LERIDA

Lerida is another of those Catalan cities that remind one of the saying about new wine in old bottles. Seen from afar it is clearly one of those old human hives that have existed on the same spot ever since man felt the need of a permanent abode—you have the hill-site, the walls, the towers, the flowing river, the mediæval aspect. You observe with delight a humpbacked bridge, such as (with a total disregard for beasts of burden) our pious ancestors loved to build. And over all rises the cathedral—or, as we shall soon learn, what was the cathedral. But on a closer inspection we find that time has by no means left Lerida untouched. Already she has overflowed into the opposite side of the stream, and there is a big new suburb with wide white streets, spaciously planned squares, and avenues along which the trees are beginning to grow. And as you cross the humpbacked bridge, you observe that the centre arch is quite new, and as you enter the old town, you are astonished by the stir and the modernity of it all. It is just like Smyrna or Damascus. Every one has been too busy to build the town over again. Its poor old rickety houses, in which men designed to lead only the sedatest of lives, have been hastily requisitioned for the service of modern industry and commerce. The low rooms are packed with merchandise, the frail houses seem like to burst. The underground cellars come in very handily. Lerida is very much alive. Some day she will have to pull her house down and build a new one altogether.

Probably no one would have come to Lerida—no strangers of the uncommercial variety, that is—if Street had not told us about the old cathedral, since turned into a barracks. Nor without his detailed and professional description would the average traveller be able to make much of the building. The purposes to which it has been put have obscured the outlines of the features of the original fabric. But you cannot overlook it for it stands high on the hill like a citadel, which, indeed, it has now become.

Lerida—which the Catalans, by the way, call Lleyda—was known to the Romans as Ilerda, and when they turned Christian, they built a church on this site. This, it is supposed, became a mosque during the brief Moorish period, to be reconsecrated on the reappearance of the Christians. The first stone of the actual building was laid on July 22, 1203, in the presence of King Pedro II., and the consecration took place on October 31, 1278.

(People often wonder why we do not build cathedrals nowadays equal to the old. One of the reasons may be that we are in too great a hurry. In the Middle Ages no man expected to see the completion of the work he began. They were animated by a strong communal sense, different from the individualism of to-day.)

The excellent bishop and chapter of Lerida in the year 1707 thought the cathedral too old for their requirements, and having already commissioned a military architect to build them a new church in the city below, thither they removed. By a fair exchange the military took possession of the cathedral. They willingly display it to you, and the non-commissioned officer who shows you round seems less in a hurry to get the visit over than your clerical cicerone usually is.

The lay traveller in attempting to understand this church has always to refer himself to the explanation of Street or else to that of Piferrer, which is certainly not so intelligible. In plan, then, the church is cruciform with three eastern apses and square transept arms. Another apse projects eastward from the south transept, which is flanked on the other side by a semicircular chapel, pointing south. Over the crossing rises an octagonal lantern, roofed like the whole church with stone, and pierced in each face with double windows with varied tracery. At its north-west angle is a slender octagonal staircase turret, rising from the south-west angle of the north transept. There is a similar but stouter tower, detached from the lantern, rising over the south transept. These towers give the whole pile a romantic and beautiful appearance.

The principal portal, called in the Catalan dialect the Puerta dels Fillols, opens into the middle of the south aisle. “This [says our authority] is an example of singularly rich transitional work, with an archivolt enriched with chevrons, mouldings, dog-tooth, intersecting arches, and elaborate foliage. There is the usual horizontal cornice over the arch, and above this is a fourteenth-century statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Our Lord. The horizontal cornice is carried on moulded corbels, between which and the wall are carvings of wyverns and other animals; whilst the soffit of the cornice in each compartment is carved with delicate tracery panels, in some of which I thought I detected some trace of Moorish influence. The cornice has a delicate trailing branch of foliage; and the labels and two or three orders of the arch, in which sculpture of foliage is introduced, are remarkable for the singular delicacy and refinement of the lines of the foliage, and for the exceeding skill with which they have been wrought. There is none of that reckless dash which marks our carvers nowadays, but in its place a patient elaboration of lovely forms, which cannot too much be praised. The mouldings here are all decidedly characteristic by a later—probably fifteenth-century—vaulted porch, which occupies the space between two added chapels. The effect is very good and picturesque.”

