ARCHÆOLOGY is a comparatively modern branch of study; it can hardly be said to have existed as such before the third decade of the nineteenth century, when Caumont,[96] the first real archÆologist, began to awaken the interest of his countrymen in the architecture of past ages and in the science and customs of antiquity. Since Caumont there have been many workers in the field, not only in France but in every civilised country, and splendid have been the results of their earnest and conscientious labours. Among the most brilliant of these may be reckoned the strong, clear light which has dissipated the darkness that so effectually hid from our eyes the degree of civilisation attained in the Middle Ages. It is only during the last thirty years that we have become aware that the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries were not a stagnant period in the world’s progress. Buckle would not have written as he did about the Middle Ages had he come into the world a couple of decades later; or, putting it in another way, had he lived a few years longer and not been suddenly cut off in his early manhood, he would certainly have modified his caustic strictures upon the times which so nearly preceded our own.

Like Buckle, many other writers of his day believed implicitly that the power of the Church during the Middle Ages was such that it destroyed all individual liberty; but now we know that though religion governed all, she stifled nothing.[97] Our ancestors were religious, they were even superstitious to a very high degree, but they loved their individual liberty with a passion that the bulk of our socialistic contemporaries would be puzzled to understand. “Our proud ancestors ignored the very idea of that unlimited power of the State which is now so ardently appealed to,” wrote Montalembert, one of the greatest students of the Middle Ages, after twenty-five years of study. “A dead level has been regarded (in the nineteenth century) as a mark of progress, and identity of yoke as a guarantee. God forbid that we should assert equality to be incompatible with liberty; but up to the present time the art of making them live together has not been discovered in any of the great countries of the great European continent.... I remain sadly impressed by the spectacle of the debasement, feebleness, and growing impotence of each individual man in modern society. Does not this stupid and servile apotheosis of the wisdom and power of the masses menace us with the extinction, at once, of every personal initiative and all strong originality, and with the annihilation, at the same time, of all the proud susceptibilities of the soul and the genius of public life?”

The study of archÆology did not cease with Montalembert; since his day it has made enormous strides. We know now that he was right. The men who lived in the Middle Ages did not recognise, as we do now, the “omnipotence of numbers,” hence the glorious originality shown in their architecture, its dignity, its liberty, and its nobility. We have only to look a little way to note that “in those countries where the sovereignty of the State is most absolute, the originality of art is nearest to its vanishing point, diminished by the State, that despot who never dies, who already extends everywhere his irresistible and pitiless level, over prostrate human dust.” The music, poetry and painting, sculpture, as well as the architecture of the Middle Ages, all point with unerring finger to the individuality of the Middle Ages. The songs of the Gallegan trovadors, the Cancionero Gallego, are full of tales that bear witness to the liberties taken by individuals in those days even with their religion. Have we not already repeated in this very volume tales in which nuns and gallants freely appealed to the Virgin for her assistance in designs which they knew to be immoral!

The age of cathedral-building is not over. We see new cathedrals rising in Russia, in England, in America. Huge and massive and costly they are, but have they the spiritual and subtle beauty of the Gothic or the charm of the Renaissant architecture? Can they be judged by the same standard? No; for, to use the words of Spain’s great architect, artistic collectivism has succeeded personal art, just as personal art once succeeded symbolic art.[98] And architecture, according to the eternal laws of its being essentially an interpretative, not an imitative art, it interprets the soul-language of the human beings amongst whom it rises into existence.

