Annette M. B. Meakin

Our last view of Tuy Cathedral—Scenery between Tuy and Orense—Ribadavia—Boundaries of Orense—Crossing the MiÑo—The Puente Mayor—The hot springs—Their usefulness—The Cathedral of Orense—Its PÓrtico de Gloria—The wonderful crucifix—The cloister—Santa Eufemia—Fight for her body—The oxen decide—Cardinal Quevado—Sculpture brought from Italy—Wood-carving—Spanish enamels—A silver crucifix—The reredos—The Orense Museum—Stone sarcophagi—Roman mosaics—A strange musical instrument—The Gallegan bagpipe—Orense and the Sueves—The Monastery of San Francisco—La Trinidad—Allariz—An interesting church—Convent of Santa Clara—Allariz mentioned by Ptolemy—Strongly fortified—Aquasantas—The parish church—San Pedro de la Mezquita—Junquera de Ambia—El Mosteiro

WE rose early on a glorious April morning to catch the first train to Orense. The sun shone brilliantly, and the outline of the blue-grey hills with which Tuy is surrounded stood out clear and distinct. On some of these peaks there are still the ruins of fortifications raised by the ancient Celts when they fled from the Romans in the valley. As the railway omnibus was taking us through the pine woods to the station, we caught, at a bend in the road, a view of the Cathedral of Tuy. “What ancient castle is that?” I inquired of a fellow-passenger. “It is the Cathedral,” he replied, smiling. This was the second time that I had mistaken that edifice for a mediÆval stronghold.

The line from Tuy to Orense runs through scenery more beautiful than that of the Austrian Tyrol. For a long time the winding MiÑo is visible close beneath the train windows, as it makes its way through the verdant valley, banked by mossy boulders and clumps of pine or chestnut trees, and now and again rushing through narrow ravines. The first station we passed was that of Salvatierra, near which towered a mediÆval fortress almost hidden by ivy, while, dotted about, were some little houses painted red. Terraces of vines now covered the sloping hills; every now and again we were in the thick of a pine wood. The station in the pine wood was Nerves: between it and Arbo the MiÑo’s bed grew very narrow and stony, and the waters foamed as they forced their way between the boulders; then they whirled round in an eddy, and the next minute we were looking at a sparkling waterfall, below which a peasant sat fishing with a very long line. At Pousa, the next station, we compared the architecture of the houses on the Portuguese side of the water with that of the Spanish houses on the opposite bank: the Portuguese houses were larger and more commodious in appearance. Steep mountains walled us in as we neared the station of Freira, and our train described a curve or loop worthy of the Canadian Rockies. After the next station, Filgueira, the river burst from its granite ravine and fled round the circular base of a conical mountain.

We had now reached Ribadavia, and the country on all sides was covered with vine terraces. Ribadavia, hardly more than a large village in the district of Ribadavia, in the province of Orense, was once an important town. Garcia, king of Galicia, the son of Ferdinand the Great, had his Court at Ribadavia, and his palace stood on the spot now occupied by a Dominican convent. There are two churches at Ribadavia that are well worth a visit—the conventual Church of Santo Domingo, and the Church of Santiago. The former is a good specimen of Gallegan architecture, with its wooden roof and its whitewashed granite walls and arches; the latter has an interesting Romanesque window.

Orense, it will be remembered, is one of the four provinces into which modern Galicia is divided. It is bounded on the north by the provinces of Pontevedra and Lugo, on the south by Portugal, on the east by Zamora and Leon, and on the west by Pontevedra and Portugal. Its most important rivers are the MiÑo, the Sil, the Limia, and the Bibey. The chief town, Orense, is situated in an extensive and luxuriant valley which lies in the midst of mountains, many of them having summits of bare rock devoid of all vegetation. Orense is a clean, bright little town, with more movement in its streets than is usual in Gallegan towns; it is in closer connection with Madrid than the others, and has not that mediÆval look so characteristic of the province.

