Part 7

But the supreme objects of interest in this Castilian Charterhouse are the superb tombs of Juan II., his queen, and their son, the Infante Alfonso. These were designed and in great measure executed by Gil de Siloe, by order of Isabel the Catholic. The effigies of the king and queen recline on an alabaster tomb, the ground plan of which is a star of eight points formed by two squares placed diagonally. On the angles of the lower slab are placed figures of children supporting the royal escutcheon, and accompanied by lions. Each of the sixteen spaces between the points of the star is occupied by the statue of an apostle or a cardinal virtue placed in a niche. The tracery of this part of the tomb is indescribably rich. The angles of the upper slab are rounded off and marked by pinnacles, statuettes, and the statues of the Four Evangelists. Here and there the charming figures of cherubim, all in different postures, seem about to detach themselves from the marble. In the intervals between the points of the substructure are disposed lions in various attitudes: on some _amorini_ are mounted, while others are about to devour nude children. Such fantastic conceptions--monsters, genii, etc.--are displayed in marvellous profusion all over the surface of the monument. All this detail, which, in Street’s opinion, is for beauty of execution, vigour, and animation of design, finer than any other work of the age, serves but as a setting for the recumbent figures of Juan II. and Queen Isabel of Portugal--the parents of that other and more famous Isabel. The king is shown in his crown and robes; the face is weak, but beautiful, boyish almost, smooth-shaven, and framed by long curling locks; on the breast falls a magnificent collar of state. The right hand, which held the sceptre, has been broken off, the left, with a natural gesture, gathers up the folds of the robe. On the feet are pattens, which seem to have been in use by both sexes in Spain in the fifteenth century. The robe is of the most magnificent description, encrusted with embroidery and precious stones. The statue of the queen remains intact. Her gloved hands hold an open book, from which she seems to have raised her eyes to regard the spectator between half-closed lids. Her mantle is as splendid as her husband’s. Siloe’s embroidery in marble, his moulding of the draperies, are as delicate as the work of the weaver of the robes itself could ever have been. The lace-work is so fine that one expects a breath of wind to ruffle it. Assuredly, the price paid to the architect (442,667 maravedis) was not an exorbitant one.

The same skill is apparent in the kneeling effigy of the Infante Alfonso, who died while in rebellion against his half-brother Enrique III., at the age of fifteen years. Also by Siloe, this monument is contained within a recessed arch in the north wall of the sanctuary, festooned with a vine to which children cling. Men-at-arms support the tomb, over which is seen a vigorous figure of St. George and the Dragon. The monument is hardly less significant than that of the young prince’s parents. All three tombs were a labour of love with Isabel the Catholic, who looked upon this church as in quite a peculiar sense the property of her family. It is said that on seeing the escutcheon of the family of Soria painted on one of the stained-glass windows, she at once broke it with one of her attendants’ swords, admonishing the community that they must accept no other patronage than hers. And to-day, in truth, what glory there is at this forlorn monastery is of her creation. A statue, in painted wood, of St. Bruno, founder of the Carthusian Order, in one of the chapels, deserves notice if only as one of the rare specimens of Portuguese art--it was the work of one Manoel Pereira.

It is difficult to treat of the minor churches of Burgos in chronological order, for here, as in so many other cities, the existing fabric of the earliest-founded church may be of recent date, and far surpassed in antiquity by the actual masonry of some less historic fane. Street assigns the date of San Estéban to somewhere between the years 1280 and 1350. It stands on the castle hill, and exhibits some features of architectural interest. The portico is good Gothic work of the late thirteenth century, the reliefs representing the martyrdom of the patron saint. An early instance of realism is the stones adhering to the folds of the saint’s robe in one of the statues. Above is a fine wheel-window of the middle fourteenth century. The church consists of three parallel naves, all terminating in apses. At the west end is a raised gallery for the choir, with a fine late Gothic balustrade. Some beautiful arabesque work may be seen in the last chapel in the south aisle; the retablos and pulpit are comparatively modern. This church, which belonged by the way to the Knights Templars, is entered through an early fourteenth-century cloister--one of the smallest to be met with.

Next in order of interest, and probably of date, comes San Gil, a cruciform structure in the north of the city, founded, or at any rate rebuilt, in the fourteenth century. Its chief treasure is a wrought-iron pulpit, with very beautiful tracery, in part gilded. Very curious are the effigies in the floor of the church, with bodies of black marble and heads and hands of white. Another feature of the building worthy of notice is the mixture of painting and sculpture and carving in the decoration of the chapels on each side of the choir. The retablos are gorgeous, and some of the tombs interesting and apparently very ancient.