Galicia of the twentieth century has inherited from Galicia of the Middle Ages poetry, sculpture, and architecture, each of which, in its own line, is absolutely unrivalled. These offer a wide and fascinating field of research to all those who seek to understand the civilisation of that period in the world’s history. The architecture of Galicia can be said to be exclusively Christian, for Moorish influence, which, penetrating into every other part of Spain, mingled itself with Christian art and produced what Spaniards cell el estilo mudejar, never gained any footing in this province. Perhaps it may be well to say a word about this style in passing, in spite of the fact that Galicia is not the province in which to study it. The Moors, it will be remembered, began to invade Spain in the year 712, and they remained in the Peninsula for the space of four hundred years. As SeÑor Lamperez has remarked in his interesting series of lectures, this branch of the art was the natural outcome of the mingling of two distinct civilisations, the civilisation of Spanish Christendom and that of the Oriental followers of Islam, during the eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries of the Christian era. It resulted from a fusion of the art of two distinct races, and the highest point of development was reached during the period which began with the reign of Ferdinand I. and ended with that of Alfonso X. (the eleventh to the thirteenth century), and that which began with Alfonso X., and ended with Ferdinand and Isabella in the fifteenth century; it had its birth and development in the first of these periods, reached its climax, and declined in the second. Mudejar architecture, according to Lamperez, was the work of Moorish architects employed in the service of Christians: it exhibited the elements of both peoples. In some instances, indeed, it has been the work of Christian artisans superintended by Moorish architects. There still exist churches in Spain whose plan is Christian (basilical), whose structure is of the simplest, showing avoidance of all the difficult problems of equilibrium, and whose materials are of the smaller order (tiles, etc.), with much plaster gypsum and excessive subdivision of excessive and artificial ornamentation dominated by geometrical ideas. The Ordinances showing how the corporations of artisans were formed and what specifications were required of the men who took the position of alarif (skilled) and maestro-al-arif (Arabic) are still preserved at Seville.

Mudejar architecture was no mushroom style—on the contrary, it had its slow rise and fall, and it evinces a state of constant and continual transformation. The oldest edifice now in existence is perhaps the church of San Roman at Toledo. Those who would study the manner in which the mudejar architecture has been modified in turn by Roman, Byzantine, and Gothic influences, would do well to follow the advice of Lamperez, and group their researches on geographical lines. Catalonia, Castille, Andalusia, Aragon and Toledo, and so on. In Aragon are to be found the strongest and most splendid Mohammedan influences that Spain can show; while in Galicia these influences are, as it were, but momentary. Even Granada can show nothing to compare with the glories of Aragon, with its towers of Teruel, Daroca, and Saragossa, and with its churches of Calatayred.

But before Spain gave birth to her mudejar architecture, and long before the Moors set foot upon her shores, her Christian art owed more to the East than to the West, for it was as much Byzantine as Roman. Byzantine art dates its origin from the year 330, when Constantine moved his court from Rome to Constantinople, to a town on the borders of Asia and Europe. Constantinople, by its geographical position, was the natural meeting-point of Persians, Indians, Armenians, and Syrians. All these influences, as well as those of Asia Minor, were now brought to bear upon the Christianised pagan art of Rome. The result was the birth of Byzantine art.

How Byzantine art was carried to the furthest corners of the Christian world it is not difficult to see. Constantinople had become the centre of the Roman Empire. From her shores there poured forth warriors, traders, missionaries to every part of the earth.

Byzantine architecture borrowed her massive cupolas, supported by square pillars over a square edifice, from Persia, and from Syria she borrowed her floral ornamentation; while her love of colour, of brasses and mosaics, is traceable to the influence of all the Oriental centres where wealth and ostentation abounded. The greatest monument of Byzantine art is, of course, St. Sophia’s (now a mosque) at Constantinople, which the Emperor Justinian erected between 527 and 565. Here we see the decadent art of classic Rome transformed and vivified by Asiatic influences. In the seventh century, the agitation against the Iconoclasts (destroyers of images), in the reign of the Emperor Leo the Isaurian[99] (813-821), resulted in a wide diffusion of Byzantine influences throughout the western provinces of the great Roman Empire. Spain, herself a province, became affected.[100]

There are numerous indications that between the decadence of Roman architecture and the invasion of the Moors, Spain produced a phase of architecture quite her own,[101] of which the most striking characteristic was the horseshoe arch. It has been suggested that this kind of arch was introduced from Constantinople; but students of Spanish architecture have long tried in vain to ascertain with certainty either the date of its appearance or the source of its introduction. It is known to have existed centuries before the Christian era in Persia, India, and other parts of Asia, without, however, characterising any special style of architecture.

