Iberia (19 page)
Authors: James Michener
mighty fortress on a rock. It is practically unassailable and its
history has been a succession of sieges, some of which the insolent
city withstood for years. From the east the Río Tajo (Tagus) comes
wandering out of the plain and bumps into the rock of Toledo.
Rebuffed, it turns south, runs almost completely around the rock,
then meanders off toward Portugal to enter the Atlantic at Lisboa.
It thus protects Toledo on three sides, and to think of the city
without the river would be meaningless.
provides a natural bulwark which armies could not overcome.
Within these defenses a considerable settlement grew up in ancient
times to serve as the capital of Spain throughout the greater part
of its history. The general pattern of the city today is roughly what
it was two thousand years ago, for as an official told me, ‘Forty
years ago we had a population of about forty thousand. Today
we have the same. And forty years from now it will still be the
same, unless we build skyscrapers. For we have used up our rock.’
day out of the city, across the bridge over the Tajo and up onto
that road that swings to the south, and when I had climbed to a
high point I stopped to look back. How magnificent Toledo was,
with its two salient bulwarks: to the right, the blunt, four-square
Alcázar, a gigantic fortress with no artistic grace whatever, and
in the center the glory of Toledo, the Gothic cathedral, whose
spire and extended walls can best be appreciated from where I
stood.
together like animals in a storm, but on the country side the land
stood practically empty. The Tajo was a line demarcating
civilization from nothingness, and until Toledo was captured no
invading general could claim that he had subdued Spain. This
was the sequence of occupation with the approximate dates when
Toledo fell into new hands:
Prehistoric
192
B.C.
411
453
712
1085
Visigoths
At Mérida we have witnessed the impact of Roman rule; in the
next chapter we shall see the Muslims at Córdoba; and in all parts
we can observe Spaniards, but it is only in Toledo that we can
glimpse that nebulous period of three centuries when tribes from
northern Europe dominated the peninsula.
The first Germanic tribes that spilled over into Spain after the
debacle of the Roman Empire were mere adventurers and brought
little except fire and disruption. Vandals, Alans, Suevi, they left
no mark on either the culture or the population of Spain and
were so disorganized that it was relatively easy for the superior
Visigoths (the name means Noble Goths and refers to the West
Goths) to supersede them. The Visigoths played an important
role in the civilization of Spain. They brought a vigorous if
heretical Christianity, and when on May 8, 589, King Reccared
finally abjured his heresy and pledged allegiance to the Catholic
Church of Rome, he installed Spain’s most prized possession.
The Visigoths also introduced a codified law, a sensible tax
system, a centralized government and an element of strength in
the Spanish character. Since these Goths ruled Spain for nearly
three hundred years and stayed on after their final defeat, they
must also have made a strong contribution to Spanish blood, and
it is they who account for the large number of blue-eyed
Spaniards. On the other hand, they left almost no literature, little
art and no substantial architecture. I recall few mass movements
of people that left behind so little visual proof that they had
occupied a country.
Toledo was probably an imposing city when it served as their
capital, but the only echo of its grandeur is found in the Santa
Cruz Museum, a few steps east of the Zocodover, where a few
Visigothic remains are on display. In a corner room downstairs
stands a typical example, a tombstone from the sixth century,
carved in a soft limestone which should have been easy to work;
but its letters are so puerile, its design so trivial and its effect so
unsatisfying that one can see that it was carved by a man who had
no sense of proportion or art. It is one of the few ancient stones
I know that must be called ugly; yet in the next room stand
beautifully carved Roman stones of about the same period, and
these were surely available to the Visigoths as examples.
As one moves from room to room the conviction grows that
the Visigoths were ungracious men; the capitals they used to top
their columns are crude and the columns are poorly carved, as if
a shaggy bear had done the job with his claws.
And yet, in the far room on the second floor, when I had about
given up on the Visigoths, I came upon a piece of stone, number
196, which was positively superb, and having seen it, I had a new
appreciation of the Visigoths. I commend it as one of the best
things in Spain.
