Part 9

The Capilla de Santa Barbara was founded about the year 1350 by Bishop Juan Lucero, who is buried here. His tomb was hidden during centuries by the table at which sat the examiners of the university and at which were conferred degrees. There are several other notable tombs belonging to the Gothic period. The effigy of a knight with a long beard and sword represents one Garcia Ruiz, the ecclesiastic close by, Canon Garcia de Medina, who died in 1474.

In the beautiful Gothic chapel of St. Catalina or Capilla del Canto, now dismantled and neglected, synods and provincial councils were customarily held. The fourth chapel, dedicated to St. Bartholomew, was founded early in the fifteenth century by Diego de Anaya, Archbishop of Seville. This prelate was a native of Salamanca, and took a prominent part in affairs of state. He was deputed to persuade the anti-pope, Don Pedro de Luna, to abandon his claims to the papacy; and failing in this, or for some other reason, was not suffered to take possession of his see till a few years before his death. The roof of the chapel is adorned with stars on a very dark background. Something of the Byzantine spirit is traceable in the ornamentation. Attention is however distracted from these details to the imposing tombs of the founder and his family. Enclosed by a fine railing with Renaissance designs of centaurs and floral scrolls, the recumbent statue of the bishop is seen, clad in full pontificals and watched over by a lion, a dog, and a hare. The tomb is of pure alabaster, and supported by lions. At the angles are groups of bishops and friars, and at the sides Christ with the Twelve Apostles and the Virgin with an equal number of female saints. The architects of this fine work and of the equally admirable railing are, unfortunately, unknown. Several others of the tombs in this chapel are of scarcely inferior conception and workmanship. The statues, believed to represent Don Gabriel de Anaya and his wife, and two earlier fifteenth-century effigies of a knight and a lady, are in partly Moorish costume, according to an affectation of that age. The only tomb with an epitaph is that of Doña Beatriz de Guzman, sister-in-law of the founder. The two sons born to Don Diego before he entered the Church by Doña Maria de Orozco are also buried here: on the gospel side lies Don Diego Gomez, fully armed, with a lion at his feet; his brother, the warlike archdeacon, Juan Gomez, rests in the niche adjoining the retablo.

The chapter house, also communicating with the cloister, contains some beautifully carved chairs and tables, and a replica of a Madonna and Child by Reni.

THE NEW CATHEDRAL

It may be presumed that the faithful of Salamanca had suffered for a number of years on account of the smallness of their cathedral; for the demand for a new place of worship is not traceable to any immediate or special cause, nor to any particular individual. At the instance of the bishop and the municipality, Fernando and Isabel, in the year 1491, solicited and obtained from Pope Innocent VIII. authority to erect a new cathedral at Salamanca, on the ground that the old fabric no longer sufficed for the needs of the congregation.

The city was then nearing the zenith of its prosperity, and all over Western Europe there was a craving for the pompous, the magnificent, and the merely big. We can imagine that the Salamancans of the new era were impatient of the plainness and masculine vigour of the little cathedral of Jeronimo. The chapter spared no pains to raise an edifice which should be as splendid as any in Spain. Nothing, however, was done till 1510, when the matter was placed in the hands of the two most celebrated architects of the kingdom, Antonio Egas, architect of the cathedral of Toledo, and Alfonso Rodrigues, master of the works at Seville. These two masters could not agree as to certain details in the plans, and the bishop Francisco de Bobadilla, son of Queen Isabel’s favourite Beatriz, summoned the nine most eminent architects of Spain to a conference. These were--Antonio Egas, Juan Gil de Hontañon, Juan de Badajoz, Alfonso de Covarrubias, Juan Tornero, Juan de Alava, Rodrigo de Zaravia, Juan Campero, and Rodrigues, who had by this time gone to the island of Santo Domingo. At this conference, held on September 3, 1512, the plan and proportions of the proposed building were decided, Juan Gil de Hontañon was appointed architect, and Juan Campero clerk of the works. The project being so far advanced, liberal donations poured in from the municipality and the citizens, and at last the foundation-stone was laid, as the inscription at the right-hand corner of the main façade records, on Thursday, May 12, 1513. De Hontañon was engaged at Seville rebuilding the dome of the cathedral, but under his occasional supervision and that of his assistant, Juan de Alava, the work was actively carried on. De Hontañon died in 1531, and was succeeded in his office by his assistant; and in 1560, his son Rodrigo being then architect, the cathedral was opened for divine worship, the event being thus commemorated on a tablet: Pio IIII. papa, Philippo II. rege, Francisco Manrico de Lara episcopo, ex vetere ad hoc templum facta translatio XXV. mort. anno à Christo nato MDLX.

