Salamanca

“ SALAMANCA—ZAMORA—BENAVENTE. THE long dreary road which leads over the corn-growing plain from Medina del Campo is at last relieved some two or three miles before Salamanca is reached by the view of its imposing group of steeples and domes, which rise gradually over the low hills on the northern side. The long line of walls round the city still in part remains, but seems daily to be falling more and more to decay, and indeed generally all its grand buildings speak rather of death than of life. ”

“ What natural and economic forces made this particular spot, where the barren, treeless plain slopes down to the bed of the Tormes, the centre of learning for Spain, the intermediary for all Europe of Arabic science and Western thought and a great, and in some ways sumptuous city? What products of the earth, got by what toil of man, where the earth seems completely barren and man completely idle, provided the money to build so extensively and so elaborately? For Salamanca is a city where Plateresque and Baroque fancy have impressed their wildest dreams on the rich surface of the stone. ”

“ SALAMANCA ‘Sword never blunted pen,’ says a Spanish proverb, ‘nor pen sword.’ The history of Salamanca illustrated this truth. Its people were doughty warriors and learned scholars. The name of Salamanca was feared by Moor and Portuguese, as much as it was respected in all the halls of learning of the mediæval world. The seat of a university which all but successfully competed for pre-eminence with Oxford and Paris, it was at the same time the permanent camp of as fierce a race of fighting men as ever marched beneath the banners of Spain. ”

“ I have visited Salamanca after the great defeat of the philosophical party, the strongest that ever was formed in Spain. A man of first-rate literary character among us, [19] whom merit and court favour had raised to one of the chief seats in the judicature of the country, but whom court caprice had, about this time, sent to rusticate at Salamanca, was doing me the honours of the place, when, approaching the convocation-hall of the university, we perceived the members of the faculty of divinity strolling about, while waiting for a meeting of their body. ”

“ And, notwithstanding the glories of our Peninsular campaigns, let us resolve that a sword we will never draw but in defence of our own soil!
The ever memorable battle of Salamanca took place in the same month of July in which three years before had been fought the equally glorious battle of Talavera—and even in still more sultry weather, so much so that before the engagement at Salamanca, on one occasion when the French, pressing upon our rear, were scattered by the bayonet, some of our men fainted with the heat. ”

“ Every one is busy. The animation of this little square, as I suddenly come upon it out of a deeply shaded and aristocratic street, is just the Spain I had always thought of—a Spain of contrasts. Brilliant sun and grateful shade. Seclusion behind high walls, and a strange medley of noisy folk, for ever bargaining, buying and selling. Certainly in Salamanca it is all here. I hear the click of the castanets and the sound of the guitar in the evening, I see the ardent lover standing at those iron bars whispering soft raptures to his mistress, and the picture is complete. ”

“ And the mountain provinces of Galicia and the Asturias, of idyllic hill and dale, yet with seaports fast awakening to commercial life, look with little sympathy on the sluggish province of León that borders them.
Industrial advancement is on its gradual way in Spain, but there is not a hint of its movement in this oldest of the separate kingdoms. Zamora, Astorga, León, Salamanca, the romantic cities of the earlier days of chivalry, lie asleep; the whistle of the railways has failed to rouse them. ”

“ The great gate of the Library is now the chief relic of these bygone glories: and that gem of the early Renaissance is worthily supported by the arcaded quadrangles of some of the colleges and schools. They are built of the warm golden-brown stone which is common to most Salamancan monuments, and their richly-carved parapets and fantastically-shaped arches have an air of oriental opulence which is very taking to the eye.
But even apart from its churches, convents, and colleges, Salamanca would still remain notable by reason of its palaces alone. ”

“ The Puerta del Rio, with the Cathedral Tower.
It is one of the penalties of sketching in a crowded city that everybody who has no immediate occupation of his own becomes consumingly interested in yours. There is but one spot in Salamanca where one is quite secure from surveillance, and that is opposite the porch of San Martin, perhaps the most frequented corner in the town. Here, balanced gingerly upon a narrow ledge, you overlook the heads of the bystanders, and even the most agile urchin can find no foothold in your rear. ”

“ We the King and the Queen of Castile, of Leon, and of Aragon, Sicily, etc., send this to salute you, as one whom we love and esteem highly, and to show we desire God may give life, health, and honor, even to the extent of your own desire. We inform you that the City of Salamanca is one of the most notable, populous, and principal cities of our kingdoms, in which there is a society of scholars, and where all sciences may be studied, and to which people from all states continually come. ”

“ Ay, better, better far, Man, hark'ee Sancho, you are not at Salamanca now, amongst your square Caps, but in Palermo, come up to see your Mistress the fair Lavinia, the Glory of the City; go and court her like a Gentleman, without your Tropes and Figures, or all the Physics, Metaphysics, and Metaphors, will streight be made pitiful Martyrs. ”

“ But Salamanca was still an important and a famous place: popular fiction had made its name familiar to those who are unacquainted with its history; while to the antiquary, the historian, and the philosopher, it is a city of no ordinary interest. The Roman road, which extended from thence to Merida, and so to Seville, may still be traced in its vicinity: its bridge of twenty-seven arches, over the Tormes, is said to be in part a Roman work. ”

“ Salamanca is a sleepy old city which the world seems to have left behind. In the summer it is a veritable furnace, in the winter it is swept by icy blasts. Before the Christian era it was known as Salmantica. Hannibal came and captured it in B.C. 247 and under the Romans it was the ninth military station on the great road which they built connecting Cadiz and Merida with Astorga and Gijón. Alfonso IX. of Leon founded the university, which reached its zenith as a seat of learning during the sixteenth century. ”

