THERE are few Spanish towns which are altogether more interesting than the now insignificant and little-known city of Gerona. It not only contains several buildings of rare architectural interest, but it has, moreover, the advantage of being picturesquely placed on the banks of the rapid river OÑa, and on the steep slope of the hills which bound it.

The Cathedral is the first object of attraction, and its history is so curious, that I need make no apology for proceeding without further preface to say the substance of what I have been able to learn about it.

There was a cathedral here at a very early period; and when Gerona was taken by the Moors, they converted it into a mosque, but, with their usual liberality, allowed the services of the Church still to be carried on in the neighbouring church of San Feliu, which for a time, accordingly, was the cathedral church. In A.D. 1015 this state of affairs had ceased, owing to the expulsion of the Moors, and the cathedral was again recovered to the use of the Church. Considerable works were at this time executed,[313] if, indeed, the cathedral was not entirely rebuilt, as the old documents declare, and the altered church was re-consecrated in A.D. 1038,[314] by the Archbishop of Narbonne, assisted by the Bishops of Vique, Urgel, Elne, Barcelona, Carcassonne, and others. In A.D. 1310 works seem to have been again in progress,[315] and in A.D. 1312 a Chapter was held, at which it was resolved to rebuild the head or chevet of the church with nine chapels,[316] for which, in A.D. 1292, Guillermo Gaufredo, the treasurer, made a bequest in favour of the work.[317] In A.D. 1325 I find that an indulgence was granted by the Bishop Petrus de Urrea in favour of donors to the work of the cathedral;[318] and the work, so far westward as the end of the choir, was probably complete before A.D. 1346, inasmuch as in this year the silver altar, with its Retablo and baldachin, were placed where they now stand.[319] We know something of the architects employed during the fourteenth century upon the works just mentioned. In 1312 the Chapter appointed the Archdeacon Ramon de Vilarico and the Canon Arnaldo de Montredon to be the obreros or general clerical superintendents of the progress of the works. In A.D. 1316, or, according to some authorities, in February, 1320, an architect—Enrique of Narbonne—is first mentioned; and soon after this, on his death, another architect of the same city, Jacobo de Favariis by name, was appointed with a salary of two hundred and fifty libras[320] a quarter, and upon the condition that he should come from Narbonne six times a year[321] to examine the progress of the works. In A.D. 1325 Bart. Argenta was the master of the works, and he probably carried them on until the completion of the choir in 1346.[322]

In A.D. 1395 it was proposed to erect a Chapter-house, and the canons in charge of the fabric (“canonigos fabriqueros”) presented in writing their reasons for not erecting it where proposed by the Chapter—at the south end of the refectory. They said that the works of the church itself ought first of all to be gone on with, and that the proposed work would destroy a good and convenient refectory, and make it obscure and ridiculous: and it seems that their report had the effect of staying the work. In A.D. 1416 Guillermo Boffiy, master of the works of the cathedral, proposed a plan for its completion by the erection of a nave; and though the chevet had an aisle and chapels round it, he proposed to build his nave of the same width as the choir and its aisles, but as a single nave without aisles. This proposition was deemed so hazardous, and created so great a discussion, that the Chapter, before deciding what plan should be adopted, called together a Junta of architects, and propounded to each of them separately certain questions, to each of which they all returned their answers upon oath. In the September following, these answers were read before the Chapter by a notary, and it may be supposed carefully digested, for it was not until March 8th, 1417, that Guillermo Boffiy, the master of the works, was called in and in his turn interrogated with the same questions. Immediately after this, on the 15th of the same month, at a Chapter-meeting presided over by the Bishop, it was decided to carry on the work as proposed, with a single nave. The story is so well worth telling in full, that I have given in the Appendix a translation of the entire document, which equals in interest any with which I am acquainted, bearing on the profession of architect in the middle ages.[323] It is valuable also, incidentally, as giving us the names of the architects of several other buildings, most of those who were examined having described themselves in a formal style as masters of the works of some particular church or churches. It is difficult to say exactly when the nave was completed, but the great south door was not executed until A.D. 1458, and the key-stone of the last division of the vault seems to have been placed in the time of Bishop Benito, so late as circa 1579.[324] In A.D. 1581 the same bishop laid the first stone of the bell-tower, and in 1607 the west front and the great flight of steps leading up to it seem to have been commenced.

We have thus the story of the periods at which the church was founded, altered, and enlarged very fully told, and it now only remains to apply it to what is still to be seen in the existing building.

A reference to my ground-plan[325] will show that the church remains very much in the state which the documentary evidence describes. The choir has nine chapels round its chevet, as described, and has lofty arches, a series of very small openings in lieu of triforium, and a clerestory of two-light windows, of decidedly late but still good Middle-pointed character. The columns, in the usual Catalan fashion of this age, are clusters of rather reedy mouldings, with no proper division or subordination of parts, and consequently of poor effect, and there is no division by way of stringcourses above or below the triforium. On the exterior the east end is not seen to much advantage, as it is built into and against a steep hill, so that at a distance of a few feet only the eye is on a level with the top of the walls of the chapels round the apse. The roofs, too, have all been modernized and lowered. The only peculiarities here are a series of trefoiled openings, just under the eaves of the roof, into the space over the vaulting, and perhaps devised for the purpose of ventilation: and the gurgoyles projecting from the buttresses, which are carved and moulded stones finished at the end with an octagonal capital, through the bottom of which the water falls, and which almost looks as if it were meant for the stone head of a metal down-pipe.

When the choir was built, some considerable portions of the church consecrated in A.D. 1038 were left standing. The nave was probably entirely of this age; and a portion of what was no doubt one of the original towers still remains on the north side, between the cloister and the nave. This tower has pilasters at the angles and in the centre, and is divided into equal stages in height by horizontal corbel-tables. An apse of the same age remains on the east side of what seems to have been the south transept of the early church: and from its position we may, I think, assume with safety that the church was then finished with three or five apses at the east, very much as in the church of San Pedro, close by, which I shall have presently to describe. In addition to these early remains there is also a magnificent and all but unaltered cloister. I cannot find any certain evidence of its exact date, though it seems to have existed in A.D. 1117, when an act of the Bishop Raymond Berenger was issued in the “cloister of the cathedral.”[326] The character of the work confirms, I think, this date. The plan is very peculiar, forming a very irregular trapezium, no two of the sides being equal in length. It has on all four sides severely simple round arches carried on coupled shafts: these are of marble, and set as much as 20 inches apart, so as to enable them to carry a wall 3 feet 1½ inches thick. This thickness of wall was quite necessary, as the cloister is all roofed with stone, the section of the vaults on the east, west, and south sides being half of a barrel, and on the north a complete barrel vault. The detail of the capitals is of the extremely elaborate and delicate imitation of classical carving, so frequently seen throughout the south of France. The abaci are in one stone, but the bases of the shafts are separate and rest upon a low dwarf-wall, and square piers are carried up at intervals to strengthen the arcade. The columns have a very slight entasis.

This cloister deserves careful study, as it seems to show one of the main branches of the stream by which Romanesque art was introduced into Spain. It is impossible not to recognize the extreme similarity between such work as we see here, and that which we see in the cloister at Elne, near PerpiÑan, and, to go still farther afield, at S. Trophime at Arles. And if any Spanish readers of these pages object to my assumption that the stream flowed from France westward, they must prove the exact converse, and assume that this Romanesque work was developed from Roman work in Spain, and thence spread to Elne and Arles, a position which none, I suppose, will be bold enough to take.

The nave remains to be described; and to do this well and adequately, it is necessary to use, not indeed many, but certainly strong, words. Guillermo Boffiy, master of the works, might well cling fondly to his grand scheme, for his proposal was not less, I believe, than the erection of the widest pointed vault in Christendom. Such a scheme might be expected to meet then in Spain, as it most certainly would now in this country,[327] a good deal of criticism, and many objections, on the score of its impracticability; and it is to the honour of the Chapter that they had the good sense to consult experts and not amateurs as to the steps to be taken, and then, having satisfied themselves that their architect was competent to his work, that they left it entirely in his hands.

No. 41. GERONA CATHEDRAL p. 322 INTERIOR LOOKING EAST
No. 41.
GERONA CATHEDRAL p. 322.
INTERIOR LOOKING EAST

The clear width of this nave is 73 feet, and its height is admirably proportioned to this vast dimension.[328] It is only four bays in length; each bay has chapels opening into it on either side, and filling up the space between the enormous buttresses, whose depth from the front of the groining shaft to their face is no less than 20 feet. Above the arches which open into the side chapels is a row of small cusped openings, corresponding with those which form the triforium of the choir; and above these are lofty traceried clerestory windows. The groining-ribs are very large and well moulded. At the east end of the nave three arches open into the choir and its aisles; and above these are three circular windows, the largest of which has lost its tracery. And here it is that the magnificence of the scheme is most fully realized. A single nave and choir, all of the same enormous size, would have been immeasurable by the eye, and would have been, to a great extent, thrown away; here, however, the lofty choir and aisles, with their many subdivisions, give an extraordinary impression of size to the vast vault of the nave, and make it look even larger than it really is. In short, had this nave been longer by one bay, I believe that scarcely any interior in Europe could have surpassed it in effect. Unfortunately, as is so often the case among those who possess the most precious works of art, there is now but little feeling in Gerona for the treasure it possesses in this wondrous nave, for the stalls and Coro have been moved down from their proper place into the middle of its length, where they are shut in and surrounded by a high blank screen, painted in the vulgarest imitation of Gothic traceries, to the utter ruin, of course, of the whole internal perspective. It would be a grand and simple work of restoration to give up here, for once, the Spanish usage, and to restore the stalls to the proper choir. I say “restore,” because it is pretty clear that they could not have been in the nave when they were first made, inasmuch as this was in A.D. 1351, sixty-six years before its commencement. A deed still remains in the archives of the cathedral, by which we ascertain this fact, for by it a sculptor from Barcelona agreed, on June 7th, 1351, to make the stalls at the rate of 45 libras of Barcelona for each.[329] The detail of some parts of the woodwork is exceedingly good, and evidently of the middle of the fourteenth century, so that it is clear they are the very stalls referred to in the agreement. There is ample length in the proper choir for them, and they must have been moved into the nave in unwise obedience to the common modern Spanish arrangement, which was certainly never more entirely unfortunate and destructive of effect than it is here.

It will be seen, by reference to the Appendix, that though the architects consulted were fairly unanimous as to the possibility of building the single nave, they were by no means so in their recommendation of it as the best plan. The general feeling seems to have been decidedly adverse to it; and we may assume that the Chapter decided on it partly because it was already commenced, and partly because it promised to be a cheaper plan than the other. There seems also to have been great dread on the part of the Chapter of interfering in any way with the wall which now forms the east end of the nave, for fear lest, when it was cut into for the introduction of the respond of the nave arcade, the whole should give way.

Paschasius de Xulbe, one of the architects questioned, gives the valuable answer, that if the nave is of triple division in width, the groining of the choir must be raised in order that it may correspond in its measurements to its third; from which it is pretty clear that he spoke of a then recognized system of proportioning the height to the width of a building.

Guillermo Sagrera, master of the works at St. John PerpiÑan, tells us, in his answer, that the choir was originally built with the intention of having a single nave; and this will account for the otherwise unintelligible finish of its western wall, which it is clear, from the tenour of all the answers, was not prepared for any arches in the nave. I am not certain indeed whether we are not to assume, in reading the questions asked by the Chapter, that the Romanesque nave was itself of the same plan and dimensions; and the vast width of the old nave of Toulouse Cathedral—sixty-three feet—affords an example, at no great distance from Gerona, of the fact that architects, even so early as the beginning of the thirteenth century, were not afraid to propose and execute works on so unusual a scale.

I will not quote farther from the answers of the architects, because they well deserve to be read in detail; but it is a satisfaction to be able to say that their conviction of the practicability of the work has been amply justified, inasmuch as, even to the present day, there is scarcely a sign of a settlement or crack throughout the entire building.

It is difficult to express a positive opinion as to the original intention of the architect in regard to the design and finish of the exterior of this part of the church. The gable walls have been altered, the roofs renewed, and the original termination of the buttresses destroyed. At no time however, I think, can it have looked well. The position is charming, on the edge of a steep, rocky hill falling down to the river, and girt on its north side by the old many-towered city wall; yet with all these advantages it is now a decidedly ugly work, and the nave looks bald, and large out of all proportion to the subdivided, lower, and over-delicately-treated choir. On the west side the whole character of the church is Pagan;[330] and I well remember the astonishment with which, when I had climbed the long flight of broad steps which leads to the western door, I looked down the stupendous interior, for which I had been so little prepared!

The effect is not a little enhanced by the dark colour of the stone, which has never been polluted by whitewash; but there are some defects. The want of length has already been noticed; the entire absence of stringcourses inside is not pleasant; and the lowering of the arches into the chapels in the second bay from the west wall, where there are three in place of the two in each of the other bays, breaks the main lines of the design very awkwardly. The mouldings too, as might be expected in work of so late a date, are nowhere very first-rate, though they certainly retain generally the character of late fourteenth-century work.

The doorway on the south side of the nave is remarkable in one respect. It has in its jambs a series of statues of the Apostles, executed in terra-cotta; and the agreement for their execution, made, in A.D. 1458, with the artist Berenguer Cervia, binds him to execute them for six hundred florins, and “of the same earth as the statue of Sta. Eulalia and the cross of the new doorway at Barcelona.”[331] This doorway is very large, but bald and poor in detail; the statues to which the contract refers still remain, and are in good preservation.

There is nothing more specially worth noticing in the fabric; but fortunately the choir still retains precious relics in the Retablo behind, and the baldachin above, the high-altar. There are also said to be some frontals of the altar still preserved, which are of silver, and which were originally adorned with precious stones, and with an inscription which proves them to have been made before the consecration of the church, in A.D. 1038. Unfortunately they were not in their place when I was at Gerona, and so I missed seeing them.[332] The Retablo is of wood entirely covered with silver plates, and divided vertically into three series of niches and canopies; each division has a subject, and a good deal of enamelling is introduced in various parts of the canopies and grounds of the panels. Each panel has a cinquefoiled arch with a crocketed gablet and pinnacles on either side. The straight line of the top is broken by three niches, which rise in the centre and at either end. In the centre is the Blessed Virgin with our Lord; on the right, San Narcisso; and on the left, San Feliu. The three tiers of subjects contain (a) figures of saints, (b) subjects from the life of the Blessed Virgin, and (c) subjects from the life of our Lord. A monument in one of the chapels gives some account of this precious work; for though it is called a ciborium, it is also spoken of as being of silver, which, I believe, the actual ciborium is not.[333] The date of this monument is 1362; but in the ‘Liber Notularum’ for A.D. 1320, 21, and 22, it seems that the Chapter devoted 3000 libras for the reparation of the Retablo, though it was not till A.D. 1346 that the work was finished, and the altar finally fixed in its present position. [334] The whole of the work is therefore before this date; and probably the Retablo and the baldachin date from the period between the two dates last given, viz. A.D. 1320 and A.D. 1348.

Altar, Gerona.
Altar, Gerona.

The baldachin is, like the Retablo, of wood covered with thin plates of metal. It stands upon four shafts, the lower portions of which are of dark marble resting on the moulded footpace round the altar. These four shafts have capitals and bands, the latter being set round with enamelled coats-of-arms. The canopy is a sort of very flat quadripartite vault covered with small figures; but on both my visits to Gerona it has been so dark in the choir as to render it impossible to make out the subjects. The central subject seems to be the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin, and in the eastern division is a sitting figure of our Lord with saints on either side. In order to show the figures on the roof of the baldachin as much as possible, the two eastern columns are much lower than the western, the whole roof having thus a slope up towards the west. A singular arrangement was contrived behind the altar—a white marble seat for the bishop raised by several steps on either side to the level of the altar, and placed under the central arch of the apse. Here, when the bishop celebrated pontifically, he sat till the oblation, and returned to it again to give the benediction to the people.[335]

The church is full of other objects of interest. Against the north wall is a very pretty example of a wheel of bells: this is all of wood, corbelled out from the wall, and is rung with a noisy jingle of silver bells at the elevation of the Host. Near it is a doorway leading into the sacristy, I think, which is very ingeniously converted into a monument. It has a square lintel and a pointed arch above: bold corbels on either side carry a high tomb, the base of which is just over the lintel; this is arcaded at the side and ends, and on its sloping top is a figure of a knight. The favourite type of monument in this part of Spain is generally a coped tomb carried on corbels, which are usually lions or other beasts: there are good examples of this kind both in the church and cloister; and in the latter there is also preserved a great wooden cross, which looks as though it had originally decorated a rood-loft.

The windows have a good deal of very late stained-glass, which consists generally of single figures under canopies. I have already mentioned the fine early wood-work in the Coro. In the fifteenth century this was altered and added to: and a seat was then made for the bishop in the centre of the western side of the Coro, which has enormous pieces of carved open-work on either side executed with uncommon vigour and skill. These, again, were added to afterwards by a Renaissance artist, so that it is now necessary to discriminate carefully between the work of various ages.

If, when the cathedral has been thoroughly studied, one goes out through the cloister, an external door at its north-western angle leads out to the top of a steep path from which an extremely picturesque view is obtained. The old town walls girt the cathedral on the north side; but in the eleventh century it was thought well to add to them, and a second wall descends, crosses the valley below, and rises against the opposite hill in a very picturesque fashion. This wall has the passage-way perfect all round, and occasional circular towers project from it. The eye is at once caught in looking at this view by a fine Romanesque church with a half-ruined cloister and lofty octagonal steeple, which seems to be absolutely built across and through the walls. This is the Benedictine church of San Pedro de los Galligans;[336] and a closer inspection shows that what at first looks like the round-tower of the town walls, against which the church has been built, is really the very apse of the church, which when the new walls were built was raised and converted above into a purely military work. The earliest reference to this church that I have found is a statement that it existed in the tenth century, and that, in A.D. 1117, the Count Ramon of Barcelona gave it to the Benedictine convent of Sta. Maria de la Crassa, in the bishopric of Carcassonne, of which his brother was Abbat; and I think we may safely assume that the whole of the existing church was built within a short time of its transfer from the hands of the Secular to those of the Regular Clergy.

The church[337] consists of a nave and aisles of four bays, the arches being very rude, and the piers plain and square. There are north and south transepts, the former having one, and the latter two eastern apsidal chapels; and the choir is also finished with an apse. There is another apse at the north end of the north transept. The nave is roofed with a round waggon-vault with plain cross-ribs carried on engaged shafts; and there is a clerestory of single-light windows which, on the inside, break up partly into the vault of the roof. The aisles are roofed with half-waggon or quadrant vaults, and the apses with semi-domes. The octagonal steeple is built above the north transept, and has in the eastern wall of its first stage two apsidal recesses, which seem to have been intended for altars, and are roofed with semi-domes. The detail of some of the work at the east end is of an unusual kind: it is built in stone and black volcanic scoriÆ, and its rude character is evidence of its early date. Any one who is acquainted with the noble church at Elne, near PerpiÑan, will remember the similar use of volcanic scoriÆ there, and will be led to class the two monuments together as works of the same hand and period. The view of the exterior of the church from the north-west is very striking. There is a fine western door with a good deal of carving very delicately and elaborately wrought, one of the capitals having a very careful imitation of a fern-leaf on it; above the doorway a horizontal cornice is carried all across the front, and over this is a fine rose window. The side walls are finished with dentil-courses; and the clerestory—which is carried up very high above the springing of the vault inside—is finished with an eaves-arcading also. There were no windows in the side walls of the aisle; and the clerestory windows, and a window at the west end of the north aisle, have bold splays on the outside as well as inside.

The steeple has been much altered; but the original design of the two upper (and octagonal) stages seems to have had a two-light window with a bold central shaft, angle-pilasters, and stringcourses, with shallow arcading below them.

On the south side are the cloisters. They are locked up and in ruins; and though I tried two or three times, I was never able to gain admission to them; but I saw them from the hill above, and they looked at this distance as if they were designed very much after the pattern of those attached to the cathedral. The arches are round, and carried on coupled detached shafts, with piers in the centre of each side of the cloister. The roof seems to have been a barrel-vault, but great part of it has now fallen in. All this havoc and ruin is owing, like so much that one sees in Spain, to the action of the French troops during the Peninsular war.[338]

The whole character of this church is very interesting. The west front reminded me much of the best Italian Romanesque; and the rude simplicity of the interior—so similar in its mode of construction to the great church at Santiago in the opposite corner of the Peninsula—suggests the probability of its being one of the earliest examples of which Spain can boast.

No. 42. SAN PEDRO, GERONA. EXTERIOR FROM THE NORTH-WEST. p. 330
No. 42.
SAN PEDRO, GERONA.
EXTERIOR FROM THE NORTH-WEST. p. 330

Close to San Pedro, to the north-west, stands another church, which, though it is very small, is fully as curious. This is now desecrated and converted into workshops and dwelling-houses. It is transverse triapsal in plan (i.e., the transepts and the chancel are all finished with apses). The Crossing is surmounted by a low tower or lantern, square below, but octagonal above, and with some remains of an apparently old tiled roof. The transepts are ceiled with semi-domes, and the chancel was similarly covered, but its vault has now been removed in order to facilitate access to the steeple, in which a peasant and his family live. The nave is roofed with a waggon-vault, at the springing of which from the wall is a small moulding; and its walls are supported by buttresses, which do not seem to be earlier than the thirteenth century, though the rest of the church must date no doubt from the early part of the twelfth. The exterior is very plain; but the chancel apse is divided by pilasters which run up to and finish in a corbel-table at the eaves; and the tower has also an eaves’ corbel-table. All the dimensions of this church are very small, but it is interesting, as being almost the only example I have seen in Spain of a transverse triapsal plan; and the central lantern is one of the earliest examples of what became in later days one of the most common features of Spanish buildings.[339]

We came down the hill north of the cathedral to see this church and San Pedro; and if we retrace our steps, and go out by the western door on to the platform at the top of the vast flight of steps which leads up to the cathedral, we shall be at once struck by the beautiful, though truncated, spire of San Feliu, which stands below, and to the west of the cathedral. Indeed, in nearly all views of the old city, this steeple claims the first place in our regard; and perhaps it is seen best of all in crossing the river at the other end of the town, where it stands at the end of the vista up the stream, which is edged on either side by the backs of the tall, picturesque, and crowded houses.

San Feliu[340] is one of the oldest collegiate foundations in the diocese of Gerona; and when, in the eighth century, the Moors converted the cathedral into a mosque, here it was that the Christian rites were celebrated. No doubt, therefore, a church stood here long before the first recorded notices of the fabric, for these do not occur before the early part of the fourteenth century, save such indications of work in progress as the bequest of ten solidos to the work by Bishop William in A.D. 1245, and such evidence of its damage or destruction as is the fact that the French, attacking the city in A.D. 1285, obtained possession of the church and did it much damage. In A.D. 1313, when the Chapter of the cathedral were obtaining royal concessions towards the work of their own church, they granted an exemption to San Feliu, giving to its clergy the first-fruits of their benefices to spend on the work of their own church.[341] In A.D. 1318 there is evidence that the choir was completed, but other works were going on during the rest of the century. In A.D. 1340 the Chapter determined to erect cloisters, under the direction of an architect named Sancii, and bought a site for them to the north of the church; and the operarius or canon in charge of the work seems to have raised alms for them even so far off as at Valencia and in the Balearic Isles. The work was begun in A.D. 1357 and finished in 1368, in which year the Chapter entered into a contract[342] with an architect, one Pedro Zacoma, for the erection of the campanile. In A.D. 1363, however, it was deemed necessary, on account of the position of the church just outside the old walls, and on the north of the town, that it should be fortified; and to accomplish this work, and others of the same kind ordered in A.D. 1374 and 1385, the cloisters so recently built were destroyed. The steeple is said to have been finished in 1392,[343] Pedro Zacoma having acted as architect as late as A.D. 1376.

The church bears evident marks of many alterations and additions. It consists of nave and aisles, transepts, central apse, and two apsidal chapels on the east side of the south, and one on the east of the north transept. The piers are plain square masses of masonry, and the main arches are semi-circular, unmoulded, and springing from a very plain abacus. There is a kind of triforium, an arcade of three divisions in each bay, and a fair pointed vault of ten bays—two to each bay of the nave arcade—carried on groining-shafts corbelled out from the wall. The north transept retains a waggon-vault, the axis of which is north and south, whilst the south transept has two bays of cross vaulting. The eastern apse is circular in plan, but divided into seven groining bays, and lighted by three windows of three lights. The apses of the south transept are also circular, lighted by lancets, and groined with semi-domes, though the arches into the transept are pointed. The general character of the later part of this church is, I should say, that of late first-pointed work; yet it is pretty clear that it is almost all a work of the fourteenth century. There is a fine fourteenth-century south porch, with some good arcading in its side walls, in which the tracery is all executed with soffeit-cusping.

Of the western steeple I need not say very much, as my sketch shows the nature of its design, and the evidence as to its date is evidently very accurate. The character of the architectural detail is quite that of flamboyant-work, and the outline is bold, original, and good. It is seldom indeed that the junction of the tower and spire is more happily managed than it is here; and before the destruction of the upper part of the spire, the whole effect must have been singularly graceful. This is the more remarkable in a country where a genuine spire is so rare a feature; but the architect was fortunate in following the customs of the country when he made his steeple octagonal in plan, for it is extremely difficult—one may almost say impossible—to put a spire upon an octagonal tower the outline of which shall not be graceful. In an arch against the wall of this tower is a tomb resting on lions jutting out from the wall, and with the date 1387 in the inscription. It is a good example of the late date to which this early-looking type of monument continued to be used in Spain.

This church has a rather elaborate wooden Retablo, carved and gilt with subjects painted on its panels. The pulpit is also old, and has rich, late flamboyant tracery panels: it is placed against a pier on the south side of the nave, and a second modern pulpit faces it on the north. The old metal screen also remains: it is rather rude, and has prickets for candles along it, each of which has a sort of frame which looks as though it were meant to hold a glass.

There are also a few remains of old domestic buildings. A house near the cathedral has the usual Catalan features of trefoiled ajimez windows, and a doorway with a prodigiously deep archivolt. Another house near San Feliu has a broad window with a square-headed opening; the head is an ogee arch, with tracery in the tympanum, and over all is a square-headed label-moulding. It is not an elegant window, yet it has some value as an example of an opening as large as we usually adopt now-a-days, and with a square head. The most interesting house, however, is the Fonda de la Estrella, the principal inn in the town. The windows here are capital examples of shafted windows of the end of the twelfth century. The shafts are very delicate (4¼ inches by 6 ft. 1 inch); the capitals are well carved with men and animals, and the carved abacus is carried from window to window. The windows are of three lights, and with only a narrow space of wall between them. The back of this house is less altered than the front: on the ground it has an arcade of four round arches, on the first floor five windows of the same sort as these just described, but simpler, and above this a series of pilasters, which now carry the roof. There must have been arches I think to this open upper stage.

There is another house in the same street, and just opposite the inn, of rather later date, but also with early ajimez windows, and this had also an open stage below the roof.

The whole city looks picturesque and old, and I daresay a more careful search than I had time for would be rewarded with further discoveries of old remains. Most of the houses are arcaded below, and their lower stories are groined, the cells of the vaults being filled in with bricks laid in herring-bone patterns.

From Gerona to Barcelona there are two railways branching from the station at Empalme. That which follows the coast passes by several small towns facing the sea, in which there are many remains of old walls and castles, and not a few ajimez windows. It is, in short, a charming ride in every way. The other line going inland also passes a very striking country, and some old towns. Hostalrich is a very picturesque old walled town, with its walls and towers all fairly perfect. Fornelles has a good church, with a low crocketed spire on an octagonal steeple, brought to a square just below the belfry-stage. Granollers has a rather good fourteenth-century church, of the same general character as the Barcelona churches of the same date. It has a nave of five bays, and an apse of seven sides, with a tower at the north-west angle. Some trace of an earlier church remains in a round-arched western door. The western bay is occupied by a late fifteenth-century groined gallery carried on an elliptic arch, with a parapet pierced with richly-cusped circles. The staircase to this gallery is in a sort of aisle or side chapel, and has an extremely well managed iron hand-railing, supported by occasional uprights, and quite worthy of imitation. The tower has a delicate newel staircase in its angle: the newel has a spiral moulding, and the under side of the steps is very carefully wrought. The upper part of the steeple is like those of Barcelona cathedral—an irregular octagon, and has a traceried parapet and low spire. There is a very rich late wooden pulpit, corbelled out from the wall, through which a door is pierced, and some rich woodwork is placed at the head of the steps leading to it. The apse has two-light and single-light windows in the alternate sides, and the nave the latter only. Small chapels are formed between the buttresses, and these are also lighted with small windows. On the whole this church has a good many features of interest, and its very considerable height gives it greater dignity than our own churches of the same class have.

On the road from Gerona into France I have seen only one or two churches. At Figueras the cathedral has a steeple extremely similar to that just described at Granollers, and evidently of the same date. The sides of the octagon are not equal, and bells are hung in the windows, and one in an arched frame at the top. This tower is on the north side of the nave, which has four bays, transepts, and a Renaissance central dome covered with glazed tiles. The fabric of the nave seems to be of the thirteenth century, having lancet windows and buttresses of great projection rather well designed, chapels occupying the space between them. The west door label runs up to, and is terminated by, a long cross. At la Junquera, between Figueras and the frontier, the little Parroquia has the date of A.D. 1413 on the door. Its only feature of interest is the tower, which has a staircase carried on arches thrown from side to side of the tower, and having a square opening or well-hole in the centre. The same kind of staircase has been described in the church of San Roman at Toledo.

From hence a pleasant road among the mountains, beautifully clothed here with cork-trees, and disclosing charming views at every turn, leads by the frontier fortress of Bellegarde, over the Col de PertÚs, and so on down the eastern side of the Pyrenees to PerpiÑan. Here, if we look only at the map of modern France, my notes ought to stop. But PerpiÑan was of old a Spanish city, and its buildings are so thoroughly Spanish in their character that I may venture to say a very few words about them.[344]

The church of San Juan is of very remarkable dimensions. The clear width of the nave is sixty feet, but in the easternmost bay this is gathered in to fifty-four feet, which is the diameter of the seven-sided apse. Guillermo Sagrera, master of the works of this cathedral, was one of the architects summoned to advise about the erection of the nave at Gerona, and I think there can be but little doubt that the plan of this church was his handiwork, and that it was erected, therefore, at the beginning of the fifteenth century. It will be seen that he was one of the architects who spoke most strongly in favour of the erection of a broad unbroken nave. The vault he erected here is of brick with stone ribs, and the brickwork is rather rough, with very wide mortar joints, and looks as if from the first it were intended to plaster and paint it. The roofs of the chapels which are built between the large buttresses have flat gables north and south, and the same arrangement is carried round the apse. The most striking feature in this cathedral is that very rare thing—a very fine mediÆval organ. It is corbelled out from the north wall of the nave, and is of great size and height. The pipes are arranged in traceried compartments at five different levels. This complicates the machinery for the supply of wind, but adds greatly to the picturesque character of the instrument. Originally this organ had great painted shutters, which are now nailed up against the wall close to the south porch. The width of its front is about twenty-five feet, its projection from the wall three feet six inches, and the organist sits in a gallery at its base.[345]

There are several good old houses here: but I must content myself with the mention of one only in the Rue de la Barre. Here we have the peculiarities of the Spanish houses, as they are seen along the coast from Gerona to Valencia, very decidedly developed: the windows are all ajimez, with the usual delicate trefoiled head to the lights, and slender shafts between them, and the arch-stones of the doorway are more than usually enormous, being little less than six feet in length.

A drive of a few miles from PerpiÑan leads to the extremely interesting church at Elne, consecrated in A.D. 1058.[346] Here, as in San Pedro, Gerona, and to the east of it in the cathedral at Agde, there are occasional lines of black volcanic scoriÆ used in the Romanesque steeple and west front, and with good effect. The nave of the church has a pointed barrel vault, and the aisles half-barrel vaults, but all the cross arches are semi-circular. At the west end is a sort of thirteenth-century narthex, and the three apses at the east have semi-domes. On the north side of the church is a noble cloister, planned just like that in the cathedral at Gerona with the most complete disregard to symmetry. It is extremely similar to it also in general design: but it is very remarkable as having its east and north sides erected about the end of the thirteenth century in evident and very close imitation of the earlier work on the other two sides. The vaulting throughout the cloister is of the later date, and raised considerably above the level of the old vault. The whole of this cloister is wrought in a veined white marble, and a door from it into the church is built in alternated courses of red and white marble.

On the whole S. Elne well deserves a visit, not only on account of the extreme interest of its church and cloister, but, to the student of Spanish architecture, on account of the very important link which it supplies in the chain which connects the early Spanish with the early French buildings of the middle ages.

The history of CataluÑa shows how intimate was the connection of the people and towns on both sides of the mountains, and it is here and elsewhere in the south of France that we see the germ of almost all the mediÆval Spanish art.

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GERONA:—Ground Plan of Cathedral &c. S. Daniel or(?) S. Nicholas. S. Pedro De Los Galligans. Plate XVIII Published by John Murray. Albemarle Street 1865