The cathedral exhibits the transition from late Gothic to Renaissance. It is certainly constructed on very ambitious lines, and is not wanting in majesty, though that fervent lover of the Gothic, Mr. Street, declared the planning to be infelicitous and the detail throughout of the very poorest kind. The favourable impression the interior produces is almost entirely due to its spaciousness. The ground plan forms a rectangle, 195 feet long by 198 feet wide. On the south side it is built against the old cathedral, with which it communicates by a flight of eighteen steps. The western or principal façade is the oldest part of the building, and, as might be expected, is in the Gothic style, with hardly any admixture of the plateresque. The three entrances are recessed within graceful arches, and separated by massive buttresses adorned with statuary. The main entrance has two doors, separated by a pillar on which is a beautiful figure of the Virgin. Immediately above the doorway are two very fine reliefs of the Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi. These are contained within semicircular arches, which are in turn contained within a bewildering series of arches, rounded, elliptical, and pointed, all elaborately moulded and ornamented with animals, putti, and heraldic achievements. The vertex of the outermost of these arches upholds a vigorous relief of the Crucifixion, flanked by the Apostles Peter and Paul. Hardly a square foot has been left free of decoration, and the whole is overwrought and florid, though the rich cream colour of the stone in itself produces a pleasing effect. The side doors are much less elaborate, though designed on the same plan, and appear to have been intended to receive more statuary and ornament. The tower above is one of the few creditable performances of Churriguera--a native of Salamanca. The noble steeple to the right was part of the old cathedral, but was recast in the sixteenth century. It forms a landmark for travellers in the dreary country round the city.

On the north side of the church is the fine Puerta de las Palmas, which probably derives its name from the fine relief representing the entry of Christ into Jerusalem. The exterior of the cathedral generally suffers from comparison with the older structure at its side.

The interior consists of a nave and two aisles. The centre of the nave is occupied by the choir, which is connected, as is usual in Spanish churches, with the Capilla Mayor by a railed-in passage. There are no projecting transept arms. Over the crossing is a lantern with a half-orange dome, eight windows between Corinthian columns, and a superabundance of ornamentation, which only too well announces this to be the handiwork of Churriguera. The nave is higher than the aisles. Both are pierced with windows, made intentionally small to exclude the light. In front of these runs a pierced balustrade of very Renaissance character, below which is a charming frieze in the older style, with cherubs and animals peeping through foliage. The piers that support the roof have their capitals painted in blue and gold. Above certain of the arches is displayed the Vase of Lilies with the Angelic Salutation, adopted as its arms by the chapter; above others the medallions with busts so common in the architecture of this period.

The Capilla Mayor still lacks the retablo which it is proposed one day to set up, and is backed by hangings and a canopy over the statue of the Virgin. In the sanctuary are the silver urns containing the remains of Saints Juan de Sahagun and Tomas de Villanueva; further back in the Capilla del Carmen the tomb of Bishop Jeronimo, transported here from the old cathedral in 1744, together with the famous Cristo de las Batallas, the crude black image carried by the Cid with him on all his expeditions. It must be confessed that few Spanish cathedrals contain a less remarkable Capilla Mayor than this one.

