Part 10

The church is of unusual breadth, there being two aisles and a row of chapels on each side of the nave. ‘The nave and aisles,’ says the authority we have just quoted, ‘are all roofed at the same level, the vaulting springing from the capitals of the main columns, and the whole of the light is admitted by windows in the end walls, and high up in the outer walls of the aisles. In this respect Spanish churches of late date almost always exhibit an attention to the requirements of the climate, which is scarcely ever seen in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; and this church owes almost all its good effect to this circumstance, for it is in light and shade only, and neither in general detail nor in design that it is a success.’

The vaultings are adorned with gilded pendants and bosses, very much in the Moorish style. The light red marble pavement, with rays diverging from the yellow marble bases of the columns, appears to have been intended to suggest a reflection of the roof with its ogive vaultings above. The decoration is tasteful and not elaborate. The capitals are sculptured with _putti_ upholding escutcheons with animals and foliage.

Over the chancel is the lantern, octagonal in plan, which replaced an earlier one in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. The work was undertaken by Enrique de Egas, only at the express command of the king. The lower part is adorned with statues in niches, and with the canting arms (the half-moon) of the family of Archbishop de Luna.

The reredos of the High Altar is of alabaster and in the Gothic style. It was executed at the order of (and not by, as we have seen erroneously stated) Archbishop Dalmacio de Mur (1430-1456). The seven compartments are filled with compositions representing the martyrdom of St. Lawrence, the burial of St. Vincent, and episodes in the history of St. Valerus; with statues of the two latter saints, angels, and New Testament scenes. In all, the expressions and the draperies are exquisitely rendered. Don J. M. Quadrado is of opinion that this superb work was executed by Pedro Johán of Cataluña, Ans, Gombao, Caspar, and Gil Morlán successively.

Before the High Altar the coronation took place, and the king, robed like a deacon, prostrated himself before the primate. On the gospel side is the wooden coffin which contains the ashes of Maria, daughter of _Jaime lo Conqueridor_, who died in 1267. At her side is the noble marble tomb of Archbishop Don Juan de Aragon, brother of Ferdinand the Catholic, with statues of the Mater Dolorosa, attended by Saints Jerome, Martin, and Francis. Here are also the tombs of Archbishop Don Alonso, natural son of Ferdinand the Catholic, and of his natural son, also Archbishop, Don Fernando. The first-named did not take orders till after the birth of his son and successor, and only celebrated one mass, deeming himself unworthy of the sacerdotal functions. Beneath a tablet is deposited the heart of the Infante Baltasar Carlos, eldest son of Philip IV., carried off by smallpox at the age of seventeen. His portrait is familiar to students of Velazquez.

The choir occupies two of the five bays west of the crossing. It is in the Gothic style, and closed by a modern railing. In the centre is the tomb of Archbishop de Mede, from whose time the choir dates. The stalls are of Flemish oak. The fine lectern dates from 1413. The _trascoro_, or back of the choir, is a gorgeous plateresque affair in marble and stucco, the work of Tudelilla of Tarazona, who flourished about 1538. His are the statues of the martyrs Vincent and Laurence, the four reliefs illustrating their martyrdom, and that of San Valero, and the groups of cherubim. The tabernacle is in a not untasteful baroque style, and has side columns of black marble and a good crucifix. This figure of Christ is said to have addressed Canon Funes, afterwards Bishop of Albarracin, who is shown on his knees regarding it. The sides of the choir are adorned with statues of saints, including that of Pedro de Arbues, on the very spot where he was slain.

Few of the chapels are of interest, and all but one have been disfigured with baroque portals. In the chapel of San Bernardo is the fine tomb and effigy by Morlánes of Archbishop Don Fernando de Aragon, above being a retablo representing the Betrayal and the Crucifixion. Close by lies Doña Ana de Gurrea, mother of the prelate (died 1527). The chapel of San Gabriel, founded by Gabriel de Zaporta, is notable for its fine bronze _reja_ and plateresque adornments. In the chapel of San Dominguito del Val are preserved ‘the remains of the third child crucified by the Jews in hatred of Christ towards the year 1250’; and the chapel of San Pedro de Arbues contains that worthy’s body, his kneeling effigy by José Ramirez, and paintings by Jimenez of Tarazona. In the chapel of Nuestra Señora de la Blanca are collected the tombs of sundry archbishops. The chapel of San Miguel owes its origin to a ghastly legend. Passing through the pine grove of Villaroya, the Archbishop Don Lope de Luna heard a voice calling him. He turned and saw that it proceeded from a severed head which came leaping towards him. The decapitated man had called on the Archangel at the moment the axe descended, and life was miraculously preserved in his head till he had made his confession, and was absolved by the primate. De Luna’s tomb is a triumph of Gothic art. He is shown with mitre and crozier, reclining on a sarcophagus which is sculptured with twenty-eight figures of friars in various attitudes. In niches in the wall surrounding the tomb are beautifully carved figures of ecclesiastics and grandees, full of vigour and expression. The name of the sculptor of this fine work is unhappily unknown.

