;SPANIC NOTES MONOGRAPHS PENINSULAR SERIES HISPANIC HISPANIC SOCIETY PENINSULAR SERIES OF AMERICA HISPANIC NOTES & MONOGRAPHS ESSAYS, STUDIES, AND BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES ISSUED BY THE HISPANIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA PENINSULAR SERIES 1 1HE WAY < SAINT JAM SANTIAGO MATAMOROS (From an Illuminated MS. in the Hispanic Society of America) THE WAY OF SAINT JAMES By GEORGIANA GODDARD KING, M. A, Professor of the History of Art, Bryn Mawr College; Member the Hispanic Society of America In Three Volumes Volume III Illustrated G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK AND LONDON 1920 COPYRIGHT. 1920, BY THE HISPANIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA Ube Ifcnicfeerbocfeer press, "Hew l^orfc CONTENTS iii BOOK THREE: THE BOURNE CHAPTER PAGE I . ANO SANTO . 3 II . THE CHURCH OF THft APOSTLE 34 III . DIEGO GELMIREZ 88 IV . COMPOSTELLA .... 139 The Church of a Dream . 163 As Pilgrims Pass . 173 Castle and Church 181 Los Muertos Mandan 196 V . THE WORLD'S END ,.:,._ . r. . 202 VI . THE PARADISE OF SOULS . 221 The Long Way .; j^jf . 245 The vSinging Souls . 253 The Bridge of Dread 259 VII . THE ASIAN GOD ^ > ;^" 278 The Constant Worship ; • . 285 The Star-led Wizards ... '? ' . . 3H HISPANIC NOTES I iv WAY OF S.JAMES CHAPTER PAGE The Mortal Twin . 334 The High God . 347 Along the Eastern Road . 365 BOOK FOUR: HOMEWARD I. SUMMING UP . -, . . 373 The Chantie^ ,. y , . ... 379 Excursus on Some Twelfth Cen- tury Sculpture . ' .•" 386 Workmen of S. James 396 Sorting . ' •'. * • .'• 407 II. MA CALEBASSE, C'EST MA COM- PA GNE . ': ' S 417 III. THE TWO ROADS . . 428 Roncevaux . . 449 Envoy .... r?\ < 453 NOTES ..... 457 APPENDIX . 497 Notes on S. James Major, S. Mary Virgin, and the Pillar at Saragossa ' . . " .' 497 Miracles of S. James (AA. SS.) . 508 I HISPANIC NOTES CONTENTS v PAGE Miracles of Our Lady of Villa- Sirga . 520 The Great Hymn of S. James . 530 The Little Hymn of S. James . 533 La Grande Chanson des Pelerins de S. Jacques 536 Thurkill's Vision . 543 Apocalypse of S. Paul 553 Frau Holde . 558 A Lyke-Wake Dirge 560 El Alma en Pena 563 Gallegan Romance . 566 Purchas his Pilgrim 568 Itineraries 576 BIBLIOGRAPHY . 621 INDEX 664 AND MONOGRAPHS I vi WAY OF S . JAMES I HISPANIC NOTES ILLUSTRATI ONS vii ILLUSTRATIONS SANTIAGO MATAMOROS . Frontispiece PAGE THE NORTH AISLE AND AMBULATORY, SANTIAGO CATHEDRAL . . -13 THE FOUNTAIN AT SANTIAGO Photogravure facing page ... 54 BLUE HYDRANGEAS . . . . 77 A BEGGAR BY THE PUERTA SANTA . IO9 PUERTA DE LAS PLATERIAS . . 145 THE GREAT STAIR AT LE PUY . . 2O5 MASTER MATTHEW'S PORCH Photogravure facing page . . ^ 262 CHRIST AS PILGRIM — FROM SILOS . 305 AND MONOGRAPHS I viii WAY OF S. JAMES PAGE COINS » , . . . . 355 PILGRIMS' CROSS AT MELLfo . > . 399 FINISTERRE IN THE MIST . . . 439 I HISPANIC NOTES BOOK THREE i BOOK THREE THE BOURNE AND M ONOGRAP HS I 2 WAY OF S. JA MES Et sustulit me in spiritu in montem magnum et altum, et ostendit mihi civitatem sanctam Jerusalem descen- dentem de coelo a Deo, habentem claritatem Dei: et lumen ejus simile, lapidi pretioso tanquam lapidi jas- pidis sicut crystallum. Et ambulabunt gentes in lumine ejus: et reges terrae afferent gloriam suam et honorem in illam. Et portae ejus non daudentur per diam, nox enim non erit illic. Et afferent gloriam et honorem gentium in illam. I HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE 3 I ANO SANTO Droit a S, Jaques, le bar- on Galisois. — Anseis of Carthage. ONE night, I remember, as I travelled, the Camino de Santiago hung straight across the sky, frothy white as the surf on a night in August, and I knew that under it lay the grand church. The star-dust spun in puffs and whorls: Sagittarius drove full into it: Aquila hung poised on the green splendour Stars of Altair: Vega waited, calm and blue, for the long-attended coming of Bootes: stars that I did not know were there, stars that I had never seen, swarming like bees, various not in three or seven or ten but in fifty magnitudes, every one differing from another in glory. A shooting-star struck AND MONOGRAPHS I Todos somos peregrines Todos somos caminantes WAY OF S.JAMES down for token that another soul was re- leased upon its far journey. The star- swarms reeled and danced, like fire-flies tangled in silver braid : I sped the wandering soul with the ancient blessing: "Dios te guia y la Magdalena." . . . "Are all these people going to S. James?" At the junction the men had got down to walk upon the platform, smoking cigar- ettes and chatting under the white arc- lights, and as the long train began to get up speed the end carriage door was snatched open and a man belated, leaped in. There in the third-class carriage, dim, close, dingy, full of sleeping children stretched out on the seats, and tired men who stood in the aisle to let them sleep, dropped down a member of the Spanish nobility and looked as surprised as I . Reck- oning that in half an hour we should reach Palencia and he would go back to his first- class seat, I opened conversation in French : "Are all these people going to Compos- tella, to the Apostle?" "I dare say," he answered, "I am. I always go." HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE 5 So we talked, mighty civilly, till the glare of the station broke in at the windows and the shuffle of feet and hum of voices on the platform recommenced. At last I said: Todos "Aren't you going to your own carriage?" somos and he,— "Aren't you?" semejantes "This is mine. I am making the pil- grimage." It was evidently unintelligible. Then the member of the Spanish nobility took off his hat and went to his own place. A child lay opposite asleep: under the mounting fatigue ot the long hours, his face turned to the colour of old ivory, and all the form of the little skull showed up. The dawn waked him, and he shrank into the corner by the window, looking out silent, rather apprehensive. That little thing, five years old, had all the responsibility of a large and growing family. His mother would never have any. Hers was the maternal function and no more: she was nursing a bouncing girl with four teeth and gold earrings. But he took life as it came, gravely; when commanded to accept a piece of chocolate, pocketed it without blinking, and later handed it to a AND MONOGRAPHS I WAY OF S. JAMES Splendour in the grass little sister, intermediate, who woke up crying. She sucked it disgustingly, and he looked out the window: presently announc- ing, without preparation: "Here comes a train going back to Madrid." Mark how the reasoning faculty operates at five years old. Nobody talked to him, he looked after the others. That was all. At the first tunnel he jumped and shrank, looked across the car to make sure it was on that side also, decided to treat it as a joke, and laughed bravely. At the second and third he was ready to laugh: then as the train dashed out of the dark into a mountain dell, he found means to raise a sudden small shout, to the echoing rocks. It was Wordsworthian, the human child's response to a sublime material pleasure. All the care of the world was inarticulate in him; but he had a quaint goblin mirth. Attuned to emotion, he showed himself of the very same clay as the Virgen de las Angustias, with her tin swords and glass tears. The youngest baby was cross-eyed. The succession showed a steady decline into animalism. The children were all HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE long-headed; while the drovers who sat about me, and might have come out of the prints of Randolph Caldecott, in spite of a great length of skull fore and aft, had a low cephalic index. The lad alongside, asleep all night, was like a beautiful woman, but during the day his chin sprouted. It is well to travel with plain human nature, dependent on natural kindness. You feel how little you have yourself, and how many are the virtues of those about : patience, long-suffering, good cheer in dis- comfort. Men stood all night long, in the car, to let the children sleep at full length. A great deal of this is indifference, of course, but indifference of the right stoical sort, not through preoccupation with something bigger, but through proud disdain and personal dignity. What may lie back of this, one is always wondering. In view of the multitude on the train travelling and at every station, all bent toward the Apostle, it seemed wise to stay by the train until Corunna. There, [ bespoke a seat twenty-four hours ahead, not by any of the regular lines which were Plain human nature AND MONOGRAPHS WAY OF S. JAMES La bander c peregrin a booked up solid three days in advance, but by a sort of freelance enterprise, which was also rounding up all the Boy Scouts in Galicia for a review and the blessing of a banner; and then found comfortable quar- ters and did a vast deal of business, there in the capital of the Province which was also a seaport town: and made pleasant and profitable acquaintance which will last my life out: and made an excursion by rail to visit a church, in returning from which I forgot the dates on which the rdpido runs and there being no train on Thursdays, had to walk five miles to get a country cart to drive into town: and after all this sub- mitted perforce to let an old woman carry my luggage to the starting place and sat down upon it while the crowd sorted itself. To me then came a gentleman and said: "Madam, I see that you have a ticket for the top : now I have a seat inside, and I shall be very glad to exchange if you care to." This was exceeding kindness, for his place cost much more, and with real grati- tude I explained that I preferred the outside HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE place for air and view and he withdrew a little mortified. He was quite right in his thought that up there was no place for a lady, and that I should hate it before we were five miles out. I did. A load