Only the very patient or enthusiastic sightseer will trouble to visit the other churches of Burgos, which, as it seems to me, contain little to reward one’s curiosity. San Nicolás, a sixteenth-century parish church, being close to the cathedral, should not be neglected. The life of the saint--the patron of youth--is illustrated in some ancient paintings in the north aisle and on the admirably carved stone retablo of the high altar. This fine work, as an inscription declares, was the gift of Gonsalvo Solanco and his wife Leonor de Miranda, both of whom are buried here. The tombs in these old forgotten churches are generally interesting. St. Lesmes contains the sepulchre of the patron, a devout French monk, who lived in the reign of Alfonso VI., but whose cult never seems to have spread beyond Castile.

The old convent of San Pablo, now appropriated to military uses, is hardly worth a visit, but the story of its founder, Bishop Pablo de Santa Maria, is, as Street remarks, worth telling. Originally a Jew, he was baptized a Christian in 1390. Of his four sons one at least followed his example, and afterwards became Bishop of Siguenza; but his wife, Juana, remained deaf to all his persuasions and refused to abandon the faith of her fathers. Accordingly he had the marriage legally dissolved, and was ordained priest. In 1415, being then at Valladolid, he was raised to the episcopal see of his native city, and among those who met him upon his induction were ‘his venerable mother, Doña Maria, and his well-loved wife, Juana.’ His well-loved wife, despite their religious differences, she seems to have remained, for she was buried near her husband in this church of San Pablo, unconverted to the last. The bishop survived her fifteen years. It is strange that these tombs should have been spared in the days of Torquemada, when many bishops of Jewish ancestry were compelled to disinter the bones of their remote ancestors to save them from the fury of the new school of Christians.

Of that tutelary divinity of Burgos, the Cid, there are several shrines, mostly, alas! spurious. You may visit the church variously called Santa Agueda and Santa Gadea, a fourteenth-century building, which succeeded the historic church where the champion constrained Alfonso VI. to take the oath. That event is recorded by the stone cross near the entrance, and the iron lock over the door. But the real lock on which the oath was taken was stolen by the French, who showed themselves particularly greedy for relics of Spain’s national hero. Of the church of San Martin, where he was baptized, no trace remains. The site of the Casa solar del Cid is hardly worth visiting. The house, as might be expected, has long since disappeared, and the present uninteresting monument was erected by Carlos III. in the eighteenth century. The very monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña, which the hero chose for his last resting-place, and to which he was brought across Spain seated, dead, but still dreadful, on his war-horse, has been modernised, and contains little to assist the imagination. Its memories are stirring enough. The foundation dates from Visigothic times, and here, in the ninth century, two hundred monks were massacred by the Moors. Somewhere here is buried Babieca, the horse of the Cid, one of those four-footed heroes who have attained to world-wide fame. ‘Bury him deep,’ was his master’s last injunction, ‘for it is not meet that he should be eaten by dogs who has trampled under foot so many dogs of Moors.’ The honourable interment of animals who have endeared themselves to their masters is far from being a modern craze and a proof of the degeneracy of a people, as some pseudo-moralists of to-day appear in their ignorance to believe.

The Cid’s own tomb at Cardeña is now empty. Some of his bones were carried off by the French during the Peninsular War, and were ultimately discovered at Sigmaringen, when they were restored to the Spanish Government. Meanwhile the rest of the skeleton and that of the Cid’s wife, Doña Ximena, had been removed from their insecure place of sepulture, and are now contained in a walnut case, to be seen in a modern chapel at the Ayuntamiento, or town hall. In the same building--an eighteenth century structure--is shown the bench from which those early judges of the nation, Lain Calvo and Nuño Rasura, are affirmed by tradition to have administered justice. The archives are said to merit exhaustive examination, and are rich in rare autographs and manuscripts.

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Burgos, like many other provincial capitals in Spain, is rich in old mansions of the nobility. Our English country towns have lost much historic and monumental interest from the immemorial practice of our aristocracy living on their estates, remote from towns. Quite small towns in France and in western Europe generally, usually contain two or three residences of the local nobility which do something to redeem the place from utter provincialism. It is the absence of such buildings perhaps that gives even our large country towns the aspect of mere agricultural centres or overgrown villages. The finest example of civil architecture in Burgos is the Casa del Cordon, now the residence of the Captain-General. This was the palace of that family whose tombs we have seen in the Capilla del Condestable. It was in all probability built by the same workmen in the middle of the fifteenth century, under the direction of the famous Mudejar architect of Segovia, Mohammed, and by order of the illustrious High Constable, Don Pedro Fernandez de Velasco, and his consort, Doña Mencia de Mendoza de la Vega. Here Ferdinand the Catholic and Charles V. held their courts, and here the first Duchess of Frias presided over a little coterie composed of the most brilliant men of letters and artists in Spain. This lady was the natural daughter of Ferdinand, her mother having been a Catalan girl who accompanied her royal lover in all his campaigns disguised as an esquire. The accomplished duchess was the firm friend of her half-sister, the hapless Queen Juana, and took the latter’s husband, Philip the Handsome, to task so severely, that he caused her to be ejected from her own house. Within these walls the Burgundian prince expired, his body being jealously watched by the queen and the duchess to save it, tradition avers, from a lady by whom he had been passionately loved and who had sworn to possess him in death. The Casa del Cordon has nobler memories, too, of Columbus who, on his return from his second voyage to America, here presented himself to the Catholic Sovereigns with offerings of the choicest products of the New World. Here was signed, on June 11, 1515, the act of the incorporation of the kingdom of Navarre with Castile, the unity of the whole of Spain being thus achieved. A copy of the document is preserved in the city archives. And in this house, in 1526, Francis I. was entertained on his way back to France by the High Constable of Castile.

