Part 5

When Alfonso ascended the throne of Castile, it was the Cid who exacted from him, at the gate of the church of Santa Gadea, the humiliating oath that he had had no share in his brother’s murder--an indignity which Alfonso did not quietly forget. He dissimulated his resentment, however, and gave his sister Jimena in marriage to the valiant Campeador. Soon after the threatened quarrel broke out, and the haughty vassal abandoned all his estates in Castile, and entered the service of the Moorish Amir of Zaragoza. The chronicles tell how on his visiting Burgos the knight found, by order of the king, every door shut against him. Only a little girl nine years of age ventured to address him. From their windows the citizens beheld him and wept, crying, ‘How good a vassal, if he had only a good lord!’ Very sadly the Cid passed the night with his followers without the walls. He visited his wife and daughters at the monastery of Cardeña, and turned his face from Castile. He was at shifts for money--a precedent Don Quixote appears to have forgotten--and bethought him of an ingenious expedient. Filling an enormous coffer with stones and sand, he offered it, as being laden with gold and treasure, as security to a Jew, on the understanding that it should not be opened till the money was repaid. The confiding usurer readily advanced six hundred marks of gold and silver, and the coffer remains to this day to attest the simplicity of the Jewish character and the eminently commercial aptitudes of the Castilian national hero.

With Rodrigo’s wonderful exploits in other parts of Spain we are not here concerned. When he died at Valencia at a ripe age, he was brought back to his native place, seated upright on his famous steed Babieca, and laid to rest beside his wife at Cardeña. There he was suffered to remain till the year 1842, when his ashes were transported to the town hall of Burgos. A brave soldier, but one of the sorriest of the nation’s heroes!

During the lifetime of this worthy and the reign of Alfonso VI., Toledo was captured from the Moors, and Burgos ranked henceforward only as a secondary capital of Spain. It may be remarked that till Philip II. published his decree that ‘_Madrid solo es corte_,’ the kingdom could not be said in the modern sense of the word ever to have had a capital. Burgos, Valladolid, Toledo, and Seville had all equal claims to be considered the seat of government. As the Moorish frontier was pushed farther and farther south, Burgos lost in military importance. But its dignity was enhanced in an ecclesiastical sense, for it was raised in 1073 to an archiepiscopal see. Then followed the stormy days of Queen Urraca, when the city came in for its fair share of turmoil and bloodshed. Order was temporarily restored under the ‘Emperor’ Alfonso VII. An important ecclesiastical council was held here in 1136. Alfonso, at his death in 1157, most unwisely divided his estates, bestowing Castile upon the eldest, Fernando. The events of 1070 were repeated. Leon and Castile waged war against each other, and when the infant, Alfonso VIII., succeeded his father on the Castilian throne in 1158, the Laras and Castros, rivals for the regency, turned their swords against each other. Burgos was once more the capital of an independent kingdom, and witnessed in 1170 the marriage of the young king to Eleanor, daughter of Henry II. of England--the first of the many happy alliances between the royal houses of the two countries.

Alfonso’s reign was prosperous and glorious. He was a tolerant monarch, and showed favour to the Moslems. There seems in his time to have been an important mosque at Burgos. To propitiate Heaven, after the terrible defeat of the Christians at Alarcos, Eleanor persuaded her husband to build the monastery of Las Huelgas, to which act of piety no doubt was attributed the ‘crowning mercy’ of las Navas de Tolosa in 1212.

During the struggle for the regency, which ensued on the death of Alfonso, Burgos sided with the boy-king’s suitor Berenguela, who soon after became queen in her own right. Without hesitation this high-minded princess abdicated in favour of her son Fernando, the issue of her marriage with Alfonso of Leon, which had been dissolved by the Pope. The new king was attacked by his own father and by the arch-rebel of Spain, Alvar Fanez, but he triumphed over his enemies, and in 1230 succeeded to his unnatural father’s dominions, thus uniting finally and for ever the kingdoms of Leon and Castile.

