IV Salamanca
The very position of Salamanca, immediately to the north of the chain of mountains which served for many a century as a rough frontier wall between Christians and Moors, was bound to ensure the city’s importance and fame. Its history is consequently unique, grander and more exciting than that of any other city; the universal name it acquired in the fourteenth century, thanks to its university, can only be compared with that of Bologna, Paris, and Oxford.
Consequently its fall from past renown to present insignificance was tremendous, and to-day, a heap of ruins, boasting of traditions like Toledo and Burgos, of two cathedrals and twenty-four parish churches, of twice as many convents and palaces, of a one-time glorious university and half a hundred colleges,—Salamanca sleeps away a useless existence from which it will never awaken.
Its history has still to be penned. What an exciting and stirring account of middle age life in Spain it would be!
The Romans knew Salamantia, and the first notice handed down to us of the city reads like a fairy story, as though predicting future events.
According to Plutarch, the town was besieged by Hannibal, and had to surrender. The inhabitants were allowed to leave, unarmed, and taking away with them only their clothes; the men were searched as they passed out, but not so the women.
Together men and women left the town. A mile away they halted, and the women drew forth from beneath their robes concealed weapons. Together the men and the women returned to their town and stealthily fell upon their foes, slaughtering them in considerable numbers. Hannibal was so “enchanted” (!) with the bravery displayed by the women, that he drew away his army from the town, leaving the patriotic inhabitants to settle again their beloved Salamanca.
The Western Goths, upon their arrival in Spain, found Salamanca in a flourishing state, and respected its episcopal see, the origin of which is ignored. The first bishop we have any record of is Eleuterio, who signed the third Council of Toledo in 589.
The Arabs treated the city more harshly; it was in turn taken and destroyed by infidels and Christians; the former sacking frontier towns, the latter destroying all fortresses they could not hold.
In the eighth century no bishop seems to have existed in Salamanca; in the tenth, date of a partial reëstablishment of the see, seven prelates are mentioned; these did not, however, risk their skins by taking possession of their chair, but lived quietly in the north, either in Santiago—farther north they could not go!—or else in Leon and Burgos. The eleventh century is again devoid of any ecclesiastical news connected with the see of Salamanca; what is more, the very name of the city is forgotten until Alfonso VI. crossed the Guaderrama and fixed his court in Toledo. This bold step, taken in a hostile country far from the centre of the kingdom and from his base of operations, obliged the monarch to erect with all speed a series of fortresses to the north; as a result, Salamanca, Segovia, and Avila, beyond the Guaderrama Mountains, and Madrid to the south, were quickly populated by Christians.
This occurred in 1102; the first bishop de modernis was Jeronimo, a French warrior-monk, who had accompanied his bosom friend el Cid to Valencia, had fought beside him, and had been appointed bishop of the conquered see. Not for any length of time, however, for as soon as el Cid died, the Moors drove the Christians out of the new kingdom, and the bishop came to Leon with the Cristo de las Batallas,—a miraculous cross of old Byzantine workmanship, supposed to have aided the Cid in many a battle,—as the only souvenir of his stay in the Valencian see.
The next four or five bishops fought among themselves. At one time the city had no fewer than two, a usurper, and another who was not much better; the Pope deprived one of his dignity, the king another, the influential Archbishop of Santiago chose a third, who was also deposed—the good old times!—until at last one Berengario was appointed, and the ignominious conflict was peacefully settled.
The inhabitants of the city at the beginning were a strong, warlike medley of Jews (these were doubtless the least warlike!), Arabs, Aragonese, Castilian, French, and Leonese. Bands of these without a commander invaded Moorish territory, sacking and pillaging where they could. On one occasion they were pursued by an Arab army, whose general asked to speak with the captain of the Salamantinos. The answer was, “Each of us is his own captain!” words that can be considered typical of the anarchy which reigned in Spain until the advent of Isabel and Ferdinand in the fifteenth century.
