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The hyperbolic language of the ancients spoke of Spain as filled throughout, upon her surface and beneath her soil, with precious stones and precious metals. Old writers—Strabo, Pliny, Aristoteles, Pomponius Mela, and Diodorus Siculus—declare that once upon a time a mountain fire, lighted by shepherds in the Pyrenees and fanned into a conflagration by the wind, heated the earth until the ore within her entrails came bubbling to the top and ran away in rivulets of molten gold and silver, spreading all over Spain. The indigens of Lusitania as they dug their fields were said to strike their implements on nuggets half a pound in weight. The heart of the Peninsula, between the Bœtis and the Annas rivers—that is, the country of the Oretani and the Bastitani—was fabled to abound in mines of gold. The traders from Phœnicia, we are told, discovered silver to be so abundant with the Turdetani that “the vilest utensils of this people were composed thereof, even to their barrels and their pots.” Accordingly these shrewd Phœnicians, offering worthless trinkets in exchange, loaded their ships with silver to the water's edge, and even, when their cargo was complete, fashioned their chains and anchors of the residue.

In spite of their extravagance, upon the whole these legends are not utterly devoid of truth. “Tradition,” said so careful an authority as Symonds, “when not positively disproved should be allowed to have its full value; and a sounder historic sense is exercised in adopting its testimony with due caution, than in recklessly rejecting it and substituting guesses which the lack of knowledge renders insubstantial.” So with the legends of the gold and silver treasure of the old-time Spaniards. Besides, it seems unquestionable that those fanciful assertions had their origin in fact. Spain stood upon the western border of the ancient world. Year in, year out, the sanguine sun went seething down into the waters at her western marge. Mariners from distant countries viewed those sunsets and associated them with Spain herself. Thus, hereabouts in the unclouded south, would gold and silver be suggested by the solar orb; or emerald and jacinth, pearl and amethyst and ruby, by the matchless colours of the seldom-failing sunset.

Then, too, though not of course in fabulous amount, the precious metals actually existed in this land. Various of her rivers, such as the Calom or Darro of Granada, the Tagus, the Agneda, and the Sil, rolled down, together with their current, grains of gold. “Les Mores,” wrote Bertaut de Rouen of the first of these rivers, “en tiroient beaucoup autrefois; mais cela a esté discontinué depuis à cause de la trop grande dépense qu'il y faloit faire. Il est certain que souvent on prend dans le Darro de petits morceaux d'or, et il y a des gens qui sont accoûtumez d'y en chercher.”

Centuries before this abbot wrote his book, the Arab author of the geographical dictionary known as the Marasid Ithila had made a similar remark upon this gold-producing stream; and in the sixteenth century I find an Ordinance of Granada city prohibiting the townspeople from digging up the river-bed unless it were to look for gold.¹ Probably, however, and in spite of what some chroniclers suppose, the title Darro is not in any way connected with the Latin words dat aurum.

“Two leagues from Guadarrama,” wrote the mineralogist William Bowles, about the middle of the eighteenth century, “opposite the town and in the direction of San Ildefonso, is a deep valley where one notices a vein of common quartz containing some iron. Here, without the use of glasses, I perceived a good many grains of gold. … In Galicia grains of gold are found on sandy hills, and one is astonished to observe the wonderful works carried out by the Romans to bring the sands together, wash them, and extract the precious metal. Local tradition affirms that this precious sand was destined for the purses of three Roman empresses—Livia, Agrippina, and Faustina. … I know a German minister who employed his spare time in washing these sands and collecting the gold.”

The Romans, it is true, profited very greatly by the native wealth of the Peninsula. Helvius enriched the treasury with 14,732 pounds of Spanish silver bars and 17,023 pounds of silver money; Cornelius Lentulus, with 1515 pounds of gold, 20,000 pounds of bar-silver, and 34,550 pounds in coin. Cato came back from his pro-consulship with five-and-twenty thousand pounds of silver bars, twelve thousand pounds of silver money, and four hundred pounds of gold. Seventy thousand pounds of coined silver fell to the share of Flaccus, while Minutius exhibited at his triumph eight thousand pounds of silver bars, and three hundred thousand pounds of silver coin.

Mines of silver,² gold, and precious stones were also fairly numerous in Spain. Moorish authors wrote enthusiastically of the mines of precious metals in or close to the Sierra Nevada. “Even at this day,” said Bowles, “the Moorish mines may be distinguished from the Roman. The Romans made the towers of their fortresses of a round shape, in order to avoid as far as possible the blows of the battering-ram; and their miners, whether from habit or intentionally, made the mouths of their mines round also. The Moors, as strangers to this engine, built their towers square and gave a square shape also to the mouths of their mines. The round mouths of Roman mines are yet to be seen at Riotinto and other places, and the square mouths of Moorish mines in the neighbourhood of Linares.”