‘From the time of St. Ferdinand,’ remarks a recent historian of Spain (Mr. Ulick Burke), ‘Moors in Castile became as scarce as foxes in Middlesex.’ An era of prosperity seemed about to dawn for Burgos--_caput Castellae camera regia_, as she proudly styled herself. There were great doings within her walls when the son of the king of England (afterwards Edward I.) came here in October 1254 to espouse Leonor, sister of King Alfonso the Learned. The English prince was made a knight by his prospective brother-in-law in the church of Santa Maria, where the marriage later on took place. In 1269 Edward came again to Burgos to assist at the nuptials of the Infante Fernando and the Princess Blanche of France. Among the guests were also the king of Aragon, the sultan of Granada, the Infantes of Aragon and Castile, ‘and other great _ricoshombres_ and knights of the kingdom of Castile and Leon, and counts and dukes of France, and other hidalgos of that country; and the Marquis of Montferrat, who was wedded to Doña Beatriz, daughter of King Alfonso.’

The learned king did much to organise and to purify the administration, and as a natural consequence a sedition was fomented by his brother Don Felipe and the chiefs of the Lara, Haro, and Castro families. The rebels appeared in force before Burgos, and the king invited the leader to the Cortes then in session (1271). This invitation was refused, but a meeting was arranged at the Hospital del Rey outside the walls. Alfonso was in a most conciliatory mood, and as the rebels wanted only a colourable pretext to continue their campaign of rapine and lawlessness, the more he granted the more they wanted. Finally the ringleaders retired in utter disgust to Granada.

Burgos was the scene of one of Alfonso’s worst deeds. Suspecting his brother Don Fadrique of intriguing with his grandchildren, the disinherited Infantes de la Cerda, he ordered him to be confined in the castle, where the unfortunate prince was put to death by his ferocious nephew, the Infante Sancho. After the marriage of the Infantes Don Pedro and Don Juan with Margaret of Narbonne and Joanna of Montferrat, at Burgos in 1281, Sancho himself revolted against his father and caused himself to be proclaimed king. He obtained possession of the city, and, strangely enough, reinterred with great ceremony in the monastery of La Trinidad the very uncle he had killed.

Señor Amador de los Rios attributes the rivalry of the two cities of Valladolid and Burgos to the preference shown the former city by the wife of Sancho IV., Doña Maria Molina. For all that, it was the old capital of Castile where Sancho caused his son Fernando to be publicly declared heir to the throne.

Burgos was now a large and populous town. It owed much of its prosperity to its considerable Jewish colony, of which Don Todros Abulafia was Nasi, and Abu-l-Hasan Aben el Harits, physician to the king, one of the elders. The Israelites contributed over one hundred thousand maravedis to the revenue in the city alone. With the important part played by the Jews in the internal policy of Spain I have dealt at greater length in my work on Toledo in the present series.

During the regency of Doña Maria Molina, Valladolid was the usual seat of the court. But Burgos continued to be the scene of great functions of state. The marriage of the Duke of Brittany and the sister of Fernando IV. was celebrated here in January 1311; and several Cortes and councils met here. From Fernando the city obtained many privileges and favours--the town and revenues of Villafranca de Montes de Oca being granted to the municipality.

