II Avila
To the west of Madrid, in the very heart of the Sierra de Gredos, lies Avila, another of the interesting cities of Castile, whose time-old mansions and palaces, built of a gray granite, lend a solemn and almost repulsively melancholic air to the city.
Perhaps more than any other town, Avila is characteristic of the middle ages, of the continual strife between the noblemen, the Church, and the common people. The houses of the aristocrats are castles rather than palaces, with no artistic decoration to hide their bare nakedness; the cathedral is really a fortress, and not only apparently so, as in Salamanca and Toro, for its very apse is embedded in the city walls, of which it forms a part, a battlemented, turreted, and warlike projection, sure of having to bear the brunt of an attack in case of a siege.
Like the general aspect of the city is also the character of the inhabitant, and it is but drawing it mildly to state that Avila’s sons were ever foremost in battle and strife. Kings in their minority were brought hither by prudent mothers who relied more upon the city’s walls than upon the promises of noblemen in Valladolid and Burgos; this trust was never misplaced. In the conquest of Extremadura and of Andalusia, also, the Avilese troops, headed by daring warrior-prelates, played a most important part, and, as a frontier fortress, together with Segovia, against Aragon to the east, it managed to keep away from Castilian territory the ambitions of the monarchs of the rival kingdom.
Avela of the Romans was a garrison town, the walls of which were partly thrown down by the Western Goths upon their arrival in the peninsula. Previously, San Segundo, one of the disciples of the Apostles who had visited Bética (Andalusia), preached the True Word in Avila, and was created its first bishop—in the first century. During the terrible persecution of the Christians under the reign of Trajanus, one San Vicente and his two sisters, Sabina and Cristeta, escaped from Portugal and came to Avila, hoping to be hospitably received. All in vain; their heads were smashed between stones, and their bodies left to rot in the streets. An immense serpent emerged from the city walls and kept guard over the three saintly corpses. The first to approach was a Jew, drawn hither by curiosity; he was immediately enveloped by the reptile’s body. On the point of being strangled, he pronounced the word, “Jesus”—and the serpent released him. So grateful was the Jew at being delivered from death that he turned Christian and erected a church in honour of San Vicente, Sabina, and Cristeta, and had them buried within its walls.
This church subsisted throughout the dark ages of the Moorish invasion until at last Fernando I. removed the saintly remains to Leon in the eleventh century. The church was then destroyed, and, it is believed, the present cathedral was built on the same spot.
The Moors, calling the city Abila, used it as one of the fortresses defending Toledo on the north against the continual Christian raids; with varying success they held it until the end of the eleventh century, when it finally fell into the hands of the Christians, and was repopulated a short time before Salamanca toward the end of the same century.
During the centuries of Moorish dominion the see had fallen into the completest oblivion, no mention being made of any bishops of Avila; the ecclesiastical dignity was reëstablished immediately after the final conquest of the region to the north of the Sierra of Guaderrama, and though documents are lacking as to who was the first prelate de modernis, it is generally believed to have been one Jeronimo, toward the end of the eleventh century.
The city grew rapidly in strength; settlers came from the north—from Castile and Leon—and from the east, from Aragon; they travelled to their new home in bullock-carts containing household furniture, agricultural and war implements, wives, and children.
In the subsequent history of Spain Avila played an important part, and many a stirring event took place within its walls. It was besieged by the Aragonese Alfonso el Batallador, whose army advanced to the attack behind its prisoners, sons of Avila. Brothers, fathers, and relatives were thus obliged to fire upon their own kin if they wished to save their city. The same king, it is said, killed his hostages by having their heads cut off and boiled in oil, as though severed heads were capable of feeling the delightful sensation of seething oil!
Of all the traditions as numerous here as elsewhere, the prettiest and most improbable is doubtless that of Nalvillos, a typical chevalier of romance, who fell desperately in love with a beautiful Moorish princess and wedded her. She pined, however, for a lover whom in her youth she had promised to wed, and though her husband erected palaces and bought slaves for her, she escaped with her sweetheart. Nalvillos followed the couple to where they lay retired in a castle, and it was surrounded by him and his trusty followers. The hero himself, disguised as a seller of curative herbs, entered the apartment where his wife was waiting for her lover’s return, and made himself known. The former’s return, however, cut matters short, and Nalvillos was obliged to hide himself. The Moorish girl was true to her love, and told her sweetheart where the Christian was hiding; brought out of his retreat, he was on the point of being killed when he asked permission to blow a last blast on his bugle—a wish that was readily conceded by the magnanimous lover. The result? The princess and her sweetheart were burnt to death by the flames ignited by Nalvillos’s soldiers. The Christian warrior was, of course, able to escape.
