II Zamora
Whatever may have been the origin of Zamora, erroneously confounded with that of Numantia, it is not until the ninth century that the city, or frontier fortress, appears in history as an Arab stronghold, taken from the Moors and fortified anew by Alfonso I. or by his son Froila, and necessarily lost and regained by Christians and Moors a hundred times over in such terrible battles as the celebrated and much sung día de Zamora in 901. In 939 another famous siege of the town was undertaken by infidel hordes, but the strength of the citadel and the numerous moats, six it appears they were in number, separated by high walls surrounding the town, were invincible, and the Arab warriors had to retreat. Nevertheless, between 900 and 980 the fortress was lost five times by the Christians. The last Moor to take it was Almanzor, who razed it to the ground and then repopulated it with Arabs from Andalusia.
Previously, in 905, the parish church had been raised to an episcopal see; the first to occupy it being one Atilano, canonized later by Pope Urbano II.
Ten years after this bishop had taken possession of his spiritual throne, he was troubled by certain religious scruples, and, putting on a pilgrim’s robe, he distributed his revenues among the parish poor and left the city. Crossing the bridge,—still standing to-day and leading from the town to Portugal,—he threw his pastoral ring into the river, swearing he would only reoccupy the lost see when the ring should have been given back into his hands; should this happen, it would prove that the Almighty had pardoned his sins.
For two years he roamed about visiting shrines and succouring the poor; at last one day he dreamed that his Master ordered him to repair immediately to his see, where he was sorely needed. Returning to Zamora, he passed the night in a neighbouring hermitage, and while supping—it must have been Friday!—in the belly of the fish he was eating he discovered his pastoral ring.
The following day the church-bells were rung by an invisible hand, and the pilgrim, entering the city, was hailed as a saint by the inhabitants; the same invisible hands took off his pilgrim’s clothes and dressed him in rich episcopal garments. He took possession of his see, dying in the seventh year of his second reign.
Almanzor el terrible, on the last powerful raid the Moors were to make, buried the Christian see beneath the ruins of the cathedral, and erected a mezquita to glorify Allah; fifteen years later the city fell into the hands of the Christians again, and saw no more an Arab army beneath its walls.
It was not, however, until 125 years later that the ruined episcopal see was reëstablished de modernis, the first bishop being Bernardo (1124).
But previous to the above date, an event took place in and around Zamora that has given national fame to the city, and has made it the centre of a Spanish Iliad hardly less poetic or dramatic than the Homerian legend, and therefore well worth narrating as perhaps unique in the peninsula, not to say in the history of the middle ages.
When Fernando I. of Castile died in 1065, he left his vast territories to his five children, bequeathing Castile to his eldest son Sancho, Galicia to Garcia, Leon to Alfonso, Toro to Elvira, and Zamora to Urraca, who was the eldest daughter, and, with Sancho, the bravest and most intrepid of the five children.
According to the romance of Zamora, she, Doña Urraca, worried her father’s last moments by trying to wheedle more than Zamora out of him; but the king was firm, adding only the following curse:
“‘Quien os la tomara, hija,
¡La mi maldición le caiga!’—
Todos dicen amén, amén,
Sino Don Sancho que calla.”
Which in other words means: “Let my curse fall on whomsoever endeavours to take Zamora from you.... Those who were present agreed by saying amen; only the eldest son, Don Sancho, remained silent.”
The latter, being ambitious, dethroned his brothers and sent them flying across the frontier to Andalusia, then Moorish territory. Toro also submitted to him, but not so Zamora, held by the dauntless Urraca and the governor of the citadel, Arias Gonzalo. So it was besieged by the royal troops and asked to surrender, the message being taken by the great Cid from Don Sancho to his sister. She, of course, refused to give up the town. Wherefore is not known, but the fact is that the Cid, the ablest warrior in the hostile army, after having carried the embassy to the Infanta, left the king’s army; the many romances which treat of this siege accuse him of having fallen in love with Doña Urraca’s lovely eyes,—a love that was perhaps reciprocated,—who knows?