We pass over the civil wars and intrigues which distracted the reign of Alfonso XI., and find Burgos ruled by one born within its walls--Pedro the Cruel. Seville is more intimately associated with this picturesque and sinister personality, but here it was that he caused the governor, Garcilaso de la Vega, to be beaten to death in his presence, and watched the bulls in the arena without trampling on and tossing the mangled body of the victim. De la Vega’s remains were then placed in a casket, which was hung from the castle walls that all might fear the king’s justice. In 1355, after a busy butchering expedition, Pedro decorated a room in the castle with the heads he had collected, the slaughtered grandees, Lope de Bandaña, Gonzalo de Melendez, and Jofre Tenorio, contributing in this way to the adornment of the chamber and the delight of their lord. It was at the old capital of Castile that he was residing when Enrique de Trastamara with Bertrand du Guesclin and the White Company crossed the border. Pedro fled, and his brother was crowned at Las Huelgas. When the tide had temporarily set in Pedro’s favour, it was in the cathedral of Burgos that he and the Black Prince swore to the terms of their alliance. But in the following year (1368) Enrique’s star was once more in the ascendant, and a king, innately almost as vicious as our Henry VIII., had gone to join his hosts of victims on the other side of the tomb.

Burgos, under the Trastamara dynasty, resumed for a time the rank of capital of Spain. Like his father, Don Juan I. was crowned here, at Las Huelgas, in 1379, amid great festivities and rejoicings. His son, afterwards Enrique III., was born here, probably in the great castle, founded by Diego Porcellos, which perhaps gave its name to the whole kingdom. Few traces exist to-day of the original building, which was the habitual residence of the sovereign. Enrique III., however, ‘decreed a stately palace dome’ at Miraflores, on the left bank of the Arlanzon, at some distance from the city, but he died before its completion. A strange monarch was this Enrique. Tired of living in poverty while his nobles wallowed in luxury, he invited them to a banquet at the castle. On their arrival they found no well-spread table, but the executioner with his axe and block. It was only by liberal disbursements and advances that they escaped this functionary’s professional attentions. Thus did the needy monarch of Castile, who it is said had to pawn his coat to get a dinner, replenish his exchequer.

During the reign of Juan II. the castle of Burgos was held by Don Pedro de Estuñiga, the implacable foe of the great Constable, Alvaro de Luna. The king on one occasion actually found the gates of his own castle closed against him by this arrogant vassal, who at last compassed de Luna’s downfall and death at Valladolid. In atonement for this brutal sacrifice of his favourite, Juan converted the palace built by his father into a Carthusian monastery--to the disgust, we are told, of the local ecclesiastical authorities.

During the reign of Enrique IV. the castle of Burgos was a focus of rebellion and conspiracy. On the king’s death the castle was held by the Estuñigas for the Princess Juana, called by her enemies la Beltraneja, while the town espoused the cause of Isabel and her Aragonese husband. The bishop, who had retired to the castle of Rabe, joined forces with the Estuñigas, and the townsfolk, thus placed between two fires, implored the assistance of the court at Valladolid. Meanwhile the Portuguese allies of Juana were implored to succour the castle. Fernando of Aragon appeared at Burgos in June 1475 and invested the Estuñigas’ stronghold. An attack on the church of Santa Maria la Blanca was beaten off with loss, but the garrison, losing heart, ultimately surrendered to the besiegers. The king of Portugal, instead of hurrying on with all speed to Burgos, went into winter quarters at Zamora, while Fernando prosecuted the siege with his accustomed vigour. The garrison held out bravely, and seem to have at last capitulated, more out of disgust at the inaction of their ally than from any inability to defend themselves further. The commandant treated with Isabel in person, and surrendered on obtaining a free and unconditional pardon for himself and all his followers.

The union of Spain, consequent on the marriage of Isabel of Castile with Fernando of Aragon, tended to diminish the importance of Burgos. Nor was its prosperity augmented by the expulsion of the Jews--after they had been decimated by repeated massacres--the act of two sovereigns whose wisdom, greatness, and virtue English writers, as well as Spanish, never tire of extolling.

