Part 8

The city continued to change hands according to the varying fortunes of war till the conquest of Toledo by Alfonso VI. (1085). The country between the Douro and the Tagus, desolated by three centuries of unintermittent warfare, had become almost denuded of inhabitants. Alfonso appointed his son-in-law, Count Raymond of Burgundy, governor of Salamanca, with a mandate to repeople the town and surrounding district, and to repair the ravages of war. The count drew his colonists mainly from Castile, from the neighbouring towns of Toro and Braganza, from other parts of Portugal, from Galicia, from the ‘Sierra,’ and from his native province of Burgundy. These, together with the Mozarabes or original inhabitants, constituted the seven classes into which the population was divided, each with its separate quarter and local authorities. The whole community was subject to a code of laws framed by Count Raymond, and later amalgamated with the code preserved in the municipal archives, dating from the thirteenth century. From this document it would appear that an important part was taken in the work of colonisation by the Benedictine monastery of San Vicente, a foundation already some two or three centuries old.

Count Raymond and his wife, Urraca, were assisted in their beneficent labours by the famous bishop, Jeronimo Visquio. This prelate, a native of Perigord, and a monk of the order of St. Benedict, had come to Spain with the equally illustrious Don Bernard, Archbishop of Toledo. He accompanied the Cid as chaplain to Valencia, and on the reduction of that kingdom became its bishop. On the death of his patron he returned to Toledo, and was almost immediately appointed to the joint see of Salamanca and Zamora. In a deed, dated July 1102, the count confers upon him extensive privileges and revenues, which were confirmed by the king in 1107, the towns included in the diocese being furthermore specified. To Jeronimo we owe the old cathedral of Salamanca in which he was at last, full of years and honours, laid to rest. It had been his wish to have been laid beside his old master at Cardeña. He lived to witness the troubles attendant on the second marriage of Queen Urraca, to whom he was ever faithful; and was the first to acknowledge the primacy of the powerful Gelmirez, Archbishop of Santiago.

On Jeronimo’s death in 1120, his successor, Gerardo, was driven from the see by the Aragonese opponents of Urraca, and found an asylum with his metropolitan. The accession of Alfonso VII. resulted in the deposition of the next bishop Munio, who was a violent partisan of Aragon. He made determined efforts to recover his authority, without success, the intercession even of St. Bernard availing him nothing. Meanwhile a certain count, Don Pedro Lope, who appears to have been all-powerful in the town, shut the gates against the canonical bishop, Berengario, who succeeded at last in taking possession of his see only by the direct intervention of the king in 1135, after a lapse of four years.

The rebellious temperament of the Salamancans thus early manifested itself. A year or two later it was to cost them very dear. Scorning the leadership of any count or chief, the townsmen made repeated forays into Estremadura in search of glory and plunder. Returning laden with booty, they were met by a powerful Moorish army. The Mohammedan commander demanded a parley with their leader. The Salamancans replied that each man was his leader, whereupon the Moor thanked God for the folly of his adversaries. An engagement ensued, which might be better described as a massacre than as a battle, and but few returned to Salamanca to tell of the fate of their comrades.

The bitter lesson was repeated thrice in after years before the insensate citizens were sufficiently humbled to appeal to the king for assistance. He sent them as commander a famous warrior, Don Ponce Vigil de Cabrera, who was received in sorely tried Salamanca with much enthusiasm. The indomitable spirit of the citizens under able captainship achieved wonders. The castle of Albalat was taken and razed to the ground, and the whole district of Ciudad Rodrigo subjugated. Alfonso VII. in 1147, as a mark of favour, empowered the Alcaldes to build or to rebuild the city wall, and to encircle the suburbs with another.

Yet in 1170 we find the Salamancans allied with the people of Avila in arms against Fernando II., King of Leon. They regarded the founding of Ciudad Rodrigo as an encroachment on their privileges, and elected one Nuño Serrano as their king. On the field of Valmuza they gave battle to the king. Consulting the direction of the wind, they set fire to the brushwood, hoping that the smoke would be driven in the faces of their opponents. The wind suddenly changed, however, to the utter discomfiture of the rebels. The luckless Nuño was captured and burnt alive, and haughty Salamanca lay at the feet of the conqueror.