In short, the city was besieged during nine months. Hunger, starvation, and illness glared at the besieged. On the point of surrendering, they were beseeched by the Infanta to hold out nine days longer; in the meantime one Vellido Dolfo, famous in song, emerged by the city’s postern gate and went to King Sancho’s camp, saying that he was tired of serving Doña Urraca, with whom he had had a dispute, and that he would show the king how to enter the city by a secret path.
According to the romances, it would appear that the king was warned by the inhabitants themselves against the traitorous intentions of Vellido. “Take care, King Sancho,” they shouted from the walls, “and remember that we warn you; a traitor has left the city gates who has already committed treason four times, and is about to commit the fifth.”
The king did not hearken, as is generally the case, and went out walking with the knight who was to show him the secret gate; he never returned, being killed by a spear-thrust under almost similar circumstances to Siegfried’s.
The father’s curse had thus been fulfilled.
The traitor returned to the city, and, strange to say, was not punished, or only insufficiently so; consequently, it is to-day believed that the sister of the murdered monarch had a hand in the crime. Upon Vellido’s return to the besieged town, the governor wished to imprison him—which in those days meant more than confinement—but the Infanta objected; it is even stated that the traitor spoke with his heartless mistress, saying: “It was time the promise should be fulfilled.”
In the meanwhile, from the besieging army a solitary knight, Diego Ordoñez, rode up to the city walls, and accusing the inhabitants of felony and treason, both men and women, young and old, living and dead, born and to be born, he challenged them to a duel. It had to be accepted, and, according to the laws of chivalry, the challenger had to meet in single combat five champions, one after another, for he had insulted, not a single man, but a community.
The gray-haired governor of the fortress reserved for himself and his four sons the duty of accepting the challenge; the Infanta beseeched him in vain to desist from his enterprise, but he was firm: his mistress’s honour was at stake. At last, persuaded by royal tears, according to the romance, he agreed to let his sons precede him, and, only in case it should be necessary, would he take the last turn.
The eldest son left the city gates, blessed by the weeping father; his helmet and head were cleft in twain by Diego Ordoñez’s terrible sword, and the latter’s ironical shout was heard addressing the governor:
“Don Arias, send me hither another of your charming sons, because this one cannot bear you the message.”
A second and third son went forth, meeting the same fate: but the latter’s wounded horse, in throwing its rider, ran blindly into Ordoñez and knocked him out of the ring; the duel was therefore judged to be a draw.
Several days afterward Alfonso, the dead king’s younger brother, hurried up from Toledo, and after swearing in Burgos that he had had nothing to do with the felonious murder, was anointed King of Castile, Leon, and Galicia. His brave sister Urraca lived with him at court, giving him useful advice, until she retired to a convent, and at her death left her palace and her fortune to the Collegiate Church at Leon.
The remaining history of Zamora is one interminable list of revolts, sieges, massacres, and duels. As frontier fortress against Portugal in the west, its importance as the last garrison town on the Duero was exceptional, and consequently, though it never became important as a metropolis, as a stronghold it was one of Castile’s most strategical points.
The best view of the city is obtained from the southern shore of the Duero; on a low hill opposite the spectator, the city walls run east and west; behind them, to the left, the castle towers loom up, square and Byzantine in appearance; immediately to the right the cathedral nave forms a horizontal line to where the cimborio practically terminates the church. Thus from afar it seems as though the castle tower were part of the religious edifice, and the general appearance of the whole city surrounded by massive walls cannot be more warlike. The colour also of the ruddy sandstone and brick, brilliant beneath a bright blue sky, is characteristic of this part of Castile, and certainly constitutes one of its charms. What is more, the landscape is rendered more exotic or African by the Oriental appearance of the whole town, its castle, and its cathedral.
The latter was begun and ended in the twelfth century; the first stone was laid in 1151, and the vaults were closed twenty-three years later, in 1174; consequently it is one of the unique twelfth-century churches in Spain completed before the year 1200. It is true that the original edifice has been deformed by posterior additions and changes dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Excepting these abominable additions, the primitive building is Romanesque; not Romanesque as are the cathedrals we have seen in Galicia, but Byzantine, or military Romanesque, showing decided Oriental influences. Would to Heaven the cathedral of Zamora were to-day as it stood in the twelfth century!
