TOLEDO is now extremely easy of access from Madrid, a branch from the main line of the Alicante railway turning off at Castellejon, and reducing the journey to one of about two or three hours only, from the capital. Of old the road passed through Illescas, and the picturesque church there, illustrated by Villa Amil, made me regret that the less interesting railroad rendered the journey by road out of the question.

The country traversed by the railway is very uninteresting, and generally looks parched and arid to a degree. Near Aranjuez the waters of the Tagus have been so assiduously and profitably used, that a great change comes over the scene, and the train passes through woods where elms and other forest trees seem to thrive almost as well as they do in damp England; and one can easily understand how this artificial verdure in the plain must delight the Castilian, who otherwise, if he wishes to enjoy such sights, must leave the heat of the plain for the cold winds of the mountain ranges of the Guadarrama. Aranjuez is, however, but an oasis in this Castilian desert, and the railway, soon leaving it behind, wends its way along the treeless, leafless plain to the ecclesiastical capital of the kingdom. On the opposite or right bank of the Tagus, the hills rise to a considerable height, and here and there their dull brown outlines are marked, though hardly relieved, by large clusters of houses surrounding the lofty and apparently uninteresting churches which mark the villages, whose tout ensemble seems everywhere on nearer inspection most uninviting to the eye. The banks of the Tagus are more refreshing, for here the water-wheels for raising water, which line the margin of the stream, suggest some desire on the part of the people to make the most of their opportunities, and they are rewarded by the luxuriant growth which always attends irrigation in Spain.

I looked out long and anxiously for the first view of Toledo, but the hills, which nearly surround it, conceal it altogether until one has arrived within about two or three miles distance; and here, with the Tagus meandering through its vega in the foreground, the great mass of the hospital outside and below the city to the right hand, and the wall-encircled rock on which the city is perched, crowned by the vast mass of the Alcazar to the left, the view is certainly fine and impressive.

From most points of view, both within and without the city, the cathedral is seldom well, and sometimes not at all, seen, standing as it does on much lower ground on the side of the rock which slopes towards the least accessible part of the river gorge, and much surrounded by other buildings, whilst the Alcazar, which occupies the highest ground in the whole city, is so vast and square a block of prodigiously lofty walls (old in plan, but modern in most of their details), as to command attention everywhere. The other side of the river is edged by bold hills, and all along its banks are to be seen water-wheels so placed as to raise the water for the irrigation of the land on either side. It is not, however, until after more intimate knowledge of the city has been gained, that its extreme picturesqueness and interest are discovered. The situation is, indeed, most wild and striking. The Tagus, winding almost all round the city, confines it much in the fashion in which the Wear surrounds Durham. But here the town is far larger, the river banks are more rocky, precipitous, and wild than at Durham: whilst the space enclosed within them is a confused heap of rough and uneven ground, well covered with houses, churches, and monasteries, and intersected everywhere by narrow, Eastern, and Moorish-looking streets and alleys, most of which afford no passage-room for any kind of carriage, and but scanty room for foot passengers. It is, consequently, without exception, the most difficult city to find one’s way in that I have ever seen, and the only one in which I have ever found myself obliged to confess a commissionaire[202] or guide of some sort to be an absolute necessity, if one would not waste half one’s time in trying to find the way from one place to another.

The railway station is outside the city, which is entered from it by the famous bridge of Alcantara, which has a single wide and lofty arch above the stream, guarded on the further side by a gateway of the time of Charles V., and on the town side by one of semi-Moorish character. Above it are seen, as one enters, the picturesque apses of the old church of Santiago, and the tolerably perfect remains of the double enceinte of the city walls; whilst on the opposite side of the river, as a further guard to the well-protected city, was the Castle of San Cervantes[203] (properly San Servando), of which nothing now remains but a few rugged towers and walls crowning the equally rugged rocks.[204]

The road from the bridge, passing under the gateway which guards it into a small walled courtyard, turns sharply to the right under another archway, and then rises slowly below the walls until, with another sharp turn, it passes under the magnificent Moorish Puerta del Sol, and so on into the heart of the city.

The Alcazar is the only important building seen in entering on this side; but from the other side of the city where the bridge of San Martin crosses the Tagus, the cathedral is a feature in the view, though it never seems to be so prominent as might be expected with a church of its grand scale. From both these points of view, indeed, it must be remembered that the effect is not produced by the beauty or grandeur of any one building; it is the desolate sublimity of the dark rocks that bound the river; the serried phalanx of wall, and town, and house, that line the cliffs; the tropical colour of sky, and earth, and masonry; and, finally, the forlorn decaying and deserted aspect of the whole, that makes the views so impressive and so unusual. Looking away from the city walls towards the north, the view is much more riant, for there the Tagus, escaping from its rocky defile, meanders across a fertile vega, and long lines of trees, with here a ruined castle, and there the apse of the curious church of the Cristo de la Vega, and there again the famous factory of arms, give colour and incident to a view which would anywhere be thought beautiful, but is doubly grateful by comparison with the sad dignity of the forlorn old city.

The buildings to be studied here are of singular interest, inasmuch as they reflect in a great degree the striking history of the city itself, as well as of the kingdom of which it was so long the capital. There is no doubt that there was a cathedral, as well as some churches,[205] here before the conquest of this part of Spain, in A.D. 711, by the Moors; and in the course of the long period of nearly four centuries during which the Mahomedan rule lasted, many buildings were erected, and a Moorish population was firmly planted, which, when Alonso VI. regained the city in 1085, was still protected, and continued to live in it as before. The Moors had, indeed, set an example of toleration[206] worthy of imitation by their Christian conquerors; for though it is true that they converted the old cathedral into their principal mosque, they still allowed the Christians to celebrate their services in some other churches[207] which existed at the time of the Conquest; and during the greater part of the Christian rule, their tolerant example was so far followed, that the Moors seem to have enjoyed the same freedom, and to have lived there unmolested, whilst they built everywhere, and acted, in fact, as architects, in the old city, not only for themselves, but also for the Christians and the Jews, down to the establishment of the Inquisition. It is a very remarkable fact, indeed, that with one grand exception nearly all the buildings of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, which are to be seen here, are more or less Moorish in their character;[208] and though the cathedral, which is the one exception, is an example of thoroughly pure Gothic work almost from first to last, there never seems to have been any other attempt to imitate the Christian architectural idea of which it was so grand an exponent. I have purposely avoided going to those parts of Spain in which the Moors were undisputed masters during the middle ages; but here it is impossible to dismiss what they did without proper notice, seeing that, after Granada and Cordoba, perhaps nowhere is there so much to be seen of their work as in Toledo.

The buildings to be examined will be best described under certain heads, reserving the cathedral for the last, because some of the Moorish buildings are the oldest in the city, and these lead naturally on to the in which I shall attempt to take them will be therefore as follows:—

There are, indeed, some works anterior to the rule of the Moors, for below the walls, in the vega, are said to be some slight remains of a Roman amphitheatre;[209] in addition to which there are still some fragments of work possibly Visigothic, and anterior therefore to the Moorish Conquest of 711. These are confined to a few capitals which have some appearance of having been re-used by the Moors in their own constructions, such e.g. as the capitals of the Mosque now called the “Cristo de la Luz,” and those of the arcades on either side of the church of San Roman, together with some fragments preserved in the court of the hospital of Sta. Cruz. They are very rudely sculptured, and bear so slight a resemblance to the early Romanesque work of the same period, that it is difficult, I think, to decide positively as to their age. It is certain, however, that the earliest distinctly Moorish capitals are entirely unlike them in their character, and quite original in their conception; and it is, of course, very possible that the Moors, pressed by the necessity of the case, would, after their conquest, not only have retained some of the existing buildings, but also have re-used the best of their materials in their new works.

The earliest of the distinctly Moorish buildings is a little mosque—now called the church of “Cristo de la Luz”—which was standing at the time of the entrance of Don Alonso VI. into the city, on Sunday, May 25, 1085. He entered by the old Puerta de Visagra, and, turning into this the first mosque on his road, ordered mass to be said, and hung up his shield there before he went further. No doubt the nave of the building is still very much in the state in which he found it; it is very small, only 21 ft. 7¼ in. by 20 ft. 2 in., and this space is subdivided into nine compartments by four very low circular columns, which are about a foot in diameter. Their capitals are some of those of which I have just spoken; they are all different, and, it seemed to me, more like Moorish work than the other capitals of the same class at San Roman and Sta. Cruz. The arches, of which four spring from each capital, are all of the round horseshoe form; above them is a string-course, and all the intermediate walls are carried up to the same height as the main walls. They are all pierced above the arches with arcades of varied design, generally cusped in very Moorish fashion, and supported on shafts; and above these each of the nine divisions is crowned with a little vault, formed by intersecting cusped ribs, thrown in the most fantastic way across each other, and varied in each compartment. The scale of the whole work is so diminutive that it is difficult, no doubt, to understand how so much is done in so small a space; but, looking to the early date of the work, it is impossible not to feel very great respect for the workmen who built it, and for the ingenious intricacy which has made their work look so much larger and more important than it really is.[210] It is, indeed, an admirable instance of the skill and dexterity in design which seem to have marked the Moors so honourably from the first, and which must have made them, as far as one can judge, in every respect but their faith so much the superiors of their Christian contemporaries. An apse has been added for the altar, but this is evidently a much later addition to the old mosque. The exterior face of the walls is built of brick and rough stone. The lower part of the side wall being arcaded with three round arches, within the centre of which is a round horseshoe arch for a doorway; above is a continuous sunk arcade of cusped arches, within which are window openings with round horseshoe heads. The lower part of the walls is built with single courses of brick, alternating with rough stonework; the piers and arches of brick, with projecting labels and strings also of unmoulded brick. The arches of the upper windows are built with red and green bricks alternated. The horseshoe arches here are built in the usual Moorish fashion, the lower part of the arch being constructed with bricks laid horizontally, and cut at the edge to the required curve; and about halfway round the arch they are cut back to receive the arch, which is there commenced. In the same way the cinquefoiled arches of the upper arcade have their lowest cusps formed by the stone abacus, the intermediate cusps by bricks laid horizontally and cut at the edge, and the upper central cusp alone has any of its masonry constructed as an arch.