If the bishops fought among themselves, and if the low class people lived in a state of utter anarchy, the same spirit spread to—or emanated from—the nobility, of whom Salamanca had more than its share, especially as soon as the university was founded. The annals of no other city are so replete with family traditions and feuds, which were not only restricted to the original disputers, to their families and acquaintances, but became generalized among the inhabitants themselves, who took part in the feud. Thus it often happened that the city was divided into two camps, separated by an imaginary line, and woe betide the daring or careless individual who crossed it!
One of the most dramatic of these feuds—a savage species of vendetta—was the following:
Doña Maria Perez, a Plasencian dame of noble birth, had married one of the most powerful noblemen in Salamanca, Monroy by name, and upon the latter’s death remained a widowed mother of two sons. One of them asked and obtained in marriage the hand of a noble lady who had refused a similar proposition made by one Enriquez, son of a Sevillan aristocrat. The youth’s jealousy and anger was therefore bitterly aroused, and he and his brother waited for a suitable opportunity in which to avenge themselves. It soon came: they were playing Spanish ball, pelota, one day with the accepted suitor, when a dispute arose as to who was the better player; the two brothers fell upon their victim and foully murdered him. But afraid lest his brother should venge the latter’s death, they lay in wait for him behind a street corner, and as he came along they rapidly killed him as they had his brother. Then they fled across the frontier to Portugal.
The two corpses had in the meantime been carried on a bier by the crowds and laid down in front of Doña Maria’s house; the latter stepped out on the balcony, with dishevelled hair; an angry murmur went from one end of the crowd to the other, and a universal clamour arose: vengeance was on every one’s lips. But Doña Maria commanded silence.
“Be calm,” she said, “and take these bodies to the cathedral. Vengeance? Fear not, I shall venge myself.”
An hour later she left the town with an escort, apparently with a view to retire to her estates near Plasencia. Once well away from the city, she divulged her plan to the escort and asked if they were willing to follow her. Receiving an affirmative reply, she tore off her woman’s clothes and appeared dressed in full armour; placing a helmet on her head, she took the lead of her troops again, and set out for the Portuguese frontier.
The strange company arrived on the third day at a Portuguese frontier town, where they were told that two foreigners had arrived the night before. By the description of the two Spaniards, Doña Maria felt sure they were her sons’ murderers, and consequently she and her escort approached the house where the fugitives were passing the night. Placing the escort beneath the window, she stealthily entered the house and stole to the brothers’ room; then she slew them whilst they were sleeping, and, rushing to the window, threw it open, and, spearing the heads of her enemies on her lance, she showed them to her retinue, with the words:
“I’m venged! Back to Salamanca.”
Silently, at the head of her troops, and bearing the two heads on her lance, Doña Maria returned to Salamanca. Entering the cathedral, she threw them on the newly raised slabs which covered her sons’ remains.
Ever after she was known as Doña Maria la brava, and is as celebrated to-day as she was in the fifteenth century, during the abominable reign of Henry IV. And so great was the feud which divided the city into two camps, that it lasted many years, and many were the victims of the gigantic vendetta.
The city’s greatest fame lay in its university, founded toward 1215, by Alfonso IX. of Leon, who was jealous of his cousin Alfonso VIII. of Castile, the founder of the luckless university of Palencia.
The fate of the last named university has been duly mentioned elsewhere; that of Salamanca was far different. In 1255 the Pope called it one of the four lamps of the world; strangers—students from all corners of Europe—flocked to the city to study. Perhaps its greatest merit was the study of Arabic and Arabian letters, and it has been said that the study of the Orient penetrated into Europe through Salamanca alone.