The form of the church is that of a basilica. Like the cathedral of Palencia, it lacks a western front; the apse is semicircular, strengthened by heavy leaning buttresses; the upper, towerless rim of this same body is decorated with an ogival festoon set off by means of the primitive pinnacles of the top of the buttresses. The northern (Renaissance or plateresque) front is, though beautiful and severe in itself, a calamity when compared with the Romanesque edifice, as is also the new and horrid clock-tower.
The view of the southern end of the transept, as seen from the left, is the most imposing to be obtained of the building. Two flights of steps lead up to the Romanesque portal, flanked by three simple pillars, which support three rounded arches deeply dentated(!). Blind windows, similar in structure to the portal, occupy the second body of the façade, and are surmounted in their turn by a simple row of inverted crenelated teeth, showing in their rounded edges the timid use of the horseshoe arc. The superior body is formed by two concentric and slightly ogival arches embedded in the wall.
The greatest attraction, and that which above all gives a warlike aspect to the whole building, is the cimborio, or lantern of the croisée. Flanked by four circular turrets, which are pierced by round-topped windows and surmounted by Oriental domes that add a stunted, solid appearance to the whole, the principal cupola rises to the same height as the previously mentioned turrets. The whole is a marvel of simple architectural resource within the narrow limits of the round-arched style. What is more, though this cupola and that of Santiago belong to the same period, what a world of difference between the two! Seen as indicated above, the factura of the whole is intensely Oriental (excepting the addition of the triangular cornices emerging from beneath the cupola), and, it may be said in parenthesis, exceptionally fine. Besides, the high walls of the aisles, as compared with the stunted growth of the cimborio, and with the compact and slightly angular form of the entire building, lend an unrivalled aspect of solidity, strength, and resistance to the twelfth-century cathedral church, so intrinsically different from that of Santiago.
The interior is no less peculiar, and particularly so beneath the lantern of the croisée. The latter is composed of more than a dozen windows, slightly ogival in shape, though from the outside the pillars of the flanking turrets support round-headed arches; these windows are separated from each other by simple columns or shafts. Again, what a difference between this solid and simple cimborio and the marvellous lantern of the cathedral at Burgos! Two ages, two generations, even two ideals, are represented in both; the earlier, the stronger, in Zamora; the later, the more aerial and elaborate, in Burgos.
Another Romanesque characteristic is the approximate height of nave and aisles. This circumstance examined from within or from without is one of the causes of the solid appearance of the church; the windows of the aisles—unimportant, it is true, from an artistic point of view—are slightly ogival; those of the nave are far more primitive and round-headed.
The transept, originally of the same length as the width of the church, was prolonged in the fifteenth century. (On the south side also?... It is extremely doubtful, as the southern façade previously described is hardly a fifteenth-century construction; on the other hand, that on the north side is easily classified as posterior to the general construction of the building.)
Further, the western end, lacking a façade, is terminated by an apse, that is, each aisle and the central nave run into a chapel. The effect of this double apse is highly peculiar, especially as seen from within, with chapels to the east and chapels to the west.
The retablo is of indifferent workmanship; the choir stalls, on the other hand, are among the most exquisitely wrought—simple, sober, and natural—to be seen in Spain, especially those of the lower row.
The chapels are as usual in Spanish cathedrals, as different in style as they are in size; none of those in Zamora can be considered as artistic jewels. The best is doubtless that which terminates the southern aisles on the western end of the church, where the principal façade ought to have been placed. It is Gothic, rich in its decoration, but showing here and there the decadence of the northern style.
The cloister—well, anywhere else it might have been praised for its plateresque simplicity and severity, but here!—it is out of date and place.
To conclude, the general characteristics of the cathedral of Zamora are such as justify the opinion that the edifice, especially as its Byzantine-Oriental and severe primitive structure is concerned, is one of the great churches that can still be admired in Spain, in spite of the reduced size and of the additions which have been introduced.
Note.—To the traveller interested in church architecture, the author wishes to draw attention to the parish church of La Magdalen in Zamora. The northern portal of the same is one of the most perfect—if not the most perfect—specimen of Byzantine-Romanesque decoration to be met with in Spain. It is perhaps unique in the world. At the same time, the severe Oriental appearance of the church, both from the outside and as seen from within, cannot fail to draw the attention of the most casual observer.