Fernando did not cherish resentment against the rebellious town. He called a Cortes here in 1178, and liberally endowed the see. In gratitude for the royal favour, Bishop Vital upheld the marriage of Alfonso IX. with his cousin, Teresa of Portugal, thereby bringing upon himself the fulminations of Pope Celestine III., and ultimately the sentence of suspension and deposition. Meanwhile the fighting spirit of the Salamancans was gratified by the establishment of the military order of Alcantara by two of the townsmen, Don Suero Fernández and his brother Gomez. The knights attached themselves to the Cistercian Order, their headquarters being the hermitage of San Julian de Pereo, on the banks of the Coa. The order was approved in 1177 by a bull of Pope Alexander III., afterwards confirmed by Lucius III.

Alfonso IX. endowed Salamanca with the university, which was destined to make its name known to the utmost confines of Christendom. This was a flourishing time in Salamanca. The Dominicans and Franciscans settled in the town; buildings, colleges, churches, and convents sprang up on all sides. The banner of Salamanca was seen in the forefront of the battle at Caceres, at Montanchez, at Merida; it fluttered over fallen Trujillo and Medellin; it waved before the walls of Ubeda in 1234, and of Granada two years later. The townsmen followed the Infante Alfonso to the sieges of Murcia and Seville (1248) and were rewarded for their valour by the privilege of holding open markets--probably heretofore the prerogative of the governor.

To these halcyon days there succeeded for Salamanca a long period of discord and warfare. Sancho el Bravo, when prince, held the town against his father; and in 1288 it was severely punished for its loyalty to the king by the rebellious Infante Don Juan, whose father-in-law, Don Lope de Haro, seized on the citadel. Under its walls halted the Portuguese army of King Diniz, marching upon Valladolid. In 1308 Salamanca made a vigorous defence, in the interests of the Queen Regent, Maria de Molina, against Nuñez de Lara.

The city is honourably distinguished by the refusal of the ecclesiastical council, held here in 1310, to condemn the doomed order of Knights Templars, who were, however, despoiled of their property here as elsewhere by decree of the Council of Vienne. A more cheerful function, the year following, was the baptism of the Infante Alfonso, born here, August 13, 1311. The lordship of his native city was afterwards given by this king to his wife, Maria of Portugal. The Salamancans fought well at the battle of the Salado (1340) under their bishop Juan Lucero. It was this prelate who in 1354 dissolved the marriage of Pedro the Cruel with Blanche of Bourbon, and celebrated the king’s amazing union with Juana de Castro, whom he repudiated on the following day. Lucero’s successor, Alfonso Barrasa, was a fervent partisan of Enrique de Trastamara. He followed him to the field with a force of five hundred archers, and held the city against his enemies. Meanwhile the Tejadas, one of the most powerful families of Salamanca, had declared for Don Pedro, and threw themselves into Zamora. The town was taken by Enrique’s partisans, while Don Alfonso Lopez de Tejada retired to the citadel, leaving his sons in the hands of the enemy. On their father’s refusal to surrender, the miserable lads were put to death. Don Alfonso escaped to Portugal, where he did not return till the reign of Juan I. He died in his native city in the year 1404. Bishop Barrasa on the triumph of Enrique II. was liberally rewarded for his devotion, and entrusted with important and honourable embassies to Flanders and Italy.