Almost until the close of the nineteenth century it was erroneously believed that the horseshoe arch entered Spain for the first time with her Moorish invaders. We now know for a certainty that Spain had it long before—that she had it already in the second century. Tombstones with Roman inscriptions have been found with horseshoe arches sculptured upon them,[102] and it has even been found sculptured on pagan tombstones whose inscriptions point unerringly to the second century.[103] As Christian architecture began to rise on Spanish soil, with it there reappeared the horseshoe arch. It is visible upon the sepulchral tomb, in MÉrtola, of a man named Andrew, which bears these words, “Princeps cantorum sacrosancte aeclisae Mertillane,” and the date 525. This arch has also been found in two white marble windows, the one, now in the Museum of Merida, has barbaric ornamentations; the other, with three horseshoe arches more pronounced, exists in the church of St. Martin de Nieble.[104] A church discovered in 1789, close to the ruins of Segobriga, and which contains the epitaph of Bishop Sephronius, who died in 550, has four somewhat oval horseshoe arches in its chancel. It was thought until quite lately that there were no traces of this arch having existed in Andalusia before the arrival of the Moors, but SeÑor Gomez-Morenno believes he has discovered three edifices in which it was used: one of these is the western entrance of the town of Cordova, which the Moors called Bibalatarin. The Arab historian relates that the Visigothic nobility and garrison escaped by it in 711 A.D., to take refuge in the church of San Acisclo; and this circumstance alone is sufficient to verify its antiquity.

“Everybody believes,” says SeÑor Gomez-Morreno, “that the Grand Mosque at Cordova was the work of Abderrahmen I., with successive amplifications, and that in order to build it the Moors completely destroyed the church of St. Vincent. I do not think this is correct.” He then points out how, to begin with, the Mosque of Abderrahmen was constructed in a single year, between 169 and 170 of the Hegira (786 A.D.). Now to have built that edifice as it stands in one year would have been an utter impossibility; but to have transformed the Christian cathedral already there into a mosque within that time would be quite feasible. The western wall and faÇade with horseshoe arch of the old Christian church is still visible; its style is pure Byzantine. “I believe,” says Gomez-Morreno, “that this faÇade is a remnant of the basilica of San Vincent, and that it dates from the middle of the sixth century.” Another proof of the anteriority of the horseshoe arch to the Moors is the Bridge of the Pines, Puente de Pinos, in Granada, over the river Cubillas; this bridge, which the Moors found there on their arrival, has three horseshoe arches. The Moors, admiring it, called it by its Latin name, Ponte-Pinos.

When, in the sixth century, the entire nation of the Visigoths had been bodily converted from Arianism to Catholicism under Recared, son of Leovigild, Christian churches began to rise in all parts of Spain; and in these the horseshoe arch once more appeared. One of the most ancient of these is supposed to have been St. Roman de Hornija (Valladolid), mentioned by Morales. Then there is the famous little church, St. Juan de BaÑos (Palencia), within ten minutes’ walk of the important railway junction Venta de BaÑos, which we all pass through on our journey from Paris to Madrid. There are French archÆologists who refuse to believe that St. Juan de BaÑos really dates from the seventh century; and I have even heard a great Spanish authority suggest that the name of King Recesvinto, and the date 661, may have been added later. For years this church, first discovered by Quadrado, was thought to be the only Visigoth church preserved in Spain;[105] but now there are known to be others, as we shall see in due course, for one of the most unique specimens of this kind of architecture is standing to-day in Galicia, and in a state of remarkably good preservation. I allude to the little church of Santa Comba de Bande, in the province of Orense.