What a glorious life must have been the university city’s during the apogee of her fame! Students from all European lands, dressed in the picturesque costume worn by those who attended the university, wended their way through the streets, singing and playing the guitar or the mandolin; they mingled with dusky noblemen, richly dressed in satins and silks, and wearing the rapier hanging by their sides; they flirted with the beautiful daughters of Spain, and gravely saluted the bishop when he was carried along in his chair, or rode a quiet palfrey. At one time the court was established in the university city, lending a still more brilliant lustre to the every-day life of the inhabitants, and to the sombre streets lined with palaces, churches, colleges, convents, and monasteries.
Gone! To-day the city lies beneath an immense weight of ruins of all kinds, that chain her down to the past which was her glory, and impede her from looking ahead into her future with ambitions and hopes.
The cathedrals Salamanca can boast of to-day are two, an old one and a comparatively new one; the latter was built beside the former, a praiseworthy and exceptional proceeding, for, instead of pulling down the old to make room for the new, as happens throughout the world, the cathedral chapter convocated an assembly of architects, and was intelligent enough—another wonder!—to accept the verdict that the old building, a Romanesque-Byzantine edifice of exceptional value, should not be demolished. The new temple was therefore erected beside the former, and, obeying the art impulses of the centuries which witnessed its construction, is an ogival church spoilt—or bettered—by Renaissance, plateresque, and grotesque decorative elements.
The Old Cathedral.—The exact date of the erection of the old see is not known; toward 1152 it was already in construction, and 150 years later, in 1299, it was not concluded. Consequently, and more than in the case of Zamora and Toro, the upper part of the building shows decided ogival tendencies; yet in spite of these evident signs of transition, the ensemble, the spirit of the building, is, beyond a doubt, Romanesque-Byzantine, and not Gothic.
The plan of the church is the same as those of Zamora, Toro, and Coria: a nave and two aisles cut short at the transept, which is slightly prolonged beyond the width of the body of the church; there is no ambulatory walk, but to the east of the transept are three chapels in a three-lobed apse, the central lobe larger than the others and containing the high altar; the choir was placed (originally) in the centre of the nave, and a cimborio crowns the croisée, this latter being a peculiarity of the three cathedral churches of Zamora, Toro, and Salamanca.
Unluckily, the erection of the new building as an annex of the old one required (as in Plasencia, though from different reasons) the demolition of certain parts of the latter; as, for instance, the two towers of the western front, the northern portal as well as the northern half of the apse, and the corresponding part of the transept. Parts of these have either been surrounded or replaced by the new building.
The narthex and the western end are still preserved. They are of the same width as the nave, for, beneath the towers, of which one seems to have been far higher than the other, each of the aisles terminates in a chapel. Byzantine in appearance, the two western doors are, nevertheless, crowned by an ogival arch, and flanked by statuettes of the same style. The façade, repaired and spoilt, is of Renaissance severity.
The interior of the building is more impressive than that of either Zamora or Toro; this is due to the absence of the choir,—removed to the new cathedral,—which permits an uninterrupted view of the whole church, which does not occur in any other temple throughout Spain. Romanesque strength and gloominess is clearly discernible, whereas the height of the central nave (sixty feet) is rendered stumpy in appearance by the almost equal height of the aisles. The strength and solidity of the pillars and columns, supporting capitals and friezes of a peculiar and decided Byzantine taste (animals, dragons, etc.), show more keenly than in Galicia the Oriental influence which helped so thoroughly to shape Central Spanish Romanesque.
Of the chapels, but one deserves special mention, both as seen from without and from within, namely, the high altar, or central apsidal chapel. Seen from without, it is of perfect Romanesque construction, excepting the upper row of rose windows, which are ogival in their traceries; inside, it contains a mural painting of an exceedingly primitive design, and a retablo in low reliefs enchased in ogival arches; it is of Italian workmanship.
Of the remaining chapels, that of San Bartolomé contains an alabaster sepulchre of the Bishop Diego de Anaya—one of the many prelates of those times who was the possessor of illegitimate sons; the bodies of most of the latter lie within this chapel, which can be regarded not only as a family pantheon, but as a symbol of ecclesiastical greatness and human weakness.
