V Orense
Coming by rail from Lugo or Monforte toward Tuy and Vigo, the train suddenly escapes from the savage cañon where the picturesque Miño rushes and boils beside the road, and emerges into a broad and fertile valley where figs, grapes, and olives grow in profusion. This valley is broad, its soil is of golden hue, and the sky above it is as brilliantly blue as a sapphire. In its centre Orense, heavy Orense, which claims as its founder a Greek hero fresh from the pages of the Iliad, basks in the sun beside the beautiful Miño; the while its cathedral looms up above the roofs of the surrounding houses.
The history of the town is as agitated as any in Galicia and shows the same general happenings. The Romans appreciated it for its sulphur baths and called it Auria (golden) from the colour of the soil, of the water, and perhaps also on account of certain grains of gold discovered in the sands of the Miño.
The Suevos, who dominated Galicia and proved so beneficial to Tuy, did not ignore the importance of Orense: one of the first bishoprics, if not the first historical one in Galicia, was that of Orense, dating from before the fourth century, at least such is the opinion of to-day.
More than any other Galician city, excepting Tuy, it suffered from the Arab invasions. Entirely destroyed, razed to the ground upon two occasions, it was ever being rebuilt by the returning inhabitants who had fled. Previous to these Arab incursions the cathedral had been dedicated to St. Martin de Tours (France), and yearly pilgrimages took place to the Galician shrine, where some relics belonging to the saint were revered. But with the infidels these relics, or whatever they were, were dispersed, and the next century (the eleventh) saw the new cathedral dedicated to the Virgin Mother (?). Besides, the inhabitants seemed to have forgotten the patronage of St. Martin, he who protects the vine-grower’s métier—and this in spite of the fact that the valley of Orense is and was famous above all Galician regions for the cultivation of vines. Even Froissart, the French historian, could not speak of the town without mentioning its wine. He passed a season in the valley, accompanying, I believe, the Duke of Lancaster and his English soldiers. The wine was so good and strong, wrote the historian, that the soldiers clamoured for it; after they had drunk a little they toppled over like ninepins.
The Arabs defeated and thrown out of the peninsula, the vikings’ last business trip to Galicia over, and the Portuguese arms driven to the valley of Braga beyond the Miño, Orense settled down to a peaceful life, the monotony of which was broken now and again—as it usually was in this part of the country—by squabbles between noblemen, prelates, and the bons bourgeois. If no prince of the Church was killed here, as happened in Lugo, one at least died mysteriously in the hands of his enemies. Not that it seemed to have mattered much, for said bishop appears to have been a peculiar sort of spiritual shepherd, full of vice, and devoid of virtue, some of whose doings have been caricatured—according to the popular belief—in the cornices and friezes of the convent of San Francisco.
Otherwise, peace reigned in the land, and Orense passed a quiet existence, a circumstance that did not in the slightest add to its importance, either as an art, commercial, or industrial centre. To-day, full of strangers in summer, who visit the sulphurous baths as did the Romans, and empty in winter, it exists without living, as does so many a Spanish town.
Nevertheless, with Vigo and Corunna, it is one of the cities with a future still before it. At least, its situation is bound to call attention as soon as ever the country is opened up to progress and commerce.
The cathedral of Orense, like those of Tuy, Santiago, and Lugo, was erected in a castro. These castros were circular dips in the ground, surrounded by a low wall, which served the druids as their place of worship. The erection of Christian churches in these sacred spots proves beyond a doubt that the new religion became amalgamated with the old, and even laid its foundations on the latter’s most hallowed castros.
Perhaps the question presents itself as to why a cathedral was erected in Orense previous to any other city. From a legend it would appear that the king of the Suevos, Carrarick, had a son who was dying; thanks to the advice of a Christian monk, a disciple of St. Martin, and, one is inclined to think, fresh from Tours, the king dipped his son in the baths of Orense, invoking at the same time the help of St. Martin. Upon pulling his offspring out of the water, he discovered that he had been miraculously cured. The grateful monarch immediately became a stout Christian, and erected a basilica—destroyed and rebuilt many a time during the dark ages of feudalism and Arab invasion—in honour of his son’s saviour. What is more wonderful still is that, soon afterward, the relics of the French saint were cherished in Orense without its being positively known whence they came!