The circular arch, which the Spaniards claim to have received from the East at least five centuries before the invasion of the Moors, and which is supposed to have had its origin in the bending of twigs and branches, differs somewhat from the genuine Moorish arch, its curves being less pronounced. The earliest example of the Mussalman arch is thought to be that of the Grand Mosque of Cairuan.[106] It is extremely interesting to trace the changes through which this Spanish Mussalman arch passed during the four centuries of Moorish supremacy in the Peninsula. Those of my readers who have watched the evening sun gradually disappear behind the horizon of the sea, can easily picture to themselves the curves of this arch in its early stages. As the golden ball first dips itself, as it were, into the water, its outline forms a circular arch; but one which is neither the Roman arch nor the later horseshoe arch, but what may be called the archaic circular arch. Then, as it dips deeper and deeper, the curves gradually disappear, till exactly half of the ball is hidden: at that moment the outline is that of what is usually styled a Roman arch (early Norman). About the beginning of the eleventh century, Moorish architecture showed a tendency to lengthen the curves of its circular arch, and at the same time began to make it pointed instead of circular. That is to say, the circular arch and the pointed arch were fused into a new kind of arch, a pointed horseshoe arch.

It is the first of these, the archaic circular arch, which we find on the pagan tombstones of the second century preserved in various Spanish museums, which we find traced in the illumination of ancient Spanish parchments, which we find in the bridge over the river Cubillas, and, finally, which we find in the extremely rare relics of Visigothic architecture, of which two of the most interesting are in the province of Galicia.[107]

The foreigners who have devoted the most careful study to Spanish architecture are the French; but they have all without exception approached the subject with the preconceived idea that all the best architecture in Spain is the work of French architects; and, under this unfortunate delusion, they have misled almost every one, even Spaniards! Street is still the best English authority on Spanish architecture, though, of course, his work is somewhat antiquated;[108] but he saw comparatively little—too little to enable him to be a competent judge of Spanish national art.

The Moorish architects who constructed the Great Mosque at Cordova, as we see it to-day, adopted and improved the style of architecture which the Visigothic Christians had employed there before their arrival. It must be remembered that the Visigoths were the most cultured of all the barbarians of the north, and they were Arians long before they became Roman Catholics.

Until quite recently, even English and French historians fell into the common error of believing that Spain lay buried in uncivilised darkness during the whole dominion of the Visigothic kings.[109] Yet there has existed all the time, from their day to ours, irrefutable documentary evidence to the contrary, the writings of St. Isidore of Seville. This illustrious bishop, to whom we have already alluded in a former chapter, and who died in 636, wrote a treatise on Etymology, or The Origin of Things, and A History of the Gothic Kings. Montalembert calls him “the last philosopher of the ancient world, and the first Christian who arranged for Christians the knowledge of antiquity.” The Visigothic kings had their seat in Toledo, and the writings of St. Isidore bear incontrovertible testimony to the degree of culture to which Spain attained under their rule. There is also plenty of proof that many beautiful buildings were erected in Toledo under the Visigoth monarchy. The Moors, according to their own historian, looked with admiration on the churches, palaces, and mansions which greeted their eyes on their entrance into Toledo. There they found sumptuous palaces, with magnificent porticoes (St. Isidore calls them aulas regias).[110] Not only were these buildings beautiful, but their appointments, and the treasures they contained, were equally dazzling to the eyes of the invaders. One of the palaces had twenty-four strong rooms for storing articles of priceless value, among which were certain mysterious amulets and magic figures upon whose safe custody the safety of Ataulf’s kingdom[111] was superstitiously believed to depend. The palaces, too, of the Metropolitan bishops were most sumptuous. The Visigothic kings showed a strong predisposition to adopt the civilisation of decadent Rome, and to break for ever with their own past; they freely adopted Roman customs and usages, and even their architecture was not pure Visigothic, but Gotho-Roman: it had two distinct sources, one Roman, one Byzantine. Art entered Spain for the first time after the conquests of Julius CÆsar, while Byzantine art was brought from Constantinople in the train of the Christian religion.

While characteristics of the real Visigothic art became more and more indistinct, those of Roman and Byzantine art gradually amalgamated and formed a style of architecture which the Spaniards have called Latino-Byzantine. The Visigoths, enchained by the prestige of the ancient civilisation, and dominated by the irresistible force of the Catholic religion, offered no resistance to the development of the new art; their gold work,[112] as well as their architecture and their literature, became Latino-Byzantine. The Courts of Recared and the other Gothic kings were in constant commercial communication with Constantinople. The two streams of Roman and Byzantine influence thus flowed together, and became the channel by which the Renaissance[113] was eventually reached.