The river MiÑo lies between the railway station and the town, and is crossed by an exceedingly fine bridge, which is acknowledged to be one of the sights of Orense. Molina wrote of it that its principal arch was so high and of such a width that the MiÑo could flow beneath the central arch alone—even after its waters had been swollen by the reception of its many effluents—without touching the other arches. This bridge, the Puente Mayor, had originally nine arches, but several of them disappeared at the time of its renovation. Until about 1830, a mediÆval fortress was still standing by the bridge, but it had to be removed on account of its ruinous condition. This bridge is the highest in Spain, as well as one of the finest.

Our first walk in Orense was to Las Burgas, the hot springs, which have been known and appreciated by the inhabitants of Orense ever since the days of the Romans. These springs have never been known to decrease or to increase: the flow of their waters is always the same both in summer and winter. Their water keeps hot longer than is the case with boiled water. The water of one of the springs is hotter than that of the other; it can be drunk cold, it has neither colour, taste, nor smell; the water of the other is sulphurous. Descending a flight of stone steps, I found the water of the first spring flowing through a granite wall beneath an arch decorated with sculpture into a stone basin; a small space round it was paved with granite and enclosed with a railing, in front of which there was a small public garden laid out with paths between its flower-beds. The water which overflowed from the basin ran into a large tank, and here a group of women were engaged in washing linen. The sight that met my eyes in the neighbourhood of the second spring was less pleasing; here women were busy scalding and skinning poultry at one tank, while at another they were cooking meat in the seething water. There are butchers’ shops close by, and their meat is carried down to the springs to be washed and cleaned before being exposed for sale. I noticed that the women who were employed in skinning and cleaning the carcases were standing with their bare feet ankle deep in bloody water, on which there floated the usual refuse of a butcher’s shop. The place might easily have been mistaken for a slaughter-house. My guide informed me that on the occasion of a visit paid to the springs last year by the present King of Spain, the whole place was cleaned up and carefully prepared for the Royal visit.

Molina has something to say about the hot springs at Orense: “In the middle of Orense, hot springs bubble up with as great a noise of boiling as if they were heated from below by a great furnace. The water is so hot that you cannot put your finger into it even for a minute: you can cook fish in it. The women wash their linen there, and make every use of the hot water that they would make of it in their own houses.” The ground is so warm round these springs that

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APSE OF THE PARISH CHURCH AT ALLARIZ, ORENSE

FAÇADE OF THE CHURCH OF EL MOSTEIRO

ENTRANCE TO ORENSE CATHEDRAL

frost and snow are never seen near them even when all the rest of the town is covered with a white carpet.

The Cathedral of Orense, dedicated to St. Martin of Tours, stands on the spot where Carriarico, King of the Sueves, erected a church in the ninth century. The present edifice was erected by Bishop Lorenzo in the first half of the thirteenth century. Since then it has undergone restoration at various periods, with the result that the form of its exterior is somewhat irregular. It is in the Gothic style, and its naves, transept, and apse are remarkable for their elegant simplicity. The lantern tower was restored as recently as the close of the nineteenth century. A narrow street, the Calle de las Tiendas, now runs in front of the principal entrance, which once had a fine flight of steps leading up to it. Like so many of the churches in Galicia, this Cathedral was planned and begun in the Romanesque style, though it was eventually finished in the Gothic. The lantern is notable, as Lamperez has pointed out, as an example of the amalgamation of the Mohammedan system of vaulting—without a keystone—and the Christian with one.

Like the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, that of Orense also possesses a PÓrtico de Gloria, but this is, alas! nothing but a poor imitation of Mateo’s masterpiece, executed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; and to one who has carefully studied Mateo’s work the copy at Orense seems nothing but a painful caricature. The people of Orense call it El Paraiso. The cloister was begun in the fifteenth century, and, judging from the small part of it still intact, it must have been a beautiful example of Gothic work. A Romanesque gate led to the cloister; the few of its capitals remaining show some interesting sculpture.

