Burgos

“ The public place of Burgos, in the midst of which stands a very middling bronze statue of Charles III., is large, and not without some character. Red houses, supported by pillars of bluish granite, inclose it on all sides. Under the arcades and on the place, are stationed all sorts of petty dealers, besides an infinite number of asses, mules, and picturesque peasants who promenade up and down. The rags of Castile are seen there in all their splendour. The poorest beggar is nobly draped in his cloak, like a Roman emperor in his purple. ”

“ Don Diego Laynez and the Conde de Gormez WONDER if Burgos looked then as it does now?—a well-washed, trim little city, Dutch in its neatness, tinted, upon the principle of Joseph’s coat of many colours, pink, blue, peach, and yellow; each house totally unlike its neighbour in height and shape; the streets sprouting out all over with balconies, miradores, and low arcades under flat roofs, an unexpected Gothic tower or barbican breaking through ”

“ The air of Burgos when it is not the breath of a furnace is so heavy and clammy through the testimony of all comers that Burgos herself no longer attempts to deny it from her high perch on the uplands of Old Castile. Just when she ceased to deny it, I do not know, but probably when she ceased to be the sole capital and metropolis of Christian Spain and shared her primacy with Toledo sometime in the fourteenth century. ”

“ THÉOPHILE GAUTIER. Notwithstanding that Burgos was for so long a time the first city of Castile, it is not very Gothic in appearance; with the exception of a street where there are several windows and doors of the Renaissance, ornamented with coats of arms and their supporters, the houses do not date further back than the beginning of the Seventeenth Century, and are exceedingly commonplace; they are old, but not antique. But Burgos has her Cathedral, which is one of the most beautiful in the world ”

“ When prosperity came again to Burgos, as to many other Spanish cities, it was owing to the wise enactments of Isabella the Catholic. The concordat of 1851{63} enumerated nine archbishoprics in Spain, among which Burgos stands second on the list.
Such is Burgos, serenely beautiful, rich and exultant, the apotheosis of the Spanish Renaissance as well as studded with exquisitely beautiful Gothic work. She is mighty and magnificent, speaking perhaps rather to the senses than the heart, but in a language which can never be forgotten. ”

“ The great structure rose doubly impressive from the juxtaposition of richness and sterility, of the spirit's triumph over the material that makes Burgos as impressive in its way as Toledo with its more imposing setting.
Copyright, , 1910 by Underwood & Underwood
Burgos Cathedral from the Castle Hill
"Nuestro país es el país de las anomalías" says the critic De Larra, and the first step in Spain strikes this note. She is a land of violent contrasts; level plain and broken sierra, elysian garden of Andalusia and tractless wastes of Castile, frosty Burgos and sunny Seville. ”

“ They dread a breath of fresh air. But it makes them look awfully like murderers, and it gave us quite a creepy sensation as we plodded through old, decaying Burgos, late at night, and came suddenly on men muffled in black to the eyes at the street corners. But having occasion to ask one to direct us to the hotel, he instantly flung his cloak from his face and disclosed his features. ”

“ I have called the building a city in itself, and if a census were made of its silent population, there might seem some reason in such a simile. Who can doubt that these sculptured saints, archangels, kings, apostles, and monks without, these bleeding Christs, Virgins, infants, and martyrs within, would equal in number the living, moving world of Burgos? And this multitude, stony, silent, dead, though it seems, is not without a power and force that stand in good stead of vitality. ”

“ They are not rigid and bright like the streets of Castile. Their warmth is freeflowing like a blood under the swarthy stones. They brood, they rot: they are not transfixed in contemplation of their unity, nor in rapt service of their own high fate. They are not noble, not inspired streets like the most sordid in Avila or Burgos. ”

“ The Cathedral Church is a magnificent Structure, but intirely in the Gothic Taste.
Near Burgos is a very numerous Abby of Nuns of Quality, who as well as all the Convents of Spain have considerable Revenues: The Country from Burgos to Vittoria is finer and better cultivated than in New Castile, and the Villages seem more populous: I saw Peasants there so active to what the Spaniards generally are, that I thought myself in another World. ”