The upper stage of the mosque called De las Tornerias is Moorish work of the same plan as the Cristo de la Luz; but I am much inclined to doubt whether it is equally ancient. The rosettes cut in the vaults, and the cusped openings, give this impression, and the vaults are quadripartite and domical in section, the centres of the nine small bays of vaulting being raised higher than the others, and having two parallel ribs crossing each other both ways, in the way I have already noticed in the Chapter-house at Salamanca, and the Templars’ Church at Segovia.

There is, so far as I know, no other mosque in the city so little altered as these; but among the churches some are said to have been first of all built for mosques. San Roman is one of these. It was converted into a parish church at the end of the eleventh century,[211] and the column and arches between the nave and aisles are probably of this date. The arches are of the horseshoe form, and the capitals are, I think, commonly quoted as some of the earlier works re-used by the Moors. But I very much doubt whether their style justifies my attributing to them any date earlier than the eleventh century. The church was not consecrated until June 20th, 1221, but there can be no doubt that it was built before this date. The noble steeple is one of the works built by Moorish architects for Christian use, and it will be better, perhaps, to reserve it for description with other works of the same class.

Of the two synagogues the older is that which was founded in the twelfth century, but seized in A.D. 1405 by the Toledans—instigated by the preaching of San Vicente Ferrer—and dedicated as a church under the name of Sta. Maria la Blanca.[212] The modernized exterior is of no interest, but the interior is fairly preserved by the zeal, I believe, of some Spanish antiquaries, having long been disused as a church. In plan it consists of a nave, with two aisles on either side. A quasi-chancel was formed at the east end (in the sixteenth century apparently) by the prolongation of the central compartment or nave beyond the aisles, and the intermediate aisles were also lengthened to a less extent at the same time. There are eight horseshoe arches rising from octagonal columns in each of the arcades, and the whole of them, as well as their capitals, are executed in brick, covered with plaster. The capitals are exceedingly elaborate, but very slightly varied in pattern: they have but little connexion with any of the usual types of Byzantine or Romanesque capitals, though they have rather more, perhaps, of the delicate intricacy of the former than of any of the features of the latter, and they are, I imagine, very much later than the original capitals which they overlay. All the Moorish decorative work seems to have been executed in the same way in plaster. This was of very fine quality, and was evidently cut and carved as if it had been stone, and seldom, if ever, I think, stamped or moulded, according to the mistaken practice of the present day. The consequence is that there is endless variety of design everywhere, and—wherever it was desired—any amount of undercutting. The spandrels above the arches are filled in with arabesque patterns, and there is a cusped wall arcade below the roof; but almost all of this is evidently of much later date than the original foundation, as the patterns are all of that large class of Moorish devices which, though they retain many of their old peculiarities, borrow largely at the same time from the traceries and cusping of late Gothic work. Unfortunately in such work the material affords so small an assistance in the detection of alterations, that it requires the exercise of considerable caution to ascertain their exact limits; and in Toledo, as in most places, people seem always disposed to claim the highest possible antiquity in all cases, seldom allowing anything to have been done by the Moors after the restoration of the Christian rule, though, in fact, the exact converse of this would be nearer the truth. The roof has coupled tie beams—placed a very slight distance apart—an arrangement of which the Moorish carpenters seem to have been always very fond. The pavement is very good, but must, I imagine, be of about the date of the conversion of the synagogue into a church. It is divided into compartments by border tiles, laid down the length of the church on either side of the columns. The spaces between these are filled in with a rich diaper of encaustic and plain red tiles, whilst the general area between these richer bands is paved with large red, relieved by an occasional encaustic tile. The latter have patterns in white, dark blue, and yellow, and in all cases they are remarkable for the beautiful inequality both of the colours and of the surface of the tiles. Both colour and material are in themselves better than the work of our tile-manufacturers at the present day, and illustrate very well the difference between hand-work and machine-work, which I have already noticed in comparing the old and new modes of dealing with plaster. The Moorish tiles are very commonly seen in Toledo, and were used both for flooring and inlaying walls, and in some cases for the covering of roofs. This synagogue of Sta. Maria la Blanca is on the whole disappointing. I went to it expecting to see a building of the ninth or tenth century, and found instead a fabric possibly of this age, but in which—thanks to the plasterers of the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries—nothing of the original building but the octagonal columns and the simple form of the round horseshoe arches is still visible. Nevertheless it well deserves examination, and a more accurate knowledge of the detail of Moorish work would, I dare say, have enabled me to separate more clearly the work of the original church from the additions with which it has been overlaid.

No. 29. STA. MARIA LA BLANCA, TOLEDO. p. 318. INTERIOR, LOOKING EAST.
No. 29.
STA. MARIA LA BLANCA, TOLEDO. p. 318.
INTERIOR, LOOKING EAST.

The other synagogue is now converted into the church called “del Transito,”[213] and about the date of this there is no doubt. It was erected by Samuel Levi,[214] a rich Jew, who held the office of treasurer to Pedro the Cruel, and was completed in A.D. 1366; but it did not long retain its first purpose, the Jews having been expelled the kingdom in 1492,[215] and this synagogue having then been given by Ferdinand and Isabella to the order of Calatrava.

The building is a simple parallelogram, 31 feet 5 inches wide, by 76 feet in length. The lower portion of the side walls is quite unornamented for 20 or 25 feet in height; but above this is very richly adorned with plaster-work. There is, first, a broad band of foliage, with Hebrew inscriptions above and below it, and above this on each side an arcade of nineteen arches, springing from coupled shafts, eight of its divisions being pierced and filled with very elaborate lattice-work. The end wall (now the altar end) has a very slight recess in the centre, and the whole of it to within some seven feet of the floor is covered with rich patterns, inscriptions, and coats of arms, whilst above the arcade is continued on from the side walls in eight divisions. The arcades are all cusped in the usual Moorish fashion, the outline of the cusps being horseshoe, but without an enclosing arch. The end opposite to the altar has two windows pierced in the upper arcade, and three windows below breaking up into the band of foliage and inscriptions. The whole is now whitewashed, and though the detail is all fantastic and overdone, the effect is nevertheless fine, owing to the great height of the walls and to the contrast between the excessive enrichment of their upper and the plainness of their lower part.

The Retablo over the principal altar is a work of the end of the fifteenth century, but not of remarkable merit, having paintings of Scripture subjects under carved canopies; there is another of the same class against the north wall. The roof is a grand example of the Moorish “artesinado”[216] work. It has coupled tie-beams, and a deep cornice, which is carried boldly across the angles, so as to give polygonal ends to the roof, which is hipped at the ends, the rafters sloping equally on all four sides. These rafters are only introduced to improve the appearance of, and—it may be—the possibility of hearing what was read in, the synagogue. The pitch of the real roof is very flat, and where a flat roof is absolutely necessary, this kind of ceiling is undoubtedly very effective. At some height above the plate the sloping rafters are stopped by a flat ceiling below the collar rafters, panelled all over in the ingeniously intricate geometrical figures of which the Moorish architects were so fond, and in the device of which they were always only too ingenious. The rafters as well as the tie-beams are used in pairs placed close to each other, and the space between them is divided into panels by horizontal pieces at short intervals, with patterns sunk in the panels. There is a western gallery, and some seats made of glazed encaustic tiles on each side of the sanctuary.

The exterior has arcades answering to those of the interior: it is built mainly of brick, with occasional bands of rough stonework. The bricks are 11 in. by 7¾ in. by 1¼ in. in size, and are used with a mortar joint 1¼ in. in thickness.

It is impossible to deny the grandeur of the internal effect of this room. The details are entirely unlike what I should wish to see repeated; but the proportions, the contrasted simplicity and intricacy of the lower and upper part of the walls, the admission of all the light from above, and the magnificence of the roof, might all be emulated in a Gothic building, and I have seen few rooms which have appeared to me to be more suggestive of the right form and treatment for a picture gallery or saloon for any state purpose.

The two synagogues I have described stand now in the most deserted and melancholy part of Toledo. The old Juderia, or Jews’ quarter, is decayed and abandoned. The Jews, of course, are all expelled from it, and the Christians seem to have avoided their quarter as though there were a curse on it. Samuel Levi, the founder of El Transito, built for himself a magnificent palace near it, of which, I believe, some part still exists, though I did not see it.

The Moorish houses, which I must now shortly describe, appear to be very numerous and of all dates, from the twelfth century down to the conquest of Granada; and it seemed to me that up to this time almost all the houses must have been the work of Moorish architects. The Jews and Moors were both very numerous bodies—so much so that Toledo is charged by an old writer with having had in it none others,—and there is nothing to show that the Christians ever employed any other architects. The common type of house is one which is completely Moorish in plan, even when the details are not so. It almost always had a long dark entrance passage, with an outer door to the street, studded thickly with nails of the most exaggerated size, and furnished with great knockers. The outer room or passage—ceiled with open timbers, boarded or panelled between—opens into the patio or central court, over which in hot weather an awning or curtain could be hung. This patio is surrounded by open passages on all sides, supported by wooden posts, or sometimes on granite columns, and the staircase to the upper floors rises from one angle of it. The woodwork is generally well wrought with moulded ends to the joists and moulded plates. Here are usually one or two wells, the court having been the impluvium where all the water from the roof was collected in a large cistern below the pavement, Toledo is still a clean city, and Ponz,[217] defending its credit from an attack by an Italian writer, maintains that the women are so clean that they wash the brick-floors of their houses as often as they do their dishes!