The Moors in their earlier buildings in Spain show traces of Roman influence, and even of Byzantine influence; for, as we have seen, they admired the handiwork of the Visigoths, and often adapted it to their own uses. The art of Granada is in reality the result of a fusion of Roman, Byzantine, and Arab influences. Moorish relief work is much deeper than that of Rome or Constantinople; that is to say, their sculptured designs project much farther from their base. The Moors, in the words of Lamperez, did not bring a new style of architecture with them into Spain, but, by the peculiar way in which they adapted to their own temperament the art which they found waiting there, a new style was produced.[114] Neither under the Visigoths nor under the Moors can Spanish soil be said to have produced a national architecture. The Spaniards of the Middle Ages were great transformers, but they were not originators or inventors. Lamperez seems to think that Spain would have produced from the days of the Visigoths onward a distinctly original and national style of architecture had she been allowed sufficient time. A glance at her history is enough to show us that this was not permitted to her.

As we have said, the Moors did not conquer Galicia; her examples of the Latino-Byzantine and Romanesque styles are consequently free from Moorish influences;[115] but they are nevertheless hybrid in character, as all art which is nothing but a combination of several foreign styles must necessarily be. The widespread belief that the world would come to an end in the year 1000, having been proved erroneous, the building of churches and monasteries suddenly increased, and a period of remarkable architectural development was the result.[116] The monasteries represented a sort of reaction against the brutality of feudalism, by offering refuge to the oppressed, and to those who sought a safe retreat in which to dedicate themselves to intellectual pursuits. The immense power to which the monasteries afterwards attained began in this way. Cluny became, as it were, the focus of that power, and from its sheltering walls there poured forth armies of monks, who propagated their arts along with their religion in all parts of Europe. Thus the Latino-Byzantine or the Romanic styles of architecture reached from Rome to Scandinavia and from Palestine to Galicia. It is to Galicia that we must bend our steps if we wish to look upon the chief monument of Romanic architecture in Spain, for that monument is no other than the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.

The rise of Gothic architecture began in the early part of the eleventh century, which forms one of the most important epochs in the annals of the Roman Catholic Church; it began at a time when civilisation, fleeing from the brutalities of feudalism, had taken refuge in the cloister.[117] It was then that the sap of a new life began to rise in the old tree,—a life thirsting for liberty, and open to all development and progress. It was between the beginning of the last decade of the thirteenth century and the end of the first part of the fourteenth that the sap rose highest. The work of civilisation passed from the hands of the monks to the hands of the newly formed middle classes. Before that time all the architects and even stone-masons were monks. Montalembert tells us how our own English monk of the seventh century, St. Wilfrid, brought stone-masons (coementarii) from Rome to build his beautiful conventual church at Ripon.

The king, formerly only a figurehead, now recovered his regal power;[118] the bishop, formerly subject to the abbot, now stood above that dignitary; the city became a municipal community, struggled for its rights and privileges, erected its own municipal buildings; the artisans, no longer feudal serfs, formed themselves into guilds, corporations and fraternities so exclusive, that none might be initiated into the secrets of their trade without undergoing long years of apprenticeship.[119]

With all these changes, architecture kept pace. “It felt in its soul a burning life which urged it to the most daring conceptions.”[120] Gothic architecture represents not a revolution in art, but an evolution. The sap rose in the old trunk, and the buds burst forth from the old branches. It is a mistake to think that Gothic architecture was introduced into Europe from the East by the Crusaders; these soldiers did not, as Viollet le Duc has remarked, bring back art in their knapsacks—they had other things to think of.[121] The constructors of Romanesque art had struggled with a double problem—how to support wide vaultings, and how to let light in upon dark naves. Merchants of the ninth century, pilgrims of the tenth and eleventh, Crusaders of the twelfth, all had their influence. Larger churches with wider vaultings became urgently needed. The new cathedrals were to play a civil as well as religious part—quite different from that which had been played by the conventual churches. These are some of the elements which contributed to the development of Gothic architecture.