of Boy Scouts kept just ahead: a company of Guardia Civil trotting the same way separated along the roadsides and closed up again, and private motors, one uniform pale grey with plastered dust, were all converging from bye-roads and speeding toward one goal. The road was perfect, rising and falling just enough for pleasure, winding just enough for changing winds and shifting lights. Between green- ish lands, now moor with outcropping gran- ite, now pasture with hedgerow leafage, we topped a slope, and saw a dust cloud ahead, and overtook it on a down grade, and turned to another rise crowned by a trotting figure against the grey-blue sky. The scent of rosemary and lavender that perfume the memory of Castile, is not present in this thick Atlantic air, but instead, whiffs from wet brook-sides struck across the brown- ish-tasting dust. In the milky blue sailed Company on the road AND MONOGRAPHS 10 WAY OF S.JAMES An old- fashioned inn heaps of white clouds, that veiled the sun- light for a moment and were left behind. The machine rattled out its own click and clatter, the rhythm of machinery, but the sleek horses which we passed singly or in pairs or troops, played a pretty tune on the well-metalled causeway. At the hangar in Compostella hotel men were in waiting chiefly to warn off travel- lers, but I had telegraphed a week ahead and my friend of long standing, the head waiter of the Hotel Suizo, admitted when I decended, sole out of the hotel omnibus, that I could not be left in the street. "Every room has been bespoke for more than a month, but because we know you," quoth he, "and because you come every year, we shall have to find you something." I confess I like going every year to the Hotel Suizo: a good, old-fashioned inn where the front door is encumbered with orderlies, and the stair -landing blocked with valets brushing their masters' clothes and cleaning their boots; where the maids cannot answer the bell for gossiping with the men, and the house keeps a stock of HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE cots to set up in your room for your servant. Among the ladies' maids they found me a room in the roof, where a glazed trap-door was the window, but I could stand on the table to lean out and watch the white Camino frances running in, swiftly the last stage of it, where I had often come before. One night it rained and I lay warm and close, and listened to the splash and drip, the pattering on the slates and drop- ping on the floor, and forgot in snug content the peasants who had walked twenty miles or forty, chiefly for the fireworks, and would be sleeping, such of them as did sleep, in doorways and church porches, only to be disappointed of the fireworks after all. It was July weather, full of thunder-storms, and the great set-piece which should have kindled all the face of Santiago with living fire and uplifted a multitude of mounting stars .and falling sparks, never came off at all. The review of the Boy Scouts, too, was deferred sine die, and their Mass and banner blessing hurried over between showers, too early for half of them to get there. As, however, the little church of S. AND MONO GRAPH S ii Rain in the night 12 Crowds in the town WAY OF S.JAMES Susanna, for which this function was ap- pointed, would not have held a quarter of them, that mattered the less. Their broad hats and ponchos, their well-set-up figures, like young men done in little, gave a brown- ish tinge to streets and squares, blending well with the rusty jackets and white stockings of country-men, the priests' sleek soutanes, and the vast black apron and coloured shawl and handkerchief of the solid, uncomely women. Misled by a popular rumour that the King himself was expected, I waited long one night to see him before the Episcopal Palace. A young guardsman on duty there, more for show than service, corrected me scrupulously when I spoke briefly of the master of that house, and explained with boyish care that he was the Cardinal Archbishop of Santiago. He is a terribly tiny old man whose ring I kissed once long ago, when he was doing me a kindness: and as we waited, carriages came, with livery, and flowing manes and tails, with cockades and varnish adorning the equip- age and, inside, Bishops and Cardinals HISPANIC NOTES The North Aisle and Ambulatory, Santiago Cathedral THE BOURNE and Monsignores and their secretaries and valets, with purple and scarlet stockings and green pipings and tassels and more costume in their quiet dignity than I could fathom, beside the intense, black respecta- bility of valet and secretary. Near me stood a sweet-faced country-man who had walked in, twenty miles, and would not go to bed, I suspected, till he walked home again: he had served in the Cuban War and bore no grudge to my country. We talked about all sorts of things: I remember, he told me he had never seen a bull-fight. He was not rare in that, many men have said the same to me, or else: "I saw one once but," in extenuation, "I was very young," in short, I knew no better then. On the other hand, it is notorious that English and Americans in the consular service, in com- merce, even in diplomacy, may never miss a fight during the season. It is said, popu- larly, that the King dislikes going, and he and the Queen evade all that they can: that the Queen Mother appreciates the sport and as for the Infanta, the King's aunt, the one who is so pious, she is quite mad about Anent the Bull-Fight HISPANIC NOTES 16 The grace ofquietude Pilgrimages WAY OF S.JAMES it. A very beautiful Provencal lady, going home on a visit, with whom I travelled for some hours on the way between Paris and Nimes, told me how she loved it, but it was not right, all the same. She said, " Ca fait de la fievre." In this crowd, waiting for belated royalty at the end of a Idng day, what one felt most, as in the train, were the virtues of patience and submission. Nobody fretted, nobody joked, or fidgeted: we talked, and waited, or we waited in silence. There were few women, but I had no reason to regret that I was there, as I had on the omnibus with persons more well-to-do. We stood, not pushing or crowding, in simple humanity, like herded ponies, or docile goats. If no one was rude, neither was anyone curious; neither helpful, nor unkind; the not un- friendly indifference made an ambience temperate and pleasurable. For the big pilgrimages I was too late. Those come earlier, when work can be left, between haying and harvest, or between the labours of the spring months, with plough and pruning-knife, and the sharp- HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE ening of scythe and sickle. The pilgrims come in, a few hundred strong, by parishes, and wander about the town for a few hours : for them the western doors are opened and the complicated staircase is thick with figures ascending and descending without molestation, as in Jacob's Dream. Some have come on foot, but most by train, for the railway is a matter of course in Spain and serves even for the periodic movement of vast flocks of sheep from one region to another as conditions of pasturage demand. I have often passed long trains of double- decked cars, moving slowly, warm-smelling with the soft huddled creatures. Though it is the bourne, the end of heart's desire, there is nothing strange in Compostella. The pilgrims can find there little round-arched churches like their own at home among the mountains of Leon, or plateresque and baroque, more grandiose, but not unlike such others as they have seen in cities of men. It is the gift of San- tiago to seem, for each man, the place where he would be. The low streets, ar- caded, with low-browed houses and a low and meslas The end of heart's desire AND MONO GRAPHS 18 The place of a dream WAY OF S.JAMES hanging sky, are like places to which you come in a dream and remember that you have known them long ago. It is grey, being built of granite, as melan- choly as the rock-moulded hills that draw close about it, and as natural. The single commercial street, filled with the rustle of feet after dark, and with the double file of coming and going figures, is warm and famil- iar; homely, the shop that hardly flares and the shop that barely glimmers. Out from it lead dark archways, and darker descending streets: in it, the sparse little crowd sees itself, coming and going, up the street and down again: girls, old women, soldiers, priests, country -men, women in black veils, women in straw hats. Santiago is triste, mortally. It is grey of granite: greenish, tawny, blackened or lichened; but sombre and austere even in its heaviest pomp. The Puerto, de las Platerias is gilded by weathering, but that opposite is stained with sea fog and greyed with mountain mist. Santiago is a dead city. The town is full of the crying of bells, for bells are voices of HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE the dead, warning, impelling, urging, arrest- ing; calling to recollection, signalling to prayer, sounding for the passage of time, marking the years of one dead, clamouring at sunrise like sea-birds, clanging in the green clear twilight of early moonset, making the devotion appointed. La Ora- cidn, they call the Angelus in Spain, and riding toward a mountain city in the still pale light after the sun has dropped, you may hear them break out into a loud crying of their own: one after another takes it up, and rocking in their open arcades, echoing in the windless air, ringing against the red wall of the city and the blue wall of the mountain, they call and they compel. The dead that once lived are gone, and their place knows them no more, and the memory of them is a little pain, or a vague wraith, or a name and no more, or, at the last, nothingness, but the bells live yet, and cry and call. They call out of the past, they call to the times to come, and most of all they call out of the void to the heart of man to pause for a breath and