Knocker and Nails on Door, Toledo.
Knocker and Nails on Door, Toledo.

This is the type of house to be seen probably in every street in the city; but here and there are still left other houses of distinctly Moorish architecture, and of extreme magnificence in their adornment, Looking to the frail material of all these enrichments, the wonder is, not that so few houses remain, but rather that anything at all exists; and even in their present forlorn state there is something very interesting in these houses and rooms and decorations, so utterly unlike anything to which a northern eye is ever accustomed at home. The examples of this class which I saw seemed to be all of the same date—either of the fourteenth or fifteenth century—and though full of variety in their detail, extremely similar in their general effect. A room in the Casa de Mesa is the finest I saw, and I suppose that even in the South of Spain there are few better examples of its class. Its dimensions are 20 ft. 3 in. in width, by about 55 ft. in length and 34 ft. in height. The walls are lined at the base with very good encaustic tiles, rising nearly 4 ft. from the floor; above this line they are plain up to the cornice, save where the elaborately-decorated entrance archway—an uncusped arch, set in a frame, as it were, of the most fantastic and luxuriant foliage, arcading, and tracery—occupies a considerable part of one of the side walls. A very deep cornice of but slight projection, with a band of enrichment below it, surrounds the room, and this is interrupted by the doorway at the side, and by a small two-light window at one end. This window of two lights, with a cusped round-arched head to each light and some delicate tracery above, is framed in a broad border of tracery work, copied from the latest Gothic panelling, so that the whole design is a complete mixture of Gothic and Moorish detail. The ceiling is in its old state and of the usual artesinado description. Its section is that of a lofty-pointed arch, truncated at the top, so as to give one panel in width flat, the rest being all on the curve. The roof is hipped at both ends and panelled throughout, each panel being filled in with a most ingenious star-like pattern, of the kind which one so commonly sees in Moorish work. The patterns are formed by ribs (square in section) of dark wood, with a white line along the centre of the soffeit of each. The sides of the ribs are painted red, and the recessed panels have lines of white beads painted at their edges, and in the centre an arabesque on a dark blue ground. The colours are so arranged as to mark out as distinctly as possible the squares and patterns into which it is divided, and the sinking of some panels below the others allows the same pattern to be used for borders and grounds with very varied effect. The reds are rather crimson in tone, and the blues very dark. The plaster enrichments on the walls seemed, as far as I could make out, to have been originally left white, with the square edges of the plaster painted red; but I cannot speak quite positively on this point.

A room in a garden behind the house No. 6, in the Calle la Plata, is an almost equally good example, though on a smaller scale, and with a flat ceiling. The great entrance archway in the middle of one side is fringed with a crowd of small cusps, but otherwise it is treated very much in the same way as the door in the Casa de Mesa. The cornice here also is very deep, and the band of plaster enrichment below it is filled with Gothic geometrical tracery patterns. The ceiling is particularly good, being diapered at regular intervals with figures formed by two squares set across each other, with an octagonal cell sunk in the centre of each. This room is about 36 ft. long by 11 ft. 8 in. wide, and 11 ft. 5 in. high to the band below the cornice, and a little over 16 ft. in total height.

The “Taller del Moro,” so called because it was turned into a workshop for the cathedral, and is in the Calle del Moro, is a more important work, consisting of three apartments, lavishly decorated. Don Patricio de la Escosura, in the letterpress to ‘EspaÑa Artistica y Monumental,’ considers the date of this building to be between the ninth and tenth centuries;[218] but I see no reason whatever for believing that its plaster decorations are earlier than 1350, or thereabouts.

The list which I have already given of Moorish works will show how many I have to leave undescribed; but I had not time to see all, and it is not worth while to describe with any more detail those that I did manage to see, for they are all extremely similar in the character of their decorations.

The work of the same kind in the churches of Toledo is of more interest, because here it is of that partly Moorish and partly Christian character, which shows that the Mahomedan architects, to whom no doubt we owe most of it, wrought under the direction to a considerable extent of their Christian masters, and in some respects with very happy results. In most of the general views of Toledo, some steeples which are attached to churches of this class are to be seen, and they give much of its character to the city. I saw six of these, namely, those of San TomÉ, San Miguel, San Pedro Martyr, Sta. Leocadia, San Roman, and La Concepcion; whilst among the churches in the same style are parts of Sta. Isabel, San Eugenio, San BartolomÉ, Sta. Ursula, Sta. FÉ, Santiago, and San Vicente.

The whole of these works are very similar in their general character, being built rather roughly of brick, with considerable use of cusped arcades in a succession of orders one over the other, the churches generally being finished with apses at the east end, and the towers being built without buttresses, and roofed with tiled roofs of moderate pitch.

The steeple of San Roman is the finest example of its class to be seen here. For half its height it is perfectly plain, built of rough stone, with occasional courses of brick, and quoined with brick. The string-courses are all of brick, unmoulded. The character of the three upper stages will be best understood by the illustration which I give. The cusped arch of the lower of these stages is certainly very pretty, but the common form of trefoiled Moorish arch enclosed within it seems to me to be the most frightful of all possible forms. It is neither graceful in itself, nor does it convey the idea of repose or strength; and it is so completely non-constructional, that the lower portion of the apparent arch is never built as an arch, but always with horizontal courses. In the belfry stage the bold variation of the openings is worthy of notice; and throughout the whole the utmost praise is due to the architect who, with none but the commonest materials, and at the least possible expense in every way, has, nevertheless, left us a work much more worthy of critical examination than most of the costly works in brick erected by ourselves at the present day. It is amazing how much force is given by the abandonment of mouldings and chamfers, and the trust in broad, bold, square soffeits to all the openings. I must not omit to mention that the small red shafts in the arcade below the belfry seem to be made of terracotta.

San Roman. Toledo.
San Roman. Toledo.

The construction of the steeple is very peculiar. In the lowest stage it is divided by two arches springing from a central pier, and the two compartments thus formed are roofed with waggon-vaults. In the next stage the central pier is carried up, and has four arches springing from it to the walls. The four spaces left between these arches are vaulted with barrel-vaults at right angles to each other. The steps of the ascent to this tower are carried on arches against the side walls, with occasional openings in the vaults when necessary for passing.

San Roman has a nave and aisles, with arcades of two arches between them; a chancel, mainly of Renaissance style, covered with a dome, but with some late Gothic groining to its apse; and a south chancel aisle ending without an apse. The tower is on the north side of the chancel. The whole church is plastered and whitewashed most painfully, but still retains one or two interesting features. The footpace in front of the altar has a good pavement of large plain red tiles, laid diagonally, with small encaustic blue and white glazed tiles at intervals. The whole pavement is divided into a number of strips by rectangular bands of blue stone. The altar at the east end of the south choir aisle also deserves a note, being built with a solid black stone front, carved in imitation of embroidery and fringes, with an inscription on the superfrontal, and a shield suspended in the centre of the frontal. This strange device for economizing altar vestments was not common, I think, here, but several examples remain in the new cathedral at Salamanca. The reredos over this altar has a very sweet painting of the Last Supper, the figure of our Lord being much raised above those of the apostles, and the table at which He sits being polygonal.

Santa Magdalena. Toledo.
Santa Magdalena. Toledo.

Sta. Magdalena has a smaller and simpler tower of the same class; it is perfectly plain below the belfry stage, which has two windows in each face. The bells hang here, as is so often the case in Southern buildings, in the window; and in all these buildings, as in most other old examples of brickwork, the putlog-holds (or holes for the insertion of the scaffold-poles) are left open. The bricks, too, are used very roughly and picturesquely with a very thick mortar-joint, and the consequence is that every part of this work has a value in texture and light and shade undreamt of by those who have never seen anything but our own smooth, smart, and spiritless modern brick walls, built with bad bricks and no mortar.[219]

The steeple of San TomÉ is so absolutely identical in its details—save that its shafts of glazed earthenware are alternately green and yellow—with that of San Roman, that it is unnecessary to describe it.[220]

San Pedro Martyr has a steeple which is much wider on one side than on the other, but is otherwise similar to that of San Roman in its general design. San Miguel, and Sta. Leocadia, and La Concepcion, have steeples more like that of La Magdalena, the towers being small, and with only one arcaded stage below the belfry. The masonry and brickwork is the same in all these examples, but their scale differs considerably, the steeple of San Roman being by far the largest and loftiest, that of San TomÉ the next, and the others a good deal smaller.

All these steeples seem to me to illustrate not only the proper use of brick, already mentioned, but also the great difference between old and new works in the degree of simplicity and amount of cost with which their authors appear to be satisfied. It is seldom, indeed, at the present day, that we see a steeple erected which has not cost twice as much, in proportion to its size and solidity, as either of these old Toledan examples; and it is to be feared that few of us now have the courage to trust entirely in the virtue of doing only what the money given to us to spend will properly allow, without raising that silly and too-frequently-heard wail about our work having been spoilt for want of money, which no medieval work, however poor, ever was!

I have been unable to satisfy myself, by any documentary evidence, as to the age of these buildings. There is some record of extensive works in the church of San TomÉ, in the beginning of the fourteenth century,[221] but, as we see that the church has since been paganized without damage to the town, it is possible that they may also have escaped the previous works. On the other hand, the king Don Alonso VIII. is said to have been proclaimed from the steeple window of San Roman, in 1166; and, looking to the character of the Puerta Visagra—an undoubted work of the commencement of the twelfth century—I do not know whether we should be justified in refusing to give the steeple of San Roman the date claimed for it, though my impression when I was looking at it, without consulting any authorities, was, that this work was none of it older than the end of the thirteenth century. The first impressions of an English eye in looking at this Moorish work are not, however, much to be depended on, the profusion of cusped arches, in which the Moorish architects so early indulged, always giving their work a rather late effect.

Among the churches of Moresque character that I saw, I may specially mention those of Santiago and Sta. Leocadia. The former appeared to me to be a work mainly of the fourteenth century. It is a parallel-triapsidal church, and has some old brick arcading on the exterior of the chancel aisle, but is generally so bedaubed with plaster and whitewash as to be uninteresting. It is said to have an artesinado ceiling, but I do not recollect this, and I believe it has a plaster ceiling below the old one. The pulpit is a rather striking work of that mixed Moorish and Gothic detail which prevailed in the fifteenth century. One fact I noticed here, and again at Valencia Cathedral, was, that the pulpit had no door, and the only access seemed to be over the side, by aid of a ladder! When pulpits were erected, it is fair to suppose that they were meant to be used; but in the Spain of the present day it is, perhaps, not of much consequence if they are unusable, as sermons do not seem to be very much in vogue.

Of the other churches in the city Sta. Isabel has a polygonal apse, with each side arcaded with a Moorish trefoil arch. San Eugenio has a similar apse, with a second stage, with multifoil arcading all along it; and San BartolomÉ has three of these cusped and arcaded stages in its apse. Sta. Ursula has a stone apse, circular in plan, coursed with brick, and pierced with three Moorish windows. La Concepcion has a polygonal apse of rude stonework below, and is coursed with bricks from mid-height upwards, with three Moresque windows set within square recessed panels; whilst Sta. FÉ presents the unusual feature of buttresses to the apse, and has an interlacing arcade below the eaves, and long lancet windows set within Moresque cusped panels. Sta. Leocadia (commonly called Cristo de la Vega), just outside the city, and in the valley below its walls, also retains the apse of its church, erected on a site which is said to have been first built upon as early as the fourth century. This is entirely covered with arcading from the ground to the eaves, arranged in three equal orders, the lower cusped, the next having the common Moorish trefoil, and the upper being round-arched. Some of the panels of these arcades are pierced for light. The existing building is probably in no part earlier than the twelfth century; it consists of a small modern nave, a sanctuary of two bays with round transverse arches, and cusped Moresque arches in the side walls. The apse at the east end is roofed with a semi-dome. At the west end is a small modern cemetery, full of gravestones, inscribed at least as fully, fondly, and foolishly, as those we indulge in in our own cemeteries.

In addition to these more important works there are, in the cathedral, a door leading into the chapter-room, and a recessed arch in one of the chapels on the south side of the nave, executed by Moorish artists probably in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. It has been absurdly enough suggested that these are parts of the ancient mosque which stood on the same site; but there is no ground whatever for the idea, the work being evidently of much later date, and it being at the time a common fashion to introduce some work of this kind into buildings which otherwise are purely Gothic.

The last head under which I have to describe Moorish work, is, perhaps, also the most interesting. The walls, gateways, and bridges of Toledo are, I think, the finest I have anywhere seen; in part, at least, of extreme age, very perfectly preserved, and on a grand scale. There is a double line of wall on the unprotected side of the city towards the Vega, the inner line said to be the work of the Visigoths, before the Moorish conquest, in 711,[222] and the outer built in 1109, by Alonso VI. Both walls seem to go from the Bridge of Alcantara on one side of the city, to the Bridge of St. Martin on the other. Outside the wall the hills and walls slope down rapidly to the valley; whilst within them the uneven surface is covered thickly with houses everywhere, until the Tagus, winding round three parts of the city in its deep, savage, and solitary defile—a solitariness all the more impressive from being so near to the busy hive of men—encloses it, and makes defensive erections almost unnecessary.

Puerta del Sol. Toledo.
Puerta del Sol. Toledo.

I have already given some account of the Bridge of Alcantara.[223] It is of two lofty arches, with a bold projecting pier between them. Here is one of the best points of view of the two lines of wall, which are broken constantly by round or square projecting towers, and ascend and descend in the most picturesque fashion, to suit the rugged inequality of the rocks on which they are built. I know no view more picturesque and magnificent. The first gateway reached is the Puerta del Sol, which is so admirable an example of the picturesqueness of which the style is capable, that I cannot resist giving an illustration of it. It is, indeed, not only picturesque, but in all respects a dignified and noble work of art. The variety of arches, one behind the other, which is seen here, was a very favourite device with the Moorish architects. Here, I think, there are four, two pointed and two round, but all horseshoe in their outline. The outer gateway on the old Bridge of St. Martin has five such arches, two of them being round and one pointed horseshoe, one a plain round, and one a plain pointed arch. In the Puerta del Sol the intersecting arcades in brickwork over the arch, and the projecting turrets on a level with them, are extremely picturesque. The materials used are wrought stone, rough walling stones, and brick. The battlements are of a type which was repeated by the Christians in most parts of Spain, but was, no doubt, derived first of all from the Moors. The situation of the gateway is charming; with due regard to military requirements it turns its side to the enemy, and is reached by a winding road, which bends round at a sharp angle just before reaching it. To the left is seen the sweet view over the Vega, watered and made green by the kind river; a view which gains immensely on one’s liking, compared, as it always is, with the dreary arid hills beyond, and with recollections of the weary waste over which so much of the traveller’s road to Toledo must needs lie. The age of this gateway is not known, but it dates probably from the end of the twelfth, or beginning of the thirteenth century. So, at least, I judge by comparing it with the next gateway, that called the Puerta de Visagra, the finest gateway in the outer wall (which was erected circa 1108-26), and which cannot, therefore, be earlier than the beginning of the twelfth century.

The design of this Puerta de Visagra is clearly due to a Moorish architect, and it is extremely interesting to find the Christian king, so soon after his conquest of the city, making use of the Moors for his work, and to find them doing their best, apparently in their capacity as builders, to second his endeavours to make the recapture of the city by the Infidels impossible. The materials of this gate are the same as those of the other, but its character is much heavier and ruder. The contrast between the grand outer arch and the extremely small inner arch is very curious; the ground has, however, risen considerably in front of it, so that its real proportions are very much concealed. The wall is carried out in advance of this gateway, and has an angle-tower, which was schemed, no doubt, to secure the proper defence of the entrance. Further along, beyond the point at which the two walls unite, we reach the Bridge of St. Martin—a noble arch of even grander scale than that of Alcantara, and, like it, guarded at either end by gateways, of which that on the further side has the remains of Moorish work in the arches which span it, and which have been already mentioned; it is finished with the Moorish battlement. This bridge has five arches, of which the largest is magnificent in scale,—no less than 140 (Spanish) feet wide by 95 high. The arches are very light and lofty, and spring from grand piers, behind which the rocky defile is seen in its greatest grandeur. It seems to have been built in 1212, and repaired, the central arch being rebuilt,[224] by Archbishop Tenorio, circa 1339.

My notice of these various works has been, as it were, only the preface to the real glory of Toledo; for interesting and unique as some of them, and strange and novel as all of them are, there is a higher value and a greater charm about the noble metropolitan church of Spain than about any of them: a charm not due only to its religious and historical associations, but resulting just as much from its own intrinsic beauty as an example of the pure vigorous Gothic of the thirteenth century, such as when I left France on my first Spanish journey I supposed I should not see again till my eyes rested once more on Chartres, Notre Dame, Paris, or Amiens! Here, however, we have a church which is the equal in some respects of any of the great French churches; and I hardly know how to express my astonishment that such a building should be so little known, and that it should have been so insufficiently if not wrongly described whenever any attempt at a description has been made by English travellers who have visited it.

The cathedral is said to have occupied the present site before the capture of the city by the Moors.[225] They converted it into a mosque, and in course of time enlarged and adorned it greatly. At the capitulation to Alonso VI., in 1085, it was agreed that the Moors should still retain it; but this agreement was respected for a few months only, when the Christians, without the consent of the king, took it forcibly from them and had it consecrated as their cathedral.[226] Of this building nothing remains. The first stone of the new cathedral was laid with great ceremony by the king Don Fernando III., assisted by the Archbishop, on the 14th of August, A.D. 1227;[227] and from that time to the end of the seventeenth century additions to and alterations of the original fabric seem to have been constantly in hand.

The cathedral is built east and west, “according to the universal tradition of the Church,” says Blas Ortiz, forgetting apparently that this is no tradition of the Roman Church. I think it is always attended to in Spain, save in cities like Barcelona, where the commercial intercourse with Italy perhaps introduced the Italian tradition. The feeling about the Orientation of churches was stronger among the English and Germans than anywhere else, and possibly the Spanish tradition dates from the time of the Visigothic kings.

It was the same king who laid the first stone of Burgos Cathedral in 1221, and it will be remembered that Maurice, the then Bishop of Burgos, is said to have been an Englishman, and had been Archdeacon of Toledo. Ferdinand’s first wife was a daughter of the Duke of Suabia, his second a Frenchwoman. The name of the architect was preserved on his epitaph, which I copy from Blas Ortiz:—

I did not see this inscription, and am unable to say, therefore, whether it is original; but I believe there is little doubt of this.[228] I should have much more doubt as to the nationality of the architect. The Spanish writers all talk of him as “Pedro Perez;” but as the Latin inscription is the only authority for his name, he may as fairly be called Pierre le Pierre, and so become a Frenchman; and I cannot help thinking that this is, on the whole, very much more likely than that he should have been a Spaniard. This, at any rate, is certain: the first architect of Toledo, whether he were French or Spanish, was thoroughly well acquainted with the best French churches, and could not otherwise have done what he did. In Spain itself there was, as I have said before, nothing to lead gradually to the full development of the pointed style. We find, on the contrary, buildings, planned evidently by foreign hands, rising suddenly, without any connexion with other buildings in their own district, and yet with most obvious features of similarity to works in other countries erected just before them. Such, I have shown, is the case with the cathedrals at Burgos, at Leon, and at Santiago, and such even more decidedly is the case here. Moreover, in Toledo, if anywhere, was such a circumstance as this to be expected. In this part of Spain there was in the thirteenth century no trained school of native artists. Even after the conquest the Moors continued, as has been said before, to act as architects for Christian buildings whether secular or ecclesiastical, and, indeed, to monopolize all the science and art of the country which they no longer ruled. In such a state of things, I can imagine nothing more natural than that, though the Toledans may have been well content to employ Mahomedan art in their ordinary works, yet, when it came to be a question of rebuilding their cathedral on a scale vaster than anything which had as yet been attempted, they would be anxious to adopt some distinctly Christian form of art; and, lacking entirely any school of their own, would be more likely to secure the services of a Frenchman than of any one else; whilst the French archbishop, who at the time occupied the see, would be of all men the least likely to sympathise with Moresque work, and the most anxious to employ a French artist. But, however this may have been, the church is thoroughly French in its ground-plan and equally French in all its details[229] for some height from the ground; and it is not until we reach the triforium of the choir that any other influence is visible; but even here the work is French work, only slightly modified by some acquaintance with Moorish art, and not to such an extent as to be recognized as Moresque anywhere else but here in the close neighbourhood of so much which suggests the probability of its being so. The whole work is, indeed, a grand protest against Mahomedan architecture, and I doubt whether any city in the middle ages can show anything so distinctly intended and so positive in its opposition to what was being done at the same time by other architects as this. It is just what we see at the present day, and we owe an incidental debt of gratitude to this old architect for showing us that in the thirteenth century, just as much as in the nineteenth, it was possible for an artist to believe in the fitness and religiousness of one style as contrasted with another, and steadily to ignore the fantastic conceits of the vernacular architecture of the day and place in favour of that which he knew to be purer and truer, more lovely and more symbolical.

From A.D. 1290, the date of the death of the first architect, to A.D. 1425, I have not met with the name of any architect of this cathedral; but from that year to the end of the last century the complete list is known and published,[230] and contains of course many well-known names.

The plan of the cathedral is set out on an enormous scale, as will be seen by the table of comparative dimensions which I give below, as well as by comparison with the other plans in this volume.[231] In width it is scarcely exceeded by any church of its age, Milan and Seville cathedrals—neither of them possessing any other great claim to respect—being, I think, the only larger churches in Christendom; and the area covered by the cloisters, chapels, and dependencies of Toledo, being on the same large scale, is of course in excess altogether of Milan, which has none. The original plan consisted of a nave with double aisles on either side, seven bays in length; transepts of the same projection as the aisles; a choir of one bay; and the chevet formed by an apse to the choir of five bays, with the double aisles continued round it, and small chapels—alternately square and circular in plan—between the buttresses in its outer wall. Two western towers were to have been erected beyond the west ends of the outer aisles;[232] and there were grand entrances in each transept, and three doorways at the west end. The great cloister on the north side, and all the chapels throughout (save two or three of the small chapels already mentioned, which still remain in the apse), are later additions. Scarcely a fragment of the lower and visible part of the exterior of the cathedral has been left untouched by the destructive hands of the architects of the last three centuries; and the consequence is, that it is after all only the interior of this noble church that is so magnificent, there being very little indeed that is either attractive or interesting on the exterior. There is absolutely no good general view to be had of it; for a network of narrow winding lanes encompasses the building on all sides, leaving no open space anywhere, save at the west end; and here the exterior has been so much altered as to deprive the view of its value. I had some difficulty in mounting to the roof, the canon in authority sternly and rudely refusing me permission; but as the sacristan considered that I had done my duty in asking, and that the canon had exceeded his in refusing, in the end he took me everywhere. We ascended by a staircase in the archbishop’s palace, which leads by a gallery thrown over the road to the upper cloister. This extends above the whole of the great cloister, and has a timber roof carried on stone shafts, which appear by their mouldings to be of the fifteenth century. This upper cloister is entirely surrounded by houses occupied, some by clergy, and some by the servants of the church, and where little choristers in red capotes and white laced albs run about playing in their spare moments. Nothing that I have met with in Spain exceeds the intolerable stench which everywhere pervades these ecclesiastical tenements! But the look-out is rather pleasant, for the cloister court is planted thickly with fine shrubs and trees which shoot up as high as the top of the walls.

Stone Roof of Outer Aisle and Chapels, Toledo.
Stone Roof of Outer Aisle and Chapels, Toledo.

The exterior of the church, seen from this point, is altogether in a great mess—no other word so well describes its state! So far as I could make it out, I think the original mode of roofing the church was as follows: the aisle next the nave was covered with a timber roof sloping down from the clerestory windows; whilst the outer aisle and the chapels beyond it were roofed with stone roofs laid to a flat pitch, and sloping down to a stone gutter between the two, which again carried the water east and west till it discharged in a pipe through each buttress. In place of this, a gabled roof now covers both aisles with a gutter against the clerestory and overhanging eaves on the outside. The main roofs were probably steep and tiled; that of the choir appears to have been carried on stone columns or piers, in front of which was the parapet, so that there was a current of air throughout. In the apse I was able to see my way a little more clearly; for here the stone roofs of the chapels and outer aisle are still perfect, and most ingeniously contrived, as the accompanying diagram will explain. Here again I was unable to find out what was the original roof of the inner aisle; but it was possibly of stone like the others, though my impression on the spot was that it must have been of wood, and covered with tiles. The diagram shows the roof over one of the circular and two of the square chapels of the apse, and the three corresponding bays of the outer choir aisle. The triangular bays and square chapels have stone roofs sloping down to a gutter between them; whilst the bay between them had a square roof sloping slightly all ways, and over the outer chapel a roof sloping back to the same gutter. The water is all carried away by stone channel-drains to the outside of the walls. The whole of this contrivance is now obscured by an extraordinary jumble of tiled roofs one over the other, added, I suppose, from time to time as the original roof required repair.[233] There are double flying-buttresses wherever there are transverse arches in the groining. These were altered in the fifteenth century by the addition of a fringe of cusping on the edge of their copings, which of course spoilt their effect, though this is not of much consequence now, as they are never seen. The nave also has double flying-buttresses; and its clerestory and triforium were thrown into one, and large windows inserted, in the fourteenth century in place of the original work. The only portion of the original external walls of the aisle that I could see was on the south side of the choir. Here in the apse chapels there are good and rather wide lancet-windows with engaged shafts in the jambs, well moulded, and labels adorned with dog-tooth. The old termination of the buttresses seems to be everywhere destroyed. The flying-buttresses in the apse were finely managed. Owing to the arrangement of the plan two flying-buttresses support each of the main piers, and they are double in height. Their arches are moulded with a very bold roll-moulding, with a smaller one on either side, and the piers which receive them are faced with coupled shafts with carved capitals. The arrangement of the buttresses follows exactly (and of necessity) the planning of the principal transverse arches of the groining. From each angle of the apse there are two flying-buttresses; these each abut against a pinnacle, which is again supported by two diverging flying-buttresses. It might be expected that the effect would be confused, as it is in the somewhat similar plan of the chevet of Le Mans; but here the buttresses and pinnacles seem to have been less prominent, and therefore to have interfered less with the general outline of the church which they support. The pinnacles to the buttresses of the central apse are tolerably perfect, but they appear to be not earlier than the fifteenth century. Those of the intermediate aisle are all destroyed, but many of those in the outer aisle still remain. The chapel of San Ildefonso, too, beyond the chevet, retains its pinnacles and parapets; and behind these rises a flat-pitched tiled roof, which, as everywhere else throughout the cathedral, has the air of being a modern substitute for the old roof: undoubtedly the whole work wants steep roofs to make it equal in effect to the French churches from which it was derived, and in which this feature is usually so marked.

The external mouldings of the windows in this part of the church are very good, and of the best early-pointed work; among others I saw that the external label of the rose-window in the north transept is filled with quaint crockets formed of dogs’ heads projecting from the hollow member of the moulding.

All these remains of the original design of the early church can only be seen by ascending to the roofs; and as they illustrate the most interesting portion of the whole work, I have taken them first in order.

It is now time to take the rest of the fabric in hand; and for this purpose it will be necessary to confine myself henceforth almost entirely to the interior. The doorways will be mentioned further on, because they are all additions to, and not coeval with, the original fabric; and, similarly, the window-traceries—except in the case of one or two of the apse windows, and the openings of the triforium and clerestory of the choir—are none of them original.

No. 30. TOLEDO CATHEDRAL. p. 241. INTERIOR OF TRANSEPT, &c., LOOKING NORTH-WEST.
No. 30.
TOLEDO CATHEDRAL. p. 241.
INTERIOR OF TRANSEPT, &c., LOOKING NORTH-WEST.

The first view of the interior is very impressive. The entrance most used is that to which the narrow, picturesque, and steep Calle de la Chapineria leads—that of the north transept. The buildings on the east side of the cloister rise on the right hand, and chief among them the fine fifteenth-century chapel of San Pedro, which, in entire contempt of all rules as to orientation, runs north and south, and opens into the aisle of the church by a sumptuous archway. Near the end of this chapel an old and very lofty iron grille crosses the road; and passing through this, and by the group of beggars ever clustered round it, the fine fourteenth-century north doorway, rich in sculpture, is passed, and the transept is reached. The view across this, as is usually the case in Spain, is the great view of the church; for here only is there any really grand expanse of unoccupied floor, and without such a space real magnificence of effect can never be secured. The view hence into the double aisles round the choir, across the gorgeously decorated Capilla mayor, and down the side aisles of the nave, is truly noble, and open, I think, to but one criticism, viz., that it is somewhat wanting in height. Judged by English examples, its height is unusually great; but all the other dimensions are so enormous that one requires more than ordinary height, and the vast size of the columns throughout the church, as well as the fact that most of the perspectives are those of the side aisles, which are of necessity low, gives perhaps an impression of lowness to the whole which is certainly not justified by the measurement in feet and inches of the central vault.

If my readers will refer to the engraving of the ground-plan, they will be struck by the extreme simplicity and uniformity of the original outline of the cathedral, and the entire absence of all excrescences, whether of transepts or chapels. In this respect it is not a little like some of the finest French examples, such as Notre Dame, Paris, and Bourges, and extremely unlike the ordinary early Spanish plan, in which the transepts, the lantern, and the three eastern apses, are always distinctly and emphatically marked. Here the excrescences are all later additions. The chapels of the chevet were very small, and almost contained within the semi-circle which forms its outline. There is no lantern, and the transepts are hardly recognized on the ground-plan. The aim of the great French architects of the period was to reduce their work to an almost classic simplicity and uniformity; and their ambition was evidently shared by the architect who presided over the erection of this Cathedral at Toledo.

Let us now examine with some minuteness the arrangement of the plan of the chevet. This is rightly the first point to be considered; for this is always the keynote, so to speak, of the whole scheme of such a church; and it is here that the surest evidence is afforded of what I believe to be the foreign origin of the design; for not even in details is there anything by which it is more easy in some cases to trace the origin of an old church than in the general scheme of the ground-plan; and in large churches the plan of the chevet is that which regulates every other part. To this part therefore I must now address myself.

Diagrams of Vaulting.
Diagrams of Vaulting.

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the ingenuity of the greatest French architects—the greatest school perhaps the world has ever seen—was taxed to the utmost to devise means for obviating all the difficulties attendant on the plan of an apse with an aisle or aisles continued round it.[234] The arrangement of the central vault is easy enough; but the great flying-buttresses which support this have to be carried in part on the columns which form the divisions of the aisles surrounding the apse. From the centre of the apse, therefore, a number of lines drawn through its angles represent the lines of the flying-buttresses, and mark the position for the outer orders of columns. These lines diverge so rapidly from each other that the compartments enclosed within them become extremely irregular in their outline; and this renders it very difficult to cover them with vaults which shall look thoroughly well, and in which the arched ribs shall not be crippled or irregular in their lines. The French architects had from the first realized the necessity for making the diagonal vaulting rib a semi-circle. They saw that the line thus obtained was a continuous line of the utmost value, leading the eye on in succession from one bay of vaulting to another without any interruption—gradually from one end of the vastest vault to the other. Whenever this form is given up the effect of vaulting is half destroyed; and it matters not whether we turn to the domical pointed vaults of the Angevine architects, or the vaults of some of our own cathedrals, with their pointed diagonal ribs, we shall at once see how inferior they are to the old French mode.[235] In these unequal vaulting bays in the apse it was impossible to make a straight diagonal rib a semi-circle, for then (I) the highest part of the vault would be higher than the intersection of the ribs, and the connexion of the intersection with the highest part of the transverse arch would be extremely bad, and all but unmanageable. To get over this difficulty, we find the architect of Bourges (A.D. 1230) planning his diagonal ribs on a curve (II); whilst at Chartres (A.D. 1220) the architect planned this rib on a broken line (III). The architect of the choir of Le Mans (just later in date than Chartres—circa A.D. 1230) improved enormously upon what his brethren had done by the introduction of a triangular compartment in the outer aisle, which enabled him to make the vaulting bays between them nearly square, and to obtain a light between each of the chapels of the apse, which vastly increased its beauty. The architect of Bourges had indeed introduced triangular-vaulting compartments in his outer aisle, but so clumsily, that he had increased rather than diminished the difficulty with which he was dealing; and the earlier architect of Notre Dame, Paris (A.D. 1170), had ingeniously planned almost all the vaults of his apse in triangular compartments, with great gain over the systems of those who had preceded him; but his plan had the grave defect of placing a column behind the eastern central arch of the apse, and so stopping all view eastward from the choir. It remained for the architect of Toledo Cathedral to resolve all these difficulties by a disposition of his columns so ingenious and so admirable as to be certainly beyond all praise. His plan looks indeed simple and very obvious; yet how many attempts had been made in vain to accomplish what he did; and how completely has he not overcome all his contemporaries! I hold it to be in the highest degree improbable that anyone could have devised this improvement who had not been actively engaged in the study of the French Cathedrals.[236] No churches exist in Spain which in the least degree lead up to the solution of the problems involved. And indeed almost at the same time that this church was commenced, we have Spaniards at work at other churches, as, e.g., at LÉrida and Tarragona, in an entirely different and in a much more primitive style. The architect therefore—if he was a Spaniard—was one who had spent much time upon French buildings; but was much more probably a Frenchman, who also, unless I am mistaken, brought with him some of his countrymen to direct the sculpture of the capitals, &c., which, as well as the mouldings, are thoroughly good, pure examples of French Gothic of the date.

The engraving of the plan will best explain the beauty of the arrangement of the chevet.[237] There are twice as many columns between the aisles as there are round the central apse, and the points of support in the outer wall are again double the number of the columns between the aisles. The alternate bays throughout are thus roofed with triangular compartments, and the remaining bays are, as nearly as possible, perfectly rectangular, whilst the vista from west to east is perfectly preserved, and the distance from centre to centre of the outer row of columns is, as nearly as possible, the same as that of the inner order. The outer wall of the aisle was occupied alternately by small square chapels opposite the triangular vaulting compartments, and circular chapels opposite the others. Very few of these remain unaltered; but the sketch and plan which I give will show what their character was. The analogy of the small chapels in the chevets of Paris, Bourges, and Chartres, would seem to prove that originally there was no larger chapel at the east end, and the similar arrangement of the vaulting compartments throughout seems to confirm this view.

In the eastern portion of the church a good deal of dog-tooth enrichment is introduced. I have noticed the same fact in the account of Burgos Cathedral, and suggested that it was imported there from Anjou. Here, however, the architect clearly knew not much, if anything, of Angevine buildings, and probably borrowed the dog-tooth from Burgos, though of the other peculiarities of detail in that church I see no trace.

Chapels of the Chevet. Toledo Cathedral.
Chapels of the Chevet. Toledo Cathedral.

The planning of the whole church was uniform throughout. The columns are all circular, surrounded by engaged shafts, which, in the great piers in the transept, are trefoiled in section. There do not appear to have been chapels anywhere in the side walls of the nave, save on the south side of the south aisle, where the chapel of Sta. Lucia appears to be of the same age as the church, and is recorded to have been founded by Archbishop Rodrigo, with an endowment for two chaplains to say masses for the soul of Alonso VI.[238] This chapel has triple groining-shafts in the angles, a good triplet, with dog-tooth and engaged jamb-shafts, in the south wall, and a window of two lancets, with a circle in the head, in the east wall. On the west side of this chapel is an extremely rich recessed arch in stucco, of late Moorish work—a curious contrast to the fine pointed work of the chapel.

No. 31. TOLEDO CATHEDRAL p. 246. INTERIOR OF NORTH AISLE OF CHOIR
No. 31.
TOLEDO CATHEDRAL p. 246.
INTERIOR OF NORTH AISLE OF CHOIR

The original scheme of the church is only to be seen now in the choir and its aisles. These are arranged in three gradations of height,—the choir being upwards of a hundred feet, the aisle round it about sixty feet, and the outer aisle about thirty-five feet[239] in height. The outer wall of the aisle is pierced with arches for the small chapels between the buttresses, the design and planning of which are shown clearly in the illustration which I give. The intermediate aisle has in its outer wall a triforium, formed by an arcade of cusped arches; and above this, quite close to the point of the vault, a rose window in each bay. It is in this triforium that the first evidence of any knowledge on the part of the architect of Moorish architecture strikes the eye. The cusping of the arcade is not enclosed within an arch, and takes a distinctly horseshoe outline, the lowest cusp near to the cap spreading inwards at the base. Now, it would be impossible to imagine any circumstance which could afford better evidence of the foreign origin of the first design than this slight concession to the customs of the place in a slightly later portion of the works. An architect who came from France, bent on designing nothing but a French church, would be very likely, after a few years’ residence in Toledo, somewhat to change in his views, and to attempt something in which the Moorish work, which he was in the habit of seeing, would have its influence. The detail of this triforium is notwithstanding all pure and good; the foliage of the capitals is partly conventional, and, in part, a stiff imitation of natural foliage, somewhat after the fashion of the work in the Chapter-house at Southwell; the abaci are all square; there is a profusion of nail-head used in the labels; and well-carved heads are placed in each of the spandrels of the arcade. The circular windows above the triforium are filled in with cusping of various patterns. The main arches of the innermost arcade (between the choir and its aisle) are, of course, much higher than the others. The space above them is occupied by an arcaded triforium, reaching to the springing of the main vault. This arcade consists of a series of trefoil-headed arches on detached shafts, with sculptured figures, more than life-size, standing in each division; in the spandrels above the arches are heads looking out from moulded circular openings, and above these again, small pointed arches are pierced, which have labels enriched with the nail-head ornament. The effect of the whole of this upper part of the design is unlike that of northern work, though the detail is all pure and good. The clerestory occupies the height of the vault, and consists of a row of lancets (there are five in the widest bay, and three in each of the five bays of the apse) rising gradually to the centre, with a small circular opening above them. The vaulting-ribs in the central division of the apse are chevroned, and, as will be seen on the plan, increased in number, this being the only portion of the early work in which any, beyond transverse and diagonal ribs, are introduced. There is a weakness and want of purpose about the treatment of this highest portion of the wall that seems to make it probable that the work, when it reached this height, had passed out of the hands of the original architect. It is strange that, so far as I have been able to learn, no record exists of the date of the consecration of the church; so that it is quite impossible to give, with certainty, the date at which any part of it had been finished and covered in. In the nave the original design (if it was ever completed) has been altered. There is now no trace of the original clerestory and triforium which are still seen in the choir; and in their place the outer aisle has fourteenth-century windows of six lights, with geometrical tracery, and the clerestory of the nave and transepts great windows, also of six lights, with very elaborate traceries. They have transomes (which in some degree preserve the recollection of the old structural divisions) at the level of the springing of the groining. The groining throughout the greater part of the church seems to be of the original thirteenth-century work, with ribs finely moulded, and vaulting cells slightly domical in section. The capitals of the columns are all set in the direction of the arches and ribs they carry, and their abaci and bases are all square in plan.

