OVIEDO, seldom visited by the foreigner, lies well situated on rising ground in a fine open valley. Grand mountains surround and hem it in on the east, south and west, to the north the country undulates until it reaches the Biscay coast twenty odd miles away. These natural barriers gather the clouds and the climate is humid; on an average there are but sixty cloudless days in the year. While I was in Oviedo it rained almost incessantly, and the "clang of the wooden shoon" kept the streets lively with a clattering "click-clack." All the poorer classes wear sabots in wet weather, sabots that are pegged on the soles, difficult to walk in, but kept well out of the mud and puddles by these pegs. This particular make is common to Asturias, just as the ordinary French shape is to Galicia.

Oviedo is one of Spain's university cities, and I happened to strike the week when the festivities in celebration of its tercentenary were in progress. Wet weather and pouring rain never damp the ardour of the Spaniard during a fiesta, and despite the rain, powder was kept dry somehow or other, and enthusiasm vented itself regularly up to eleven o'clock every night by terrific explosions. Functions of some sort seemed to be going on all day long. Societies from the country paraded the streets, led by music, in most cases bagpipes and a drum, and Oviedo was evidently "doing itself proud."

I happened on a ceremony in the Cathedral one morning. The bishop was preaching to an immense crowd when I entered. Seated in the nave were the Professors of the University, Doctors of Law and Medicine, the Military Governor and his Staff, the Alcalde and Town Councillors, besides representatives from the universities of every European country, except, strangely enough, Germany, and one from Harvard, the first to attend a function of this sort since the war. It was a really wonderful sight, for the Cathedral is not marred by a coro in the nave. The hues of the many-coloured robes, from canary yellow and scarlet to cerulean blue and black, the vast throng literally filling every available bit of space, even on to the pulpit steps, gave me a subject for my brush, and I surreptitiously made a hasty sketch, to be finished afterwards in my room.

OVIEDO. IN THE CATHEDRAL
OVIEDO. IN THE CATHEDRAL

The Cathedral was founded by Fruela in 781, and enlarged in 802 by Alfonso the Chaste, who made Oviedo the capital of Asturias, and with his Court resided here. He created the See in 810. The present edifice was begun by Bishop Gutierrez of Toledo in 1388, and the tower added by Cardinal Mendoza in 1528.

Hedged in, although fronting on to a little plaza, the grand west faÇade with its beautiful porch can hardly be said to be visible. This lofty portico of richly ornamented Gothic, under the shelter of which the gossips parade to and fro, leads into the Cathedral and stands thrust out and between the two towers. Only one of these towers is completed, and it is surmounted by a good open-work spire the top of which rises two hundred and seventy feet from the ground.

I wandered about hopelessly trying to gain some idea of the exterior of the Cathedral and found that it was only by walking outside the city that anything at all can be seen of it, and then the towers and roof of the nave, with the flying buttresses attached, were the only features that came into view.

The entrance by the south door leads through a dark passage, in which many votive offerings hang over a tiny shrine where burnt a little flickering lamp; going in I found myself at the spot from which I had made my sketch the previous day. What a relief it was to find no coro blocking up the nave! The eye could wander over the whole of this lofty interior—could follow the beautiful open work of the triforium and rest on the stained glass of the clerestory windows. The aisles are very shadowy, all the light being concentrated in the nave and the crossing, and the vision, with a great sense of good effect, is led up to the white tabernacle on the High Altar and the immense retablo beyond. A little theatrical if you like, but it is business, and the Church understands this so well.

Among the chapels, good, bad and indifferent, is one containing a gorgeous silver-gilt shrine wherein rests the body of Santa Eulalia, Oviedo's patroness. In another, tucked away behind the north transept, the Capilla del Rey Casto, lies buried Alfonso the Chaste who did so much for the city. Six niches in the walls contain stone coffins, which are supposed to hold the remains of Fruela I., Urraca, wife of Ramiro I., Alfonso el CatÓlico, Ramiro, and OrdoÑo I. The bodies of these royalties at one time lay here, and a modern inscription on a mural tablet relates how they were removed, but not how their tombs were destroyed. Many other kings and princes we are told by this tablet also lie here, and as there are but half a dozen coffins their bones must be bien mÉlange.

There are the usual overdone chirrigueresque altars which do their best to mar this imposing church, though I am glad to say they hardly succeed. From them, however, it was a relief to be taken by a very intelligent verger up the winding stairs which led to the CÁmara Santa.