brood upon the abyss. The crying of bells Son t antes los muertos AND MONOGRAPHS 20 WAY OF S. JAMES In the hollow hill Three places there be, sweet with the music of bells: Siena, and Oxford, and Compostella; Siena ringed with rose-red walls, Oxford with her dreaming spires, Compostella in the hollow hill. As of Ox- ford, so of Compostella, it is hard to think of a life rooted there, of the saecular honour of old families, of a town habit of its own, apart from those who come and go, or those who come and stay. Whether English Don or Spanish Canon, when such have once come, they stay. But there are, back of this and beyond, ancient and noble families established there : and a stirring history of the townsmen's struggle for their liberties. The representative of one of these families who was long Mayor of the city, has a mar- vellous place at Puente de Ulla where, as in a memory of the Italian lakes, tall cy- press, and leafy pergola and the noble stone-pine, relieve the eternal sequence of chestnut and eucalyptus; and rose and jasmine, sweet as flowers of home, supplant the blue hydrangea, luxuriant and scentless. In Compostella, as in other Gallegan towns, sons are married and grandchildren HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE are reared: Senor Murguia has a vast store of the folk tales and customs amid which he grew up there. " In the very city in which we write," he says, "in the very house in which we were reared, on Christmas Night our father bade lay two places more at the table as though these empty chairs should be filled, invisibly, by those who gave him life." Curiously, it is only the ancestors to whom the rite is due, he adds; for when a brother died, they laid no third cover. That testifies to a life deep-rooted; not to be overrun by the passing of pilgrims, or crowded and disarranged by the students of the university. The townsfolk have their share in the A no Santo, not wholly a commercial share, and the Municipality made that year just such provision as in an American town, for competitions and prizes, band-concerts and fireworks, races and re- views: for exhibitions of cows and cabbages; for the promotion of orderly amusements and the suppression of the professional criminal. Two things were remarkable: the entire sobriety from the first day to the last of inhabitants and visitors: and 21 Ancestral ghosts AND MONOGRAPHS 22 WAY OF S.JAMES Rain- maker and Son of Thunder the literary nature of some of the competi- tions. There was a prize poem and a public award, a good deal of Gallegan verse and oratory, and along with the giants and their pipe and tabor, there was before all, the Gallegan bagpipe. The half -forgotten Scotch ancestry woke and stirred in my veins, and with the children I followed the piper. After the July thunder-storms were past, we settled down to grey Atlantic weather, that ranged from a fine drizzle to a fine downpour; the clouds dragging on the hills, or sitting, half-way down, in a curtain of heavy fog. The stones are patched and stained with lichen, like scabs and scars; unvenerable and rather leprous. But townsfolk took it with a practised patience. In the inevitable competition between Municipality and Chapter, the latter enjoys an unfair advantage in controlling the skyey influence, the power that makes la pluie et le ban temps. On Saturday when the Boy Scouts arranged for a Mass and review in the Park, it poured, and everyone who could, took refuge in the cathedral and HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE swelled the congregation for the great Mass of the Vigil. The downpour sounded in pauses of the organ : they stood close, cheek by jowl: motor-folk and labourers, mendi- cants and parsons on a holiday, professional pilgrims and substantial farmers. The beggars, tricked out in calico capes sewn over with scallop shells, and staffs on which the gourd is reduced to a symbolic knob, or in coats like Joseph's for patches, are as consciously unreal as the Roman soldiers in a play, embarrassed at showing their knees. Like the beadles in brocade gown and horsehair wig, they are dressed up for the occasion, and much less at home in their finery. One pilgrim I found, with an ecstatic face, who looked a little like S. Francis. His head was the same shape, and his brown frock helped the illusion. For a long time I watched him praying, and when he got up and went out I ran after and asked leave to photograph, readily yielded: then he asked an alms. Why not? Give and take is fair. Through all these days I saw gravity, See Vol. II. page 483 AND MONO GRAPHS WAY OF S.JAMES Making Magic but on the whole little devotion, except sometimes in the case of women: young women, who are afraid of life and take pre- cautions: or elder ones who have suffered in life, and look for anodyne. At the shrine you see men kneeling a little awe-struck, at the gold, or at the age? You find a group of women saying litanies. But S. James means nothing to them, he is only the means of making magic. You say a rosary or a litany because, presumably, Something wants it; or you get indulgences or you help some souls in purgatory, for there is some- thing you want. Give and take is fair. These are the appointed means, quite ir- relevant in nature, to some desired end. Not all who come are either peasant or tourist, not all who live there are mild- faced, ox-eyed Gallegans. In the street a woman passed of Aubrey Beardsley's, in black jacket and lace veil: the same curled lips and narrowed eyes and insolent bust, the same heavily waved hair in flat masses and crockets, and out of her dark eyes, between her level dark lashes, she looked cantharides. Others I have known, gentle HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE creatures, with the bearing of the saints, into whose hand you could put yours to go to the end of the world, in whom submission seems not a necessity but an instinct, a renouncement, an action of the will to negation. Only from Friday until Tuesday or Wed- nesday, was the town much altered: then squares were crowded with moving, staring folk, friends were meeting and exchanging the news of a year. You would see a priest who talked business of some sort half an hour with a country-man, and settled it, and took up something else with a woman that sought him out, all in the middle of the square. Masses were rich with sweet-stringed music and breathing horns, with glowing vestments, with processions of relics, with the solemn radiance of innumerable tapers. At Mass on the Apostle's day, pontifical and regal, and again at Vespers on Tues- day, Botafumeiro, the five-foot silver censer, came out in a little cart of his own, and was wheeled through the cloven crowd, attached by ropes to the machinery under Flammis mobilibus atria AND MONOGRAPHS 26 WAY OF S.JAMES Bota- fumeiro the central dome and then at the moment of incense was hoisted a few feet, and swung by four strong men. The mechanism, somewhat like that which swings bells, gave not a creak: slowly the great, smoking creature began to move, rising higher at every return, cutting a wake through the transept crowd, mounting as a swing mounts by the life that grows in it, till vast, fragrant, dimly shining, it sped, it hung, it flew, it lay close under the vault at the north, at the south; and then the swinging slowly dwindled and died. There was a kind of exultation in the mass and power of it, as there is in great bells when they are rung, which redeemed the vulgarity and the reclame of the sacristan showing it every day. By the way, the renowned silver censer was melted down by the French a hundred years ago, and this one is only Britannia-metal. Botafumeiro, it must be admitted, divides the interest with S. James in the public programme and the visiting crowd: indeed, in the competition, Botafumeiro usually led. Already at nine o'clock in the morning HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE the church smelt warm and human in the dark aisles, which is rare, for on these grey stones the incense does not cling, and in these granite piers the fleas find cold har- bourage. If you remember the reek of a great day at S. Gervais or S. Etienne du Mont, you need not fear it here, for Span- iards are much in the open air: the peasants are never unpleasant at your elbow, even the bourgeois are never quite unventilated. By the commencement of the choir office, we were standing each immovable on his own scrap of pavement, and kneeling in our tracks. Piety was a matter quite private and personal. Nobody venerated the relics as they passed in procession, but stared instead; nobody knelt for them; and for the Archbishop, who made, indeed, slight ges- tures of benediction with his scarlet glove and diamond cluster, nobody bent. I have seen in France the whole church swayed as by a great wind when the Bishop passed, swayed by the passing of the Spirit. This blessing was like water at the aspersion: none of it could hit anybody. They manage crowds strangely, in Spain, AND MONO GRAPHS 27 The Office The wind that bloweth. . 