Part 6

The part of rock at the western extremity of town and citadel is defended by the strong Torre de Homenage, which was held for Isabel the Catholic by Andrés de Cabrera in 1476 when the rest of the fortress had been seized by the partisans of Juana. In 1507, on the contrary, it offered a vigorous resistance to the same Cabrera, to whom, however, the garrison surrendered on May 15. The tower is surmounted and strengthened by seven turrets. The irregular disposition of these _cubos_ and _torreones_ (round towers and bartizans) round the four sides of a keep is a peculiarity of Spanish military architecture. Here they used to be crowned with peaked roofs of slate, probably like those that lend such a bizarre appearance to the palace at Cintra. This feature, like the plaster-work on the façade, shows distinct Moorish influence, and encourages the belief that the castle was modelled on that of the Muslim lords of Toledo.

We have seen how important was the part played in the history of the kingdom by this grand old citadel. I must not forget to mention that Le Sage places here the scene of the confinement of Gil Blas before his marriage; but as is well known, the author of the most famous of picaresque romances never set foot south of the Pyrenees.

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The space to the east of the Alcazar was formerly occupied by the old cathedral, built in the twelfth century, and totally destroyed by the Comuneros in 1520. It was determined to erect the new cathedral on a more convenient site, and on the 8th June 1522 the Bishop, going in procession, laid the foundation-stone of the existing building on the west side of the Plaza Mayor. The plans were drawn by Juan Gil de Hontañon, and are very similar to those of the new cathedral at Salamanca, of which Hontañon was architect, though he is said to have used another’s designs. Street thinks (and few will disagree with him) that this is the finer cathedral of the two, chiefly because its eastern end is semicircular and not square. It is one of the very latest Gothic cathedrals, and is on the whole a beautiful building in fine warm-hued stone. The plan is that of an oblong, rounded at the eastern end; or, to be more precise, it includes a nave with aisles, into which on both sides open chapels placed between flying buttresses, and a chevet with seven polygonal chapels. The choir occupies the customary position in the middle of the nave. A cupola, 220 feet high, rises over the crossing. The length of the church is given as 330 feet, the breadth as 158 feet, the nave being 44 feet across, the aisles 30 feet.

The west front is divided by buttresses into five compartments, corresponding to the nave, aisles, and rows of chapels, both in width and in elevation. The three entrances are enclosed within pointed arches. The ornamentation is restrained and pure. At the southern corner the front is flanked by a square tower 345 feet high and 35 feet in area, with six rows of windows enclosed within arcades and all blinded except those of the belfry. The angles of the platform are adorned with pinnacles, and the tower is surmounted by an octagonal clock-story. Higher than the Giralda of Seville and broader than the Tower at Toledo, this structure is a matter of legitimate pride to the Segovians.

The rest of the exterior closely resembles that of Salamanca--‘the same concealment of the roofs and roof-lines everywhere,’ laments Street. The outside of the chevet exhibits an excess of ornamental work; it is, in fact, a forest of pinnacles. On the south side the façade is partly hidden by the cloister and sacristies.

The interior is bright and altogether pleasing. The columns are massive and gracefully moulded, and the arches lofty. The nave and aisles are lighted by windows filled with beautifully-coloured glass. There is no triforium, but instead a balustrade in the flamboyant style in front of the clerestory of the nave.

The lantern or cupola over the crossing, and the gorgeous reredos behind the High Altar, are quite out of keeping with the general aspect of the church. The chancel is enclosed by three very fine iron screens, quite Plateresque in character, though executed in 1733. The majority of the stalls in the choir were designed for the old cathedral, half a century at least before its destruction. The organ on the Epistle side, now enclosed in an eighteenth-century case, also came from the old church, and was the gift of Enrique III. The rich marble retablo at the west end of the choir was given by Carlos III., and enshrines in a silver reliquary the ashes of the local martyrs, Fruto and his brethren.