Emeralds were formerly extracted from a mine at Moron, in the Sierra de Leyta; white sapphires and agates at Cape de Gata,³ at the eastern extremity of the Gulf of Almeria; amethysts at Monte de las Guardas, near the port of Plata, “in a precipice (sic) about twenty feet in depth.” According to Laborde, garnets have been discovered down to modern times “in a plain half-way on the road from Almeria to Motril. They are very abundant there, particularly in the bed of a ravine, formed by rain-torrents, at the foot of a little hill, upon which a great number of them are likewise found. The emeralds are in the kingdom of Seville, all the others in that of Granada. It has been said for some time that a pit in the mountain of Bujo, at Cape de Gata, contains a great many precious stones; but none could be found there, notwithstanding the prolonged and careful searches that were lately made.”

Silver mines exist, or have existed, at Benasque, Calzena, and Bielza, in Aragon; at Cuevas, near Almeria; at Almodovar del Campo; at Zalamea, in Extremadura; at Puerto Blanco, in Seville province; in the Sierra de Guadalupe; at Fuente de la Mina, near Constantina; and near Almazarron, in the province of Carthagena. Not far from this latter city was another mine, that sent to Rome a daily yield of five-and-twenty thousand drachmas, and was worked by forty thousand men. Twenty thousand pounds in weight of pure silver proceeded yearly from Asturias, Lusitania, and Galicia. Hannibal extracted from a Pyrenean mine three hundred pounds a day. The fair Himilca, wife of Hasdrubal, was owner of a silver mine at two leagues' distance from Linares. Laborde wrote of this mine: “It was reopened in the seventeenth century, when a vein five feet in breadth was found, from which many pieces of silver were taken; the working of it, however, has been neglected. It belongs to the town of Baeza.”

The same author, who wrote about one hundred years ago, gives curious and instructive notices of several other Spanish silver mines. “The mountains of the kingdom of Seville, on the confines of Extremadura, towards Guadalcanal, Alanis, Puerto Blanco, and Cazalla, which form a part of the extremity of the chain of Sierra Morena, contain several silver mines, which have been worked. There is one of these in the Sierra Morena, three miles from Guadalcanal, which to all appearance must have been very rich: there were three shafts for descending, the mouths of which are still to be seen: it was worked in the seventeenth century, and given up in 1653. It is believed that it was inundated by the workmen, in revenge for a new tax that was laid upon them. Another silver mine was also worked formerly, a league and a half from the other; it has a shaft, and a gallery of ancient construction; the vein is six feet in circumference, and is composed of spar and quartz. There is also a third mine, a league and a half from Guadalcanal, and half a league south-east of the village of Alanis, in the middle of a field; it is two feet wide; the Romans constructed a gallery in it, from south to north; a branch of it running eastward has been worked since their time: it originally contained pyrites and quartz, but it is by no means rich; there is lead at the bottom.”

Gold mines, or traces of them, have been found in the neighbourhood of Molina in Aragon, San Ildefonso in Old Castile, and Alocer in Extremadura; in the Sierra de Leyta; in the valley of Hecho in Aragon; and at Paradeseca and Ponferrada—this latter town the Interamnium Flavium of the Romans.

It is said that the chieftains of the ancient Spaniards adorned their robes with rude embroidery worked in gold, and that the men and women of all ranks wore gold and silver bracelets. These statements cannot now be either proved or controverted. Gold or silver objects older than the Roman domination have not been found abundantly in Spain. Riaño describes a silver bowl, conical in shape and evidently fashioned on the wheel, engraved with Iberian characters on one of its sides. A similar bowl was found in Andalusia in the seventeenth century, full of Iberian coins and weighing ten ounces. Gold ornaments, such as earrings, and torques or collars for the neck, have been discovered in Galicia less infrequently than in the other Spanish regions, and may be seen to-day in private collections, in the Royal Academy of History at Madrid, and in the National Museum of Archæology.⁴ Villa-amil y Castro has written fully of these torques (Museo Español de Antigüedades, Adornos de oro encontrados en Galicia). In nearly every case, he says, they consist of a plain gold bar, C-shaped and therefore not completely closed into a ring, and with a knob at each extremity, as though their pattern were suggested by the yoke of cattle. One or two are decorated with a somewhat rude design extending through a portion of their length.