Just as the cathedrals were the expansions of the conventual churches, the universities were expansions of the monastic schools; and, as Preissig has observed, this transformation was due in the main to the great reputation for learning enjoyed by the schoolmen, “who attracted such multitudes of students that it was found necessary to recognise the schools on a broader basis.”[122] Our own oldest university, that of Oxford, owes its foundation to a mandate from the Holy See. The first university to be founded in Europe was that of Paris. The second was that of Bologna.

Though Spain possesses some of the finest specimens of Gothic architecture in the world, she has never made that style her own. Her grandest Gothic cathedrals were designed by foreign architects; and in her remote corners, like Galicia, that style never reached perfection. We will tell our readers at once that there is no example of pure Gothic art in the whole of Galicia, in spite of the fact that it struggled hard to find a footing.

In the fifteenth century, when the rules of Gothic architecture were being followed by all the greatest architects of Europe (except the Italians), it had already passed its highest stage of development, and its glories were beginning to decline. Italy was already turning to the past for fresh inspiration. Nicolas of Pisa was already copying the sculpture of pagan sarcophagi; Petrarch was unearthing the classic literature of Greece and Rome; Giotto was appropriating the pictorial art of the Byzantine Church, and Brunelleschi was replacing the Gothic pillar by a classical column. Sculpture had opened the way, literature and painting had followed in her footsteps, and it only remained for architecture to do likewise. The Renaissance originated in Italy, and in Italy it attained to its highest development.[123]

Gothic architecture had been the work of men who only valued their handiwork as an expression of religious faith, it was nothing if not symbolic; but with the Renaissance the spirit of faith, reverence, superstition, or whatever we may choose to call it, was changed into something quite different. In the Renaissance, as Lamperez has forcibly expressed it, men began to value their work intrinsically, and individuals began to claim their personal rights. Buildings began to be admired for the grandeur of their conception, the delicacy of their form; the amount of labour they had cost, and their symbolism were forgotten. In the age of St. Bernard, cathedrals were raised for the glory of God; during the Renaissance, they were raised to enhance human glory.

The architects of the Renaissance retained the Byzantine cupola, the basilical plan, and the plan of the Greek cross; they also retained the gallery over the naves, the two towers of the faÇade and the portico (narthex liturgico) of the Gothic style; but the sublime in architecture had disappeared, the magnitude of the mass, the imposing length of the line, the grandeur and simplicity of the conception, were gone for ever.[124] Florence was the cradle of Renaissance architecture, and Brunelleschi the first of its architects; he constructed, in 1425, the cupola of the Duomo at Florence, where ornamentation plays so great a part. It was not till the sixteenth century that the new style appeared in France, under the name of “Francis I.,” in Spain as “Plateresco,” and in England as “the style of Queen Isabella.” St. Peter’s at Rome (begun as a basilica and completed as a Greek cross) is looked upon as the great model of this style.

But the Gothic style of architecture died hard in France, Germany, England, and Spain; for Christianity still clung to its mystic ideals. The change, to Italy, was merely a change of dress; but to those countries where the Gothic style had taken deeper root, it was a much more serious affair. That is why they did not begin to build their churches in the Renaissance style till the second half of the sixteenth century. “Gothic architecture was the child of the Romanesque style, from which it gently evolved; but that of the Renaissance was revolutionary, it despised the past, to which it did not feel itself a successor. The architect of the Middle Ages worked anonymously for the general good; the architect of the Renaissance was a personage, and his name has always been preserved along with his work.” We never forget Michael Angelo when we speak of St. Peter’s at Rome,—St. Peter’s the grand prototype of Renaissance architecture—the most perfect copy of which is perhaps our own St. Paul’s Cathedral. It was Michael Angelo who said, “Trifles make perfection, and perfection is not a trifle.” Neither the architect of Seville Cathedral nor the architect of Canterbury would have said that. But who will deny that the perfection of the Duomo, to take only one example, is the result of patient and trifling detail?