The mansion, which has thus loomed so large in the history of Spain, occupies one side of the Plaza de la Libertad. It belongs to the last period of Gothic, and is not wanting in dignity and grace. The walls are surmounted by a parapet or balustrade of pinnacles and crestwork, in which is repeated the Cross of St. Andrew, in remembrance of a victory gained by a Velasco on that saint’s day. The façade is flanked by two square towers, rising one story above the ordinary roof level. The windows and arcades are later additions, and in bad style. The rope carved in stone over the entrance, from which the house derives its modern name, is held by some to be part of the insignia of the Teutonic Order, by others, with more probability, to be the cord of St. Francis of Assisi, a saint who was the object of a special veneration by the Velasco family. Within it are contained the escutcheons of the allied houses of Velasco, Mendoza de la Vega, and Figueroa, the first displaying the castles and lions of Castile and the device _Un buen morir honra toda la vida_. The halls and courts, now devoted to the military administration of the province, reveal some interesting traces of the former magnificence of this old home of one of the most powerful and illustrious of the great families of Spain.

On the south side of the river, in the Calle de la Calera, are two interesting houses which give the neighbourhood a thoroughly sixteenth-century aspect. The portal of the fortress-like Casa de los Angulos or of Iñigo de Angulo is adorned by two lions placed on the pillars flanking the archway, above which is a shield with seven quarterings. A few doors farther on is the more interesting Casa de Miranda, considered the best example of the Renaissance style in Burgos. It now serves the prosaic purposes of a candle factory. It is entered through a noble doorway decorated with heraldic achievements. Between the capitals of the inner court may be deciphered the inscription: _Franciscus de Miranda salon abbas de salas et canonicus burgen protonotarius et scriptor aplicus patrie restitutus faciendum curavit anno De MDXLV_. The escutcheon of the Mirandas is displayed on the friezes, which are in the usual Renaissance style, relieved with the figures of genii, medallions, etc. The architecture of the staircase exhibits a harmonious blending of late Gothic and early plateresque. Fine workmanship is to be seen in the decoration of the façade of the old Colegio de San Nicolás (1570), where the Provincial Institute has its quarters.

Two more conspicuous monuments of the sixteenth century are the fine arches of Santa Maria and Fernan González. The former occupies the site of the old tower of Santa Maria, where the town council at one time held its sittings, and whence the body of Garcilaso de la Vega was hurled by Pedro the Cruel; it was erected between 1536 and 1540 by the municipality to conciliate Charles V., it is said, for the events of the Comunidad. The arch is of three stories, and flanked by two rounded towers. Over the arch are shown in niches six statues: those of Charles V. and the Castilian worthies, the Cid, Fernan González, Nuño Rasura, Lain Calvo, and Diego Porcellos. The upper part of the structure is battlemented and adorned with statues of the Virgin, of the guardian angel of the city, and of kings-at-arms supporting escutcheons. The probability is that the entrance arch, and indeed the whole lower story, is older by a century than the sculptured parts.

The arch of Fernan González was erected in 1592 to mark the site of the castle of the redoubtable count. It is in the severe and imposing Doric style of Herrera, and was evidently intended to receive a statue of the hero, which an impoverished city is not likely to provide now. Burgos has, however, done its best to keep green the memory of its illustrious sons--an example set by so many continental towns, which we, in England, seem loth to follow.

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Of the castle, whose history was so long the history of Castile, little that is ancient, nothing of the earliest structure, remains. The oldest masonry is probably the gate, called the Puerta San Estéban, a brick structure pierced with a horse-shoe arch. Popularly ascribed to the period of the Moorish domination (which practically was never asserted over Burgos), there can be little doubt that it dates from the fourteenth century, and was the work of Mudejar masons, like so many other Spanish buildings of that time. The old citadel of Castile is now a heap of ruins, but it was strong enough as late as a century ago to resist the assaults of Wellington. The next year, however (1813), the French completely dismantled the fortifications and evacuated the city.