We entered the Cathedral by the north door, after admiring the toral archivolt and triple columns of the door leading to the Capilla de San Juan, with its statues of St. Peter and St. Paul. The first sight that attracted our attention was the handsome sarcophagus, covered with stone relief, of Bishop Vasco Perez Marino, who, according to one account, brought the crucifix, which Orense counts as one of her greatest treasures, from Cape Finisterre, somewhere between 1333 and 1343. The crucifix itself, we found in a chapel on the opposite side of the transept nave. Villa-Amil says this could hardly be the Finisterre Christ, because there exists documentary evidence that during the sixteenth century both the Christs were objects of adoration at the same time. Molina describes them both, and says that the Christ at Orense is one of those that were made by Nicodemus. (There are two others in Spain, one at Burgos and another at Arenas.) Bishop Juan MuÑoz de la Cueva wrote of this crucifix in 1727 that the sight of it filled the hardest of sinners with confusion and contrition, and attracted the devotion even of foreign kings and pilgrims. Its hair, which is black and long, and its nails, are said to be human. I remember seeing the Christ at Burgos laid out on the pavement in the nave of the Cathedral on Good Friday that the faithful might kneel before it and kiss its feet, and I was informed at the time that it was covered with human skin. The figure of Christ in both cases is life-size. Villa-Amil believes that the Christ at Orense is of a later date by two centuries than Bishop Marino, and he adds that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the worship of crucifixes was particularly fervid. The Popes granted special Indulgences to pilgrims who visited the Orense Christ, and as Orense was a halting-place for pilgrims to St. James, it was visited by most of the foreigners who came on that pilgrimage. The Christ is made of wood, and tightly covered by several layers of flesh-coloured cloth, which looks like human skin; the feet and arms are so constructed as to be easily moved. Pilgrims stick their fingers into the body, and are amazed to find that an impression is made just as would be the case with a human body. SeÑor Benito F. Alonso, who is a native of Orense, has carefully examined this Christ, and gives his readers a practical explanation of all that for so long appeared so miraculous with regard to it.[273]

We next visited the cloister next to the Sala Capitular, and here our attention was drawn to some very quaint sculpture upon the old capitals: on one of them was the figure of a horse, and on others there were Biblical groups which must be among the earliest work in the Cathedral.

The ashes of one of Orense’s first martyrs, Santa Eufemia, are preserved in this Cathedral. Santa Eufemia, according to historical accounts, suffered martyrdom near the walls of an ancient city called Obobriga (which some writers have tried to identify with Tuy) about the middle of the second century of the Christian Era, in the reign of Antoninus Pius.[274] Tradition relates that a young shepherdess, guarding her sheep upon a mountain slope on the confines of Portugal and Galicia, saw one day a hand stretched out from between

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STONE REREDOS IN THE CAPILLA DE LOS CONDES, MONTERREZ

THE PUENTE MAYOR—ONE OF THE WONDERS OF ORENSE

the boulders, and on one of its fingers was a golden ring. The girl put out her hand and took the ring. From that moment her power of speech was gone and she was perfectly dumb. She returned in terror to her home, and by signs explained to her father what had taken place. Her father took the ring from her, and, hastening to the spot where the hand had appeared, found it still there and replaced the ring. As he did so a voice said to him, “Here is the body of Santa Eufemia. See that it is removed and placed with honour in the Church of Santa Marina.” The command was carried out, and from the year 1090 till the time of Bishop Sequin (1164) the ashes of the saint rested in the little chapel on the Portuguese border. It was only with great difficulty that the bishop was able to translate them to the Cathedral of Orense. The coffin was placed upon a cart, but just as it was about to proceed to Orense the Portuguese of the neighbouring villages came in great crowds, and threatened to use force if the body was not carried back to their own Cathedral at Braga. Bishop Sequin and the Bishop of Braga were friends, having both been educated at the monastery of Santa Cruz in Coimbra, and they did their best to bring the dispute to an amicable end, but the feelings of the Portuguese were so violent that the only resource open to the bishops was to harness a couple of untamed oxen to the cart and let the animals decide for themselves whether the saint should be carried to Orense or to Braga. The oxen at once started off in the direction of Orense, followed by a large concourse of the clergy, who chanted psalms and prayed at every halt upon the road. When the procession had reached Sejalvo, just outside Orense, the oxen stood still and refused to move another step, whereupon the priests, followed by all the dignitaries and aristocracy of the town, carried the coffin upon their shoulders to the Cathedral, where it was deposited to the sound of solemn music.

At the spot where the oxen stopped, Bishop Sequin erected a small chapel—right in the middle of the road—and placed beside it a stone cross with the effigy of Santa Eufemia, which was still standing in the eighteenth century. The pedestal of the cross and the inscription dating from the twelfth century are still there.

On the altar opposite the door of the sacristy we found three beautiful thirteenth-century pictures in silver relief, representing scenes in the history of Santa Eufemia.[275] To see these properly we were obliged to have a candle. In the first, the young martyr stands trembling before her pagan persecutors, while an angel appears in the clouds above to support her in her resistance to their evil designs. In the second picture—to the right—the victim is being tortured, and in the third—to the left—is the scene in which the little shepherdess indicates to her father by signs that she has seen the hand and been struck dumb. All the faces are beautifully done, and most lifelike, and the ornamentation round the pictures is very tasteful.

Another work of art is the marble sculpture above the recumbent effigy of Pedro Quevado y Quintano, who was Bishop of Orense from 1776 to 1818. He was one of the most beloved of all Orense’s prelates. When Napoleon summoned an illegal Assembly at Bayona, Quevado was one of those who refused to appear, and he protested strongly against the abdication of the Spanish Sovereign. Grandmaison has described how, when more than three hundred exiled French priests took refuge in the Peninsula, Quevado received them as a brother, and placed his bishop’s palace at their disposal. When Napoleon placed his brother Joseph (Pepe Botella) on the throne of Spain, Quevado was deprived of all his emoluments as a punishment for his patriotism. Pope Pius VII. made Quevado a cardinal in recognition of the noble generosity with which this bishop had helped the people of Orense from his own purse in their time of great need. Orense celebrated his investiture with five days of festivity, during which the town was illuminated and every kind of public amusement was indulged in.

The marble sculpture which decorates his tomb was executed in Italy: it consists of two medallions with two relief figures, one representing Strength—Hercules, who is wrapped in the skin of the lion Nemius, and has just torn from its place a massive pillar. The other represents Charity—an old woman—caring for two destitute children.

The most beautiful tomb in the Cathedral, however, is not that of Quevado, but that of some unknown person. It is richly decorated with statues, the central one representing King David with his harp and crown. All the statutes have pointed shoes showing beneath their long robes.

Besides the famous Christ of which we have spoken above, this Cathedral possesses another large crucifix, a figure of Christ, also life-size. It is of Byzantine workmanship, and the figure is nailed to the cross with four nails, as was customary between the seventh and twelfth centuries.[276] The head wears

a Gothic crown, and a damask tunic covers the body to the knees.

Another treasure of this Cathedral is the beautiful wood-carving of the choir, which was long believed to be the work of Francisco Moure, a native of Orense, who is known to have executed the fine carving of the altar in the Jesuit monastery of Monforte and the choir at Logo. But just before my arrival at Orense a local archÆologist, SeÑor Eugenio Alvarez, discovered in the archives of the Cathedral a document proving that the choir at Orense was the work of a foreigner—an Italian named Juan de Angeles—in the sixteenth century.

I heard from a reliable source that there were some exquisite specimens of enamel work in the treasury, but did not have an opportunity of inspecting them. It is very rarely that they are shown to visitors.