It is about eight inches high and was once square, about thirty
inches on the side, but now one of the corners has been damaged,
which does little harm; indeed, it lends a feeling of history. The
four sides of the stone, a rather soft, whitish limestone, are sloped
inward and decorated with rude square crosses of the kind known
as formée. Broad at the ends and tapering to a point where the
vertical and the lateral bars met, the four triangular parts give the
impression of a huge stone Iron Cross, as if this early work of the
Goths had served as the pattern for present-day Germans, which
it probably did. The crosses are accompanied by rows of massive
and ungainly fleurs-de-lis plus other odds and ends, the whole
decoration producing a feeling of combined awkwardness and
significance. The stone is not inspired, but it is devout; it is not
beautiful, but it does evoke a sense of primitive worship.
On top it has been hollowed to form a basin, and through one
side, the cutting having been performed crudely, a drainpipe
issues, for this is a baptismal font, and here the Goths committed
themselves and Spain to the Christian religion. I never tired of
looking at this stone; it seemed to me to have the rude force
attained by our best modern sculpture, and I suppose if Henry
Moore or Richard Stankiewicz were called upon to produce a
baptismal font for a contemporary church it would look
something like this. Of all the Visigothic stones I have seen in
Spain, this one speaks most clearly and purely of that shadowy
age when these northern barbarians fumbled and grumbled their
way to victory and defeat.
Legend says that the Visigoths lost Spain because a voyeur king
spied on a naked princess. Roderick, fated to be the last king of
Toledo, had assumed the throne in 709. A married man, he
conceived a great passion for the daughter of his friend and
counselor, Count Julian, who governed Ceuta in Africa. King
Roderick used to secrete himself in the bushes near a cave, still
shown to tourists, on the other side of the Tajo near where I had
stopped to see the city, and from this hidden spot he watched
Florinda bathe. One day, while doing so, his passion overcame
him and he leaped from his hiding place and raped the girl. Count
Julian, seeking a revenge which would repair his daughter’s honor,
was ridiculed by the king much as Rigoletto, the father of Gilda,
was ridiculed by his count. Rigoletto missed his revenge; Count
Julian did not. He fled Toledo, went south to Gibraltar, crossed
over to Ceuta, and there invited the Muslims to help him teach
Roderick a lesson. He led the Moors into Spain, where they
defeated Roderick, and then he brought them to Toledo and
showed them how to cross the Tajo and penetrate the defenses.
Of Roderick, when the battle ended, there remained only a kingly
scarf and a glove; his fate was never known, but the rule of the
Goths was ended and they left behind only that litany of strange
and un-Spanish names used by their kings: Reccared, Witeric,
Wamba, Witiza, Quindasvinto. The long dominance of the
Muslims had begun.
The heart of Toledo is the Gothic cathedral, begun in 1227 and
finished more than two hundred and fifty years later. It is so
beautiful that one could never exhaust its variety, so evocative of
the religious and civil history of Spain that it can never be fully
understood. It is a masterpiece of concept and execution.
I care little for the exterior, what I have been able to see of it,
for the façade is so uneven it looks as if Visigoths had planned it.
The left spire is marred by three curious circles of projecting
flanges such as boats use on their pier lines to prevent wharf rats
from climbing aboard; it therefore looks as if it were prepared to
repulse an assault of angels. The right spire was never finished,
and what exists of its base was severely mutilated by a late
addition. The various doors leading into the cathedral have been
admired by some, but they are poor things compared to what we
shall see in the north. But even if the exterior were a masterpiece
it wouldn’t matter, because you can’t really see it. Houses and
shops are jammed against it, and only from across the river can
one see that part that soars above the surrounding roofs and gain
an idea of what the building must have been before it was so sadly
encroached upon.
But inside, it is quite a different matter. One does not enter
through the main façade but through a cloister that stands off to
one side. Whenever I step into the cathedral itself, I go to the first
closed door on my right, lean back against it and allow my eye to
wander the full length of the left aisle to remind myself of how
enormous this church is. One morning I stepped it off, about a
yard to a step, and it measured 136 paces, well beyond the length
of a football field.