This is by far the most interesting portion of the Cathedral. Built by Alfonso in 802 to hold the sacred relics brought hither from Toledo at the time of the Moorish invasion, it stands above a vaulted basement; the reason for this arrangement evidently being the damp climate, and the wish to keep so holy a charge free from moisture. The chapel is divided into two parts. The inner, of very small dimensions, has a low barrel vaulting borne by arches with primitive twelfth-century figures. The sanctum sanctorum is slightly raised, and from this inmost Holy of Holies the relics are shown to the devout who kneel in front of a low railing every day at 8.30 A.M. and 3.30 P.M. The cedar wood arca in which they are kept is of Byzantine workmanship. The relics include some of Mary Magdalene's hair, and crumbs left over from the feeding of the five thousand.

The outer chamber of the chapel has a finely-groined roof, attached to the columns supporting which are statues of the twelve apostles. The richly-tesselated pavement resembles the Norman-Byzantine work of Sicily, and was not uncommon in Spain prior to the thirteenth century.

A bell tower, in which at one time hung "Wamba," the great bell of the church cast in 1219, stands partly on the roof and at the south-east corner of the CÁmara Santa. It was erected by Alfonso VI., and to judge by its present state will not long survive, most decidedly "Wamba" could not swing there now.

The Cathedral possesses three remarkable crosses, La Cruz de los Angeles, Maltese in shape, is studded with uncut gems. It dates from 808, and like the cross at Santiago is 1200 years old. La Cruz de la Victoria, the cross of Pelayo, is encased in beautiful filigree work, and is the identical one borne aloft before Pelayo at his glorious victory over the Moor at the Cave of Covadonga. The third is a crucifix on an ivory diptych, absolutely identical with the Cristo de las Batallas of the Cid at Salamanca. Many other relics of great archÆological interest belong to the Cathedral, and make it well worth the journey to see. This journey from Leon is long and trying, but the line, which climbs to an altitude of 4110 feet, is one of the finest pieces of engineering skill in Spain.

OVIEDO. THE CLOISTERS
OVIEDO. THE CLOISTERS

The dark entry of the south door leads not only into the Cathedral and up to the CÁmara Santa, but also through a side door opens on to the fourteenth-century cloisters. They are well kept and the little garden court a paradise in comparison with some of those I know. The capitals of the columns are well carved with prophets and saints under canopies, angels and angels' heads, grotesques and good floral cutting; while into the walls beneath them and round the arcades are let many tombs and gravestones brought here from different ruined or desecrated churches.

I went off one morning to see the earliest Christian church in the country. Braving the rain I tramped through mud ankle-deep for an hour up the hill slopes westward. It was a case of two steps forward and one back, but the spirit of the tourist was on me. I could not leave Oviedo and acknowledge I had not been to Naranco. I was desperate and I got there. What a charming out-of-the-way spot it is! Hidden behind a grove of ancient chestnut trees, under the brow of the mountain, stands Santa Maria.

A triple arched porch at the top of a dozen steps gives entrance on the north side to this minute and primitive place of worship. I entered and found myself in a barrel-vaulted parallelogram, with a curious arcade running round the walls. The west end is raised three steps above the nave, from which it is cut off by three arches ten feet high at the centre. The east end also has this feature, but the floor is level with the nave. All the columns in the church are of twisted cable design with shield capitals containing figures in low relief. The arcades, which are walled up, have depending from the plain groining bands slabs of cut stone with plaques below, something like a ribbon and medal in the way they hang. The interior is but thirty-five feet in length and fifteen feet across.

Beneath the church is a semicircular stone crypt, similar to that beneath the CÁmara Santa; it is entered from the cottage in which at one time lived the officiating priest. The caretaker inhabits this cottage, which is built on to the church, and I had come at her dinner hour. Alas! she could not leave me in peace, and I must own to a defeat. I was practically driven away, for the meal was spoiling and required her undivided attention, but I had seen Santa Maria de Naranco; I had grasped how in the early days, when the Infidel was overrunning the land, this little building on the lone hillside was a centre of the Faith, and how from the surrounding mountain fastnesses worshippers had gathered here and gone away strengthened by prayer, and how from this little seed of the Church sown on the forest-clad hill Spain's mightiness had grown.