Part 7 (1/2)
From Zamora, cheered by the recollection of perhaps the most gorgeous sunset and the clearest moonlight that I ever saw, I made my way across country to Benavente. It is a ten hours' drive over fields, through streams and ditches, and nowhere on a road upon which any pains have ever been bestowed; and when I say that the country is flat and uninteresting, the paternal benevolence of the government which leaves such a district practically roadless will be appreciated. Beyond Benavente the case is still worse, for the broad valley of the Esla, leading straight to Leon, is without a road along which a tartana can drive, though there is scarcely a hillock to surmount or a stream to cross in the forty miles between a considerable town and the capital of the province!
Soon after leaving Zamora some villages were seen to the right, and one of them seemed to me to have a church with a dome; but my view of it was very distant, and I cannot speak with any certainty. From thence to Benavente no old building was pa.s.sed.
[Ill.u.s.tration: No. 12.
BENAVENTE.
EAST END OF STA. MARIA. p. 102.]
Benavente is the most tumble-down forlorn-looking town I have seen. Most of the houses are built of mud, rain-worn for want of proper thatching, of only one story in height, and relieved in front by a doorway and usually one very small hole for a window. There is, however, a church--Sta. Maria del Azogue--which made the journey quite worth undertaking. It is cruciform, with five apses projecting from the eastern wall, that in the centre larger than the others.[110] The apses have semi-domes, the square compartments to the west of them quadripart.i.te vaulting in the three centre, and waggon-vaults in the two outer bays. The transepts and crossing are vaulted with pointed barrel-vaults at the two ends, and three bays of quadripart.i.te vaulting in the s.p.a.ce between these two compartments; and the internal effect is particularly fine, owing to the long line of arches into the eastern chapels and the rich character of most of the details. The nave and aisles no doubt retain to some extent their old form and arrangement, but most of the work here is of the fifteenth century, whilst that of the eastern part of the church is no doubt of circa A.D. 1170-1220. The west front is quite modernized. The transept walls are lofty, and there is a simple pointed clerestory above the roofs of the eastern chapels, and a rose window over the arch into the Capilla mayor. The smaller chapels have each one window, the centre chapel three windows with the usual three-quarter engaged shaft between them, finis.h.i.+ng in the eaves-cornice. The south transept has a fine round-headed doorway, but all its detail is that of early-pointed work. It has an Agnus Dei surrounded by angels in the tympanum, the four Evangelists with their emblems in one order of the arch, bold foliage in the next, a deep scallop ornament in the third, and delicate foliage in the label. The capitals are well carved, and the jambs of the door and one of the members of the archivolt have simple rose ornaments at intervals. The abaci of the capitals are square, but notwithstanding this and the other apparently early feature of the round arch I am still not disposed to date this work earlier than circa A.D. 1210-20.[111] Of the same age and character probably are all the eaves-cornices of the earlier part of the church, and, I have little doubt, the whole lower portion of the church itself.
There is a fine doorway to the north transept, and a lofty tower of very singular design rises over its northern bay. This is three stages in height above the roof, and is finished with a corbel-table and a modern spire of ogee outline. The masons' marks on the exterior of the walls are here, as is usual in these early churches, very plentiful.
The church of San Juan del Mercado seems to be in some respects even more interesting than the other. It has a south doorway of singularly rich character, the two inner orders of the arch being round and the others pointed. The shafts are unusually rich and delicate; they are carved with acanthus-leaves diapered all over their surface, with chevrons and spiral mouldings, and above their bands at mid-height have in front of them figures of saints, three on either side. The tympanum has the Adoration of the Magi, and the order of the arch round it is sculptured with angels. Altogether this is a very refined and n.o.ble work, and the combination of the pointed and round arches one over the other is very happy. The west front has also a fine doorway and engaged shafts at intervals in the wall, and the east end is parallel triapsidal of the same character as that of San Juan.
There are some other churches, but those which I saw seemed to be all late and uninteresting. There are, too, the rapidly wasting ruins of an imposing castle. It is of very late sixteenth century work, and apparently has no detail of any interest; but the approach to it through a gateway, and up a winding hilly road under the steep castle walls, is very picturesque. By its side an Alameda has been planted, and here is the one agreeable walk in Benavente. Below is the river Esla, winding through a broad plain well wooded hereabouts with poplars and aspens; in the background are lines of hills, and beyond them bold mountain outlines; and such a view, aided by the transparent loveliness of the atmosphere, was enough to make me half-inclined to forget the squalid misery of everything that met the eye when I pa.s.sed back again to my lodging.