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The provincial museums of Spain are, as a rule, disappointing, but the Burgos collection, housed in the Puerta Santa Maria, is enriched by the spoils of numerous ancient churches and suppressed convents. The alabaster effigy of Don Juan de Padilla, believed to be by Gil de Siloe, is one of the noblest sepulchral monuments in the kingdom. It was brought here from the ruined monastery of Fres del Val, where the knight was interred in 1491, having met his death at the age of twenty years, before the walls of Granada. He is shown kneeling in an attitude of prayer, beside a prie-Dieu. The face is beautiful and expressive, and probably a portrait. An ample robe of extraordinary richness reveals the shirt of mail, the cuirass, and the plate armour worn by the young warrior. The style reminds one of the statues of Don Juan II. and Prince Alfonso in the Cartuja, and reflects the greatest credit on Spanish sculpture. Hardly less beautiful is the tomb itself, decorated with shields upheld by angels, and an inscription recording the age of the deceased. In the museum is also a very curious and interesting altar-front from the convent of Santo Domingo de Silos, dating from the eleventh century. It is of bronze, with figures of saints in coloured enamels, in a bastard Byzantine style. The Moorish ivory casket from the same monastery and of the same century is profoundly interesting, as exhibiting in relief the Persian theory of the origin of good and evil, like the basin from Medina Az Zahara, preserved in the National Museum of Archæology. The Byzantine reliefs of saints on one side of the casket were evidently carved by the Christians when they became the possessors. Few small provincial collections contain more important antiquities than the Museum of Burgos.

III

SALAMANCA

‘Sword never blunted pen,’ says a Spanish proverb, ‘nor pen sword.’ The history of Salamanca illustrated this truth. Its people were doughty warriors and learned scholars. The name of Salamanca was feared by Moor and Portuguese, as much as it was respected in all the halls of learning of the mediæval world. The seat of a university which all but successfully competed for pre-eminence with Oxford and Paris, it was at the same time the permanent camp of as fierce a race of fighting men as ever marched beneath the banners of Spain. The pen has made the city famous in every land, but it was by her sword that she came to be better known in her own country. Decayed and ruined, she has yet made herself illustrious in the two great fields of human activity, and has a twofold claim on the respect and interest of men of every European tongue.

The city, far older than Leon and Burgos, existed prior to the Roman conquest. It is identified by some with the Elmantica of Polybius, in which others recognise the neighbouring town of Alba de Tormes. Plutarch speaks of it as Salmatica, ‘a great town of Spain,’ and relates the heroic exploits of its womenfolk. Besieged by the Carthaginians under Hannibal, the inhabitants were forced to surrender. They were ordered to evacuate the town, leaving behind them all their arms and property as spoils for the victors. They were then placed under a guard of Massilians, while the rest of the Punic host hastened to plunder the forsaken city. But the women, who had accompanied the prisoners and whom no one had thought of searching, produced weapons which they had concealed about them, and armed their husbands, who fell upon their guards and cut them to pieces. The Carthaginian army was thrown into dismay by this unexpected attack, and the brave Salamantians were enabled to make good their escape to the hills. Hannibal is stated by Plutarch to have graciously pardoned the enemy that had eluded his vengeance.

Salamanca, with the rest of the province of Lusitania, passed under the sway of Rome, and seems to have been a place of some importance. Money was coined here in the reign of Tiberius, and the town was governed by duumvirs. Christianity must have early taken root here, for when the Goths conquered Spain they found an episcopal see already established at Salamanca. It had already been for a time the seat of a Vandal governor, Genseric, brother of King Huneric. Money was struck bearing the names of the city and of the kings Erwig and Egica. Certain bishops are mentioned as assisting at the councils of Toledo: Eleutherius at the third; Hiccila at the fourth and fifth; Egered at the seventh, eighth, and tenth; Providentius at the twelfth; Holemund at the thirteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth. When in 715 Salamanca was submerged by the Moorish invasion, her bishop sought refuge with Pelayo in the glens of Asturias, and we read that Alfonso the Chaste assigned the basilica of San Salvador at Oviedo, to Quindulfo, the occupant of the see then _in partibus infidelium_. The city did not long remain in the undisturbed possession of the Moor. It was taken by Alfonso I. in 750, and again in 858 by Ordoño I., who made captive the Moorish amir, and released him only after extorting better terms for his Christian subjects. But this promise did not tempt back the bishops from their safe retreat in the north. Sebastian, who wore the mitre about the year 880, occupied himself with writing a chronicle of Spain from the reign of Wamba to his own day. His patron, Alfonso el Magno, succeeded in expelling the Mohammedans from Salamanca, and thought to annex it definitely to his kingdom; but it was recaptured by Abd-ur-Rahman, the Khalifa, five years later, the Christian inhabitants, including priests, to the number of two hundred, being put to the sword.