The transept doors are also very fine, especially the southern one. The cornice is beautifully sculptured and the wheel window above reveals in its details the influence of the Italian Romanesque. These entrances make us regret the effacement of the west porch, which is concealed by the vast square cloister covering that side of the church. This remarkable building, now occupied by troops, is the grandest, Street declared, he had ever seen. In its present desecrated state, it must be confessed it needs a highly trained eye to appreciate its beauty. The arcades are walled up, and there is some ground for supposing that when in ecclesiastical occupation the galleries were used as dormitory and refectory. The details vary greatly. The bays vary in width, the sculpture is of all sorts of design, and of all periods. Adjoining this vast cloister on the north side is a long barrel-vaulted hall, lighted only at one end. On the west side the cloister is entered through an enormous western doorway with a pointed arch. South of this and almost detached from the cloister stands that beautiful octagonal steeple which served Pedro Balaguer as a model for the Micalet Tower at Valencia. It is 170 feet high and divided into five stages, “the whole construction being of the most dignified and solid description.”

Concerning the position of this tower, Street remarks: “Here, as often happens with detached campaniles, the grouping of the steeple with the church from various points of view is very diversified, and often very striking. From its great height above the valley it is seen on all sides, and generally at some distance. From the south, the grand size of the cloister, which connects the steeple with the church, gives it somewhat the effect of being in fact at the west end of an enormous building, of which the cloister may be the nave; whilst the steeple rears its whole height boldly to the right, and makes the whole scheme of the work utterly unintelligible, until after a thorough investigation.”

The interior of the church is now cut horizontally by a plank flooring, and no features of interest can be distinguished, except in a single apsidal chapel, which is still used as such, and where is buried a natural son of King Pedro the Catholic, who died in 1254. Whitewash has obscured all the details of capitals and columns.

Adjacent to the cathedral on the north side is the ruin of a once noble hall, with traces of Moorish influence in its carving—possibly the remains of a chapter-house or episcopal palace.

Far exceeding the cathedral in antiquity is the church of San Lorenzo hard by, though it is not safe to accept the tradition of its Gothic origin. It was certainly built prior to the twelfth century. Originally just an apse and a nave, with walls eight feet thick and a span of thirty-three feet, aisles each ending in an apse were added to it at a much later period. They communicate with the nave by very simple pointed arches, and their windows have good traceries of the late thirteenth century. “The apse has a semi-dome and is lighted by three round-headed windows, five inches wide in the clear, and has a corbel-table under the eaves outside.”

The octagonal campanile dates from the fifteenth century, to which period belongs the western gallery. There is a good deal of pointed work in the church, which is gloomy and religious. The high altar, dating from about 1400, has a reredos which is highly praised by some critics.

Lerida was the Salamanca of Aragon. Her university, founded in 1300 by Jaime II., numbered the profligate Calixtus III. among its professors, and Vicente Ferrer—the “angel of the judgment”—among its alumni. Ford reminds us that Horace speaks of the place as a seat of learning in Roman times, to which the troublesome youths of the capital were banished. The town, like its Castilian prototype, has been famed for arms as well as learning. It sustained a severe siege from Felipe IV. himself in 1640, and withstood the assaults of the great Condé in 1640. It owned the loss of its university to its devotion to the Archduke Charles in the War of Succession, and (more directly) to the defeat sustained close by, by the Bourbon king. At the same time the military authorities made the clergy give up their cathedral.

Probably none of the ancient edifices of Lerida will interest you as much as the market-place, surrounded by quaint old houses; entering, you find the whole house is a great wine-press, the grapes, trodden on the ground floor, pouring their juice into the cellars below.