The Burgolese joined the Comunidad in 1520, allying themselves with Toledo and Segovia, Zamora, Toro, Madrid, Avila, Guadalajara, Cuenca, Alcala, and Soria. The citizens seized the castle and murdered an unpopular official, Garcia Jofre, afterwards sacking the episcopal palace. They surrounded the palace of the Constable of Castile, Don Iñigo Fernandez de Velasco, and were deterred from burning it to the ground only by the intercession of the clergy, who exposed the Sacrament over the doorway. The Constable fled to Briviesca, but some months after returned in triumph to the now pacified city. Sixteen years later we find the townsfolk welcoming Charles V. with enthusiasm, and erecting in his honour the graceful arch of Santa Maria. Burgos had accepted the new monarchy and the new era. The product of another age, she found herself unfitted to play a distinguished part in this. Not without dignity she passes into the background, and history knows her no more.

THE CATHEDRAL

Built at the instance of an English bishop and, like all the cathedrals of northern Spain, on a French model, the church of Santa Maria la Mayor is conspicuously more Spanish than that of either Leon or Toledo. This more national character may be due to later additions and alterations--alterations and additions which have neither obscured nor impaired that wonderful unity and harmony of design apparent in this, the ideal Gothic church.

The cathedral occupies the site of a church built in 1075, where a summer palace of Fernan González had till then stood. The first stone was laid on July 20, 1221, by Bishop Maurice, an Englishman who had come over to Castile in the train of Henry II.’s daughter Eleanor. The saintly King Fernando took a lively interest in the great work, which progressed so rapidly that the cathedral appears to have been ready for the reception of the faithful in November 1230. The nationality of the bishop and his share in the building of the fabric are, however, matters of dispute between historical writers.

The cathedral is built on very uneven ground, a circumstance which rather enhances than detracts from its picturesqueness. O’Shea calls attention to a remarkable trait in the exterior, rarely possessed by buildings otherwise of equal merit: ‘We mean that the forms should be bold projections or reproductions in relief of the internal parts, as in embossing. Thus, in this cathedral, the eye embraces the inward distribution at one glance from the shape of the parts outside.’ From a distance the most conspicuous parts of the edifice are the steeples surmounting the west front and the lantern over the crossing. The delicacy and nobility of the spires, pinnacles, and open-work adorning the glorious fabric tempt one to rhapsody. But so much beauty can be adequately portrayed only by the brush, not by the pen.

The lowest stage of the western or main front is pierced by the three doors corresponding to the nave and aisles within. Formerly rich in sculpture, this part of the façade was rebuilt in the latter part of the eighteenth century, in accordance with the pseudo-classical ideas of the time, and robbed of nearly all its statuary. The ‘restorers’ spared the statues of Alfonso VI., San Fernando, and the Bishops Maurice and Astorio at the side of the Puerta Real (Central Door), and the sculptures of the Coronation and Immaculate Conception of the Virgin over the lateral entrances. This lowest stage of the west front in its extreme plainness and severity presents an incomplete appearance when contrasted with the much more elaborate and ancient work above. Over the middle door, within a noble and gracefully moulded ogival arch, is a large, finely traceried rose-window, lighting the nave. Above this again are two windows, each of four lights, and their upper parts filled with beautiful tracery. Before each light stands the statue of a youth crowned. Over this highest stage of the middle division of the west front is the inscription _Pulchra est et decora_ carved in stone, and forming a balustrade, which is adorned by statues of the Redeemer, the Madonna, and the Baptist.

Over the side doors rise the towers, surmounted with steeples, built for Bishop Alfonso de Cartagena (1435-1456) by the artist, probably a German, called Juan de Colonia, or John of Cologne. These steeples rise to a height of three hundred feet, and, except at the lowest story, are detached from the rest of the edifice. They are adorned with tall pointed windows, the space for two of these on the second stage of the north tower being covered, however, by the seventeenth-century clock. The pinnacles themselves are wonderful examples of delicate fretted stone-work. Street saw little beauty, however, in Juan de Colonia’s work, adding that the bells in the spires were the most misshapen he had ever seen.