In the sacristy is to be seen the Gothic cross of gold and jewel-work, on which the kings of Aragon swore to observe the _fueros_. Some of the vestments are very fine. A casulla is said to have come from old St. Paul’s, London, at the time of the Reformation. There is a magnificent _custodia_, dating from 1537, and a fine silver reliquary, sent from Avignon in 1405 by Benedict XIII. (the anti-pope, De Luna). In the Sala Capitular are pictures attributed to Ribera and Zurbarán. The fine tiled pavement of this room is modern.

The church of Santiago is mentioned as far back as 1121, and retains a few Romanesque features. Here the saint is said to have lived on his visit to Spain; and in the porch the magistrates of the city used to assemble and to administer justice.

The most important church in Zaragoza after the Seo is, in Street’s estimation, that of San Pablo, built in 1259. The octagonal steeple is faced with tiles in much the same way as the part of the cathedral wall above described, and is certainly a later addition to the structure. The nave is of four bays and terminates in a five-sided apse. The aisle is continued all round the church, and communicates with the nave by pointed arches in an extraordinarily thick wall. In the left aisle are five early and highly interesting Gothic retablos. The elaborate reredos of the High Altar, with its reliefs of the Passion and of the Acts of St. Paul, is hardly worthy of the master--Damian Forment--to whom it has been hastily attributed. Ford suggests that it is the work of one of his pupils.

The church of Santa Engracia, which figured prominently in the great siege, commemorates the massacre of a number of Christians of both sexes by the soldiery of Dacian. The bodies of the saints, Engracia and Lupercius, having been discovered here in 1389, the church already built on the spot was enlarged, and finally rebuilt with great splendour by Ferdinand the Catholic. A terrific explosion on August 13, 1808, completely wrecked the fabric, leaving little more than the plateresque portal, believed to have been designed by Morlánes. The entrance is through a round arch recessed within another, and surrounded by a retablo-like arrangement of niches containing groups. The outer arch is flanked by four statues of doctors of the Church in niches, and surmounted by statues of Ferdinand and Isabel.

The existing church, clumsily restored by the Hermits of St. Jerome, contains some interesting tombs of the martyrs. They appear to date from the fifth century. One is decorated with reliefs in the rudest Byzantine style, the subjects being Adam and Eve and the Serpent, and the sixteen martyrs, whose relics are enclosed. The pillar is shown at which Santa Engracia was flogged by order of Dacian, and a well which is believed to contain the bones of innumerable martyrs.

It is curious and painful how constantly the memorials of religious fanaticism confront one in this beautiful country. Here we are shown the spot where a Christian suffered for his faith; there where a Jew perished; there where a Moor died for conscience’ sake. Persecution naturally engenders a vindictive and intolerant temper in its victims, and these, become the masters, are hardened, not softened, by affliction. Religion, too, in Spain was almost always identified with race. The Moor, the Jew, and the Lutheran were not only infidels or heretics, but aliens--the political and racial enemies of the Spaniard. In fact, religious intolerance in the Peninsula cannot be said to have assumed such unnatural forms as in France and Germany, where men of the same blood and language cut each other’s throats, and vied with each other in doing the most harm to their native lands.

To the dawn of the sixteenth century also belonged the famous leaning tower at Zaragoza, the Torre Nueva, now demolished; while the Lonja or Exchange commemorates the reign of Juana la Loca, or as the inscription states, of her and her son, Don Carlos, ‘conregnantes’ (1551). This is one of the many buildings scattered over Spain and Europe generally which were intended to accommodate brokers and business men, who resolutely refuse to swarm in the appointed spots--witness our own Royal Exchange, the Lonjas of Seville and Granada, etc. The exterior belongs to no recognised style. The round-headed door is flanked by two windows of similar shape; above runs a sort of imitation gallery, then two more rows of round-headed windows, finished off with a fine eaves-cornice. The soffits of the arches are elaborately carved. At each corner of the edifice is a little tower, roofed with white and green tiles. The interior is divided into a nave and aisles by twenty-four columns, of which seventeen are embedded in the walls. From their Ionic capitals spring seventeen arches, which at the points of intersection are studded with gilt bosses. The Lion of Zaragoza may be distinguished among the decorations, and over the door and on the walls the arms of Spain. O’Shea says that the ‘gigantones’--gigantic figures representing the four quarters of the globe, carried about in processions--are kept here.

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A great many of the fine old mansions (_solares_) of the aristocracy and merchants of Zaragoza disappeared in the siege, or to permit of modern improvements. Those which remain date mostly from the sixteenth century. The finest, on the whole, is the Casa de la Infanta, so-called as having been the residence of La Vallabriga, a lady banished from Madrid for marrying the Infante Don Luis. The house was built by a rich merchant named Gabriel Zaporta in the middle of the sixteenth century. A square entrance admits to a court, round which runs a gallery, upheld by columns on fluted pedestals, and formed of caryatide figures interlocked. On these rest the capitals, elaborately carved with masks, and on these again is borne the gallery, the arches and parapet of which are enriched with medallions, masks, grotesques, and foliage. The decoration is a fine specimen of the plateresque style. The staircase, in the same style, is worthy of note.