The present cathedral, the date of the erection of which is a point of discussion to-day, is generally believed to have been built on the spot occupied by the primitive basilica. It is dedicated to Santa Maria la Madre according to the official (doubtful?) statement, and to St. Martin of Tours, Apostle of Gaul, according to the popular version.
The general appearance of the cathedral proclaims it to have been begun, or at least planned, in the twelfth century, and not, as Baedeker states, in 1220. As a twelfth-century church we are not obliged to consider it for more reasons than one, and especially because, as we have seen, the twelfth century was the great period of Galician church-building. It was in this century that the northwest shone forth in the history of Spain as it had not done before, nor has done since.
The church is another Romanesque specimen, but less pure in its style than any of the others mentioned so far: the ogival arch is prevalent, but rather as a decorative than as an essentially constructive element. As it is, it was commenced at least fifty years after the cathedral of Lugo, and though both are twelfth-century churches, the one is an early and the other presumably a late one; the employment of the ogival arch to a greater degree in Orense than in Lugo is thus easily explained.
In short, the cathedral of Orense is another example of the peculiar Romanesque of Galicia, which, withstanding the invasion of Gothic, created a school of its own, pretty in details, bold in harmony, though it be a hybrid school after all.
The influence of the cathedral of Santiago is self-evident in the cathedral of Orense. How could it be otherwise, when the bishop Don Diego, who sat on the chair, was a great friend and a continual visitor of that other Don Diego in Santiago who erected the primate cathedral of Galicia?
This influence is above all to be seen in the Portico del Paraiso, an interior narthex leading from the western front to the body of the church. It is a handsome area of Romanesque sculpture covered by an ogival vaulting, and would be an important monument if its rival and prototype in Santiago were not greater, both as regards its perfection of design, and the grand idea which inspired it.
Of the three doors which lead into the cathedral, the western is crowned by three rounded arches reposing on simple columns. The tympanum as a decorative element is lacking, as is also the low relief, which is usually superimposed above the upper arches. The latter are, however, carved in the most elaborate manner. As regards the other two portals, the northern and southern, their composition, as far as generalities are concerned, is the same as the western, excepting that they are surrounded by a depressed semicircular arch in relief, the whole of a primitive design.
The towers of the cathedral are not old. The general impression of the building from the outside—unluckily it cannot be contemplated from any distance, as the surrounding houses impede it—is agreeable. To be especially observed are some fine fourteenth-century (?) windows which show ogival pattern, but either of timid execution or else of a bold endeavour on the artist’s part to subdue solemn Gothic to the Romanesque traditions of the country.
The interior has been restored and changed many a time. In its original plan it consisted of two aisles and a nave with a one-aisled transept, and, just as in Lugo, an apse formed by three semicircles, of which the central was the largest, and contained the high altar. To-day, though the general appearance or disposition of the church (Roman cruciform with exceedingly short lateral arms) is the same, an ambulatory walk surrounds the high altar, which has been moved nearer the transept in the principal nave. The vaulting is ogival, reposing on solid and severe shafts; the aisles are slightly lower than the central nave, and the croisée is surmounted, as in Santiago, by a handsome cupola similar in construction to that of Valencia, though more reduced in size, and of a less elegant pattern.
The lack of triforium is to be noted, and its want is felt.
The northern aisle has no chapels let into its exterior wall, but a long row of sepulchres and sepulchral reliefs to replace them. Some of them are severe and beautiful. The choir has finely carved stalls, and the Gothic retablo is the only one of its kind in Galicia, and one of the best in Spain.
Many more details could be given concerning the worthy cathedral of Orense, second only in richness of certain elements to that of Santiago. The additions, both in Romanesque and ogival styles, are better than in most other cathedrals in Galicia, though, as far as Renaissance is concerned, Galicia showed but little love for Italia’s art. This was due to the regional Celtic taste of the inhabitants, or else to the marked signs of art decadence in this part of Spain, when the Renaissance was introduced into the country.
As regards the cloister,—small and rather compact in its composition,—it is held by many to be a jewel of the fifteenth century in the ogival style, handsome in its general outlines, and beautiful in its wealth of sculptural decoration.