The chapels are not specially interesting. Those in the chevet are exactly alike, and furnished like those in the aisles, for the most part, with seventeenth-century retablos. In one (Nuestra Señora del Rosario) is buried Doña Maria Quintana, who ended a dissipated life in the odour of sanctity on August 16, 1734. Her epitaph runs: ‘Hic vespere et mane et meridie laudes Deo reddidit, et vitandi crimina zelo preces et lacrymas Juges effudit; hic quam intra chorum psallere secum prohibuit, extra chorum fructuose psallere Spiritus docuit; hic tertio ab obitu die nondum rigida membra, à juncturis suis jamdiu separata quiescunt ossa. An forsan post mortem etiam prophetabunt?’ The chapel of St. Hierotio was dedicated to that saint by Bishop Escalzo under the false impression that he was the founder of the see. The Capilla de la Piedad (fifth in the left aisle) is remarkable for a fine Descent from the Cross, a retablo with colossal and expressionful figures, painted by Juan de Juni in 1571. In the same chapel is a painting by Alonso Sánchez Coello, the Apparition of Christ to St. Thomas, spoilt by injudicious re-touching.

On the south side of the cathedral is the cloister, which belonged to the old church, and was reconstructed here in beautiful flamboyant style by Juan Campero in 1524. It is entered by a fine Gothic doorway, in the Consuelo chapel (wherein is the noble tomb of Bishop de Covarrubias). On the cross-vaulting of the cloister may be seen the arms of Bishop Arias Dávila. We notice the monuments of three of the architects--Rodrigo Gil de Hontañon (died 1577), and his successors, Campo Agüero and Viadero. In the chapel of Santa Catalina at the foot of the West Tower are contained the remains of little Prince Pedro, with his painted and gilded effigy. The superb monstrance preserved in this chapel was designed in 1656 by Rafael González. At the northern aisle of the cloister may be read this inscription: ‘Aquí está sepultada la devota Mari Saltos con quién Dios obré este milagro en la Fonzisla. Fizo su vida en la otra iglesia, acabó sus dias como Católica Cristiana, Año de 1237.’ (Here is buried the devout Maria Saltos, with whom God performed a miracle at Foncisla. She passed her life in the other church, and finished her days as a Catholic Christian in the year 1237.) ‘The other church’ was of the Hebrew persuasion, to which Maria belonged. Accused of adultery, and condemned to die by the elders of her community--which was a self-governing body in Spain within certain limits--she was cast from the Peña Grajera, the Tarpeian Rock of Segovia. At the supreme moment she was heard to invoke the Virgin of the Christians, and reached the ground unharmed. She was baptized, and died, as the epitaph testifies, a devout Catholic. The incident may be ranked with the remarkable, if not miraculous, escape of the Catholic secretaries at Prague, known as the Fensterstürz.

The chapter-house, adjacent to the Western Tower, is a very splendid apartment, paved with marble, upholstered with crimson velvet, and containing some good engravings, mostly Flemish. An elegant staircase leads to the library above.

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At the back of the cathedral is the Plaza Mayor, one of the most picturesque squares in Spain. The Ayuntamiento with its Doric columns looks strangely out of place, surrounded as it is by old houses with projecting upper stories and wooden loggias of a Gothic, almost German character. The church of San Miguel may be attributed to Hontañon or one of his assistants. It replaces an earlier structure, in the porch of which the town council used to meet. In the north transept is an interesting triptych, where St. Michael is represented weighing souls. Hard by, at the corner of the Calle Ancha and Calle de los Huertos, is the old mansion of the Arias Dávila family, with a tall square turreted tower, adorned in its lower stages with diapered plaster. Near the church of San Martin are another fine tower belonging to the Marquis de Lozoya, and the house (now a book-shop) of Juan Bravo, one of the three leaders of the Comuneros.

The church of San Martin is approached by a flight of steps, and encircled on three sides by a cloister or portico, which was used in the twelfth century, at all events, as a burial-ground. The west porch is bold and original, with statuary in the jambs of the doorway, and capitals carved with birds in couples. The church was originally apsidal, but has been frequently restored. The Bravos and Rios, two prominent families of Segovia, are buried here; and the tomb of Gonzalo de Herrera and his wife in alabaster is in a chapel on the left-hand side. The church is surmounted by a modern cupola over the crossing, and by an ancient tower placed, oddly enough, over the middle of the nave.