[Ill.u.s.tration: SALAMANCA:--Ground Plans of old and new Cathedrals:--and of San Marcos:--Plate IV.
Published by John Murray, Albemarle St. 1865.]
CHAPTER V.
LEON.
It is a ride of some six-and-thirty or forty miles from Benavente to Leon. The road follows the course of the valley of the Esla all the way, and, though it is as nearly as possible level throughout, it is impa.s.sable for carriages. This is characteristic of the country; the Spaniards are content to go on as their fathers have done before them, and until some external friend comes to make a railway for them, the people of Benavente and Leon will probably still remain as practically isolated from each other as they are at present.
The valley is full of villages, as many as ten or twelve being in sight at one time on some parts of the road. None of their churches, however, seem to be of the slightest value. They are mostly modern and built of brick, though some have nothing better than badly built cob-walls to boast of; and their only unusual feature seems to be the great western bell-gable, which is generally an elevation above the roof of the whole width of the western wall, in which several bells are usually hung in a series of openings. The villages, too, are all built of cob; and as the walls are either only half-thatched or not thatched at all, they are gradually being worn away by the rains, and look as forlorn and sad as possible. One almost wonders that the people do not quit their hovels for the wine-caves with which every little hill near the villages is honeycombed, and upon which more care seems to be bestowed than upon the houses. In these parts the peasants adorn the outside of their houses with plenty of whitewash, and then relieve its bareness with rude red and black paintings of sprigs of trees, arranged round the windows and doors.
The cathedral of Leon is first seen some three or four hours before the city is reached. It stands up boldly above the well-wooded valley, and is backed by a n.o.ble range of mountain-peaks to the north; so that, though the road was somewhat monotonous and wearying, I rode on picturing to myself the great things I was soon to see. Unfortunately I visited Leon a year too late, for I came just in time to see the cathedral bereft of its southern transept, which had been pulled down to save it from falling, and was being reconstructed under the care of a Madrilenian architect--Senor Lavinia. I saw his plans and some of the work which was being put in its place, and the sight made me wish with double earnestness that I had been there before he had commenced his work! In England or in France such a work would be full of risk, and might well fill all lovers of our old buildings with alarm; but in Spain there is absolutely no school for the education of architects, the old national art is little understood and apparently very little studied, and there are no new churches and no minor restorations on which the native architects may try their prentice hands. In England for some years we have lived in the centre of a church-building movement as active and hearty perhaps as any ever yet known; our advantages, therefore, as compared with those possessed by foreigners generally, are enormous; whilst perhaps, on the other hand, in no country has so little been done as in Spain during the present century. Yet in England few of us would like to think of pulling down and reconstructing one side of a cathedral, and few would doubt that art and history would lose much in the process, even in the hands of the most able and conservative architect.
The two great architectural features of Leon are the cathedral and the church of San Isidoro; and to the former, though it is by much the most modern of the two, I must first of all ask my readers to turn their attention.
Spaniards are rightly proud of this n.o.ble church, and the proverbs which a.s.sert its pre-eminence seem to be numerous. One, giving the characteristics of several cathedrals, is worth quoting:--
”Dives Toletana, Sancta Ovetensis Pulchra Leonina, fortis Salamantina.”
And again there is another Leonese couplet:--
”Sevilla en grandeza, Toledo en riqueza, Compostella en fortaleza, esta en sutileza.”
So again, just as our own people wrote that jubilant verse on the door-jamb of the Chapter-house at York, here on a column in front of the princ.i.p.al door was inscribed--
”Sint licet Hispaniis ditissima, pulchraque templa, Hoc tamen egregiis omnibus arte prius.”
There used to be a controversy as to the age of this cathedral, which must, however, one would think, long since have been settled. It was a.s.serted that it was the very church built at the end of the ninth century during the reign of Ordono II.; and the only proof of this was the inscription upon the fine fourteenth-century monument of the King which still stands in the aisle of the chevet behind the high altar:--
”Omnibus exemplum sit, quod venerabile templum Rex dedit Ordonius, quo jacet ipse pius.
Hunc fecit sedem, quam primo fecerat aedem Virginis hortatu, quae fulget Pontificatu.