In 1455 the effigy of Henry IV. was dethroned in Avila by the prelates of Toledo and other cities, and by an assembly of noblemen who felt that feudalism was dying out, and were anxious to strike a last blow at the weak king whom they considered was their enemy.
The effigy was placed on a throne; the Archbishop of Toledo harangued the multitude which, silent and scowling, was kept away from the throne by a goodly number of obedient mercenary soldiers. Then the prelate tore off the mock crown, another of the conspirators the sceptre, another the royal garments, and so on, each accompanying his act by an ignominious curse. At last the effigy was torn from the throne and trampled under the feet of the soldiers. Alfonso, a boy of eleven, stepped on the dais and was proclaimed king. His hand was kissed by the humble (!) prelates and noblemen, who swore allegiance, an oath they had not the slightest intention of keeping, and did not keep, either.
Philip III.’s decree expelling Moors from Spain, was, as in the case of Plasencia, the coup de grace given to the city’s importance; half the population was obliged to leave, and Avila never recovered her lost importance and influence. To-day, with only about ten thousand inhabitants, thrown in the background by Madrid, it manages to keep alive and nothing more.
The date when the erection of the cathedral church of Avila was begun is utterly unknown. According to a pious legend, it was founded by the third bishop, Don Pedro, who, being anxious to erect a temple worthy of his dignity, undertook a long pilgrimage to foreign countries in search of arms, and returned to his see in 1091. Sixteen years later, according to the same tradition, the present cathedral was essentially completed, a bold statement that cannot be accepted because in manifest contradiction with the build of the church.
According to Señor Quadrado, the oldest part of the building, the apse, was probably erected toward the end of the twelfth century. It is a massive, almost windowless, semicircular body, its bare walls unsupported by buttresses, and every inch of it like the corner-tower of a castle wall, crenelated and flat-topped.
The same author opines that the transept, a handsome, broad, and airy ogival nave, dates from the fourteenth century, whereas the western front of the church is of a much more recent date.
Be that as it may, the fact is that the cathedral of Avila, seen from the east, west, or north, is a fortress building, a huge, unwieldy and anti-artistic composition of Romanesque, Gothic, and other elements. The western front, with its heavy tower to the north, and the lack of such to the south, appears more gloomy than ever on account of the obscure colour of the stone; the façade above the portal is of one of the most peculiar of artistic conceptions ever imagined; above the first body or the pointed arch which crowns the portal comes the second body, divided from the former by a straight line, which supports eight columns flanking seven niches; on the top of this unlucky part comes an ogival window. The whole façade is narrow—one door—and high. The effect is disastrous: an unnecessary contortion or misplacement of vertical, horizontal, slanting, and circular lines.
The tower is flanked at the angles by two rims of stone, the edges of which are cut into bolas (balls). If this shows certain Mudejar taste, so, also, do the geometrical designs carved in relief against a background, as seen in the arabesques above the upper windows.
The northern portal, excepting the upper arch, which is but slightly curved and almost horizontal, and weighs down the ogival arches, is far better as regards the artist’s conception of beauty; the stone carving is also of a better class.
Returning to the interior of the building, preferably by the transept, the handsomest part of the church, the spectator perceives a double ambulatory behind the high altar; the latter, as well as the choir, is low, and a fine view is obtained of the ensemble. The central nave, almost twice as high and little broader than the aisles, is crowned by a double triforium of Gothic elegance.
Seen from the transept, it would appear as though there were four aisles on the west side instead of two, a peculiar deception produced by the lateral opening of the last chapels, exactly similar in construction to the arch which crowns the intersection of the aisles and transept.
In the northern and southern extremity of the transept two handsome rosaces, above a row of lancet windows, let in the outside light through stained panes.
The impression produced by the interior of the cathedral is greatly superior to that received from without. In the latter case curiosity is about the only sentiment felt by the spectator, whereas within the temple does not lack a simple beauty and mystery.
As regards sculptural details, the best are doubtless the low reliefs to be seen to the rear of the choir, as well as several sepulchres, of which the best—and one of the best Renaissance monuments of its kind in Spain—is that of the Bishop Alfonso Tostado in the ambulatory. The retablo of the high altar is also a magnificent piece of work of the second half of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth.