Читать книгу The Cathedrals of Northern Spain - Charles Rudy - Страница 7

Table of Contents

HISTORICAL ARABESQUES

The history of Spain is, perhaps, more than that of any other nation, one long series of thrilling, contradictory, and frequently incomprehensible events.

This is not only due to the country's past importance as a powerful factor in the evolution of our modern civilization, but to the unforeseen doings of fate. Fate enchained and enslaved its people, moulded its greatness and wrought its ruin. Of no other country can it so truthfully be said that it was the unwitting tool of some higher destiny. Most of the phenomena of its history took place in spite of the people's wishes or votes; neither did the different art questions, styles, periods, or movements emanate from the people. This must be borne in mind.

The Romans were the first to come to Spain with a view to conquering the land, and to organizing the half-savage clans or tribes who roamed through the thickets and across the plains. But nowhere did the great rulers of the world encounter such fierce resistance. The clans were extremely warlike and, besides, intensely individual. They did not only oppose the foreigner's conquest of the land, but also his system of organization, which consisted in the submission of the individual to the state.

The clans or tribes recognized no other law than their own sweet will; they acted independently of each other, and only on rare occasions did they fight in groups. They were local patriots who recognized no fatherland beyond their natal vale or village.

This primary characteristic of the Spanish people is the clue to many of the subsequent events of the country's history. Against it the Romans fought, but fought in vain, for they were not able to overcome it.

Christianity dawned in the East and was introduced into Spain, some say by St. James in the north, others by St. Peter or St. Paul in the south.

The result was astonishing: what Roman swords, laws, and highroads had been unable to accomplish (as regards the organization of the savage tribes) Christianity brought about in a comparatively short lapse of time.

The reason is twofold. In the first place, the new form of religion taught that all men were equal; consequently it was more to the taste of the individualistic Spaniard than the state doctrines of the Roman Empire.

Secondly, it permitted him to worship his deity in as many forms (saints) as there were days in the year; consequently each village or town could boast of its own saint, prophet, or martyr, who, in the minds of the citizens, was greater than all other saints, and really the god of their fervent adoration.

Hence Christianity was able to introduce into the Roman province of Hispania a social organization which was to exert a lasting influence on the country and to acquire an unheard-of degree of wealth and power.

When the temporal domination of Rome in Spain had dwindled away to nothing, other foreigners, the Visigoths, usurped the fictitious rule. Their state was civil in name, military in organization, and ecclesiastical in reality.

They formed no nation, however, though they preserved the broken fragments of the West Roman Empire. The same spirit of individualism characterized the tribes or people, and they swore allegiance to their local saint (God) and to the priest who was his representative on earth (Church)—but to no one else.

Consequently it can be assumed that the Spanish nation had not as yet been born; the controlling power had passed from the hands of one foreigner to those of another: only one institution—the Church—could claim to possess a national character; around it, or upon its foundations, the nation was to be built up, stone by stone, and turret by turret.

The third foreigner appeared on the scene. He was doubtless the most important factor in the formation of the Spanish nation.

It is probable that the Church called him over the Straits of Gibraltar as an aid against Rodrigo, the last Visigothic king, who lost his throne and his life because too deeply in love with his beautiful Tolesian mistress.

Legends explain the Moor's landing differently. Sohail, as powerfully narrated by Mr. Cunninghame-Graham, is one of these legends, beautifully fatalistic and exceptionally interesting. According to it, the destiny of the Moors is ruled by a star named Sohail. Whither it goes they must follow it.

In the eighth century it happened that Sohail, in her irregular course across the heavens, was to be seen, a brilliant star, from Gibraltar. Obeying the stellar call, Tarik landed in Spain and moved northwards at the head of his irresistible, fanatic hordes. The star continued its northerly movement, visible one fine night from the Arab tents pitched on the plains between Poitiers and Tours. The next night, however, it was no longer visible, and Charles Martel drove the invading Moors back to the south.

Centuries went by and Sohail appeared ever lower down on the southern horizon. One night it was only visible from Granada, and then Spain saw it no more. That same day—'twas in the fifteenth century—Boabdil el Chico surrendered the keys of Granada, and the Arabs fled, obeying the retreating star's call.

To-day they are waiting in the north of Africa for Sohail to move once again to the north: when she does so, they will rise again as a single man, and regain their passionately loved Alhambra, their beautiful kingdom of Andalusia.

Tradition is fond of showing us a nucleus of fervent Christian patriots obliged by the invading Arab hordes to retire to the north-western corner of the Iberian peninsula. Here they made a stand, a last glorious stand, and, gradually increasing in strength, they were at last able to drive back the invader inch by inch until he fled across the straits to trouble Iberia no more.

Nothing is, however, less true. The noblemen and monarchs of Galicia, Leon, and Oviedo—later of Castile, Navarra, and Aragon—were so many petty lords who, fighting continually among themselves, ruled over fragments of the defeated Visigothic kingdom. At times they called in the Arab enemy—to whom in the early centuries they paid a yearly tribute—to help them against the encroachments of their brother Christians. Consequently they lacked that spirit of patriotism and of national ambition which might have justified their claims to be called monarchs or rulers of Spain.

The Church was no better. Its bishops were independent princes who ruled in their dioceses like sovereigns in their palaces; they recognized no supreme master, not even the Pope, whose advice was ignored, and whose orders were disobeyed.

It was not until the twelfth or thirteenth century that the Christian incursions into Moorish territory took the form of patriotic crusades, in which fervent Christians burnt with the holy desire of weeding out of the peninsula the Saracen infidel.

This holy crusade was due to the coming from France and Italy of the Cluny monks. Foreigners,—like the Romans, the Church, the Visigoths, and the Moors,—they created a situation which facilitated the union of the different monarchs, prelates, and noblemen, by showing them a common cause to fight for. Besides, anxious to establish the supreme power of the Pope in a land where his authority was a dead letter, they crossed the Pyrenees and broke the absolute power of the arrogant prelates.

The result was obvious: the Church became uniform throughout the country, and its influence waxed to the detriment of that of the noblemen. Once again the kings learnt to rely upon the former, thus putting an end to the power of the latter. Once more the Church grew to be an ecclesiastical organization in which the role of the prelates became more important as time went on.

In short, if the coming of the Moors retarded for nearly six hundred years the birth of the Spanish nation, this birth was directly brought about by the political ability of the Cluny monks; the Moors, on the other hand, exerted a direct and lasting influence on the shaping and moulding of the future nation.

Christian Spain, at the time of the death of the pious warrior-king San Fernando, was roughly divided into an eastern and a western half, into the kingdom of Castile (and Leon) and that of Aragon. The fusion of these two halves by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabel, two hundred years later, marks the date of the birth of Spain as a nation.

It is true, nevertheless, that the people had little or no voice in the arrangement of matters. They were indifferent to what their crowned rulers were doing, and ignorant of the growing power, wealth, and learning of the prelates. All they asked for was individual liberty and permission to pray to the God of their choice. Neither had as yet the spirit of patriotism burned in their breasts, and they were utterly insensible to any and all politics which concerned the peninsula as a unity.

But the Church-state had successfully evolutionized, and Catholic kings sat on the only available throne. The last Moor had been driven from the peninsula, the Jews had been expelled from the Catholic kingdom, and the Inquisition—now that the Church could no longer direct its energy against the infidel—strengthened the Pope's hold on the land and increased the importance and magnificence of the prelates themselves.

A word as to heresy (the Reformation) and the Inquisition. The latter was not directed against the former, for it would have been impossible for the people to accept the reformed faith in the fifteenth century. For the Spaniard the charm of the Christian religion was that it placed him on an equal footing with all men; hence, it flattered his love of personal liberty and his self-consciousness or pride. The charm of Catholicism was that it enabled him to adore a local deity in the shape of a martyred saint; thus, it flattered his vanity as a clansman, and his spirit of individualism.

It was not so much the God of Christianity he worshipped as Our Lady of the Pillar, Our Lady of Sorrows, of the Camino, etc., and he obeyed less readily the archbishop than the custodian priest of his particular saint, of whom he declared "that he could humiliate all other saints."

Consequently Protestantism, which tended to kill this local worship by upholding that of a collective deity, could never have taken a serious hold of the country, and it is doubtful if it ever will.

On the other hand—as previously remarked—the Spanish Inquisition helped to centralize the Church's power and obliged the people to accept its decisions as final. The effect of Torquemada's policy is still to be felt in Spain—could it be otherwise?

Had successive events in this stage of Spain's history followed a normal course, and had the education of the people been fostered by the state instead of being cursed by the Church, it is more than probable that the map of Europe would have been different to-day from what it is. For the Spanish people would have learnt to think as patriots, as a nation; they would have developed their country's rich soil and thickly populated the vast vegas; they would have taken the offensive against foreign nations, and would have chased and battled the Moor beyond the Straits of Gibraltar.

It was not to be, however. An abnormal event was to take place—and did take place—which repeated in fair Iberia the retrograde movement initiated by the Arab invasion 750 years earlier.

A foreigner was again the cause of this new phenomenon, a harebrained Genoese navigator whom the world calls a genius because he was successful, but who was an evil genius for the new-born Spanish nation, one who was to load his adopted country with unparalleled fame and glory before causing her rapid and clashing downfall.

Christopher Columbus came to Spain from the east; he sailed westwards from Spain and discovered—for Spain!—two vast continents.

The importance of this event for Spain is apt to be overlooked by those who are blinded by the unexpected realization of Columbus's daring dreams. It was as though a volcanic eruption had taken place in a virgin soil, tossing earth and grass, layers and strata of stone, hither and thither in utter confusion, impeding the further growth of young plantlets and forbidding the building up of a solid national edifice.

Instead of devoting their energies to the interior organization of the country, Spaniards turned their eyes to the New World. In exchange for the gold and precious stones which poured into the land, they gave that which left the country poor and weak indeed: their blood and their lives. The bravest and most intrepid leaders crossed the seas with their followers, and behind them sailed thousands upon thousands of hardy adventurers and soldiers.

But the Spaniards could not colonize. They lacked those qualities of collectivity which characterized Rome and England. The individualistic spirit of the people caused them to go and to come as they chose without possessing any ambition of establishing in the newly acquired territories a home and a family; neither did the women folk emigrate—and hence the failure of Spain as a colonizing power.

On the other hand, those who had sailed the seas to the Spanish main, and had hoarded up a significant treasure, invariably returned, not to Spain exactly, but to their native town or village. Upon arriving home, their first act was to bequeath a considerable sum to the Church, so as to ease their conscience and to assure themselves homage, respect, and unrestrained liberty.

The effects produced by this phenomenon of individualism were manifold. They exist even to-day, so lasting were they.

A new nobility was created—wealthy, powerful, and generally arrogant and unscrupulous, which replaced the feudal aristocracy of the middle ages.

Secondly, oligarchy—or better still, caciquismo, an individualistic form of oligarchy—sprung up into existence, and rapidly became the bane of modern Spain; that is, ever since the Bourbon dynasty ruled the country's fate. As can easily be understood, this caciquismo can only flourish there where individualism is the leading characteristic of the people.

Thirdly, all hopes of the country's possessing a well-to-do middle class—stamina of a wealthy nation, and without which no people can attain a national standard of wealth—vanished completely away.

Lastly the Church, which had become wealthy beyond the dreams of the Cluny monks, retained its iron grip on the country, and retarded the liberal education of the masses. To repay the fidelity of servile Catholics, it canonized legions of local prophets and martyrs, and organized hundreds of gay annual fiestas to honour their memory. The ignorant people, flattered at the tribute of admiration paid to their deities, looked no further ahead into the growing chaos of misery and poverty, and were happy.

The crash came—could it be otherwise? Beyond the seas an immense territory, hundreds of times larger than the natal solar, or mother country, stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific; at home, a stillborn nation lay in an arid meadow beside a solemn church, a frivolous, selfish throne, and a mute and gloomy brick-built convent.

The Spanish Armada sailed to England never to return, and Philip II. built the Escorial, a melancholy pantheon for the kings of the Iberian peninsula.

One by one the colonies dropped off, fragments of an illusory empire, and at last the mother country stood once more stark naked as in the days before Columbus left Palos harbour. But the mother's face was no longer young and fresh like an infant's: wrinkles of age and of suffering creased the brow and the chin, for not in vain was she, during centuries, the toy of unmerciful fate.

Such is, in gigantic strides, the history of Spain.

The volcanic eruption in the fifteenth century has left, it is true, indelible traces in the country's soil. Nevertheless, on the very day when the treaty of Paris was signed and the last of the Spanish colonies de ultramar were lost for ever, that day a Spanish nation was born again on the disturbed foundations of the old.

There is no denying it: when Ferdinand and Isabel united their kingdoms a nation was born; it fell to pieces (though apparently not until a later date) when Columbus landed in America.

Anarchy, misrule, and oppression, ignorance and poverty, now frivolity and now austerity at court, fill the succeeding centuries until the coronation of Alfonso XII. During all those years, but once did Spain—no longer a nation—shine forth in history with an even greater brilliancy than when she claimed to be mistress of the world. But, on this occasion, when she opposed, in brave but disbanded groups, the invasion of the French legions, she gave another proof of the individualistic instincts of the race, as opposed to all social and compact organization of the masses.

The Carlist wars need but a passing remark. They were not national; they were caused by the ambitions of rulers and noblemen, and fought out by the inhabitants of Navarra and the Basque Provinces who upheld their fueros, by paid soldiery, and by aldeanos whose houses and families were threatened.

New Spain was born a few years ago, but so far she has given no proof of vitality. As it is, she is cumbered by traditions and harassed by memories. She must fight a sharp battle with existing evil institutions handed down to her as a questionable legacy from the past.

If she emerge victorious from the struggle, universal history will hear her name again, for the country is not gastado or degenerate, as many would have us believe.

If she fail to throw overboard the worthless and superfluous ballast, it is possible that the ship of state will founder—and then, who knows?

In the meantime, let us not misjudge the Spaniard nor throw stones at his broken glass mansion. To help us in this, let us remember that unexpected vicissitudes, entirely foreign to his country, were the cause of his illusory grandeur in the sixteenth century. Besides, no more ardent a lover of individual (not social) freedom than the Spaniard breathes in this wide world of ours—excepting it be the Moor.

Under the circumstances he is to be admired—even pitied.