The great rose-window of the north transept, though later, is not much more so than the work I have been describing. It has an outer ring of twelve cusped circles, six within these, and one in the centre. The whole is filled with old glass. The centre circle has the Crucifixion; the six circles round it St. Mary, St. John, and four Angels; and the outer circles figures of the twelve greater prophets, pointing towards our Lord. The ground of the centre circles within the cusps is a light pure blue, and the cusps are filled with conventional foliage. The whole is fastened to rings of iron, in the usual way, and is the best example of stained glass now remaining in the cathedral.

The works undertaken here in the fourteenth century were very considerable. The north doorway, the doorway of St. Catherine, leading from the cloisters; the clerestory in the nave and nave-aisles and transepts, and probably the whole of the four western bays of the nave; the screens round the Coro, the chapel of San Ildefonso, and some other portions, were all of this period; and the dates of many of them being certain, they give admirable opportunities for the study of the detail of the Spanish middle-pointed style. The north door has three statues in each jamb, and a central figure of the Blessed Virgin and our Lord. The arch has in its three orders different orders of angels, and the tympanum is divided into four spaces by horizontal divisions, containing the following subjects: (1) The Annunciation, the Salutation, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, the Massacre of the Innocents; (2) the Marriage at Cana, the Presentation, the Dispute with the Doctors, the Flight into Egypt; (3) the Marriage at Cana continued all across; and (4) the Death of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The whole is good work of the end of the fourteenth century. The doorway of St. Catherine, which opens into the cloister, is mainly remarkable for its elaborate mouldings, but has a central figure of the saint and two others standing on capitals, and under canopies, on either side of the doorway. The arch is crocketed and covered with a profusion of small carving, and with coats-of-arms of Castile and Leon. The label is crocketed, and between the doorway and the vault of the cloister a rose window and two windows of two lights each are picturesquely grouped. The other great doorways are almost all modernized and uninteresting.

The screen round the Coro is a feature of as great interest as any in the church. It encloses the whole of the two eastern bays of the nave; and, as far as I could judge by the way in which it finishes against the transept column, where the old work ends abruptly, and is completed with a later carving of lions and castles, it seems possible that it crossed the transepts and completely shut them out from the choir. There is, however, no certain evidence of this; and the main fact proved, is that from the very first the choir-stalls were locally in the nave. In a plan such as this, with an extremely short choir, founded evidently, like so many of the Spanish churches, on the plan of the great Abbey of Citeaux, it must, from the first, have been intended that this should be the arrangement; but, as I have observed before, the present use of the choir and the old use are unlike in the only point in which the Spanish plan is distinctly national. For, in the western face of this old screen, the doorway into the choir remains; and this has since been blocked up, in order to put the archbishop’s throne in the centre of the west end of the Coro, the only access to which is now from the transept crossing through the eastern Reja or screen. The screen-work is continued on round the apse, but much mutilated by Berruguetesque and other alterations, the work of which at the east, behind the altar, is the worst in the world—el trasparente—where angels, clouds, and rays of light, all painfully executed in marble, are lighted by a big hole, wickedly pierced right through the old thirteenth-century vault!

The nave-screen consists of an arcade filled with rich tracery, and carried upon marble and jasper shafts (said, but on what authority I know not,[240] to have come from the seventh-century Basilica of Sta. Leocadia). The wall above the capitals is divided by pinnacles; between each of which is a niche containing a subject sculptured in high relief under a canopy. The detail of the whole is of the richest kind of middle-pointed, and altogether very similar in the amount of work and delicacy of design to the arcades round some of the richest of our own buildings, as, for instance, round the Chapter-house at Ely. The sculptures are many of them admirable, full of the natural incidents so loved by, and the naÏvetÉ so characteristic of, the best mediÆval sculptors of their age. I give a complete list of these subjects in the Appendix, and strongly recommend careful study of them to those who visit Toledo. I feel the more bound to do this, because in all the Spanish Guide-books they will find them spoken of with the utmost contempt, whilst all the praise is reserved for a vile gilt creation by Berruguete, which has taken the place of the three central western subjects over the choir-door, and for two statues of Innocence and Sin, which seem to me to be innocent of art, and to sin against nature!

In addition to the western doorway there were four others in these screens, two on the north and two on the south; these opened into small chapels contrived in the space left between the screen just described, outside the columns, and the wooden screen inside the columns and behind the choir-stalls.

The screen on the south side of the apse—the remains of what no doubt once went all round it—is even more elaborate than that round the Coro: it is pierced below, so that the altar may be seen, and has large statues of saints above, and an open-gabled parapet, finished with angels everywhere, and truly a most gorgeous work! This is in the south-west arch of the choir only, a late flamboyant screen having been added afterwards beyond it to the east, whilst on the north side a Berruguetesque monument has taken the place of the old screen.

The last great middle-pointed feature is the chapel of San Ildefonso, at the extreme east end of the church. It is a most elaborate work, groined with an eight-sided vault; its windows and arches full of rich mouldings, and enriched by ball flowers and some of the other devices commonly seen in our own work of the same age. Each side of this chapel had an elaborate tomb with an arched recess in the wall over it, surmounted by a gabled canopy between pinnacles, and under which sculptured subjects are introduced.[241] These tombs were evidently all erected at the same time, and help to make the tout ensemble of the chapel very rich and striking. A string-course is carried round above them; and above this there are large traceried windows, alternately of three and four lights. The vaulting-ribs are treated in an unusual and rather effective way, being fringed with a series of cusps on their under side, which give great richness to the general effect. There are small triangular vaulting compartments in the two western angles, which are necessary in order to bring the main vault to a true octagon in plan.

The works added in the fifteenth century were both numerous and important. The cloister and chapel of San Blas, on its north side, are the first in importance. They owe their origin, indeed, to the previous century, the first stone having been laid on the 14th of August, A.D. 1389, by Archbishop Tenorio,[242] Rodrigo Alfonso being the master of the works. In the chapel is a fine monument of the Archbishop; and in the cloister walls a door which, in the capricious cusping and crocketing of its traceried work, illustrates the extreme into which the Spanish architects of this age ran in their elaboration of detail and affectation of novelty. The traceries of the whole of the windows of the cloister are destroyed, but the groining remains, and the proportions and scale of the whole work are both very fine.

The west front was commenced in A.D. 1418, and the north-west tower in A.D. 1425, one Alvar Gomez being the architect employed upon them; and in A.D. 1479 the upper part of the west front was completed; but the whole of this was again repaired and altered in A.D. 1777, so that now it presents little if anything really worthy of notice. The circular west window seems to be of the earlier half of the fourteenth century, and the later works were carried out in front of it. Between this window and the gable of the great doorway is an enormous sculpture of the Last Supper: the table extends from buttress to buttress; and our Lord and the Apostles sit each in a great niche. The steeple is certainly rather imposing in outline: a simple square tower at the base, and for some 170 feet from the ground, it is then changed to an octagon with bold turrets and pinnacles; and above this is a low spire, chiefly to be noticed for the three rows of metal rays which project from its sides. The upper part of the steeple was built when Alonso Covarrubias was the master of the works, but rebuilt after a fire in A.D. 1660.[243]

The chapel of Santiago, to the north-east of the chevet, was another great work of this period. It is similar in plan to that of San Ildefonso, by the side of which it is built, and has in its centre a grand high tomb, carrying recumbent effigies of the Constable D. Alvaro de Luna and his wife DoÑa Juana.[244] Each of the tombs has life-size kneeling figures, one at each angle, looking towards the tomb, and angels holding coats of arms—that most unangelic of operations, as it always seems to me—in panels on the sides. Here, as in the chapel of San Ildefonso, the sides of the chapel were each provided with a great canopied tomb, whilst on one side a mediÆval carved and painted wooden Retablo to an altar conceals the original altar arrangement. The exterior of this chapel is finished with a battlement and circular overhanging turrets at the angles; above which is a tiled roof of flat pitch. Don Alvaro de Luna died in A.D. 1453, and his wife in A.D. 1448; and the chapel bears evidence in the “perpendicular” character of its panelling, arcading, and crocketing, of the poverty of the age in the matter of design. At this period, indeed, the designers were sculptors rather than architects, and thought of little but the display of their own manual dexterity.

I have already described the external screens of the Coro. Its internal fittings must not be forgotten, being very full of interest, and of much magnificence. The lower range of stalls all round (fifty in number) are the work of Maestro Rodrigo, circa A.D. 1495; and the upper range were executed, half by Berruguete, and half by Felipe de BorgoÑa, in A.D. 1543.[245] The old stall ends are picturesque in outline, very large, and covered with tracery, panels, and carvings, with monkeys and other animals sitting on them. The upper range of stalls is raised by four steps, so that between the elbows of the lower stalls and the desk above them are spaces which are filled in with a magnificent series of bas-reliefs illustrating the various incidents of the conquest of Granada. They were executed whilst all the subjects depicted in them must have been fresh in the minds of the people; and they are full of picturesque vigour and character. The names of the fortresses are often inscribed upon the walls: in some we have the siege, in others the surrender of the keys, and in others the Catholic monarchs, accompanied by Cardinal Ximenes, riding in, in triumph, through the gates. It may be a fair complaint that the subjects are rather too much alike; but in subjects all of which were so similar in their story, it was, of course, difficult to avoid this. Their effect is in marked contrast to the heavy dull Paganism of the sculptures by Berruguete, whose work took the place, no doubt, of some more ancient stalls. The canopies in his work rest on columns of jasper, a material which seems to be very abundant here.

