III Toro
To the west of Valladolid, on the river Duero, Toro, the second of the two great fortress cities, uplifts its Alcázar to the blue sky; like Zamora, it owed its fame to its strategic position: first, as one of the Christian outposts to the north of the Duero against the Arab possessions to the south, and, secondly, as a link between Valladolid and Zamora, the latter being the bulwark of Christian opposition against the ever encroaching Portuguese.
Twin cities the fortresses have been called, and no better expression is at hand to denote at once the similarity of their history, their necessary origin, and their necessary decadence.
Nevertheless, Toro appears in history somewhat later than Zamora, having been erected either on virgin soil, or upon the ruins of a destroyed Arab fortress as late as in the tenth century, by Garcia, son of Alfonso III. At any rate, it was not until a century later, in 1065, that the city attained any importance, when Fernando I. bequeathed it to his daughter Elvira, who, seeing her elder brother’s impetuous ambitions, handed over the town and the citadel to him.
Throughout the middle ages the name of Toro is foremost among the important fortresses of Castile, and many an event—generally tragic and bloody—took place behind its walls. Here Alfonso XI. murdered his uncle in cold blood, and Don Pedro el Cruel, after besieging the town and the citadel held in opposition to him by his mother, allowed her a free exit with the gentlemen defenders of the place, but broke his word when they were on the bridge, and murdered all excepting his widowed mother!
In the days of Isabel the Catholic, Toro was taken by the kings of Portugal, who upheld the claims of Enrique IV’s illegitimate daughter, Juana la Beltranaja. In the vicinity of the town, the great battle of Pelea Gonzalo was fought, which gave the western part of Castile to the rightful sovereigns. This battle is famous for the many prelates and curates who, armed,—and wearing trousers and not frocks!—fought like Christians (!) in the ranks.
In Toro, Cortes was assembled in 1505 to open Queen Isabel’s testament, and to promulgate those laws which have gone down in Spanish history as the Leyes de Toro; this was the last spark of Toro’s fame, for since then its fate has been identical with that of Zamora, forty miles away.
Strictly speaking, it is doubtful if Toro ever was a city; at one time it seems to have possessed an ephemeral bishop,—at least such is the popular belief,—who must have reigned in his see but a short time, as at an early date the city was submitted to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Astorga. Later, when the see was reëstablished in Zamora, the latter’s twin sister, Toro, was definitely included in the new episcopal diocese.
Be that as it may, the Catholic kings raised the church at Toro to a collegiate in the sixteenth century (1500?) because they were anxious to gain the good-will of the inhabitants after the Portuguese invasion.
Built either toward the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century, Santa Maria la Mayor, popularly called la catedral, closely resembles the cathedral church at Zamora. The style is the same (Byzantine-Romanesque), and the impression of strength and solidity produced by the warlike aspect of the building is even more pronounced than in the case of the sister church.
The general plan is that of a basilica, rectangular in shape, with a three-lobed apse, the central lobe being by far the largest in size, and a transept which protrudes slightly beyond the width of the church. This transept is situated immediately in front of the apse; the croisée is surmounted by the handsome cimborio, larger than that at Zamora, pierced by twice as many round-topped windows, but lacking a cupola, as do also the flanking towers, which are flat-topped. Above and between these latter, the cone-shaped roof of the cimborio, properly speaking, is sloping and triangular in its cross-section.
This body, less Oriental in appearance than the one in Zamora, impresses one with a feeling of greater awe, thanks to the great diameter as compared with the foreshortened height. Crowning as it does the apse (from the proximity of the transept to the head of the church), the croisée, and the two wings of the transept, the cupola in question produces a weird and incomprehensible effect on the spectator viewing it from the southeast. The more modern tower, which backs the cimborio, lends, it is true, a certain elegance to the edifice that the early builders were not willing to impart. The ensemble is, nevertheless, peculiarly Byzantine, and, with the mother-church in Zamora, which it resembles without copying, it stands almost unique in the history of art.
The lateral doors, not situated in the transept, are located near the foot of the church. The southern portal is the larger, but the most simple; the arch which crowns it shows a decided ogival tendency, a circumstance which need not necessarily be attributed to Gothic influence, as in many churches prior to the introduction of the ogival arch the pointed top was known, and in isolated cases it was made use of, though purely by accident, and not as a constructive element.
The northern door is smaller, but a hundred times richer in sculptural design. It shows Byzantine influence in the decoration, and as a Byzantine-Romanesque portal can figure among the best in Spain.
It has been supposed that the western front of the building possessed at one time a narthex, like the cathedral Tuy, for instance. Nothing remains of it, however, as the portal which used to be here was done away with, and in its place a modern chapel with a fine Gothic retablo was consecrated.
Seen from the interior, the almost similar height of the nave and aisles, leaves, as in Zamora, a somewhat stern and depressing impression on the visitor; the light which enters is also feeble, excepting beneath the linterna, where “the difficulty of placing a circular body on a square without the aid of supports (pechinas) has been so naturally and perfectly overcome that we are obliged to doubt of its ever having existed.”
Gothic elements, more so than in Zamora, mix with the Romanesque traditions in the decoration of the nave and aisles; nevertheless, the elements of construction are purely Romanesque, excepting the central apsidal chapel which contains the high altar. Restored by the Fonseca family in the sixteenth century, it is ogival in conception and execution, and contains some fine tombs of the above named aristocratic family. But the chapel passes unnoticed in this peculiarly exotic building, where solidity and not grace was the object sought and obtained.