28 WAY OF S.JAMES que es el del roquete bianco though successfully. When the choir office began, the north transept, like all the rest of the church, was entirely filled with people. A few sacristans gently swept a clean path from the door to the crossing, not shoving or scolding, but preparing a way and making a path straight, as Scripture or- dains. Two stayed there. The square outside the door was also full, I doubt not. But at the appointed moment, vested, mitred, jewelled, from the Archbishop's palace came out into the air and sun and multitude, a group of the cathedral clergy, the Cardinal Archbishop himself, five other Cardinals, of whom three were Archbishops, eleven Bishops, the Italian Nuncio, dark and alien in that blaze, moving like a figure in a Chronicle-play, and others of the Chap- ter with silver wands and brocaded copes. The music went on, and the office; their wake stayed there, slowly shrinking, till, in came a dozen or twenty uniforms, infor- mally as the sacristans, swept a neat path again, without so much as a silken cord, and stood, attentively, where they hap- pened to be when Royalty passed. Just a HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE 29 few uniforms more were discoverable, and thin Spanish faces, accompanied by the civil power, white-gloved and white-breasted in the civic full dress which long since ceased to strike me strangely, which so sets off an order or a fine head. Escorting these, plump young comely canons in white man- tles with a red cross, the Order of Santi- ago: if they had been sleek horses or silky hounds, they might have been nobler. This is the end of /Santiago y den a Espana! There were seats for all of these, hung with venerable and glorious brocades, in the Choir, and I think, the Royal Box, gilded and glazed and hung like an opera box in the triforium, was occupied by ladies, and there was a ceremonial presen- tation on the part of the Chapter of nose- gays of flowers, and a ceremonial offering in a silver -gilt basin, of gold on the part of Royalty. My neighbours on one side were ladies in the long black veil gathered tight at throat and waist and about the skirt, which is Spanish mourning and which becomes beauty as nothing else, meseems, could so adorn: in the long intervals we AND MONO GR A PHS The Knights of S. James WAY OF S.JAMES caballero enlre caballeros held much discourse, and here at the Offer- ing I asked whether, if it were the King himself instead of his cousin, he would come through the crowd so confidently, so democratically. The answer was immedi- ate: that there would be no difference. It is commonly said the King believes en- tirely that some day bomb or pistol or knife will make an end of him, and since pre- cautions are vain, they are unworthy. It is in the ancient Spanish tradition, not the Hapsburg or the Bourbon, to live thus, caballero with caballeros. An engineer of my acquaintance who was living in Anda- lusia describes watching the King, expected to lunch at the Manager's house, as he drove his own motor up the steep street with one dirty boy standing on the running board, and two more hanging on behind. A noble man among noblemen : that made once the court of Spain, in the days of Alfonso II el Batdlador and Fernando III el Santo. As the Mass wore on, good old ladies settled down on their knees to say prayers, and I saw three well-dressed girls kneeling HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE for the Office, but the crowd came and went, laughed and talked, and fanned. In the transept, whence the altar is hidden, you could not keep track of the Mass, by the familiar music, because it was so elaborate, with long interpolations, of which the royal offering was only one: and feet and voices drowned Amen and Or emus and In saecula saeculorum. There was half an hour be- tween the Epistle and the Gospel. The crowd which had come for Botafumiero and was fairly stable till after this perfor- mance, then broke up and walked and rustled. At the sound of the bell outside which announced the Consecration, there was silence but not a hush ; the crowd knelt the least possible time. Regaining my footing I watched the faces again. What Spaniards have and Ameri- cans lack is beauty of the bony structure: the more that shows, the finer they are. The men look finer than the women, and gentler. The handsome, elderly, middle- class senoras would judge and execute their neighbours with a rare grace. The men of their class, indeed, also are more brutal. Luctda belleza AND MONOGRAPHS THE BOURNE To un- praise women t were a shame A class below, the difference shows up. At the departure, the women (not ladies) rushed the steps up to the square, shoving and trampling like school-boys. Certainly something should be done about women: they are not tame housed creatures now: and the only hope seems to give them a few civic virtues. Here, in peasant and bourgeois alike I suspect the woman rules. Their husbands trail after, humorous and silent, and in the lower class their faces have the beauty of self-control and longa- nimity. The expedition of el A postal, for these, shares a little the nature of the old-fash- ioned American camp-meeting. They are here partly for pleasure, but partly on busi- ness, to lay in some indulgences, to do some good to las dnimas, as well as to lay in thread and find out the price of wool. Give and take is fair: all things are arranged according to reason; you acquire merit by ordained observances and then you have it, ready, against need. Later in the summer, when everything was over, I used to kneel in the quiet church AND MONOGRAPHS THE BOURNE 33 before the great brass reja, blinking at the Apostle, and making it all out. S. James in his dim shrine, above the high altar, wears an enormous silver-gilt halo like a hatbrim, and a gigantic collar of the same A shrine that stretches nearly to his waist. His face and a Buddha of painted enamel over marble, is tawny and bearded and a little foolish : behind him hangs a rich darkness; before him, count- less constellated tapers; and the reflections about the silver shrine glimmer like the sunstreaks on water. With the multitudin- ous Salomonic columns, the heavy fruit garlands of the pilasters in Between, the massy cornices, the piers and architraves, all of gold embrowned, the effect of the entire sanctuary is as of one of the lac- unper- quered shrines for Buddha, and the imper- turbed turbable, within, abiding there. AND MONOGRAPHS I 34 WAY OF S.JAMES II THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLE And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, com- ing down from God out oj heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband, and I heard a great voice out of the heaven, saying : f Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men and he will dwell with them. THE Reverend F. Fita says explicitly, and he here presents the best tradition of Spanish ecclesiastical scholarship, that the disciples of S. James landed with his pre- cious body at Iria (which is Padr6n) and started off, and some four leagues north- ward on the Roman road that ran from Iria to Betanzos they came to a place called Liberodunum, * which means, "The Way- I HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE side Tower." It is significant to find the Way figuring, thus, before sepulchre there was. The place was to be known, later, as Compostella: there they found, perhaps, a Roman tomb, and there they laid the Apostle. The MS. called Tumbo A, writ- ten in 1129 and belonging therefore to the Santiago that we know, shows Theodo- mir discovering the three sepulchres in a barrel-vaulted crypt, in a church in the midst of a city: that church has towers at the west end, and eastward of the transepts, I should say. The MS. possibly preserves for us the disposition of the sacred crypt. A similar painting of the thirteenth century in the Historia Compostellana is no less explicit: the crypt consists of two aisles with a lamp swinging from the central capital on which descend cusped and pointed arches. Outside, the building is battlemented, the west front gabled, a transept steep-roofed, a circular staircase tower built at the west. Now, it is one of the peculiarities of the little crypt of Santiago Abajo, S. James Undercroft, 35 Miniature pictures AND MONOGRAPHS S. James Undercroft Area marmorea WAY OF S. JAMES constructed under Master Matthew's por- tico, and the great staircase which leads to it, that this has two aisles and a central row of shafts to carry the superincumbent weight. The crypt of the sepulchre lay eastward of this. In 1139 the crypt was already a legend: the Gallegan translation of the Codex writes "In this very church lies buried under the high altar the body of the very honoured and blessed apostle S. James, and as men say, he lies laid in an ark of marble in a very fair sepulchre." 2 So also it is written in the Libro de los Caballeros Cambeadores, the Gentlemen Moneychangers, in the fourteenth century, " O corpo de Santiago estava escondido una cova labrada con deus arcos de pedra debaixo da terra, num moymento de marmor."3 Morales in his journey of 1572 could not descend into the crypt because all access had been cut off since unremembered time, but he knows that the body lay in a cavern or vault under the high altar. Alfonso the Chaste is credited with building a church immediately upon the HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE 37 discovery of the relics by the hermit Pelayo, with the idea of recommending himself and Spain to the guardianship of the Son of Thunder: this was some sort of a sanctuary or chapel over the sepulchre, dedicated to S. James.4 The claim was made not a century later, that in or over against this he installed twelve Benedictine monks and their Abbot Ildefredo, and in 829 the land for three miles round about was annexed, for the cult of the Blessed James and the maintenance of the monks. s The date of Ramiro's Voto which tells how S. James appeared and Clavijo was won to the cry of Adjuva nos Deus is 844, and thereafter Calahorra was taken. 6 In 853 Ordono I doubled the radius. 7 Alfonso III further dowered the church in 899, removed the rude stone and brick work of his grandfather and gave to it precious marbles, frieze and columns, fetched by captive Moors from the shores of Douro and Tamega, to raise a superb temple. He intended as he told S. James, 8 "Aulam tui tumuli instaurare et ampliare . Aedificare et domum restaurare tem- Filius Tonitrui Antique marbles AND MONO GR-APHS WAY OF S.JAMES from Ro- man ruins plum ad tumulum sepulchri Apostoli quod antiquitus construxerat divae me- moriae Dominus Adefonsus Magnus ex petra et Domini Into opere parvo." This appears to mean that he built a fine new church where his grandfather's had stood: he built a House of God and raised a temple on the Apostle's grave-mound. Apart from the shrine, there was already a crypt — as will appear : if any one wants to make this a Mithraeum, nothing is wanting but an inscription by way of evidence. Only grave-stones have been found so far, dedi- cations to the Gods of the Dead. The King goes on to say that he fetched marbles from Aquae Flaviae where his ancestors the Visigothic kings had brought them from oversea and built palaces, that the Moors destroyed. This looks like an account of Roman remains, and if he was any judge, they were of oriental workmanship. Other marbles came by sea from Oporto. I do not take it that the carved lintel which he peculiarly prized, came from the little old church; rather from the ruins of Civitas Eabeca.9 HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE From this we may discover that the ninth century church was basilican or cruciform, like the little churches of the Asturias whence the Bishop Sisnandus had come, with a nave of six bays, probably timber-roofed, that it had apparently a raised vaulted sanctuary and apse, like S. Maria de Naranco and S. Cristina de Lena, and an open portico, corresponding in form, at the western end, through which to enter, with some sort of tribune above. His carven columns have disappeared and left no trace, T ° for the exquisite marble shafts, wrought like wands of ivory, which grace the south portal and the central-west- ern, are contemporary and continuous with the fabric in which they are embedded, and the carvings in S. James Undercroft seem to be by the same hand as the great hall in the archbishop's palace, and cer- tainly of the same date, the end of the twelfth century. It was dedicated in 869, in the presence of seventeen bishops: the relics were de- posited in the altars and sealed up, enclosed in caskets of imperishable wood — that 39 Pre- Roman- esque of the Asturias AND MONOGRAPHS WAY OF S.JAMES Mith- raeum? would mean cypress. There is no indica- tion whence the relics came, or if any indeed were new. Something is said about golden reliquaries, rather vaguely, and there is a great deal of balm and incense, breathing fragrance about the sepulchres. The cen- tral altar was dedicated to S. James and S. Saviour like the church: there is some evidence that the first dedication was to S. Saviour alone and, in a hymn from the Book of S. James, the First Person of the Trinity is addressed as "Sother, theos athanatos." 1 1 This contained thrice seven relics of the Lord, of S. James, of the far- travelling Apostles, and of certain Spanish saints, including Vincent of Saragossa, Eulalia of Merida, Marina, Julian and Basilisa. The right hand altar was dedi- cated to S. Peter, the left to S. John Evan- gelist, the other son of Zebidee. Besides this there was another altar at the north side, apparently in a crypt; "In tumulo Altaris S. Joannis quod est sub tectu et constructu "... there is a flaw in the manuscript, but the relics are enumerated. The altar above S. James's body was not HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE 4i touched: as their fathers had made it, so they left it, "nor none of us would be so hardy as to lift the stone." So the King ends with a prayer: "Poste Dominum te Patrone oro cum conjuge vel prole, ut digneris me habere famulum, et cum agnis vellere induar nee ... c ... sancte sub- The sacred pillar tractus cum edis nocens inveniar." It ends like the memory of a hymn. The foundations of the iconastasis and the steps were discovered in 1878. * 2 Under the trascoro in 1895 a meter and a half below the present pavement, was found the floor of the porch. It was only five meters wide, and from it two steps went up into the church. A plan of this church is pub- lished by Lopez Ferreiro x 3 but he does not give his source. It is not plausible. The late good canon of Santiago was sounder in theology than in judgement, and what he prints cannot be accepted until verified. A good rule warns never to trust the word of a pious man or the bed of a pious woman. The dedication took place under Bishop Sisnandus, first of the name. J 4 The name of his predecessor Ataulf is involved in strange Piety vs. respon- sibility AND MONOGRAPHS I WAY OF S.JAMES The Wolf's Den matters, an accusation of sodomy and the killing of a bull. He retired to die in Asturi- as, and Sisnandus ruled for a while as Pres- byter. His case has some points of likeness with that of the predecessor of another king's favourite and great builder, the Metropolitan Gelmirez. He was eloquent and wise; Alfonso III, who was born and grew up in Santiago, loved him as a father; he built a palace, founded a new monastery called Sub Lobio, x 5 and alongside, a night refuge and the first hospice for pilgrims. He came from Liebana and on February 14, in 869, the King gave him the church and monastery of S. Martin de Liebana: on the same day of the year in 874, he gave to the Apostle, S. Maria de Liebana. That church stands yet, being possibly of the Visigothic age, and affords a perfect model for the church that King and cleric were then building at Compostella. 1 6 The second of the name was driven from his See and S. Rosendo installed in his place : on the news of the king's death, the dis- possessed Bishop reappeared in Santiago and drew back S. Rosendo 's bed-curtains HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE with the left hand holding a naked sword in the right : to this the words of S. Rosendo were, " He that draws the sword shall perish by the sword": then he dressed himself and returned to Celanova. In truth, Bishop Sisnando II was killed under the walls, by Norman pirates. He had lived more like a mundane prince than like a shepherd of souls.17 The Asturian buildings, then, were copied at Santiago about a century later. There was nearly a century in which to finish and adorn this sanctuary, and then it came to an end. s. Almanzor reached Santiago twice, in 988 and in 907. The shrine was known to the Moors from the beginning as a place of pilgrimage: I have already cited the visit of Al-Ghazal. The account of Edrisi, which I shall quote later, deals with the twelfth century. Spanish historians re- late that Almanzor respected the shrine and set a guard about it, while he burned the city.18 "In 1002 Almanzor died and was buried in hell," and rebuilding was taken in hand. AND MONOGRAPHS 43 Normans Almanzor testifies 44 WAY OF S.JAMES King Veremund S. Pedro Mozoncio, 986-1000, was then Bishop of Iria, for the translation of the See to Compostella was effected only at the Council of Clermont, by Urban II. He was rich, noble, and influential, and pro- ceeded to the rebuilding of the church, bettering it. x 9 The Silense says that King Veremund with God's help "coepit res- taurare ipsum locum Jacobi in melius."20 A successor, Bishop Cresconio, 1048-1066, built two western towers, dedicated to SS. Benedict and Antolin: the Compostellana says for fortifying. 2 x The towers belonged to the original plan of the Benedictine Romanesque edifice. If this seems a rash word, the argument lies in the life of Bishop Peter, whose father was well-born and wealthy, from the Asturias, of a family long since famed for foundation and munificent endowment of churches, and whose mother was a princess's foster-sister. He grew up in the palace, was the infanta's chaplain, en- tered into religion at Mozoncio near So- brado, and was abbot of Antealtares at the time of his election to the See. While in the tenth century Benedictine did not mean HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE 45 Burgundian quite as it did in the twelfth, yet there is a presumption. Veremund was educated at Santiago and crowned there 2 2; whatever Spain could command would be used for the rebuilding. Cluny had, in 981. built a church with parallel apses and west- ern towers.23 The work at Santiago by 1066 had only reached the western end. But before the century closed it was seen that a much larger church was needed and the money for it was coming in steadily. To D. Diego Pelaez with his advisors belongs the project. His architect, Master Bernard the Marvellous, is more than likely to have been French by nation, for the intercourse with France was incessant already, and Bernard is a French and not a Spanish name; moreover, Bernard the Elder, Dominus Bernardus senex mirabilis magister,24 enjoys no patronymic of the Spanish sort, though Bernard the Younger, who was a canon in 1 1 20, is called Bernard Gutierrez. It was more irritating than amusing when M. Anthyme-St. Paul, who had lived long enough to know better, told the Archaeological Congress of Toulouse, in AND MONOGRAPHS Cluny in the tenth century Magister Mirabilis 46 WAY OF S.JAMES Plan French 1899, that "the first architect of S. Sernin, having drawn up the plan of the whole church and begun the choir, was called to S. James of Compostella and went, leaving in the chantiers a pupil initiated in his pro- jects and apt to replace him in his ab- sences."25 The only thing to match this assumption is M. Enlart's assertion that Petrus Petri, who made the plan of Toledo, was a Frenchman. In both cases the archi- tect may, indeed, have been French, I believe that he was, but the state remains belief based on inductive reasoning, and not assertion based on knowledge of fact. The plan of Santiago is French unques- tionably. It belongs, along with S. Faith at Conques and S. Sernin at Toulouse, to the same great school as S. Martial at Limoges, built also under monks of Cluny, conse- crated by Urban II in 1095, but burned in part 1167. S. Sernin was consecrated also by Urban II in 1096, again by Calixtus II in 1 1 19. S. Faith is the eldest of the group, built under Abbot Odalric, 1030-1065. 26 The earliest consecration at Santiago was said in 1899 to have taken place in 1082. HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE I can only conjecture that M. Anthyme- St. Paul took that date from the opening ot Book III of the Compostellana, which refers to the commencement of works. The earliest consecration that I know is 1 1 02, when Diego Gelmirez consecrated the altar of the Saviour and all the rest of the minor apses.27 Normally the capilla mayor would be consecrated first, but here, the high altar was so sacred it needed nothing, as will appear later. The chantier was formed largely of French elements, as the succeeding analysis will show: to these Sr. Lamperez adds28 rather cautiously but, as I believe, with truth, "The cathedral of Santiago shows in some of its elements a nationalization of the style, produced by direct foreign in- fluences, e. g. Syro-Byzantine elements, and by national, . that is Mahommedan ele- ments. " He does not however specify these in his great History of Architecture, and as his opusculi are deplorably hard to come by, we must take his word. The date of commencement is in dispute. The Book of S. James says29 that it was AND MONOGRAPHS 47 Chantier French Syro- Byzantine and Moham- medan 48 WAY OF S.JAMES Dates Pre- sumptions begun in 1078, fifty-nine years before the death of Alfonso I of Aragon (i 134 — 59 = 1075), sixty-two before that of Henry I of England (1135 — 62 = 1073) and sixty- three before that of Louis the Fat of France (1137 — 63 = 1074). These dates are all inconsistent each with the other: but it seems likely that in Compostella, where the authors got all the material for this part of the text, the date of commencement would be preserved, though deaths of foreign kings might be misknown. In Part II of the Codex, the Book of Miracles, occurs another blunder about the death of the king of France. There is no record of work or of prepara- tion before. It were not amiss to point out that Diego Pelaez became bishop only in 1070, and that his predecessor Gudesteo, who was related to the high Gallegan nobility, both quarrelled and fought with them, and was finally hacked to bits in his own bed over a question of the land between Ulla and Tambre.30 The chances are against his beginning the preparations for a great building; and D. Diego could not HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE possibly have collected men and material, settled legal claims, and made all sure financially, within something less than a year and a half. The issue is further con- fused by a passage in the Historia Com- postellana to the effect that at the date of the opening of Book III, viz. A.D. 1128, forty-six years had elapsed since the begin- ning of the works, "ab inchoatione novae ecclesiae B. Jacobi." 3 x That would set the date at 1082 for digging of foundations and actual erection of walls. At any rate, in 1077 a concord was signed between Fagildo, the abbot of the convent of Antealtares, and the bishop Diego Pelaez.32 The plan of the great church, on which work was beginning, forced them to sacrifice the church of the monastery and a part of the cloister. In a case like this the high altar stands over the original crypt, the confessio; and far beyond the probable three parallel apses of the eleventh century church, stretched the new ambulatory with its crown of five radiating chapels. The room for these had to be secured at once, and terms made with 49 Con- tradictions Concord signed AND MONOGRAPHS 50 WAY OF S.JAMES the monks who still called themselves the Guardians of the Shrine. Another incident A hard winter will have contributed to delay the com- mencement. 1077 was a hard winter, from Michaelmas to Quadragesima Sunday the bitter cold endured, memorable throughout Spain. 3 3 While no building could be begun, D. Diego attended to the law business, awaiting the hour. In the capitals of the two columns at the entrance to the chapel of the Saviour, you may read: Regnante Principe Adefonso constructum opus tempore presulis Didaci inceptum opus fuit. The date of 1078, on the door- jamb of the south transept, is good evidence that the work of the church was begun in that Com- year. At Val-de-Dios, in Asturias, the mencement lintel-stone of the south transept records in 1078 the date of commencement, in a curious form; and undamnitum, it says, and yet the portal is untampered with, and the word after the architect's name is construxit, which marks some' sort of completion. I HISPANIC N OTES THE BOURNE 5. Finally, the inscription must be read from bottom to top34: TERIO. Q.I BAS1LIKAM. ISTAM. CONS TRVXIT. RTVS. POSITVM. EST. HOC. FVNDAMENTVM. PRAESENTE. MAGISTRO. GAI.- EPCANTEM OVETENSIS, IOHANNES. ABBAS. VALLIS. m. IOHAN. QVA-" IN. LEGIONE. The statement that work was begun on the first of May, 1218, and that the archi- tect's name was Walter, is made as ob- scurely as possible: but the position of the inscription corresponds precisely to that at Santiago. Earlier in the same chapter that pre- serves the dates, Aymery had said: "Of the master-builders who in the beginning built the church of Santiago, one was named Master Bernard the elder, and he was a very marvellous master, and Robert, with about fifty other, masters. They worked on it steadily ": every day, says the Gallegan version. The original Commission of Administration consisted of the Abbot Gundesind, the treasurer Master- guilders AND MONOGRAPHS I WAY OF S.JAMES The old church Sigered, and one Wicart who was probably a canon, too.35 The Historia Compostellana says, under the year of 1078, that the new building was so undertaken as not to involve the destruction of the old church, which was [eft in the new. In 1112 the old church, grown ruinous, was taken down, and the western towers before ii2o.36 What that signifies is that the Bishop and Canons could not afford to give up their sanctuary and place of pilgrimage through all the years the building might go on. The Chap- ter of Salamanca, in 1512, had voted for the sake of comfort to retain the old Church while the new went up alongside, and the Chapter of Segovia had probably the same intention. Here more was involved than merely comfort: not money only but the business, which had a money value, like a physician's practice or the good-will of shop. They wisely kept on with business as usual, and the high altar was never moved from its place above the tomb, till the new building being entirely fit for ser- vice, the old was dismantled and carried HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE 53 piecemeal out the three great doors. In the ninth Miracle we read that Bishop Stephen lived in the church in a straw hut over against the altar: intus in B. Apostoli basilica. About the origin of the little church of S. James Undercroft a suggestion seems plausible to offer modestly: it occurred because, like the pilgrims, I have known the great shrines of France, and climbed not only the hill of the Magdalen at Vezelay but also the steep stairs to Notre- Dame-du Puy. Of this chapel, Sr. Villa-amil, after disposing of the thick walls, narrow vesti- bule, and strait passage, added, some in the time of Archbishop Alfonso de Fonseca, and some in the seventeenth century, says37 that in the beginning the little nave had no doors, probably for the sake of light, but that doors were put further in; and that there were, moreover, doors which led to he church above, that opened in the rec- tangular niches just eastward of the cross- ing, and took one up, by inclined planes as I understand, to emerge in the nave of the cathedral. He admits that Master Mat- The Origi- nal Stairs AND MONOGRAPHS 54 WAY OF S.JAMES Le Puy thew rebuilt the whole more or less; it is safe to put stress upon the more, remember- ing that Master Matthew with his Portico, was more than doubling the weight those three central piers sustained. But descend- ing alongside by the street that runs under the Palace, or feeling the steep pitch of the ground approaching from westward and measuring the strong ascent that begins in the gully at the foot of the town and ends far above the great church, I have seen in a flash the great front at Le Puy, where the steep winding street debouches into a yawning arch and continues up a flight of steps that once emerged in front of the high altar, and was only afterward turned to come out into the transepts. That west front, of which Diego Pelaez approved the plan, and Diego Gelmirez saw the conclu- sion, carved with the great scene of the Transfiguration, was, it seems more than likely, comparable to Le Puy. About this of Le Puy, M. Enlart has a significant word, that would exactly describe what I conceive it was: he says "a la fois un porche, un perron couvert, et une crypte."38 HISPANIC NOTES The Fountain at Santiago THE BOURNE This is confirmed by the passage in Thurkill's Vision where souls standing in the grass outside the Basilica, look up the great staircase and see the altar. Inceptumopus:with the easternmost por- tion and the new-fangled possession-path and with them the building began. The consecration in 1102 indicates probably that the work had just passed the transepts, which originally had each two small apses eastward, and was starting on the nave. In 1116 and 1117, popular risings did no small damage to the fabric, and when the towns- folk tried to smoke out the Archbishop and Queen they burned out entirely one of the western towers, and brought down the bells. These injuries to the fortifications would be repaired before anything else. Under the date A.D. 1128, the Historia Com- postellana39 relates that the church had yet no cloister, nor proper offices, nor was it adorned with edifices or decorated, like other churches less held in honour, and pilgrims, priests, and laymen, went about asking where were the cloisters and offices. Indeed, they wandered about and looked HISPANIC NOTES 55 Appendix VII WAY OF S.JAMES Cloister in where they were not expected and scan- dal and annoyance, it would seem, were the result. So the Chapter was convened, and the Archbishop spoke. He recom- mended to the Chapter building a cloister, and offered some money towards it, a hun- dred marks in all, thirty at the time and the rest at the end of the year, also a legacy. They voted a committee, consisting of the Dean and the Primusclero, Peter Elias, that is, and Peter Gundesind. The church however, was not, as this should imply, finished, for we happen to know that in 1 1 24 two canons of Santiago, Pedro Ansurez and Pelayo Nunez, had been running all over Italy collecting money for the fabric of the Church of S. James. 4 » That cloister begun with the Archbishop's help was to be, perhaps, never finished: supplanted at any rate, in the sixteenth century. Sr. Lopez Ferreiro says that scraps of it remain, consisting of leafy and flower forms, "gallones," "perlados," wave-patterns, etc., and not grotesques. His description seems to indicate a rather early Romanesque, but he may possibly HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE 57 mean something like the cloister of the Sar. In 1134, on the occasion of the consecra- tion of a Bishop of Avila, an effort was made to start up the work again, which "aliis causis impedientibus neglectum et intermissum fuerat," and the Archbishop again gave generously.41 In 1138, when King Alfonso tried to attach the alms- boxes and probably the great "ark " and had to remove his seals again, some of the money went to masters and workmen working on the cloisters. 4 2 Aymery when enumerating the doors of the church, calls43 the two in the south flank "de Petraria," and which must mean, "of the chantier "; it is chantier possible that the cloister was going up in the midst of that. The next date of importance is that of the grants of Ferdinand II, in 1168, not only that for the works of the cathedral, for such had been given in 1107, 1129, and 1131, but that to Master Matthew, already Master in charge of the works: they exist in much Matthew the same form as Alfonso's to Peter the Pilgrim. He gets 100 maravedis a year. 44 In the reign of this Ferdinand, Master AND MONOGRAPHS I WAY OF S.JAMES Like Apo- lonius of Tyana Matthew's porch was raised in the time of Bishop Peter the Third, who preceded Bishop Peter Munoz the Necromancer, poet and theologian, great scholar and great teacher. He it was who being in Rome came back by wizardy on Christmas night, in order to sing the last lesson of Matins, which had to be performed by a dignitary of S. James's in Rome.45 From Aymery,46 who came there not later than 1138, you would think the church was finished. It was, however, consecrated by Archbishop Peter Munoz, in 1211: the record exists in a set of Annals preserved in the MS. that is called the Tumbo Negro and adorned with miniatures. This is the date of the consecration crosses in the walls. The Poitevin saw in place, at any rate, the three great portals, the altars in use, the triforia accessible. There are to be nine towers,47 he says; some are built, some are building. He does not mention the cloister, or the chapel under the stair- case, of Santiago Abajo, which is strong testimony to the theory earlier indicated, HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE 59 that in his day that was the staircase. For him, the crypt has become fabulous: there lies S. James in a marble ark, in a fair vaulted sepulchre, wonderful for size and workmanship; it is lighted heavenly- wise with carbuncles like the gems of the New Jerusalem, and the air is kept sweet with divine odours; waxen tapers with heavenly radiance light it and angelic service cares for it. Otherwise, his account is accurate to the last degree: on a plan of the church you may name the chapels, trace the doors he enumerates and place the towers: two over the south transept [two over the north] two over the west front; two stair- case turrets, and a glorious lantern over the crossing. The stone is strong and living, hard and brown, like marble [for polish] painted within, in divers ways: covered without with tile and lead. And he is scrupulous to add that the towers are not yet finished. In his day.the transepts had each two apses eastward, as you may discover from the dedications of the altars : to S. Nicholas The heavenly radiance AND MONOGRAPHS 60 S. Maria de la Corticela Doors WAY OF S.JAMES and Holy Cross, on the north: to S. Martin and the Baptist, on the south. Another behind the high altar, dedicated to S. Mary Magdalen, served for the early pilgrims' mass. The little church of the Corticela, was then as now connected with the church : the passage now has been cut through the chapel of S. Nicholas, but a glance at the plan will show how that church has a south door which leads by a winding pass- age into the square, and the other end of that passage once came into the transept between the two apses where now is the crooked little chapel of the Holy Ghost. The northern chapel of the corona or charolle is now dedicated to S. Bartholo- mew but once to S. Faith, and to its dedi- cation came the Bishop of Pampeluna who had been a monk of Conques. 4 8 That corresponding to it on the south, was S. Andrew's. So with the doors: the first one named, that of the north transept, is called S. Mary's, for it led to the Corticela; the next, the Via Sacra, is still opened for Anos Santos. The third now goes through HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE what was once the southernmost transept apse: formerly, it must have led out be- tween the two little apses and was named of S. Pelayo. The fourth is called "de Can- onica"; it opens yet on the Sacristy where canons go to smoke a cigarette in between psalms. The fifth and sixth still exist in the south flank of the church, and opened then on the chantier; the seventh, in the north flank, was the grammar-school door and gave access to the Archbishop's palace. The usual entry, however, for the episcopal family seems to have been by an upper door into the triforium and Aymery's word for that is usually Palacio. The triforium hac? forty-three windows. The windows were glazed: the central chapel had three, the clerestory of the apse, five. This is entirely French. Although the transepts, like the nave, have aisles, the great portals have two doorways and not three: Aymery notes this with surprise.49 It was not, however, uncommon in the south-west of France, and was the western arrangement at S. Faith of Conques and S. Sernin of Toulouse; also AND MONOGRAPHS 61 62 WAY OF S.JAMES La Aza- bacherta North facade the cathedral of Bordeaux, though later, preserves the regional trait. The north door, named now from the Azabacheria, the market for pilgrim's trumpery and in especial the jet tokens for which Compostella was famous, was then called Porta Francigena. Twelve col- umns rilled the door-jambs, reliefs the tympana; and by an adaptation of the Poitevin style, as it appears variously modi- fied in Notre Dame la Grande and in the Cathedral of AngOul£me, the face of the wall above the doorway carried the most important sculpture. Here, in pariete, ap- peared a great Apocalyptic Christ, blessing with the book, enthroned within a mandorla that the four evangelists hold up, as the angels in the tympanum at Cahors and Autun. Eastward, on His right, the reliefs show Adam and Eve created and enjoined; on His left, dismissed from Paradise. And everywhere around, in a bewildering multi- tude that will recall the portals ot Leyre and Sangiiesa, and those of Notre Dame la Grande and Conques as well, are figures of saints, and beasts, men and angels, HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE 63 women and flowers, and what not, past telling. This suggests a whole scheme of Genesis i, 1-26. In the tympanum of the eastern door, under a tabernacle, you have Genesis i 1-26 the Angelic Salutation of the second Eve: the angel Gabriel speaks to her : "Che non sembiava imagine che tace, Giurato si saria chei'dicesse: Ave!"50 In the tympanum of the western are the signs of the zodiac and other lovely matters which we may guess to be the labours of Labours the months: some of these, and parts of of the months the Creation, and King David who must be counted among the cloud of witnesses on the face of the wall, still exist, built into the south side. Finally, the good Poitevin notes the odd little figures high up on the face of the jamb proper, four little apostles, blessing those who pass through: SS. Peter and Paul, John and James. Each stands on a bull's head, like the saints at Leon: and lions flank the doorway, watch- ing the doors, much as in Lombardy. AND MONOGRAPHS I 64 South facade A wayfaring theme WAY OF S. JAMES Here, however, they lean over and look down from the top of the doors. The northern facade commemorated the Creation; the southern, the Judgement; the western, the Transfiguration. At the south transept, which still exists, the east- ern tympanum shows the Betrayal, the Scourging, and Pilate sitting as one in judgement: above that, S. Mary, God's Mother, with her son in Bethlehem, and the three Kings who bring offerings, and the star, and the Angel warning them. On the other tympanum is all the story of the temptation, "the evil angels like larves, and the candid angels which are the good," and what each offers: and others ministering with censers. The four apostles guard the jambs, as before [I think that he is wrong in one case and that there was, even then, the sign of the Lion] and four lions as well, two below, and two more again, above the central pier, back to back. Eleven columns are here, carved with all manner of images, flowers, birds, and the like, and these are of marble; either those are gone and replaced by others filled HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE with kings and saints, or he has confused them with the western in recollection. In the tympanum appears, thus early, that sign of the Ram that M. Bertaux identified so cleverly, s i and the legend of the adulter- ous wife is told of it already, how her hus- band surprised her lover, and cut off his head, and compelled her to fondle and kiss it twice a day, while it corrupted in her hands. It was a bitter and sensual ven- geance but, after all, she might have been such a great lover as that in the story of William of Cabestang. Above, on the face of the wall, four angels trumpet to announce the Judgement Day, and Christ stands erect with S. Peter on His left, bearing the keys, and S. James on His right between two cypress trees, and his brother S. John alongside, and the other apostles spread out to left and right, and beyond them, and above and below, flowers, men, beasts, birds, fish, and other works. The west door surpasses far the others: it too has only two doorways, with many steps outside, and columns of divers AND MONOGRAPHS verger' s tale The Doom 66 WAY OF S.JAMES marbles, decorated in many ways: [here follows the same enumeration of all created things]. Above, is marvellously carved The Jvlotint of the Transfiguration upon Mount Tabor: Tabor the Lord in a white cloud [somewhat, perhaps, like the crimped clouds of Moissac] His face shining like the sun, His vesture gleaming as snow; and the Father above speaking to Him, and Moses and Elias who appeared with Him, talking of the sacrifice which was to be accomplished in Jerusalem. Here also are SS. James and Peter and John to whom before all the others the Lord revealed His transfigura- tion. Two things are to notice here: that there are no tympana, and that the descrip- tion has changed from exact observation into something literary. Aymery could not stand close, and stare, and take notes, here: and the only explanation is that already urged, that if this first facade resembled structurally that at Le Puy, the steps were a very long way below the huge relief, s2 Recapitulation may serve, at this point. It is probable that: I HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE 1. Alfonso the Chaste built a little brick church, a local shrine. 2. Alfonso III the Magnanimous built at the end of the ninth century a basilica of the Asturian type with marble columns. Almanzor burned this. 3. The church of the eleventh cen- tury was Benedictine Romanesque, with three parallel apses, probably transepts, and western towers: the style of Cluny. 4. The church of the twelfth century belonged to another French type of which the greatest examples were S. Martial of Limoges, S. Sernin of Toulouse and S. Faith of Conques. It kept however the towers, which were in France to be handed on to pure Gothic: it possibly borrowed a west end from Le Puy, and took over decoration from Poitou. All these regions are traversed by the Pilgrim Way. Something Syrian and Byzantine and something Mohammedan, were added on Spanish soil. 5. At the end of that century Master Matthew rebuilt the west end, with a porch or narthex that shows acquaint- ance with the Burgundian and with Chartres. AND MONOGRAPHS Recapitu- lation 68 WAY OF S. JAMES Wherever men work with level and square, the name of Master Matthew is revered, with those of Robert de Coucy Master of and Pierre de Chelles. He was Master the works at the works before he began the Gloria in 1 1 68: he had been living in Galicia at least since 1161 when he was at work on the Puente Cesures, the bridge below Padron. In 1188 he set the lintel and the inscription underneath it: •i- Anno: Ab Incarnatione: Dm: m.° c.° Ixxxviii.vo: Era IA CCXXHV!A: Die K-L, Aprilis: super: liniharia: Principalium: portalium. Ecclesiae: Beati: lacobi: sunt collocata: Per: Magistrum: Matheum: qui: a Fundamentis: ipsorum: portalium: Eressit: magisterium. He was secular, married, with various and sons sons, one of whom was booked to succeed succeeding him in the work, as at Burgos worked the generations of Colonia and at Toledo those of Egas. The Compostellan School was recognized as an organization from the end I HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE 69 of the eleventh century: in 1135 Alfonso VII enriched and protected it with various privileges and exemptions : Matthew's post was director and master of all the workmen of this. In 1168 Ferdinand II, because he held in his charge the direction and magis- tracy of the works of the Apostle, granted him 100 maravedis a year "to be used for his own person and for the same work so that he might see the completion of his art." His name occurs as a witness in documents of 1189 and 1192; in 1217 he is still working and is called Dominus : and in 1352 and 1435 the houses in which he had lived in the Plaza de la Azabacheria were still called Master Matthew's houses.53 The kneeling figure beneath the portal, if it is indeed his portrait, in its strong so- briety, its inalienable youth, is a worthier monument than Peter Vischer's or Adam Kraft's quaint effigies in Nuremberg. The Portico de la Gloria is a narthex of the Burgundian type, taken off the lowest story of the nave. Above, the triforium gallery is continued over it, and opened by western arches into the and name surviving Narthex AND MONO GR A PHS WAY OF S.JAMES Bur- gundian and open great nave, precisely as it is carried around the transept ends. In this it differs from those of Vezelay and Autun, but conforms to the same tradition as S. Pere-sous- Vezelay, the churches of S. Benigne and Notre Dame in Dijon, he Burgundian church of S. Sepulchre at Barletta. The cathedral at Chartres which was burned in 1194 approached possibly to this type, the three carved portals of the lower story standing back in line with the eastern wall of the towers, kept therefore in very low projection; the affect being something like that of S. Vincent of Avila. Like S. Vincent, probably, also, and like Autun, which was certainly known to the first builders of Avila, almost as certainly to those of Compostella, the portico at Santiago opened westward without tym panum or door, by three lofty arches, adorned with statues on the four piers which enframed these. Roland, we know, in the fifteenth century, stood among them, and so probably did Charlemagne; and almost certainly such effigies of Solomon and David as are built in at Orense. HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE From Santiago was copied the portico at Orense called El Paraiso, with such scrupulous exactitude that its evidence may not be impeached on points where destruction or misinterpretation, at Santi- ago, must be supplied or corrected. Only a single bay in depth, and three across, the porch of Santiago is ribbed quadripartite vaulting very richly moulded, the ribs and arches adorned with flowers and leaves. In the four corners, four angels trumpet to Judgement. On the jambs, and the western piers, stand twelve Apostles, and the two Evangelists who were not of the twelve; prophets; Moses, Esther, and the Queen of the South; the hermit Pelayo; two sera- phim, high in the outer wall; and two angels with scrolls. Over the doors into the aisles the round arch in two orders is filled with sculpture; the central door is divided and the head of it filled by a sculptured tympanum: on the trumeau sits S. James facing westward, above a marble shaft carved with the Trinity and the Tree of Jesse; and on the eastern face, at the foot a figure kneels, which im- Western piers AND MONOGRAPHS 72 Theophany WAY OF S.JAMES memorial tradition identifies with Master Matthew himself. It is indeed of the right age, with its smooth-shaven cheek and heavy curls: for this work, like the first doors of Ghiberti in Florence, belongs to the youth of a long-lived man. The theme of the whole is not the Last Judgement, though that enters in, nor even the terrible Four Last Things: rather, it is a theophany. On the tympanum, a gigantic Christ, seated, shows His wounds, but the wide gesture has more of blessing in it than of terror. Shoulder and chest bare, He has neither book nor crown. Beside Him sit the four evangelists, S. Matthew writing, the other three fondling their symbolic beasts, like the jeune homme caressant sa chimere. Seven angels display the instru- ments of the Passion, and in the extreme corner on the Gospel side a kneeling figure testifies and intercedes: this is not the Blessed Virgin. It stands for S. John, the brother of James, the disciple whom Jesus loved, and the witness of the Revel- ation: "and I John saw these things and heard them." By the introduction of this, HISPANIC NOTES THE BOURNE the whole scene conies to bear to the Trans- figuration, which it supplanted, the same relation as the Gospel bears to the Old Testament: the Transfiguration was of earth, transitory, and a type: this is eternal in the heavens. In the upper part of the tympanum, on either side, are crowded tiny figures, the multitude whom no man could number, in their washed robes, who shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads. Above the piers, on either hand, angels gather up little naked souls, "who are just born, being dead "; they shelter them in the folds of their garments, carry them in their bosoms, bringing them to swell the number, s 4 Across the archivolt, on the radius of the arch, are seated the four- and-twenty elders, making music on divers instruments. Beneath the feet of Christ, which rest on the springing foli- age of the Tree of Life,ss the capital of the trumeau depicts on its four faces the scenes of the Temptation, the intention of which turns on Hebrews i, 3, ii, 18, iv, 14-15, this being one called of God 73 White souls AND MONOGRAPHS 74 WAY OF S. JAMES a high priest after the order of Mel- chisedec. The grand figure of S. James seated The great here with Tan-staff and scroll from which and famous the writing was erased long since — "Misit statue me Dominus" it read — is perhaps the most magnificent single figure of the Roman- esque age: his throne rests on the backs of lions, but his bare feet on cool green leaf- age. 5