We read that St. Vicente Ferrer was in Salamanca at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and as a Spanish writer has it, converted the Jews to the unity of the faith on the ruins of their synagogue. He does not appear to have been equally successful in converting the Christians to the spirit of their faith, to judge from the following tragic incident which stained the history of Salamanca in his day. A quarrel arose over a game of pelota between two brothers of the family of Manzano and two of the Enriquez. The two latter were slain, and their slayers fled to Portugal. The mother of the victims, Doña Maria Rodriguez de Monroy, shed no tears, but silently and stoically gathered together her retainers and retired to her country seat at Villalba. A day or two later she, with a few followers, suddenly fell upon the murderers of her sons as they sat in fancied security at their inn in some Portuguese town, killed them, and bore their heads in triumph back to Salamanca, where she flung them upon the tombs of the Enriquez. But from this deed of vengeance sprang a bloody vendetta between the two families and their partisans, which the eloquence of St. Juan de Sahagun in 1460 allayed but could not extinguish. When forced to lay aside the sword and dagger, the bowl and philtre became the instruments of this unquenchable hate. Nay, as late as the reign of Philip II., the rival factions wore different colours, and eagerly seized the opportunity to contend against each other in jousts and tournaments. Juan de Sahagun, whose good deeds are strikingly relieved against so dark a background, himself fell a victim to poison, administered by a lady, whom his preaching and exhortations had deprived of her lover. Acclaimed at once (1479) as the patron of the city, it was not till October 17, 1690, that he was formally enrolled in the list of the saints of the Catholic Church. His feast is celebrated on the day of his death (June 11).

The fierce passions of the Salamancans were inflamed throughout the fifteenth century not only by private but political animosities. In the reign of Juan II. the city was alternately the prey of the partisans and the opponents of the royal favourite, Alvaro de Luna. When the king visited the town in 1440, the Archdeacon Juan Gómez, son of the late bishop, Don Diego de Anaya, a furious adversary of the Constable, garrisoned the alcazar of San Juan and the tower of the cathedral, and compelled his sovereign to take refuge in the house of one Acevedo. The fortress was again garrisoned against the king (Enrique IV.) six years later by Pedro de Gutiveros, but this time the bishop was on the royal side, and, with the help of Suero de Solis, expelled the rebel from the town. In gratitude for this and his friendly reception by the citizens in 1465, the unfortunate king ordered a fair or open market to be held every year from the 8th to the 21st of September, and to the delight of the townsmen decreed the demolition of the alcazar.

The disputed succession on the death of Enrique again plunged the city into civil war; both claimants, Juana and Isabel, finding partisans within its walls. Hoping to profit by these disorders, the Conde de Alba de Tormes entered the town at the head of his vassals and endeavoured to obtain possession of it. After much fighting he was expelled by the citizens, headed by Don Alfonso Maldonado and Suero de Solis. Upon the triumph of Isabel’s faction, the Portuguese quarter was promptly sacked in revenge for the assistance given by that nation to Juana. Another Maldonado was seized by King Fernando and ordered to deliver up his castle of Monleon under pain of death. The captive lord gave the necessary orders to his wife, commanding the garrison, who, at first, obstinately refused to obey them. It was only when the headsman was about to strike off her husband’s head in view of the ramparts that she relented and admitted the king’s troops.

The Salamancans were assuredly of stern stuff. The Catholic Sovereigns amused them with tournaments and pageants, and found employment for their swords before the walls of Granada. In the year 1497 Fernando, returning defeated from the Portuguese frontier, found his only son, Prince Juan, at the point of death. He expired on the 4th of October, after thirteen days’ sickness, at the age of nineteen, his mother arriving too late to see him alive. It is related that Fernando caused the queen to be informed that he also was dead, that her joy on finding him alive should somewhat soften the blow. Isabel never returned to the scene of her greatest bereavement; but we find Fernando, now a widower, here in the winter of 1505-1506.

The failure of the harvest about this time caused so much distress that the university was closed, and the ecclesiastical authorities had to leave the city. Hard upon these dark days came the rising of the Comuneros, into which the Salamancans threw themselves with all their hearts. Even the nobility espoused the popular cause, as also did the dean of the cathedral, various professors of the university, and the more prominent merchants. The leaders of the movement in Salamanca were young Maldonado Pimentel, and a skinner called Valloria, who was the idol of the populace, and by them hailed as ‘pope and king.’ But neither Valloria’s popularity nor Maldonado’s valour and rank availed to save them from the scaffold to which, with so many illustrious Castilians, they were doomed after the crushing defeat of the Comuneros at Villalar.

The establishment of the new monarchy meant for Salamanca, as for so many other cities, the end of liberty and the end of bloodshed. Family quarrels were henceforward to be adjusted by the king’s judges, wrongs avenged by his justice, not by the stiletto and poisoned draught. Outwardly Salamanca made merry over the change, and fêted Charles V. on his state entry in May 1534. His son was married here at the age of sixteen to Maria of Portugal--amid great rejoicings, as we are always told of such events.