The entrance to the north transept was known in the time of Alfonso X. as the Gate of the Twelve Apostles. It stands on a higher level than the floor of the church and is hence called Puerta Alta, or more often the Puerta de la Coroneria. The lower portion certainly, the whole probably, belongs to the thirteenth century. There is a great profusion of sculpture. On either side of the door are seen the figures of the twelve Apostles. The portal is enclosed within an ogival arch, on the archivolt of which are shown, successively, seraphim, cherubim, and the souls of the just rising from their graves. The upper part of the tympanum is adorned with the figures of Christ seated and attended by the Virgin and St. John. Below this is a composition of doubtful interpretation, the figures on one side seeming to illustrate the judgment of the wicked, those on the other side the establishment of the Dominicans and Franciscans in Castile. Higher up, the façade is pierced with two high pointed windows, and above these again by windows of several lights, with statues in niches.

Ingress to the north transept is now obtained by a side entrance called the Puerta de la Pellejeria, a plateresque structure facing east, dating from the year 1516. Somewhat of the Gothic spirit may be detected in this sumptuous but not over-decorated portal. The detail is excellent, and the execution vigorous. With the figures of the Virgin, the Apostles, Saints, and Bishops are associated genii, _amorini_, and heraldic achievements in the true Renaissance style. Above the doorway is a group representing the martyrdom of the two Saints John; and over this a prelate, probably Rodriguez de Fonseca, is kneeling at the feet of the Madonna. The composition is flanked by the fine statues of Saints Peter and Paul; and on the sides of this façade are placed in niches the statues of St. John the Baptist and St. James, and St. John the Divine and St. Andrew.

The Puerta del Sarmental gives access to the south transept. It has the finest of the cathedral fronts. It is approached by a broad flight of steps, flanked by the walls of the episcopal palace and cloisters, and by some interesting fourteenth-century tombs of bishops. The architecture of the portal is on the same plan as that of the Puerta Alta. In the tympanum Christ is shown with the Evangelists and the beasts symbolical of them; below are the seated figures of the twelve Apostles. The three orders of the archivolt are adorned with angels and with crowned figures playing various instruments. Above all this is a magnificent rose-window filled with beautiful glass of the fourteenth century. The third stage of the front shows three Gothic windows, elaborately traceried, and each divided into four lights by mullions, supported by large figures of angels. ‘The angles of the transepts,’ says Street, ‘are flanked by crocketed pinnacles, the crockets here, as elsewhere throughout the early work, being simple in form and design, but as perfect in effect as it is possible for crockets to be.’

The eastern front of the cathedral is formed by the Capilla del Condestable and its adjoining chapels. The exterior of the famous octagonal chapel mentioned is very fine. On the uppermost stage on one of the sides two lions, standing upright, are seen supporting laurel crowns--one containing the cross, the other the monogram of Christ. On a lower stage the escutcheon of the Velascos and Mendozas is displayed between two knights armed _cap-à-pie_. The stages are flanked by effigies under canopies. The angles of the façade are surmounted by elegant spires and pinnacles.

The plan of the cathedral--a Latin cross, with nave, aisles, and transept--has been obscured by the chapels built on the north, south, and east sides, as may be seen by a glance at the plan included among the illustrations. The nave is of six bays, and fifty-eight metres long. Though the view is spoilt, as in all Spanish churches, by the choir, it remains picturesque, pure, and devotional in the highest degree. The dim religious light of our northern churches, it is true, is lacking, for the interior is white throughout, and the stained glass, which in earlier times would have mellowed the strong sunlight, was unhappily shattered during the war of Independence. The aisles are lower than the nave, from which they are separated by twenty columns, each with eight engaged shafts. The triforium is somewhat in the nature of an architectural curiosity, and certainly has been altered since the thirteenth century; it consists of wide bays of five or six lights each, with trefoil and quatrefoil traceries above, enclosed within a semicircular arch or ‘label,’ which is decorated with sculptured heads. Street declares that he has seen nothing like this elsewhere, and supposes it to be the work of a native artist. Above the triforium is the original clerestory--‘Simple, but good and vigorous in style.’