It is important to remember that architecture is a science in which each style must be studied geographically. To understand the history of Gothic architecture in England, for instance, is not necessary, though helpful, to understand the history of its development in Spain, France, or Italy. Each of these countries has produced varieties peculiar to itself for which special names have been found; such, for instance, as the “Perpendicular” style peculiar to England. We may even say that architecture should in some cases be studied provincially, and certainly in the case of Galicia. “To understand the architecture of Galicia is not an easy thing,” is a remark I have heard from the lips of some of Spain’s most distinguished architects as well as from her archÆologists. Professor Lamperez, whom I have quoted so often in this chapter, tells me he has dealt very fully with the subject of Gallegan architecture in his great work on Christian architecture in Spain; but, unfortunately, it has not yet been given to the public.

Our readers must bear in mind the fact that the Middle Ages embraced two great architectural epochs, the Romanesque and the Gothic. The Romanesque epoch, in which the Latino-Byzantine style predominated, may be divided into three periods, the first from about the year 400 A.D. to the year 1000,—the second from 1000 to 1100,—and the third—commonly known in Spain as the Transition Period—from 1100 to 1200. The Gothic epoch may also be roughly divided into three periods, the first, that of the Lancet Window, from the year 1200 to the year 1300; the second, that of the Circular Window, from 1300 to 1400; and the third the Ornamental Gothic, from 1400 to about 1520.[125] Then followed the Renaissance.

Galicia was very slow to adopt Gothic architecture, and it will be found that nearly all her churches, even when the influence of Gothic architecture is very decided, partake more of the Latino-Byzantine than of the Gothic style. Another noticeable point with regard to Galicia is that she continued to build in a particular style even after it had become quite antiquated in other parts of the Peninsula; consequently many of her churches look at first sight much older than they really are. In Spain, more perhaps than in any other country, the Renaissance began with a Transition—a Transition, to quote Lamperez, in which the spirit was Gothic still, though the details were classic. After a while the classic details took the name of plateresco; then, after the great mathematical architect, Herrero, had introduced a mathematical precision in the detail of ornamentation, plateresco gave place to, or rather, was transformed into churrigueresco, which in due course brought about a reaction which resulted in the neo-clasica. These are the three principal periods of the Spanish Renaissance.

The word plateresco, or plateresque (from plata silver), is derived from the idea of silver filigree. The stone lacework of the Burgos cathedral, to take a well-known example, is plateresque. The word churrigueresque is derived from the name of JosÉ Churriguera, though Churriguera was not the first to introduce it, Pedro Ribera and Narciso TomÉ having been before him. Between the middle of the seventeenth century and the middle of the eighteenth, the Churrigueresque style of decoration was looked upon as the most perfect in creation.

“Along with all the contradiction, all the praise and the censure with which this style of architectural decoration has been heaped,” says Lamperez, “we must consider what are the eternal and unchanging laws of architecture; we must remember that this art is not one of initiation, but of interpretation. Its form must be judged in relation to the end it has in view; it has both active and passive elements. It may seem hard, but we are compelled to pronounce the verdict that the so-called churrigueresco style does not meet these requirements of true architecture. It may do honour to the man who executed it, but it does not bring honour to the architect who designed it.”

The period during which the Churrigueresque style predominated was that which began with the year 1669 and closed about the middle of the eighteenth century. JosÉ Churriguera was born and educated at Salamanca. He made his name by work on the tomb of Queen Maria of Savoy, who died in 1489. Pedro Ribera exaggerated the defects of his master in the fountain of Anton Martin; so also did Narciso TomÉ, who let the light through the roof of Toledo Cathedral by inserting an architectural filigree of Churrigueresque work. “The idea,” remarks Lamperez, “was bold in the extreme, and the conception grandiose; but—it produces optical illusions, a panoramic, not an architectural effect.” No art should ever be permitted to overstep its limits, and the architecture of Spain commits this crime in its most excellent examples of the Churrigueresque style. The examples of this style in Spain are very numerous, but of them all the most beautiful and sumptuous, the most truly magnificent and monumental, example in the whole of the Peninsula may be seen in the faÇade of the Cathedral of Santiago in Galicia, which was the work of Casas y Novea in 1737.