“ A Jesuit convent rears its chill harsh walls in the town’s heart: a symbol of the ruthless might of the Company of Jesus, of its enormous logic. And everywhere, the alleys limping up, limping down, between the homes of the Church.
This Salamanca, fixed in the eras of Isabel, Carlos, Felipe II, has aged; has not changed. The dirty streets are the same; the low blind precincts of the poor (Cervantes lived here once) and the dominant recurrent periods of church and tower. Life’s anarchy is here controlled by learning. ”

“ The real fiesta, however, took the form of a bullfight that had a character all its own. Salamanca, as I have hinted, is no longer a city of wealth. Indeed, those occasions are rare in these modern days when she can indulge in a round of the national sport, even though she possesses one of the largest bullrings in Spain. On this great holiday, however, the city fathers had decided that nothing within the bounds of reason was too good for the recreating of Salamanca's long unfeasted children. A full-sized bullfight would, to be sure, have far overstepped the bounds above mentioned. ”

“ The next morning, before daylight, we were again under arms, and moved towards Salamanca, to occupy that town with the first division and some Spaniards. Every morning we assembled an hour before daybreak, without its walls, waiting the approach of the enemy. I noticed the Spanish officers invariably covering their mouths, before the sun had risen, with their cloaks, and blowing the smoke of their cigars through their noses. ”

“ Very suggestive of Salamanca’s fiery, flourishing days is the device over the doorway of an old house in the little Plaza de San Cebrian—‘Quod tibi non vis, alteri non facias.’ Close by in an underground cellar the famous Enrique de Villena is said to have studied magic under a sacristan from a neighbouring church. ”

“ It is in this street, bordered by lateral lanes, and covered with canvass tendidos, that all the commerce of Granada moves and buzzes; hatters, tailors, and shoemakers, lacemen and cloth merchants, occupy nearly all the shops, which possess as yet nothing of the improvements of modern art, and remind you of the old pillars of the Paris markets.
The Zacatin is always crowded. Now you meet a group of students on a tour from Salamanca, playing the guitar, the tambourine, castanets, and triangle, while they sing couplets full of fun and animation ”

“ Just so they came into Salamanca in the past when students with swords and velvet capes walked the streets, and so I hope they may do some hundred years from now, for such lives of frugal contentment are unequaled. Localism and provinciality have been forced on Spain by nature, and it is this very provincialism which is her charm for the traveler. Fresh from a prosperous, new world, he may often long for certain changes here, for more widely diffused education, for free libraries, a more secure self-government; but such material prosperity is bought with a price. ”

“ Oct. artillery to reach Salamanca had to proceed all up the valley of the Tagus almost to Madrid and come back to meet him at Salamanca, where he was to be joined by reinforcements from England under Sir David Baird. Moore's concentration at Salamanca was wholly based on the supposition [1295] that the Spanish armies were strong enough at all events to retard, if not wholly to resist, the invasion of the French. Yet the grand army was rapidly approaching, and before long the forces collected upon the frontier rendered resistance hopeless. ”

“ It is a remarkable fact that nearly every one of our chief battles in the Peninsula was heralded by a storm, as if Nature sympathized in the contest. That of Salamanca was fought upon a plain surrounded by ranges of hills—one of the few open and level tracts upon which the rival armies met in the Peninsula, which seemed peculiarly adapted for such a struggle, bearing at opposite and distant points two striking rocky eminences, steep and rugged, called the Arapiles (cut out, as it were, for rival generals) on which the left of the French and the right of the Allies were posted. ”

“ The light division and the Spanish infantry entered Salamanca, the cavalry were disposed beyond the Tormes, covering all the front, and thus posted, the English general desired to bring affairs to the decision of a battle. For the heights of Christoval were strong and compact, the position of the Arapiles on the other side of the Tormes was glorious as well as strong, and the bridge of Salamanca, and the fords furnished the power of concentrating on either side of that river by a shorter line than the enemy could move upon. ”

“ November 18.—Start at eight, and en route get a volunteer guide for Cuba de Sancho, who runs amazingly fast and long. On arrival get comfortably lodged, and start at dawn for Salamanca, which we reach by five o’clock, being in all eleven leagues.
Here meet Mr. Fletcher, Mulcaster, and Foster, who tell us that the French had pushed on cavalry to Valladolid, and also that an order has been given to the troops at Salamanca to prepare to march at the shortest notice. ”

“ On the next day there arrived detailed and certain news from secret correspondents in Salamanca, to the effect that Marmont was concentrating his troops in two bodies, one, under his own command, at Salamanca itself, the other about Alba de Tormes and Tamames. The natural deduction from this information was that one column would march by the Puerto de Baños over the mountains to the Tagus, and the other by Ciudad Rodrigo and the Puerto de Perales. Wellington, on receiving the Spanish notes forwarded by Spencer, was delighted to find that his forecast was almost certainly right. ”

“ Salas (Don Ramon de) , born at Belchite in Aragon, was a professor at Salamanca, and one of its greatest literati: he was prosecuted in 1796 by the Inquisition of Madrid, on suspicion of having adopted the principles of the modern philosophers, Voltaire, Rousseau, and others, whose works he had read. He acknowledged that he was acquainted with their works, but added that he had only read them in order to refute them, which he had done in several public theses, maintained at Salamanca by some of his pupils, under his direction. All these theses were introduced in the trial. ”

“ There is a notice of the author—Francisco Botelho Moraes e Vasconcellos—in Barbosa, (Tom. II. p. 119,) and at the end of the edition of the Alfonso, Salamanca, 1731, 4to, is a defence of a few peculiarities in its orthography. “Las Cuevas de Salamanca” (s. l. 1734) is a small volume, divided into seven books, written, perhaps, at Salamanca itself, which Moraes loved, and where he retired in his old age. He published one or two works in Spanish, besides those already mentioned, and one or two in Latin, but no others of consequence. ”