Near the Puerta de San Martin is the Casa de los Picos, which was acquired and rebuilt in the fourteenth century by the family of Hoz. It seems once to have been known as the Jews’ House, till in the sixteenth century its façade was rebuilt with the extraordinary facetted stones from which it derives its present name. While in this neighbourhood, the few poor remains of the palace of Enrique III. should be inquired for.

Where the Calle Real opens into the Plaza Mayor is situated one of the most interesting churches in Segovia. Corpus Christi Church was till the year 1410 a Jewish synagogue. In that year a rabbi obtained from the sacristan of San Facundo a consecrated Host as a security, it is said, for a loan. The street where this impious transaction took place is still known as Mal Consejo. The Jews attempted to profane the Sacred Wafer in their synagogue, but were scared by awful portents, and confessed their crime. Their place of worship was forfeited, apparently at the suggestion of St. Vincent Ferrer, and consecrated as a Catholic church. It bears a strong likeness to Santa Maria la Blanca at Toledo. The nave and aisles are separated by horseshoe arches springing from fir-cone capitals, above which runs a series of blind windows. The ceiling is of wood. The transept and dome have been added since the adaptation to the purposes of Christian worship. The sacristan will point out the crack in the wall which occurred at the moment of the attempted sacrilege.

Santa Trinidad, on the north side of the Plaza Mayor, is a Romanesque church of the San Martin type. It is adjoined like the latter by a portico, also used once as a place of sepulture. The apse is lit by three windows, below which are others now only to be seen from the interior. A lane leads from this church to San Nicolás, close to the walls. Here the two apses are each lit by a single window, and over the smaller of the two is raised a low tower with two round-arched belfry windows. The secularised church of San Facundo exhibits similar characteristics. It contains a not very valuable museum.

Segovia is a Paradise for the ecclesiologist, but so many of the churches differ only in the smallest particulars from the San Martin and San Millán type that a description of each would be tedious. An exception must be made as regards San Esteban, opposite the Episcopal Palace, famous for its Romanesque tower, the finest work of the kind in Spain. The base of the tower is as high as the nave; the remaining five stages are adorned on each side with graceful arcaded windows. The angles are splayed off, and up the middle runs a shaft. The tower is surmounted by a pinnacle, evidently a later addition, and in very bad style. The external cloister of San Esteban is the most beautiful in the town.

In the disused church of San Juan de los Caballeros are buried the founders of the two great houses of Segovia, Fernán Garcia and Dia Sanz, averred by tradition to have been the conquerors of Madrid.

The finest specimen of these early Romanesque churches is to be seen outside the south wall. San Millán is said to have been founded by the Counts of Castile in the tenth century, but the present fabric dates from the twelfth. The church consists of a nave, aisles, and external cloisters on each side, all ending in eastern apses. There is a low, square lantern over the crossing, and a modern square tower at the east end of the north cloister. The west front is very simple and pierced with a round-arched door and four windows. The arches of the cloister spring from finely sculptured capitals on double shafts. Street calls attention to a local peculiarity in the design of the north and south doors. ‘Their jambs consist of shafts set within very bold, square recesses; and the number of orders in the arch is double that of those in the jamb, they being alternately carried on the capitals of the shafts, and upon the square order of the jambs. The effect is good....’ The interior is well preserved, but daubed all over with whitewash and plaster. The church is barrel-vaulted, but may once have had a flat timber roof. The capitals of the massive columns are carved with very large and striking figures of men and animals. The corbels are adorned with masks and caprices, very skilfully chiselled.

