II Corunna
Corunna, seated on her beautiful bay, the waters of which are ever warmed by the Gulf Stream, gazes out westwards across the turbulent waves of the ocean as she has done for nearly two thousand years.
Brigandtia was her first known name, a centre of the Celtic druid religion. The inhabitants of the town, it is to-day believed, communicated by sea with their brethren in Ireland long before the coming of the Phœnicians and Greeks who established a trading post and a tin factory, and built the Tower of Hercules.
The Roman conquest saved Brigandtium from being great before her time. For the Latin people were miserable sailors, and gazed with awe into the waves of the Atlantic. For them Brigandtia was the last spot in the world, a dangerous spot, to be shunned. So they left her seated on her beautiful bay beside the Torre de Hercules, and made Lugo their capital.
In the shuffling of bishops and sees in the fifth and sixth centuries, Corunna was forgotten. Unimportant, known only for its castle and its tower, it passed a useless existence, patiently waiting for a change in its favour.
This change came in the fifteenth century as a result of the discovery of America. Since then, and with varying success, the city has grown in importance, until to-day it is the most wealthy and active of Galicia’s towns, and one of the largest seaports on Spain’s Atlantic coast.
Its history since the sixteenth century is well known, especially to Englishmen, who, whenever their country had a rupture with Spain, were quick in entering Corunna’s bay. From here part of the Invincible Armada sailed one day to fight the Saxons and to be destroyed by a tempest; ten years later England returned the challenge with better luck, and her fleets entered the historical bay and burned the town. During the war with Napoleon, General Moore fought the French in the vicinity and lost his life, whereas a few years earlier an English fleet defeated, just outside the bay, a united French and Spanish squadron.
To-day, the old city on the hill looks down upon the new one below; the former is poetic and artistic, the latter is straight-lined, industrial, and modern. Nevertheless, the aspect of the city denies its age, for it is more modern than many cities that are younger. What is more, tradition does not weigh heavily on its brow, and depress its inhabitants, as is the case in Lugo and Tuy and Santiago. The movement on the wharves, the continual coming and going of vessels of all sizes, commerce, industry, and other delights of modern civilization do not give the citizens leisure to ponder over the city’s two thousand years, nor to preoccupy themselves about art problems. Moreover, the tourist who has come to Spain to visit Toledo and Sevilla hurries off inland, gladly leaving Corunna’s streets to sailors and to merchants.
There are, nevertheless, two churches well worth a visit; one is the Colegiata (supposed to have been a bishopric for a short time in the thirteenth century) or suffragan church, and the other the Church of Santiago. The latter has a fine Romanesque portal of the twelfth century, reminding one in certain decorative details of the Portico de la Gloria in Santiago. The interior of the building consists of one nave or aisle spanned by a daring vault, executed in the early ogival style; doubtless it was originally Romanesque, as is evidently shown by the capitals of the pillars, and was most likely rebuilt after the terrible fire which broke out early in the sixteenth century.
Santa Maria del Campo is the name of the suffragan church dedicated to the Virgin. The church itself was erected to a suffragan of Santiago in 1441. The date of its erection is doubtful, some authors placing it in the twelfth and others in the thirteenth century. Street, whom we can take as an intelligent guide in these matters, calls it a twelfth-century church, contemporaneous with and perhaps even built by the same architect who built that of Santiago de Campostela. Moreover, the mentioned critic affirms this in spite of a doubtful inscription placed in the vault above the choir, which accuses the building of having been completed in 1307.
The primitive plan of the church was doubtless Romanesque, of one nave and two aisles. As in Mondoñedo and Lugo, the former is surmounted by an ogival vault, and the aisles, lower in height, are somewhat depressed by the use of Romanesque plein-cintré vaultings. The form of the building is that of a Roman cross with rather short arms; the apse consists of but one chapel, the lady-chapel. As regards the light, it is horrible, for the window in the west is insignificant and, what is more, has recently been blinded, though only Heaven knows why. The towers emerging from the western front are unmeaning, and not similar, which detracts from the harmony of the whole. As regards the different façades, the western has been spoilt quite recently; the northern and southern are, however, Romanesque, though not pure, as ogival arches are used in the decoration of the tympanum.
In other words, the Church of Santiago at Corunna is more important, from an archæological point of view, than the Colegiata. The fishing folk do not think so, however; they care but little for such secondary details, and their veneration is entirely centred in the suffragan church—“one of the three Virgins,” as they call her to whom it is dedicated. To them this particular Mary is the estrella del mar (sea star), and she is the principal object of their devotion. It is strange—be it said in parenthesis—how frequently in Galicia mention is made of stars: they form a most important feature of the country’s superstitions. Blood will out—and Celtic mythology peeps through the Christian surface in spite of centuries of true belief.