Nor is the choir specially remarkable, except as a specimen of Churriguera’s decorative frenzy. The stalls are carved with the figures of saints, full-length and half-length, in very stagy poses, though the boy-martyrs, Justus and Pastor, are, it must be confessed, very well executed. Wherever space permitted, cherubs, floral scrolls, and all sorts of decorative patterns have been put in. The _trascoro_ or altar at the rear of the choir surpasses the latter in the extravagance of its style. The Eternal Father, accompanied by angels, apostles, and prophets, may be seen amidst a profusion of clouds and foliage. The statues of St. Anne and St. John the Baptist obviously belong to an earlier period and a better school. They are attributed by Ponz to Juan de Juni, who was responsible for much of the ornamentation over the main entrance.

The chapels are all square and of the same height and size--twenty-eight feet square and fifty-four feet high. They are all decorated in the Gothic style, a uniformity which suggests that they were all built at the same time, or very carefully copied from the first one planned. Each contains a semicircular window, and four arched recesses for tombs. This regularity of style has operated to some extent as a check upon the excesses of the Churrigueresque school. The Golden Chapel--the second in the south aisle--dates from the sixteenth century. All within it is superbly gilded, the decoration reflecting credit on its author, Canon Francisco Sanchez de Palencia, whose noble tomb is here. His dignities are set forth on the beautiful plateresque _reja_. The chapel also contains a notable skeleton or memento mori. The next chapel is called after the Presidente de Lievana, and is adorned with some good paintings by the dumb artist Navarrete, particularly by a copy of Titian’s ‘Deposition.’ The fourth chapel on this side contains the good statue of a very good man, Canon Palacios, who died in the odour of sanctity in the year 1591. We may now descend to the old cathedral by a doorway on the right, close to a fine picture of the Madonna and Child and St. John, by Morales. The monuments of Count Raymond and Doña Urraca must have been destroyed to make room for this part of the new building. Good paintings by Gallego may be seen in the Capilla de San Antonio on the opposite side of the church. There are not many good tombs, the only ones remaining to be mentioned being those of the Bishops Corrionero (1620), Felipe Beltran (1783), and Agustino Varela (nineteenth century).

The sacristy is a gorgeous apartment, where mirrors, gilding, and ornamentation of every style are combined to produce a not altogether unpleasing effect. The treasury is rich in relics of doubtful authenticity. The silver reliquaries were once the property of the Knights Templars, whose cause Salamanca long upheld. Here you may gaze (with a befittingly credulous air) upon three thorns from Christ’s crown, a piece of the true cross, an arm of St. George, St. Lawrence’s shoulder, the head of one of the eleven thousand virgins who escorted St. Ursula, the hearts of St. Bartholomew and St. Sebastian, and the bodies of five Spanish martyrs who suffered under the Vandals. More interesting are a letter in St. Teresa’s handwriting, and a small crucifix of blackened bronze, often confounded with the Cristo de las Batallas, and probably of the same period and source. The chalice, monstrance, and other sacred vessels are beautifully wrought, even for a country where metal-working has been carried almost to perfection.

THE UNIVERSITY,

thanks to which the name of Salamanca was honourably known throughout the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries from Lisbon to Novgorod, was founded by Alfonso IX., King of Leon, in the first quarter of the thirteenth century--moved thereto, it is said, by the establishment of the university of Palencia by his cousin of Castile. Consequent on the union of the two kingdoms in the person of Fernando III., the latter university declined and faded out of existence, Salamanca thus remaining the oldest seat of learning in Spain. Valladolid, the next in order of antiquity, dates from 1346, Alcalá from 1499, Seville from 1504. The sainted king in 1243 bestowed a charter on the young university, by virtue of which the students were exempted from the municipal law and made subject to their own tribunals. The first court thus constituted was composed of the bishop, the dean and prior of the Friars Preachers, the father guardian of the Discalced Franciscans, and certain persons named as Don Rodrigo, and Pedro Guigelmo, Garcia Gomez, Pedro Vellido, Fernando Sanchez de Porto Carrero, Pedro Muñiz, canon of Leon, and Miguel Perez, canon of Lamego.

Under Alfonso the Learned the new foundation naturally flourished. He not only confirmed by a royal ordinance, dated from Badajoz, 1252, all the privileges granted by his predecessors, but exempted the students from tolls and certain other dues, and secured them priority in the matter of accommodation at inns. Furthermore, in 1254, he endowed a chair of law with an annual stipend of five hundred maravedis, an assistant or bachelor also being appointed; a master of decrees, at a salary of three hundred maravedis; two masters of decretals, at five hundred maravedis a year each; two masters in physics, in logic, and in grammar, each at two hundred maravedis; an organist at fifty maravedis; and a librarian, at a hundred maravedis. The same monarch reduced the number of rectors to two--the Dean of Salamanca and one Arnal Sanz. In the celebrated Partidas, in the compilation of which Alfonso was doubtless assisted by members of this university, directions are given that at all such seats of learning there should be good inns, abundance of bread and wine, and pleasant walks where the students might in the evenings take the air.

No mention is made in the decrees of 1252 and 1254 of a faculty of theology, which probably came within the province of the cathedral chapter. The connection between the university and the cathedral was very intimate. Examinations were held and degrees conferred, as we have seen, in the chapel of Santa Barbara; the doctors were admitted to the choir, the canons reciprocally to the university theatres. Pope Innocent IV. had referred in flattering terms to the university at the Council of Lyons in 1245; and in 1255 Alexander IV., in a brief dated from Naples, acclaimed it as one of the four wonders of the world, and gave it his pontifical sanction. Boniface VIII. sent the professors a copy of his decretals, and revised the university statutes. The students were divided into eight sections, according to the part of the Peninsula from which they came, and the heads of these sections elected the rector. The election took place at Martinmas, and the installation on St. Catharine’s Day. The newly elected dignitary was escorted to his house by the students, each section being marshalled behind an ensign consisting of the principal fruit of its country. The rivalries between these different groups generally led to blows, and frequently called for the intervention of the authorities. On such occasions it was the privilege of the rector to defray all damages and fines. But the reign of cakes and ale did not always endure at Salamanca. In 1308 the times were so bad that the stipends of the professors were suppressed, and the university only survived the crisis through the self-sacrifice of the chapter and the intervention of the pope, who devoted a ninth of the tithes of the archbishopric of Santiago to its maintenance.

Subsequent pontiffs continued to exhibit great interest in the now flourishing institution, and to it belonged the honour of terminating, by its decision in favour of Clement VI., the schism which had divided the Christian church. A less honourable incident was the unfavourable decision pronounced by its professors on the great project of Columbus, referred to them by Queen Isabel. This verdict was the more surprising as the university had adopted the Copernican system at a time when it was considered heretical and dangerous.

The most famous school in all Spain shared the fortunes of the monarchy. In the days of Luis de Leon there were 70 professors and 10,000 students, and the 52 printing-offices and 84 bookshops employed 3600 men. In the year 1552 there were still no fewer than 6328 undergraduates. Women competed equally with men for the honours of the learned. Among the most illustrious members of the university were Beatriz Galendo, surnamed the Latin, the daughter of a professor, and the teacher and friend of Isabel the Catholic; Alvara de Alba, the author of a mathematical treatise, and Cecilia Morillas, the wife of a Portuguese, Dom Antonio Sobrino, and the mother of several learned doctors, who consulted her on the most difficult points in the humanities, in philosophy, and theology. Salamanca remained to the last a stronghold of Catholic orthodoxy. The only one of its professors who ever advanced heretical opinions--Pedro de Osuna--recanted in good time, and assisted with the rest of the university at the solemn burning of his books and the purification of the class-rooms in which he had taught. At the end of the eighteenth century the number of students had fallen to 2000. To-day it may be estimated at 1200 students, all drawn (excepting those of the Irish college) from the surrounding provinces. The nineteen professors are worse paid than an English ledger-clerk, and no book or pamphlet has issued from the university press (if such exists) for many years past.

The colleges were classified as Escuelas Mayores and Escuelas Menores. The college to which the name university is specially applied seems to have been built between 1415 and 1433 by Alfonso Rodriguez Carpintero, though the shield of the anti-pope Benedict XIII. (Pedro de Luna) over the door leading to the cathedral, dating from about 1380, leads one to suppose that part of the building was already standing at that date. For a long time, however, the cloisters of the cathedral were used as class-rooms. The present edifice has little about it to suggest the Gothic era. Restored by Fernando and Isabel, it ranks indeed as one of the earliest and finest specimens of plateresque architecture. Over the double entrance of the main façade are two rudely executed busts of the Catholic sovereigns, clasping the same sceptre, and enclosed in one medallion. Around this is inscribed the legend: ‘οί βασιλεῖς τῇ ἐγκυκλοπαιδείᾳ, αὕτη βασιλεῦσί’ (‘the Kings to the University, the University to the Kings’). The panels into which the three stages of this beautiful façade are divided are filled with escutcheons, medallions, foliage, scrolls, and grotesques, all admirably executed in the creamy stone, which gives so beautiful an appearance to the buildings of Salamanca. This fine work is ascribed to Enrique de Egas, and said to have cost 30,000 ducats. It is surmounted by a parapet of elaborate pierced work, and two pinnacles, which we could perhaps have spared.

Opposite, in the courtyard, stands the fine bronze statue of the university’s most brilliant alumnus--Luis de Leon. This great man was born at Granada in 1527, and entered the Augustinian Order in 1544. His writings went far to give permanency and purity to the Castilian idiom, which only at that time was coming into use by the learned. Promoted to the chair of theology at Salamanca, his translation into the vernacular of the Song of Solomon excited the suspicions of the Holy Office. He was arrested and kept in confinement at Valladolid during five years, at the end of which time he was released, the charges against him not having been proved to the satisfaction even of the inquisitors. On his return to his chair he received a tumultuous ovation. As he rose, the crowd of students awaited in dead silence an apology, a condemnation of his unjust accusers, some reference at least to the prosecution which had dragged on through five weary years. They were disappointed. Leon had no mind to dwell on his personal affairs. He broke the silence of five years with the simple words, ‘As we were saying yesterday ...’ He died, Provincial of his order, in the year 1591, and was buried in the Convent of San Agustino at Salamanca.

On the left side of the square is the old students’ hospital, with a fine effigy of St. Thomas Aquinas over the doorway, and a cornice in the plateresque style. Finer still is the portal of the adjacent Escuelas Menores, also dating from the early sixteenth century. Above the doorway of two arches are displayed the three escutcheons which proclaim the university to be royal, and the triple crown and the heads of St. Peter and St. Paul which proclaim it pontifical. These emblems appear amidst a profusion of detail, in which the Gothic and plateresque styles seem to have been assimilated.

Returning to the principal façade, we find the archives on the ground floor. Opening out of the inner _patio_ may be seen the lecture-room of Louis de Leon. His ashes now repose in the chapel once adorned by Fernando Gallego, but ‘restored’ in the eighteenth century. The coloured stones and marbles used in the reconstruction are not without a certain pleasing effect. Passing up the noble staircase, with its banisters formed of dancing figures and foliage and superb artesonado ceiling, we reach the handsome library. This contains many treasures, among them forty Greek codices, as many Latin, the illuminated MS. of ‘famous and virtuous women,’ written by Alvaro de Luna, and a fifteenth-century Bible, richly illuminated. The Sala del Claustro is shown, outside which the student about to contest a thesis was obliged to remain for twenty-four hours to consider his subject at leisure.