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Two other exceedingly interesting churches are also outside the city wall, in the valley of the Eresma. Descending by a very steep path from the Alcazar to the junction of the two streams, and passing an arch in the baroque style, we reach Fuencisla--the bubbling rock, from which water filters. Here a cypress marks the spot where Maria del Salto alighted uninjured from the crag above. The neighbouring church, built in 1613, contains the shrine of the wonder-working Virgin of the Fuencisla. It possesses a fine reredos and iron pulpit. In the convent of the Discalced Carmelites are preserved the head and body of the famous St. John of the Cross, the spiritual guide of St. Teresa, and one of the world’s greatest mystics. You may also see the pictured Christ which, it is alleged, spoke to the saint, bidding him ask a favour; John asked, as a devout Spaniard of that time might have been expected to do, for more suffering and humiliation. The cave in which he retired to pray may also be visited.

Proceeding up the valley of the Eresma, we notice the old Casa de Moneda, or Mint, built in 1586, which down to 1730 coined all the money of Spain. Above it lies the curious little church of Vera Cruz, built in 1204 by the Knights Templars, more or less on the model of the church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. It would be difficult to convey a clearer idea of the peculiar conformation of this structure than by Street’s description: ‘The nave is dodecagonal, and has a small central chamber enclosed with solid walls, round which the vaulted nave forms a kind of aisle. This central chamber is of two stories in height, the lower entered by archways in the cardinal sides, and the upper by a double flight of steps leading to a door in its western side. The upper room is vaulted with a domical roof which has below it four ribs, two parallel north and south, and two parallel east and west, and it retains the original stone altar arcaded on its sides with a delicately wrought chevron enrichment and chevroned shafts. The upper chapel is lighted by seven little windows opening into the aisle around it. A slab indicates the position of the supposed sepulchre. The room below the chapel has also a dome, with ribs on its under side. On the east side of the building are the chancel and two chapels, forming parallel apses, to the south of which is a low steeple, the bottom stage of which is also converted into a chapel. The chapel in the centre of the nave is carried up and finished externally with a pointed roof, whilst the aisle is roofed with a lean-to abutting against its walls. There are pilasters at the angles outside, small windows high up in the walls, and a fine round-arched doorway on the western side.’ The sepulchre is placed on the upper story, as at Jerusalem, where the hill of Calvary has been included within the church. Note the red crosses recalling the original owners, and the fast disappearing paintings on the retablo in the chancel. The portion of the True Cross formerly preserved here was removed to Zamarramala in 1663, when the old Templars’ Church was abandoned so far as religious rites were concerned.

Not far off, in a desolate spot once described as a terrestrial paradise, stands the church of El Parral, the chapel of a suppressed monastery of the Hermits of St. Jerome. It was founded in 1447 by the famous Juan Pacheco, Marquis of Villena, on the ground where he had defeated three antagonists in a protracted duel. The architects were Juan Gallego and the brothers Guas of Toledo. The plan of the church is unusual. The transept is very broad from east to west, and projects but little beyond the nave. The chancel is shallow, and its lateral walls run slant-wise to the eastern angles of the transept. Most churches of the Order of St. Jerome, according to a Spanish writer, were built this way. The effect is good. The nave is practically covered by a western gallery, and has but few windows; whereas the transept and chancel are flooded with light through six tall lancet windows with statues of the Twelve Apostles in their jambs. The contrast of light and shadow is very striking and beautiful. The choir or western gallery is carried on graceful arches and is handsomely panelled. Over the north-western chapel of the transept is the organ loft. The reredos behind the High Altar, in five stages separated by columns, was painted in 1553 by Diego de Urbina. The tombs of the founder and his wife lie on either side of the chancel. Their kneeling effigies, though sadly damaged and defaced, remain among the most beautiful examples of Spanish sculpture. Equally deserving of praise is the tomb of the Marquis’s natural daughter, the Countess de Medellin, in the south transept. The exterior of this church is not remarkable. The west front is pierced by a good double door, and ‘adorned’ with two huge square coats-of-arms; it is flanked by a square tower pierced by rounded windows in the belfry story.