From my vantage point at the door I can see three things: the
immense sweep of the aisle; the massive structure in the center
of the cathedral, which houses the choir and the altar; and at the
far end the Capilla de Santiago, which terminates the aisle. This
chapel is something very special.
Seen from where I stand, the ground-level part of the chapel
is composed of an iron grille which provides a lovely tracery and
a subtle movement which invites the eye to look past the great
bulk of the altar and around into the ambulatory. Above the grille,
stained-glass windows lend color and variation to the scene. Aloft,
the vaulting crisscrosses in various angles and planes, creating a
polyphonic counterpoint whose intricacies never end. This distant
conjunction of elements is like a perpetuum mobile placed at the
end of a long line of stone trees whose trunks are the majestic
pillars of the cathedral, and although there will be much for me
to see in this subtle building, nothing will excel this simple yet
complicated view down the aisle to the distant chapel. With this
view one gains an insight into what a cathedral is supposed to be.
Let us walk from my door down the length of the church to
the Capilla de Santiago. A quarter of the way down on the left
stands a small golden chapel, put there to break the long sweep;
it is placed exactly right, for it lends a touch of color without
creating confusion: this cathedral is surprisingly free of clutter or
the kind of garbage that often mars the minor churches of Spain.
Now on the right we see the heavy walls of the choir and altar.
Light strikes us as we cross the transept, a small cathedral in itself,
and at the end we face the chapel whose components I have
described.
It contains two works of note. High on the wall Santiago rides
a brightly colored merry-go-round horse caparisoned in gold and
shells. This is the same Santiago we saw as a pilgrim in Mérida,
but in this evocation he is Santiago Matamoros (Moor-slayer),
brandishing the enormous sword with which he slays Muslims,
one of whom we see beneath the horse’s hooves getting his head
slashed off. We will meet this ferocious Matamoros riding over
much of Spain but never in a more stylish presentation.
On the pavement of the chapel stand a pair of splendid marble
tombs, each supported by four kneeling knights of the Order of
Santiago, and from looking at them one can appreciate how grand
and powerful that order was. The tombs form the end of a story
both tragic and amusing, for they contain the bodies of the Conde
Álvaro de Luna and his wife. The conde was born in 1388 as the
illegitimate son of a rural family. Having no family prospects, he
maneuvered himself into position as the confidant of Isabel the
Catholic’s father King Juan II, whom we have already met as the
grandson of John of Gaunt, and so charmed him that he, Alvaro,
became the effective ruler of Spain and the most notorious legal
thief in history. His appetite for land and money was so voracious
that after a few years he had amassed a million and a half coins
of Spanish gold, eighty million lesser coins of Castilla and Aragón
and seven trunks of Italian gold coins. He was Master of Santiago,
which made him one of the most powerful lay forces in religion,
and Condestable de Castilla, which empowered him to control
the countryside. By one clever trick or another he acquired
outright ownership of one hundred and twenty different towns.
In the days when Colonel Pizarro was a boy in Trujillo, for
example, Don Álvaro owned the city. His end was sardonic.
Always loyal to the king, he engineered for Juan a most favorable
second marriage to Isabel of Portugal (who would become the
mother of Isabel the Catholic), but no sooner had she become
Queen of Spain than she decided that the Conde de Luna must
go. ‘He is stealing the nation,’ she told her husband as she
organized a cabal of nobles who arrested the conde on some
irrelevant charge, gave him a drum-head court-martial and sped
him to the execution block. He was buried in the Capilla de
Santiago, and that is where the humor comes in, for his family
erected over his grave a life-sized portrait statue so articulated
that when Mass was being said at the main altar some twenty
yards away, a servant who followed the motions of the priest could
manipulate a series of underground chains which made the statue
stand, sit or genuflect at the proper points of the service, creaking
loudly as it did so. So far as we know, this was the world’s first
mechanical man and it became so notorious that more people
watched it than the priest. This continued for some thirty years
until one day Queen Isabel said sternly, ‘Get that thing out of
here!’ What became of the praying statue no one remembers.