Years passed by, and Salamanca partook of the senile decay which seemed to be creeping over Spain. The old feudal fights were recalled by the sanguinary town and gown riots, which filled the streets with dead and dying towards the close of the seventeenth century. Then came bad harvests, inundations, and the earthquake of 1755. It was but a poor and desolate city on which the French levied severe contributions in 1809, and which they sacked from end to end, three years after, in revenge for their disastrous defeat by Wellington before its walls. Salamanca has worshipped Mars and the Muses; but the War-god has turned savagely on his devotees, and from the scene of so many bloody conflicts the Genius of Learning seems at last to have fled shuddering away.

THE OLD CATHEDRAL

The primitive cathedral of Salamanca is said to have been the church of San Juan el Blanco, in the riverside suburb. Its proportions and situation were not suited to the dignity of the new city founded by Count Raymond, and we find him before long laying the first stone of a new cathedral on one of the three eminences enclosed within the walls. The exact date of the foundation and the names of the architects are unknown. But tradition avers that Bishop Jeronimo consecrated the church, and the master-builders who raised the walls of Avila at Count Raymond’s orders most likely had some share in this, his greater work. They were Cassandro, an Italian, Florin de Southren, a Frenchman, and Alvar Garcia, a Navarrese. Placed at their disposal was a band of five hundred Moslem masons and carpenters, made prisoners by the count.

Bishop Jeronimo died in the year 1120, but the records show privileges conceded to the workmen engaged in the construction of the cathedral in 1152, 1183, and as late as 1285. According to Street, a priest of Medina del Campo, in the year 1178, bequeathed his property to the chapter for the purpose of completing the cloister, from which it may be inferred that not much remained to be done to the church itself at that date. Successive popes and kings showered donations and privileges upon the nascent cathedral, till the chapter, rich in lands and vassals, ranked as a feudal power, and the sacred edifice itself as a formidable stronghold. Massive, simple, vigorous, it well deserves the epithet _fortis Salamantina_, by which it is distinguished in the well-known lines about the cathedrals of Spain, ‘Sancta Ovetensis, dives Toletanas, pulchra Leonina, fortis Salamantina.’

A building so long in course of construction is sure to present certain varieties of style, and though the old cathedral of Salamanca has undergone very little alteration since its completion, its original Romanesque character is seen to have been modified by Gothic influence. The Byzantine pillars, remarks Don Jose Quadrado, carry graceful pointed arches, and the Romanesque capitals of the clustered columns exhibit an elegance very rare in works of that style.

In plan the church is a Latin cross, one arm having been removed to make way for the new cathedral. The nave and aisles terminate in apsidal chapels. Cloisters adjoin the southern side, and the entrance from the west is through a long portico, once flanked by two massive fortified towers. This vestibule is Byzantine, though adorned with Gothic statuary, and now entered through a very poor arrangement of Doric and Corinthian columns.

The nave produces a more imposing effect than is usual in Spanish churches, owing to the absence of a choir. There is no triforium, but the nave is lighted by round-arched windows of single lights. Over the crossing rises the glorious dome or lantern, called by the Salamancans the Torre del Gallo from the weathercock on its apex. This fine work is supported on arcades, divided into sixteen compartments, and pierced with windows over each of the cardinal sides. Outside, the lantern is roofed with scaled tiles. At the four angles are rounded pinnacles with continuously moulded windows; between these and contrasting with them are pointed gables with windows, the arches of which spring sharply from capitals. In his work on _Gothic Architecture in Spain_, Mr. Street remarks, ‘I have seldom seen any central lantern more thoroughly good and effective from every point of view than this is: it seems to solve, better than the lantern of any church I have yet seen elsewhere, the question of the introduction of the dome to Gothic churches. Though the scale of this work is very moderate, its solidity and firmness are excessive, and thus only is it that it maintains that dignified manliness of architectural character which so very few of our modern architects ever seem even to strive for.’