The fine old Casa de Comercio, described in several guide-books of recent date, no longer exists. The noble mansion of the Counts of Sastago housed Philip III. in 1599; and the Audiencia occupies the site of the ancestral home of the De Luna family, to which belonged the anti-pope Benedict XIII. and the wicked Count in Verdi’s opera.

We have left almost to the last that ambitious but meretricious memorial of the decadence, the new cathedral, or Iglesia del Pilar. The Apostle James (Santiago), according to tradition, visited the city forty years after the birth of Christ. He was favoured by a vision of the Blessed Virgin, poised on a pillar of jasper, and attended by angels. He built a modest chapel on the spot, which soon became a great resort of pilgrims. This was replaced in the thirteenth century by a large church, which was demolished to make room for the present building, erected in 1686 by Don Francisco Herrera. The design, bad enough in itself, was made worse by Ventura Rodriguez seventy years later. The exterior hardly merits description, though the domes or cupolas with their brilliant green, yellow, and white tiling are not without a certain bizarre beauty.

Spanish writers are as severe as others in their condemnation of this spacious edifice: ‘The baroque style’ (says Don J. M. Quadrado), ‘as timid and clumsy in the general proportion of the work as it was audacious and presumptuous in detail, gave space not repose to the Pilar--size without grandeur. The eye measures vainly this square of 1500 feet, and observes the nave and aisles equal in dimensions; it rests on the twelve square piers--enormous masses which might serve for the bases of towers, recoils from the bare vault, from the thick cornice, from the ridiculous foliage of the capitals, the arches, etc. This disagreeable impression is intensified by the strange and confused disposition of the temple, which, divided into two by the Shrine and the High Altar, presents two centres of attraction, and obstructs the nave with objects masking each other.’

The only objects of particular interest in this vast edifice are those just named, which stand back to back. The Shrine or Capilla Santa constitutes a chapel within a chapel, the exterior being rectangular, the interior elliptical. Overhead is an oval dome borne on four Corinthian columns, with capitals richly gilded, and over this again another cupola or lantern painted by a namesake (not a relative) of Velazquez. There are four smaller domes painted by Goya and Bayeu. The profusion of rich marbles, the elaboration of the architecture, the brilliancy of the frescoes, and the multitude of statues give this chapel a sumptuous and not inartistic appearance. Around are hung banners taken from the infidels. The Sacred Pillar is almost entirely concealed, but there is a hole in the casing through which the devout may kiss it. On each side of the chapel imposing staircases lead to the crypt, in which lie several archbishops and canons, and the heart of Don Juan José of Austria, brother of Carlos II.

The High Altar of the cathedral is of alabaster and in the Gothic style, the work of one Damian Forment, an early sixteenth-century artist. The lower reliefs, separated by slender pilasters, represent the Espousals of the Virgin, the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection. Above, in canopied niches, are the Assumption, the Nativity, and the Presentation. The canopies are richly adorned with the figures of saints. At the sides are two large statues of St. James and St. Braulio--objects of special devotion--and at the apex of the altar-screen are two angels supporting Our Lady of the Pillar. The whole is undoubtedly the finest work of art in the cathedral.

The choir stalls merit attention. They were designed by the Navarrese Estebán de Obray, and carved by the Florentine Giovanni Moreto and Nicolás de Jobato between 1542 and 1548. The infinite number and variety of the designs, the delicacy and intricacy of the work, suggest that it was accomplished in two or more generations rather than in six years. Equally admirable is the bronze _reja_ by Juan Tomás Celina (1574) on a marble base, sculptured by the Majorcan artist, Guillermo Salvá.

The sacristy contains an immense variety of offerings to the shrine by pilgrims from all parts of the world. These had been accumulating for centuries, and the Chapter were able some years ago to raise a sum of £20,000 by disposing of only a portion of them. Without profanity we might perhaps say that the Virgen del Pilar is to Zaragoza what Diana was to the Ephesians. Hundreds make a living by selling pictures and models of the shrine, and a surprising number of silversmiths do a roaring trade in images and medals. Yet it is not quite wise or safe for the traveller to scoff at a devotion which largely inspired the heroic defence of 1808, and supplied the place of arms, strategy, and able leadership.

Close by, the yellow Ebro is spanned by the seven arches of the Puente de Piedra. Its origin is of unknown antiquity. It was here in 1435, when one of the arches collapsed--presaging the destruction by the Genoese of the Aragonese fleet which sailed that day; and the inscription mentioning Alfonso V., and the date 1437, can only refer to its reconstruction. And across this bridge we pass into the stern, desert country of Aragon, and so on to the distant, gleaming Pyrenees.