Cathedral of Toledo

“ The sacristies and capitular rooms in the Cathedral of Toledo are of more than royal magnificence. Nothing can be more noble and picturesque than these vast halls decorated in that solid and severe style of luxury that the Church alone understands. They present an endless succession of carved walnut-wood or black oak, tapestry, or Indian damask curtains hanging down before the doors, brocade drapery with large massive folds, figured tapestry, Persian carpets, and fresco paintings. ”

“ Owing to the long period of its building, it bears late Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque features, while traces of Moorish influence are not wanting.
The Cathedral of Toledo was built in an imaginative, creative and passionate age,—an age when the ordinary mason was a master builder as well as sculptor, stimulated by local affection, pride and piety. The results of his work were tremendous,—his finished product was a storehouse of art. Artists of all nations had a hand in the work. ”

“ Riches which might deck out a whole church among us lovers of bare walls are here found packed within the compass of a single chapel; and little gems of carving and inlay are thrust aside like lumber into corners where they can be scarcely seen. The whole is a dream of magnificence unsurpassable even in Italy: yet it is the gorgeous gloom of Toledo which still springs first to the memory when we contrast our own chaste chilly churches with the opulence of the shrines of Spain.
The cathedral stands upon steeply sloping ground well above the level of the Arlanzon. ”

“ We had only a poor half-hour for it, and we could not do more than flutter the pages of the epic it was and catch here and there a word, a phrase: a word writ in architecture or sculpture, a phrase richly expressed in gold and silver and precious marble, or painted in the dyes of the dawns and sunsets which used to lend themselves so much more willingly to the arts than they seem to do now. From our note-books I find that this cathedral of Toledo appeared more wonderful to one of us than the cathedral of Burgos ”

“ I have never found its wonderful charm diminished by familiarity; on the contrary, the coloured rays of light from above, striking upon the brown shade of stone, seem ever more and more witching; the delicate tones of shadow more and more mysterious, and the unrivalled grandeur of long forested perspectives of aisles and of spacious naves, with the multiplicity of arches and windows, ever a greater testimony of Toledo’s departed glory.
Space forbids anything like a detailed account of the chapels and cloisters of the Cathedral. ”

“ The Cathedral of Toledo, deprived of the greater number of its functionaries,—including its archbishop and fifty-six of its sixty canons, and no longer possessing, out of an income of hundreds of thousands sterling, a treasure sufficient for providing brooms and sweepers for its pavement,—will, in perhaps not much more than another year, if the predictions of the inhabitants be verified, be finally closed to public worship. ”

“ Excepting the Cathedral, nearly all the glories of Toledo are Moorish. The Moors, those true artists and most conscientious workers, have here left an Alcazar, gateways, bridges, mosques, palaces, and towers, to perpetuate their golden age; and though{91} the grand old metropolitan church remains the crowning jewel of the desolate old city (a Lear of cities, deaf, blind, decaying) , all these anticipate the marvels of Cordova and Granada. But the Cathedral takes you back to quite another epoch of art and religion. ”

“ To have won the most glorious of Spanish battles—a victory so stupendous, considering the odds and the results that the great archbishop himself insisted it was nothing less than due to the intervention of heaven—and to have built the cathedral of Toledo! What epitaph needs a man who accomplished two such deeds in a single life? ”

“ If Toledo is the nation's architectural museum, the city's cathedral, the huge imposing Gothic structure, is, beyond a doubt, an incomparable art museum. Centuries of sculptors carved marble and berroqueña; armies of artisans wrought marvels in cloths, metals, precious stones, glass, and wood, and a host of painters, both foreign and national, from Goya and Ribera to the Greco and Rubens, painted religious compositions for the sacristy and chapels. ”

“ The cathedral is a fine building, though it hardly can rank with the finest; and it seems to be somewhat infected by the prevailing Frenchified air. Yet in sanctity it is pre-eminent; for it boasts the holiest relics in the Peninsula—all the miracle-working treasures which the kings of the Visigoths had hoarded in their temple at Toledo, and which the faithful bore away with them into the mountains when they fled from the invading Moors. ”

“ If one should speak of all the noteworthy things you meet in this Cathedral, he would find himself in danger of following in the footsteps of Mr. Parro, who wrote a handbook of Toledo, in which seven hundred and forty-five pages are devoted to a hasty sketch of the basilica. For five hundred years enormous wealth and fanatical piety have worked together and in rivalry to beautify this spot. The boundless riches of the Church and the boundless superstition of the laity have left their traces here in every generation in forms of magnificence and beauty. ”

“ So, unchanged, must it have been in its great day of hieratic glory, of Gothic rule, of Saracen triumph and of feudal revolt.
PUENTE DE ALCANTARA
From the bridges, the road winds up the steep rock, upon whose summit this unique old city is built. The views at every turn of the winding path are entrancing. There is every strange effect to gratify the eager eye in search of the picturesque: an unsurpassed boldness of site, from the wide zone of the Tagus to the point of the Cathedral tower pinnacled against the upper arch of heaven. ”

“ Great patrons of art and science, they founded universities and cultivated the arts of peace, while they were often plunging the country into war, which they waged with valor and skill. Under them the city reached a degree of splendor unsurpassed in the dreamy reign of Oriental voluptuousness and taste. But when it succumbed, as it did to the great German Czar, and the court was removed to Valladolid, its sun went down, never to rise again.
The cathedral is a glory, even in Spain, which is richer in cathedrals than any other country. Toledo has always been favored by the Romish Church. ”

“ It was impossible to look on any side without meeting with chapels, churches, convents and ancient hospitals. Religion had absorbed the industrious Toledo of old, and still guarded the dead city beneath its hood of stone. From some of the belfries a red flag was floating, bearing a white chalice; this meant that some newly-ordained priest was singing his first mass.
"I have never been up here," said Don Martin, sitting by Gabriel's side on one of the rafters, "without seeing some of these flags; ecclesiastical recruiting never ceases, there are always visionaries to fill its ranks. ”

“ Suffice it to say that nowhere in Spain is there a Gothic building of such well-proportioned dimensions, such simplicity in its leading features, such a fine idea in the interior of the spacing out of light and shade, as in this magnificent Cathedral—the grandest of the three due to French influence.
And Toledo's churches? There are nearly sixty still remaining, every street seems to contain one! And Toledo's convents? There are almost as many. ”

“ These visits will not soon be forgotten, for it is but rarely that life gathers such subjects of remembrance. The last evening I remained in Toledo, I walked into the cathedral sometime after sunset,—it was the latest visit I had made to it: the interior was all wrapped in deep dusk;—the lofty aisles stretched darkly beyond, only shewn by a solitary lamp burning before the shrine of some inferior saint,—its ineffectual light dimly falling athwart the gloom ”

“ Under the gray vault of the cathedral women kneel before the image of the Christ Child, bringing Him a new pair of embroidered pantalets and entreating of His rosy simplicity what they would not dare ask from the "Ecce Homo"; or they kiss the satin-slippered feet of the miracle-working Virgin and vow her, if their prayer is granted, seven bright new swords of the finest Toledo workmanship to pierce her patient heart. The man of scientific training, fresh from the modern world, is brought into sharp collision with this dim old town. ”

“ Round the walls are the portraits of the archbishops, beginning with St Eugenius. The old series ends with Cisneros, and the second begins with William of Croy. Most of the recent portraits are wretched daubs. There are paintings here by John of Burgundy on a level with those of the Mozarabe chapel, while the effect of the Giordano ceiling is striking. The light seems to fall in perpendicular rays. In the matter of paintings the Cathedral would be poor enough but for a Titian and the splendid picture of El Greco in the sacristy. ”

“ It was now a good hour since the peaceful inhabitants of Toledo had secured with key and bolt the massive doors of their ancient mansions; the campana gorda of the cathedral was ringing curfew, and from the summit of the palace, now converted into barracks, was sounding the last bugle-call for silence, when ten or twelve officers, who had been{173} gradually assembling in the Zocodover, took the road leading thence to the monastery where the captain was lodged, impelled more by hope of draining the promised bottles than by eagerness to make acquaintance with the marvellous piece of sculpture. ”

“ The plain song had its nest in this Primacy. It was preserved here for centuries and purified; all the best was collected in Toledo, and from the books in this Cathedral have gone forth the chorales of all the churches in Spain and America. Poor plain song! it has long been dead. You see for yourself, Gabriel, who comes to the Cathedral at the hour of the choir? No one, absolutely no one. The matins are recited, and all the offices are intoned in the midst of perfect solitude. The people who still believe know nothing of the liturgy; they do not prize it and have forgotten all about it ”

“ The Cathedral THE monument which dominates Toledo, and which is not only the most prominent feature in a town whose every feature is so marked and significant, so unlike all the travelled eye is most familiar with, but is the centre of its changes and vicissitudes, of its triumphs and humiliations, is the Cathedral. ”

“ The Gothic retablo is one of the best of the Cathedral. A passage leads to it, and the interior is extremely gilt and ornate. The sovereigns are buried on either side of the chapter, the first being Henry of Trastamare, the founder of the chapel. Rich as it is in gilding, wrought-iron, marble and paintings, it looks small and unimposing after the great chapel of St Jago. Mass is celebrated here every morning at nine. An official in ragged and embroidered finery, at the end of the chapter, stands, holding the crowned and jewelled mace with the arms of Spain. ”

“ During the Visigothic reign in Toledo, the Cathedral site was occupied by a Christian temple. It was transformed by the Moors after their occupancy of the city into their principal mosque; there they were still permitted to carry on their worship, according to the terms of the treaty made on their surrender of the city to King Alfonso IV in 1085. A year afterwards{130} King Alfonso went off on a campaign, leaving the capital in charge of his French queen, Constance, and the Archbishop Bernard, recently sent to Toledo at the King's request by the Abbot of Cluny. ”

“ Not many poor are to be seen among the population of Toledo; it has now dwindled down to that point, at which the wants of the{384} church, the university, and the convents, can sustain it: beyond this number there are few; and those few are supported by church and convent alms: the only beggars I saw, were three or four women, who sat at the gate of the cathedral.
I was not long in Toledo before visiting its cathedral, which has no rival but the cathedral of Seville, in its claims to be the greatest and the most magnificent of Gothic temples. ”

“ It is situated about twelve leagues (40 miles) to the westward of Madrid, and is built upon a steep rocky hill, round which flows the Tagus on all sides but the North. It still possesses a great many remarkable edifices, notwithstanding that it has long since fallen into decay. Its Cathedral is the most magnificent of Spain, and is the See of p. 119the Primate. In the tower of this Cathedral is the famous bell of Toledo, the largest in the world, with the exception of the monster-bell of Moscow, which I have also seen. It weighs 1543 arrobes, or 37-032 pounds. ”

“ Hugues of Cluny, and from Spain came the great Bernardo who ruled the see of Toledo. For the people of Clermont to-day, November 28, 1095, is as vivid a reality as any of the revolutions of yesterday. A statue of Urban II stands outside the cathedral. Even so he stood, said a witness, as one having authority, high above the vast throng, on one side of him the stunted Peter the Hermit of Picardy, and on the other the Norman-Italian Bohemund of Taranto, a veritable Greek god in build and feature. From end to end of France Urban journeyed to arouse the people. ”

“ The inside is a mixture of plaster and rich marble, excessively gaudy, and in the worst taste imaginable.
These churches are all in the same part of Naples, and are seen in a walk from the Toledo to the cathedral. The Church of the Annunciation is more distant. It is really a noble edifice, of modern architecture, though the disposition is rather too complicated. There are three chapels on each side of the nave, with doubled columns between them, and a continued unbroken entablature. The plan of the choir is more intricate, and reminded me of Santa Maria in Campitelli, at Rome. ”