Standing beneath the lantern, we see the fine wooden retablo, adjusted so as to fit the curving wall of the apse. Its fifty-five subjects are arranged in five rows, and enclosed each in an arched frame painted white and gold. These paintings, representing scenes from the life and passion of Christ, are more delicate and skilful than the fresco of the Last Judgment, on the semi-dome above, painted perhaps half a century later in 1446, by Nicolás Florentino.

The chancel was at first reserved as a burying-place only for those of the blood-royal. Here are the tombs of the Infanta Mafalda, daughter of the King of Castile, who died here in the kingdom of Leon in 1204; of Don Fernando Alfonso, natural son of Alfonso IX., Dean of Santiago and Archdeacon of Salamanca; and of _his_ natural son by Doña Aldara Lopez, Don Juan Fernandez, surnamed the Golden-Haired, a brave warrior, who died in 1303. On the gospel side is the tomb of good Bishop Sancho de Castilla, a descendant of Pedro the Cruel, and Doña Juana de Castro, who died in 1446, and close to him his successor Vivero, a counsellor of Fernando and Isabel. The statues of the two prelates are contained in the same sepulchral arch. Here also lie the noble cavaliers, Don Diego Arias, Archdeacon of Toro (_obiit_ 1350), and Don Arias Diez Maldonado (1474), both benefactors of the cathedral, whose ashes were removed here in 1620 by order of the dean and chapter. In the chapel of St. Nicholas, on the epistle side, lies the Dominican Bishop Fray Pedro, who baptized Alfonso XI., and died in the first quarter of the fourteenth century; his effigy is enclosed by a pointed arch, above which Christ is shown as judge.

In the south transept, still fortunately preserved, are four interesting tombs, which appear to date from the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century. The first is crudely sculptured with reliefs of the Adoration of the Magi, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection; the recumbent figure is said to be that of Diego Lopez, Archdeacon of Ledesma. Beneath a star-shaped cupola is the hooded figure of a woman, one Doña Elena, who passed away in the year 1272; the reliefs represent her deathbed and ascent to heaven. The third tomb is that of Don Alfonso Vidal, Dean of Avila and Canon of Salamanca; and the fourth, in the best Gothic style and fine arabesques, probably dates from the beginning of the fifteenth, rather than the preceding, century. It certainly cannot be, as used to be believed, the tomb of the precentor Aparitius, who died in 1274. Other very plain tombs are to be seen in the aisles, which are adorned with paintings by Fernando Gallego, called by Quadrado the Dürer of Salamanca.

The cloister, though as old as the church, has been extensively modernised. The doorway from the transept, however, has not lost its Byzantine character, nor its capitals their beautiful ornamentation of foliage with birds and nude figures. The four altars at the angles, dedicated respectively to the Blessed Virgin, St. Michael, St. Anthony of Padua, and the Magi, are enriched with the paintings of Gallego. In the cloister are also some tombs in the late Gothic style. The sarcophagus of the Archdeacon Diego Rodriguez (1504) is upheld by three lions; and another tomb enshrines the remains of Pedro Xerique (1529), a canon of this cathedral, who left a fund for the endowment of fifty poor girls with dowries--a very necessary bequest in these unsentimental Latin countries! Of the old twelfth-century sepulchres nothing but a few epitaphs and tablets remain.

Communicating with the cloister by some very ancient doorways are four interesting chapels. The oldest is the Capilla de Talavera, so called after the ‘Doctor de Talavera’ (one of the Maldonado family), who in the beginning of the fifteenth century endowed it with twelve chaplaincies for the celebration of the Mozarabic ritual. The chapel must have been very old at that time. ‘It is a very remarkable chamber,’ says Street, ‘square in plan below, and brought to an octagon above by arches thrown across the angles, and finally roofed with a sort of dome, carried upon moulded and carved ribs of very intricate contrivance. The interlacing of these ribs gives the work somewhat the effect of being Moorish, and there can be little doubt, I think, that it owes its peculiarities in some degree to Moorish influence. I should be inclined to attribute this room and its vault to the architect of the lantern of the church.’ The Mozarabic rite is still performed here six times a year.