In a cupboard lined with velvet in the sacristy is preserved a beautiful crucifix of silver filigree work. The hair and clothes of the Christ are of gold. Sad to say, a native of Orense, who made a fortune in South America, has recently spent a hundred and twenty-five thousand pesetas in having this beautiful work spoiled, i.e., modernised and decked out with coloured stones; its original date is unknown, but it is thought to be the work of the silversmiths of Santiago.

The reredos on the chief altar is also worth inspection, it is thought to be the work of a Fleming; each niche containing a statue is decorated with golden lace. It is the only reredos of its kind in Spain. Every statue in it is said to be worth ten thousand (Spanish) dollars.

We next visited the Orense Museum. Here we found a stone bearing an inscription relating to the Burgas, or Hot Springs, which had once been erected near them by the Romans; the inscription was in honour of the nymphs who were supposed to haunt the springs. Here also we found several interesting stone sarcophagi; one was that of a converted Jew of Monforte who spent a great deal of money on the churches; his name was Gaibor, and he flourished in the eighteenth century. Here, too, were specimens of good Roman mosaic, taken from the Roman baths in the neighbourhood; some Byzantine capitals; a sarcophagus bearing an inscription in the Gallegan dialect, from the fourteenth century; a sarcophagus of the fifth century without a cover; a bronze cross of the fifth century; some Roman pens; some Roman amphoras; bronze hatchets found in the bed of the MiÑo; and a number of arrow-heads, some of green serpentine, others of stone. Among the documents were some Papal Bulls and other parchments in a glass case. One of the things that interested me most was a musical instrument of mediÆval structure; it had a handle like a barrel organ, but its strings and screws were like those of a violin. I am told that this strange kind of instrument is still in use among the blind musicians of Galicia; and there are two of them represented in the Orense PÓrtico de Gloria, two of the four-and-twenty elders are playing them by turning the handle. In this museum we also found a good specimen of the Gallegan bagpipe, or gaita. It was here that SeÑor MacÌas showed me a recently completed plan of the old Roman road that passed through Orense from Braga to Astorga, at which he and several other archÆologists had been working for some time. The walls of the museum are hung with old paintings, some of them being portraits of the family of San Rosendo, brought from the monastery of Celanova. But perhaps the most treasured object of all is the stone with the Roman inscription which SeÑor MacÌas and his friends had such difficulty in removing from the site of the ancient Civitas Limicorum.

The name of Orense is derived from the Latin word Aurea, “golden,” and was the name given to the town by the Romans. As we have seen elsewhere, the great pride of Orense is the fact that the Sueve kings Carriarico and Teodomiro abjured Arianism within her walls after hearing of the miracles of St. Martin of Tours, and through the preaching of St. Martin of Dumio, after there had been more than a hundred years of strife between that heresy and the Catholic Faith, a strife which brought with it all the evils of a civil war. Six centuries later the monastery of the Franciscan Order was established within the walls of the city. Soon after its completion, in a quarrel between Bishop Yanez de Noboa and the monks, a man who had killed a member of the Noboa family in the street took refuge with the monks, and as they refused to deliver him up, the citizens burned their monastery to the ground. A few years later a new monastery was begun on the site where it now stands, on a hill just above the town, to the east of the Cathedral; this was finished about the middle of the fourteenth century. It is now used as a barracks for an infantry regiment, but its architecture is well preserved and quite worth a visit; it has a beautiful fourteenth-century Gothic cloister with graceful arcades resting on double shafts, every capital having different sculpture. The faÇade of the church has a fine Gothic door with three columns on either side, and some quaint sculpture on their capitals. This church has one nave and three apse chapels; its form

is that of a Latin cross; the roofing of the nave is of wood, while the transept and apses are covered with Gothic vaulting. The four arches of the transept form curvilineal triangles, as if originally intended to support a cupola or lantern. The apses, which resemble those of Santo Domingo of Pontevedra, are connected by doors of communication in their walls; they are lighted by very narrow and long lancet windows. Some say that the sculptured figures on the capitals in this church are intended to represent the struggles that took place between Bishop Yanez de Noboa and the monks, but this is not correct; they merely represent the monsters, birds, and foliage so much affected in that period. The church contains some interesting tombs.