“ As regards legends and traditions of feudal romance and tragedy, hardly a city excepting Toledo and Salamanca can compete with Burgos. Historical events, produced by throne usurpers and defenders, by continual{179} strife, by the obstinacy of the noblemen and the perfidy of the monarchs,—all interwoven with beautiful dames and cruel warriors—are sufficiently numerous to enable every house in and around Burgos to possess some secret or other, generally gruesome and licentious, which means chivalrous. ”

“ CATHEDRAL OF BURGOS
The spires above the house-tops
The general mass that rises above the roofs, now flat and covered with reddish ochre tiles, is, whatever may be the defects of its detail, almost unique in its lavish richness. The spires rest upon the house-tops of Burgos like the jeweled points of a monarch's crown. The detail is so profuse that it well-nigh defies analysis. It seems as if the four corners of the earth must for generations have been ransacked to {59}find a sufficient number of carvers for the sculpture. ”

“ In the Peninsula the origin of this school or movement may be traced to Burgos. Here, just as the fifteenth century was drawing to its close, and just before the breath of the Renaissance crossed the Spanish frontier at its eastern side, was gathered a small though influential group of eminent workers in more crafts than one; painters and sculptors, architects, embroiderers, carvers of wood, reja-makers, and painters of cathedral glass. ”

“ From one of the earliest and finest, that of Bishop Maurice at Burgos, there is a sequence illustrating almost every variety of Gothic down to that exquisite Renaissance monument of the son of Ferdinand and Isabella at Avila, in which—in spite of the date and style—the old spirit still breathes an air of grace, refinement, and purity over the whole work. Such chapels as those which enshrine these monuments,—that of the Constable at Burgos, of Santiago at Toledo, of Miraflores near Burgos,—are well fitted to hold the most magnificent of memorials ”

“ A brave soldier, but one of the sorriest of the nation’s heroes!
During the lifetime of this worthy and the reign of Alfonso VI., Toledo was captured from the Moors, and Burgos ranked henceforward only as a secondary capital of Spain. It may be remarked that till Philip II. published his decree that ‘Madrid solo es corte,’ the kingdom could not be said in the modern sense of the word ever to have had a capital. Burgos, Valladolid, Toledo, and Seville had all equal claims to be considered the seat of government. ”

“ In the Castle at Burgos, once a sumptuous palace as well as a citadel, the marriage of the Cid took place; also that of Edward the First of England and Eleanor of Castile. Burgos is illustrious among cities, as having given birth to the Cid, who in 1040, first saw the light in a house which stood on the spot where now stands an obelisk, in the Calle Alta, erected by Charles III. in 1784. There are, of course, a large number [Pg 75] of people who know all about the Cid, and the derivation of the word. ”

“ The men are equally devout; and every one, caballero or beggar, soldier or priest, comes in his turn, week-day and Sunday. The churches are beautifully kept, warm in cold weather, cool in summer, clean and dusky and quiet always. No wonder they are never empty.
The Cathedral of Burgos is so rich in different sorts of beauty that it would be idle for me to try and particularise any, excepting perhaps the wonderful effect of it as a whole upon the accustomed eye. ”

“ FROM Burgos to Valladolid the monotonous Castile plain continued, unbroken by any hill and hardly a tree. Yet evening on the level steppes has a charm of its own. Like sunset at sea, nature has a free sweep of canvas on which to paint her pageant; details eliminated, the essential remains. One carries away many such memories from the silent plateau, till little by little the affection of the grave Castilian for his home is understood. ”

“ A special architectural interest attaches to the life of this prelate, for the tradition in Burgos has always been that he was an Englishman, who came over in the train of the English Princess Alienor, Queen of Alfonso VIII., and, having been Archdeacon of Toledo, became in A.D. 1213 Bishop of Burgos. Florez, [10] however, doubts the tradition, and observes that his parents’ names, Rodrigo and Oro Sabia, were those of Spaniards. ”

“ Burgos itself was originally surrounded by a wall, of which few fragments remain; but although its streets and broad squares, such as the central Plaza Mayór, or Plaza de la Constitucion, have often quite a modern appearance, the city retains much of its picturesque character, owing to the number and beauty of its churches, convents and palaces. Unaffected by the industrial activity of the neighbouring Basque Provinces, it has little trade apart from the sale of agricultural produce and the manufacture of paper and leathern goods. ”

“ Men and women, nobles, peasants, and townspeople are everywhere, in the centre of the road, and on the raised banks beside it, on the trees and on the adjacent hills, all impatient, and all weary already of waiting; however, we see no one that we know, not even the peasant from Barbadillo, whose curiosity is as proverbial in Burgos as that of his friend Iñigo, and whose conjugal affairs amuse so much the townspeople, since the day they saw him disown his wife at the door of the mansion of the lords of Vivar. ”

“ The known history of Burgos begins in 884 with the foundation of the citadel. From that time forward it steadily increased in importance, reaching the height of its prosperity in the 15th century, when, alternately with Toledo, it was occupied as a royal residence, but rapidly declining when the court was finally removed to Madrid in 1560. Being on one of the principal military roads of the kingdom, it suffered severely during the Peninsular War. ”

“ This I have thought fit to inform you, that you may learn not always to judge of people by their looks. When I left Burgos I had as good clothes as you, but I sold them in the first village I passed through, to relieve myself of so inconvenient a burden, and contented myself with these tattered garments, which would excite the pity, or at the worst the compassion, of thieves whom a better dress would probably have tempted. ”

“ The rooms around, which look down upon the courtyard, are let to the poor at a shilling or two a month. The Palace of the Inquisition is now a slum, and from the windows where monarchs and grandees and Grand Inquisitors looked down hang the yellow rags of beggars and the blue sheets of poor labourers drying in the sun.
Burgos at night is the absolutely dullest place I ever saw in my life, and that is saying a good deal. Some Spanish gentlemen who had made friends with us at the hotel took us to a café, and we spent the evening in getting all the information out of them that we could. ”

“ Street describes as the earliest he saw. In both, the primitive mode of working through thin plates superposed to form tracery has been adhered to, and the whole of the ironwork has been applied to a wooden framework. I regard the pulpit at Burgos as likely to have been executed early in the fifteenth century, and the one now under consideration as of the close of the same century; and both may, I think, have been produced under the influence of the masters from Cologne, who did such wonders, and set so many fashions, in Burgos and its vicinity, especially at Miraflores. ”

“ As but little rain falls in summer, and the soil is poor, agriculture thrives only in the valleys, especially that of the Ebro. In live-stock, however, Burgos is one of the richest of Spanish provinces. Horses, mules, asses, goats, cattle and pigs are bred in considerable numbers, but the mainstay of the peasantry is sheep-farming. ”

“ The castle of Burgos was untenable, there were no magazines of provisions, the new works were quite unfinished, and they commanded the old which were unable to hold [537] out a day; of Clauzel’s and Foy’s divisions nothing had been heard. It was resolved to retire behind the Ebro. All the French outposts in the Bureba and Montaña were immediately withdrawn, and the great dépôt of Burgos was evacuated upon Vittoria, which was thus encumbered with the artillery dépôts of Madrid, of Valladolid, and of Burgos, and with the baggage and stores of so many armies and so many fugitive families ”

“ There is another hotel at Burgos, the Raffaele, which, as we learned too late, is—in complete contradiction of the guide-books—clean and pleasant. On the practical side, that voyager will achieve success who plans his route in Spain so as to evade the Fonda del Norte at Burgos, which is the stronghold of dirt, and the Hotel de Paris at Madrid, which takes the palm for extortion. ”