Higher up the Segre is the historic town of Balaguer, the Bargusia of Livy, and the capital of the ancient county of Urgel. The counts had their residence in the “Beautiful Castle” (“Castillo hermoso”) which overlooked the town and has now totally disappeared. There are a few ruins of the once famous priory of Santo Domingo. The site of the castle is occupied by the church of Santa Maria, built in 1351. It is a dignified, simple edifice, of a single nave with lateral chapels. The Trappist monastery of Bellpuig de las Avellanas a little way out of the town is another and better preserved monument of the piety of the old Counts of Urgel whose line expired with Jaime el Desdichado at the beginning of the fifteenth century.

Still going northward, and without crossing the limits of the old country, we reach the venerable town of Agramunt, notable for its late Romanesque church with a portal similar to the Puerta dels Fillols at Lerida. We reach at last Seo de Urgel at the very foot of the Pyrenees. As a see, the place is of immemorial antiquity. Its bishops (who are co-sovereigns with France of the Republic of Andorra) attained the zenith of their power and splendour in the eleventh century. The town has figured in every border war and was the seat of the audacious reactionary caucus which called itself a regency and declared Ferdinand VII. unfit to govern while he was obedient to the constitution.

The actual cathedral was consecrated by Bishop Eribal in 1040, but its construction lasted well on into the next century. It resembles a church of southern France more than one of Cataluña. The façade is divided vertically by two buttresses, horizontally by string courses into three stages, the lowest of which is pierced by the simple round arched west porch, the middle by three round-headed windows, the highest forming a sort of attic, by a round-headed window and two rosaces. The interior is divided into a nave and aisles with transept and lantern. The treasury is interesting for its collection of documents dating back to the time of the Carlovingian kings.

Returning from Lerida to Barcelona we pass the castle of Bellpuig, the seat of the great family of Anglesola—a massive fortress of red stone, restored in the sixteenth century. Its magnificent staircase still gives one some idea of the pomp and state of its former lords. The village extends from the castle to the church—a situation which inspired the erudite topographer of this country (Piferrer) with reflections that remind one of Don Quixote’s address to the goatherds. The church contains the tomb of Don Ramon de Cordova, one of the ablest lieutenants of Gonzalo de Cordova. His effigy, armed and holding his helmet, reclines in a sleeping posture on an urn adorned with reliefs of marine gods and monsters and upheld on the backs of sirens, whose hands are webbed; the sepulchral arch is formed by six Ionic columns, against which lean figures expressive of mourning; over the tomb is a relief of the Entombment. In niches on each side of the arch are two life-size figures emblematic of Victory; above them, two figures leaning forth from medallions appear to extend laurels toward the hero. The plinth and cornice of this superb tomb are adorned with reliefs illustrating the victories and achievements of the deceased, who was as distinguished as an admiral as a general. His body remains in the urn practically incorrupt. The tomb is the work of Juan Nolano.

This work has been brought here from the ruined Franciscan friary, founded a few miles from Bellpuig by the knight in the year 1507. The cloister is fairly well preserved. The two lower galleries—a third has been added since the foundation—are in debased Gothic style. The second gallery is formed by eleven rectangular columns, like those of the Lonja at Valencia, with four bands of moulding wreathed round each and gathered in at the capitals. The convent church is also of interest and is connected with the cloister by a fine staircase.

From Bellpuig we pass on to Cervera, to which Philip V. transferred the university from Lerida in 1717. This is the famous body which proclaimed, in the enlightened reign of Fernando VII., its horror of the fatal habit of thinking (“Lejos de nosotros a mania funesta de pensar”). Notwithstanding, it was closed in 1823, and finally suppressed or rather transferred to Barcelona in 1842. This singular university was housed in a building opened in 1740, which still dominates the whole town; it is a huge tasteless structure, a rather suitable home for learned fools. Nothing seems to have been determined with regard to its ultimate destiny, and the whole town has a frustrate and somewhat hopeless air. The church of Santa Maria is not devoid of beauty and interest. One of the porches appears to be a survival of an earlier Romanesque structure, and is surmounted by a relief of St. Martin sharing his cloak with the beggar. The tombs are also worthy of note.