In the centre of the Coro stands the great Eagle, a magnificent work in brass. The enormous bird, with outstretched wings, is fighting a dragon which struggles between its feet: its eyes are large red stones, and it stands upon a canopied, buttressed, and pinnacled pedestal, crowded with statues, among which are those of the twelve apostles. Six lions couchant carry the whole on their backs, and serve to complete the family likeness to other brass eagles, of which, however, this is, I think, by far the most grandiose I have ever seen.

Here as elsewhere throughout Spain the iron and brass screens are very numerous. The two Rejas, east of the Coro and west of the Capilla mayor, were finished in A.D. 1548. There is little to admire in their detail; but they are massive and bold pieces of metal-work, for the dignified simplicity of which there is much, no doubt, to be said, when we think of the terribly over-ornamented work—semi-renaissance in its feeling—which is so unfortunately fashionable among some of our own church restorers now-a-days.[246] The great iron screen outside the north transept door is an earlier work, and fine in its way. The detail of this is very much like the screens already described at Palencia.

There are also many Retablos, and some of them ancient. That behind the high altar is a grand work, of so great height that it rises quite from the floor to the roof, being filled with subjects from our Lord’s life, arranged with the most complete disregard to their chronology, and, so far as I could see, without any other better system of arrangement. The whole, however, is most effective, the subjects being richly painted and gilded, and the whole of the canopies and niches covered with gold, so that the effect is one of extreme richness and perfect quietness combined, the usual result of the ample use of gold. Many other small Retablos exist elsewhere, and many have been destroyed.[247]

The difficulty in the way of seeing to sketch anything inside the cathedral is as great as it usually is in Spain, but not at all in consequence of the absence of windows; for, as will have been seen from my description, the windows are both many and large: all of them, however, are filled with stained glass, and hence, in addition to the wonderful charm of contrasted lights and shades, which we have here in marvellous perfection, we have also the charm of seeing none but coloured rays of light where any fall through the windows on the floor or walls.

Most of the glass appeared to me to be of the fifteenth century, and later. The rose of the north transept, which is earlier, has already been described; and the glass in the eastern windows of the transept clerestory (single figures under canopies) looked as if it were of the same date, or at any rate earlier than A.D. 1350. The rest of the church is glazed rather uniformly with cinquecento glass of extreme brilliancy and unusual depth of colour, the upper windows having generally single figures, the others subjects in medallions. I had not time to make out the scheme of their arrangement; but I observed that the medallions of the clerestory of the intermediate aisle began at the west end, with the Expulsion from Paradise, and went on with subjects from the Old Testament.

Of colour on the walls, little, alas! remains. They have been whitewashed throughout, and in the choir coarsely diapered with broad gilt masonry lines, edged with black. The internal tympanum of the south transept door has a tree of Jesse, and close to it is an enormous painting of S. Christopher; and the cloister walls had remains of paintings which used to be attributed (but without the slightest foundation, I believe) to Giotto, but these have now given way to new wall-paintings of poor design and no value of any kind.

The stateliness of the services here answers in some degree to the grandeur of the fabric in which they are celebrated. At eight o’clock every morning there appears to be mass at the high altar, at which the Epistle and Gospel are read from ambons in the screen in front of it, the gospeller having two lighted candles; whilst the silvery-sounding wheels of bells are rung with all their force at the elevation of the Host, in place of the single tinkling bell to which our ears are so used on the Continent.[248] The Revolution in Spain, among other odd things, has enabled the clergy here to sing the Lauds at about four o’clock in the afternoon instead of at the right time. The service at the Mozarabic Chapel at the west end of the aisle goes on at the same time as that in the Coro, and anything more puzzling than the two organs and two choirs singing as it were against each other can scarcely be conceived. There are neither seats nor chairs for the people; the worshippers, in so vast a place, seem to be few, though no doubt we should count them as many in one of our English cathedrals. I always wish, when I see a church so used, that we could revive the same custom here, and let a fair proportion, at any rate, of the people stand and kneel at large on the floor. Our chairs, benches, and pews are at least as often a nuisance to their occupiers as the contrary; and for all parts of our services, save the sermon, all but superfluous. Some day, perhaps, when we have discovered that it is not given to every one to be a good preacher, we may separate our sermons from our other services, and may live in hopes of then seeing the floors of our churches restored to the free and common use of the people, whilst some chance will be given, at the same time, to our architects of exhibiting their powers to the greatest advantage.

It would be easy to elaborate the account which I have given of this cathedral, to very much greater length; for there are other erections in connexion with it besides all those that I have noticed, of a grand and costly kind, owing their foundation to the builders of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and everywhere affording the same exhibition of magnificence and wealth; but these works are all worthless from the point of view which I have taken for my notes of Spanish architecture, and if I were to chronicle them I should be bound to chronicle all the works of Berruguete, Herrera, and Churriguera elsewhere, for which sad task I have neither space nor inclination. I cannot, indeed, forgive these men, when I remember that to them it is due that what remained before their time of the original design of the exterior of this church was completely modernized or concealed everywhere by their additions.

The only other great Gothic work in the city, after the cathedral, seems to be the church of San Juan de los Reyes,[249] which was erected by order of Ferdinand and Isabella, in A.D. 1476, to commemorate their victory in the battle of Toro over the King of Portugal. Nothing can be much more elaborate than much of the detail of this church, yet I have seen few buildings less pleasing or harmonious. It was erected in the age of heraldic achievements, and angels with coats of arms are crowded over the walls. There is a nave of four bays, a Cimborio or raised lantern at the Crossing, roofed with an octagonal vault with groined pendentives, quasi-transepts (they are in fact mere shallow square recesses), and a very short apsidal choir of five unequal sides. The western bay of the nave has a deep groined gallery, of the same age as the church, and in which are the stalls and organs, with two small ambons in its western balustrade: chapels are formed between the nave buttresses. Other ambons are placed at some height from the floor against the north-west and south-west piers of the Cimborio. The lantern on the outside is octagonal with pinnacles at the angles and a pierced parapet.

The bald panelling of the external wall of the south transept is furnished with a ghastly kind of adornment in the chains with which Christians are said to have been confined by the Moors in Granada.

The ruling idea of the interior of this church is evidently that which, unfortunately I think, is somewhat fashionable at the present day—the bringing of the altar forward among the people without reserve or protection. The removal of the Coro to the western gallery, the shallow recess in which the altar is placed, and the broad, unbroken area of the nave, are all evidences of this, and could only have been adopted when all desire to interest the people in any but the altar services had been given up, and with it that wholesome reverence which, in earlier days, had jealously guarded, fenced around, and screened these the holiest parts of holy buildings.

A blue velvet canopy still hangs above the altar; it is a square tester, with hangings at the back and on either side. The velvet is marked with vertical lines of gold lace, and the eagle of St. John—the crest of Ferdinand and Isabella—is introduced in the embroidery.

The pulpit was against one of the piers on the south side of the nave; the door into it is now stopped up, and another pulpit has been erected below the Gospel ambon. There is a gallery corbelled out from the clerestory, in front of one of the south windows, the use of which did not seem to be at all clear, unless, indeed, it was similar in object to such an example as the minstrels’ gallery at Exeter Cathedral.

The old cloister, though falling down through neglect and bad usage, is, on the whole, the finest portion of the whole work; it is groined throughout, and covered with rich sculpture of foliage and animals, and saints in niches. It has been much damaged, mainly, I believe, by French soldiers during the war, and is now used in part as a picture gallery, and in part as a museum of antiquities. The pictures, like those in most of the inferior Spanish collections, are very sad, ghastly, and gloomy; but among the antiquities are many of value, including a good deal of Moorish work of various ages. The cloister is of two stages in height, the lower having traceried openings, the upper large open arches in each bay.

The refectory also remains, with ogee lierne ribs on its groining: over the entrance to it is a great cross, recessed within an arch, with a pelican at the top, and statues of St. Mary and St. John[250] on either side, but without the figure of our Lord.

And now I bid farewell to Toledo. Few cities that I have ever seen can compete in artistic interest with it; and none perhaps come up to it in the singular magnificence of its situation, and the endless novelty and picturesqueness of its every corner. It epitomizes the whole strange history of Spain in a manner so vivid, that he who visits its old nooks and corners carefully and thoughtfully, can work out, almost unassisted, the strange variety which that history affords. For here, Romans, Visigoths, Saracens, and again Christians, have in turn held sway, and here all have left their mark; here, moreover, the Christians, since the thirteenth century, have shown two opposite examples,—one of toleration of Jews and Moors, which it would be hard to find a parallel for among ourselves, and the other of intolerance, such as has no parallel out of Spain elsewhere in Europe.

I need hardly say that in such a city the post-Gothic builders have also left their mark. They have built many and imposing houses of various kinds, chief among which are the altered Alcazar, now destroyed and ruined, and the Convent of Sta. Cruz. But there was nothing in these works specially appropriate to the locality, and nothing, therefore, which takes them out of the position which their class holds elsewhere in Spain.

I believe that Toledo, in addition to all its other charms, is a good starting-point for visits to several of the best examples of mediÆval Castilian castles. I have not been able to afford the time necessary for this work, and was unluckily obliged, therefore, to neglect it altogether; but the Spanish castles are so important that they deserve a volume to themselves; and it is to be hoped that ere long some one will undertake the pleasant task of examining and illustrating them.

[larger view]
[largest view]
TOLEDO Ground Plan of Cathedral &c. Plate XIV. W. West, Lithr. Published by John Murray, Albemarle St. 1865.