Another old church at Orense is La Trinidad, founded in the middle of the twelfth century by Juan de Lares; it has two circular towers flanking its faÇade, they probably did duty during the Middle Ages as fortified watch-towers, for they have the appearance of bastions. The wall of the Gothic apse seems also to have been castellated. This church must have been standing when our Duke of Lancaster—who had married a daughter of Peter the Cruel—invaded Galicia to claim the lands that his wife inherited from her father. The Duke took Ribadavia in 1386, and then marched upon Orense, which he assaulted and sacked.

In several of the small towns within a short drive of Orense there are interesting monuments of mediÆval architecture. One drive well worth taking is to Allariz, where the Church of Santiago has many points worthy of study, such as its quaint circular apse with a tiled roof and Romanesque windows, and its square stone tower, also with a tiled roof. At Allariz there is also the convent of Santa Clara, with its sumptuous church and five altars, one of which is of the Corinthian order and as lofty as the church. On the arch above the closed door there is an inscription with the date “Era 1324.” The nuns of this convent have among their treasures a beautiful crystal cross of mediÆval workmanship, with an ivory image of the Virgin, which alone is worth going to Allariz to see. Near the Church of St. Stephen, at Allariz, there is a spot called el campo de la Mina, which was used as a Jewish burial-ground until the sixteenth century; some old tombstones bearing Hebrew inscriptions have recently been found there. Huerta thought that Allariz was the ancient town of Arraduca mentioned by Ptolemy. The historian Gandara stated that the remains of King Witiza were discovered at Allariz in 1663, but no other writer has confirmed this statement. It is certain, however, that Allariz was one of the most strongly-fortified towns in Galicia during the Middle Ages, and it is one of the oldest Fueros in the province. It can also boast of the fact that the great poligraphist FeijoÓ received his early education within its walls.

Another pleasant drive is to Aquasantas, where there is an interesting parish church, built of granite, with three naves, the central nave being supported by pillars 30 feet high. In the side nave to the right is the tomb of Santa Marina the martyr: there is a high square tower with a clock. This church once belonged to the Knights Templars.

Not far from Aquasantas there is the Church of San Pedro del Mezquita, and thirty kilometres distant from Orense there is the parish church of Junquera de Ambia, now a small village, but once an important Roman settlement close to the military road that connected Braga with Astorga. A milestone bearing the name of Hadrian was excavated there towards the close of the nineteenth century, it belonged to the year 133 A.D., and its inscription stated that the distance to Braga was seventy-four miles.[277] The present church dates from the year 1164, as we are told by an inscription on the tympanum of its doorway. Molina states that the ancient family of Ambia owned the whole of Junquera de Ambia, and much more land besides, and that one of them, having no heir to succeed him, built a fine church on his own estate: in the sixteenth century this edifice was turned into a Colegiata, but it is now a parish church in the diocese of Orense; it has a fine tower in the Romanesque style. The chief entrance is a good example of the same style at its best period; it has three archivolts with toral moulding.

At El Monteiro there is also a church with an interesting apse, or rather three circular apses with Romanesque windows.

There is also a remarkably fine church at Monterrey about fifty-five kilometers from Orense. This town was peopled by Alfonso VIII. of Castile in 1150, and called Monterrey because of its mountainous position. In its vicinity there are some rich tin mines. It is at Monterrey that there is a fine old square tower, the Torre del Homenaje (the bell at the top is modern), and in the church above alluded to there is a mediÆval reredos of sculptured stone.[278]