The windows which light up the nave are round-headed, and yet they are delicately decorated, as is rarely to be seen in the Romanesque type. The aisles, on the contrary, are not lit up by any windows.
Like the churches of Zamora and Toro, the whole cathedral resembles a fortress rather than a place of worship. The simplicity of the general structure, the rounded turrets buried in the walls, serving as leaning buttresses, the narrow slits in the walls instead of windows, lend an indisputable aspect of strength. The beautiful, the really beautiful lantern, situated above the croisée, with its turrets, its niches, its thirty odd windows, and its elegant cupola, is an architectural body that wins the admiration of all who behold it, either from within the church or from without, and which, strictly Byzantine in conception (though rendered peculiarly Spanish by the addition of certain elements which pertain rather to Gothic military art than to church architecture), is unique—to the author’s knowledge—in all Europe. Less pure in style, and less Oriental in appearance than that of Zamora, it was nevertheless, created more perfect by the artistic conception of the architect, and consequently more finished or developed than those of Toro and Zamora. Without hesitation, it can claim to be one of Salamanca’s chief attractions.
The thickness of the walls (ten feet!), the admirable simpleness of the vaulting, and the general aspect from the exterior, have won for the church the name of fortis Salamantini.
The New Cathedral.—It was begun in 1513, the old temple having been judged too small, and above all too narrow for a city of the importance of Salamanca.
Over two hundred years did the building of the present edifice last; at times all work was stopped for years, no funds being at hand to pay either artists or masons.
The primitive plan of the church, as proposed by the congress of architects, was Gothic of the second period, with an octagonal apse; the lower part of the church, from the foot to the transept, was the first to be constructed.
The upper part of the apse was not begun until the year 1588, and the artist, imbued with the beauty of Herrero’s Escorial, squared the apse with the evident intention of constructing turrets on the exterior angles, which would have rendered the building symmetrical: two towers on the western front, a cupola on the croisée, and two smaller turrets on the eastern end.
The building as it stands to-day is a perfect rectangle cut in its length by a nave (containing the choir and the high altar), and by two aisles, lower than the nave and continued in an ambulatory walk behind the high altar.
The same symmetry is visible in the lateral chapels: eight square huecos on the exterior walls of the aisles, five to the west, and three to the east of the transept, and three in the extreme eastern wall of the apse.
Magnificence rather than beauty is the characteristic note of the new cathedral. The primitive part—pure ogival with but little mixture—contrasts with the eastern end, which is covered over with the most glaring grotesque decoration; most of the chapels are spoiled by the same shocking profusion of super-ornamentation; the otherwise majestic cupola, the high altar, and the choir—all suffer from the same defect.
The double triforium—one higher than the other—in the clerestory produces a most favourable impression; this is heightened by the wealth of light, which, entering by two rows of windows and by the cimborio, falls upon the rich decoration of friezes and capitals. The general view of the whole building is also freer than in most Spanish cathedrals, and this harmony existing in the proportions of the different parts strikes the visitor more favourably, perhaps, than in the severer cathedral at Burgos.
The exterior of the building reflects more truthfully than the interior the different art waves which spread over Spain during the centuries of the temple’s erection. In the western front, the rich Gothic portal of the third period, the richest perhaps in sculptural variety of any on the peninsula, contrasts with the high mongrel tower, a true example of the composite towers so frequently met with in certain Spanish regions. The second body of the same façade (western) is highly interesting, not on account of its ornamentation, which is simple, but because of the solid, frank structure, and the curious fortress-like turrets embedded in the angles.
The flank of the building, seen from the north—for on the south side stand the ruins of the old cathedral—is none too homogeneous, thanks to the different styles in which the three piers of windows—of chapels, aisles, and clerestory—have been constructed. The ensemble is picturesque, nevertheless: the three rows of windows, surmounted by the huge cupola and half-lost among the buttresses, certainly contribute toward the general elegance of the granite structure.