Near to a cave where St. Dominic was accustomed to mortify the flesh, the Catholic Sovereigns built the church and convent of Santa Cruz, on the site of the first monastery of the order. The church has been truly described as a debased copy of El Parral. The western doorway is elaborate. Over the door, enclosed within a trefoil arch, is a Deposition from the Cross, with Ferdinand and Isabel kneeling on either side. Above, their escutcheons are displayed on either side of the crucifix. The retablo by Herrera, with which Philip II. endowed the church, was burnt in 1809, the fire irretrievably damaging the whole interior. Santa Cruz has now been converted into a charitable asylum.

Following the line of the city wall, we pass the church of San Lorenzo--a good example of the local style--once surrounded by thriving looms, and re-enter the town by the Plaza del Azoguejo, a picturesque space where the citizens love to forgather in the shadow of the mighty aqueduct.

IV

ZAMORA

Zamora on the Duero is one of the most picturesque towns in Spain, and one of the most celebrated in its annals. It is not well known to foreigners, probably on account of it being so difficult of approach. Few places bring back so vividly the stirring past of Castile.

The town stands above the Duero on a rocky ridge, the castle and cathedral occupying the western extremity. The river is spanned by a bridge of seventeen arches, defended near either end by a high gate-tower. If the approach is quaint and mediæval, the view from this point is even more so. Towards sundown, the spirit of the Middle Ages seems to inform the town--all is sombre, fierce, strong, and venerable. The country round seems little better than a desert. From the walls above eyes seem to be scanning the horizon for the first gleam of hostile lances. Zamora belongs to the days when towns, like men, always wore armour. To-day she is broken and war-worn and old; but if her sword is rusted and her shield broken, she may well boast it was in the service of Spain.

As we jolt over the old bridge, above the weirs of the Duero, and climb the steep street that leads into the town, we need no consultation of the records to tell us that we are here in the old Castile of the knightly days, that we shall find few memories of artists and poets, few of statesmen and great rulers, but many of hard fighters and holy priests. Zamora is constantly mentioned in the _Romancero_. We can imagine that it was a town towards which Don Quixote would have been drawn, but he only spoke of it as famous for bagpipes. Like Burgos and Valladolid and Salamanca, it was the creation of the mediæval time, and we hear first of it in the ninth century. Alfonso I., or his son Froila, took the town from the Moors. Thereafter, for many years, it continued to change hands. The Day of Zamora, famous in Spanish song and story (July 9, 901), when nearly seventy thousand Moors were slain or captured, assured the possession of the town to the Christians. In this terrific engagement Bernardo del Carpio is supposed to have won his spurs, though (if he ever existed, or the battle really took place) he must have been a hundred years old at the time! Soon after this victory the citizens clamoured for a spiritual shepherd, and a hermit named Atilanus was given them as bishop. Certain episodes of his youth began to trouble the prelate’s mind, and at the end of ten years he laid aside the pastoral staff, and declared himself unworthy of his office. He went on a pilgrimage, having thrown his episcopal ring into the Duero, proclaiming that he would not return till it was restored to him as a sign that God had pardoned him. All in the least familiar with folklore will, of course, know what happened next. Like the ring of Polycrates, like the ring in the arms of Glasgow, the bishop’s amulet was found in the body of a fish served up to him at supper. The relief of the good man at this unmistakable evidence of the Divine forgiveness, his return to his See, and the rejoicings of the inhabitants may be inferred and imagined. Atilanus was canonised by Urban II. in the eleventh century.

Of another tremendous victory said to have been won before the walls of Zamora in 939 over the pertinacious Moors we need not speak further, for it is more than probable that the fight never occurred here at all, but at Simancas. There can, however, be no doubt that the place fell before the irresistible Al Mansûr in 981, in spite of the brave resistance of the commandant, Domingo Sarracino. The Moors repeopled the town, which was governed by one Abu-l-Was el Tojibita. It was labour wasted so far as they were concerned, for Zamora was soon, and finally, recovered by the Spaniards. And now we come to the episode which has secured the town so prominent a place in the annals and legendary lore of the country.