On one of these occasions a pair of curious, kidney-shaped earrings was found, together with a torque. These earrings, apparently of later workmanship than the other ornament, are decorated over all their surface, partly with a filigree design, and partly with a fine, beadlike pattern executed with a small chisel or graving tool in the manner known in French as fusé, guilloché, or hachié. Their material is hollow gold, and when discovered they were filled with a substance resembling powdered charcoal, mixed with a metallic clay.

These ornaments are ascribed by most authorities to an undetermined period somewhere previous to the Roman domination. I think, however, that less improbably they were produced by Spanish craftsmen in imitation of the Roman manner, and during the time of Roman rule in the Peninsula. This would account for their deficiencies of execution, and also for certain characteristics which they evidently share with Roman work.

We know that Rome imposed her usages on all the peoples whom she subjugated. Consequently, following this universal law, the Spaniards would adopt, together with the lavish luxury of Rome, the Roman ornaments and articles of jewellery. Such were the annulus or finger-ring; the fibula, a brooch or clasp for securing the cloak; the torgues or neck-ring, more or less resembling those in use among the Persians; and the phalera, a round plate of gold, silver, or other metal, engraved with any one of a variety of emblems, worn upon the breast or stomach by the persons of either sex, and very commonly bestowed upon the Roman soldiers in reward of military service. Then there were several kinds of earrings—the variously-designed stalagmium or pendant, the inaures, or the crotalium, hung with pearls that brushed together as their wearer walked, and gratified her vanity by their rustling; and also several kinds of bracelets—the gold or bronze armilla, principally worn by men; the periscelis, the spathalium, and the dextrale, worn round the fleshy part of the right arm.⁵

Discoveries of Roman jewellery and gold and silver work have occurred from time to time in the Peninsula; for example, at Espinosa de Henares and (in 1840) near Atarfe, on the southern side of the volcanic-looking Sierra Elvira, a few miles from Granada. Riaño describes a Roman silver dish found in a stone quarry at Otañez, in the north of Spain. “It weighs thirty-three ounces, and is covered with an ornamentation of figures in relief, some of which are gilt, representing an allegorical subject of the source of medicinal waters. In the upper part is a nymph who pours water from an urn over rocks; a youth collects it in a vessel; another gives a cup of it to a sick man; another fills with it a barrel which is placed in a four-wheeled car to which are yoked two mules. On each side of the fountain are altars on which sacrifices and libations are offered. Round it is the inscription: SALVS VMERITANA, and at the back are engraved, in confused characters, the words: L. P. CORNELIANI. PIII. …”

The same author is of opinion that in the time of the Romans “objects of all kinds in gold and silver were used in Spain to a very great extent, for, notwithstanding the destruction of ages, we still possess inscriptions which allude to silver statues, and a large number of objects in the precious metals exist in museums and private collections.” Doubtless, in the case of articles and household utensils of smaller size—bowls, dishes, and the like, or ornaments for the person—the precious metals were made use of freely; but when we hear of mighty objects as also made of silver, e.g. principal portions of a building, we might do well to bear in mind a couple of old columns that were standing once not far from Cadiz, on a spot where in the days preceding history a temple sacred to the Spanish Hercules is rumoured to have been. Philostratus affirmed these columns to be wrought of solid gold and silver, mixed together yet in themselves without alloy. Strabo reduced them modestly to brass; but it was reserved for a curious Frenchman, the Père Labat, who travelled in Spain in 1705, to warn us what they really were. “Elles sont sur cette langue de terre, qui joint l'Isle de Léon à celle de Cadix; car il faut se souvenir que c'est ainsi qu'on appelle la partie Orientale, et la partie Occidentale de la même Isle. Il y a environ une lieue de la porte de Terre à ces vénérables restes de l'antiquité. Nous nous en approchames, croyant justifier les contes que les Espagnols en débitent. Mais nous fûmes étrangement surpris de ne pas rencontrer la moindre chose qui pût nous faire seulement soupçonner qu'elles fussent d'une antiquité un peu considérable. Nous vimes que ces deux tours rondes, qui n'ont à présent qu'environ vingt pieds de hauteur sur douze à quinze pieds de diamètre, étoient d'une maçonnerie fort commune. Leurs portes étoient bouchées, et nous convinmes tous qu'elles avoient été dans leur jeune tems des moulins à vent qu'on avoit abandonnés; il n'y a ni inscriptions, ni bas-reliefs, ni reste de figures quelconques. En un mot, rien qui méritât notre attention, ni qui recompensât la moindre partie de la peine que nous avions prise pour les aller voir de près. Car je les avois vue plus d'une fois du grand chemin, où j'avois passé, et je devois me contenter. Mais que ne fait-on pas quand on est curieux, et aussi desœuvré que je l'étois alors.”

Many of the usages of Roman Spain descended to the Visigoths. The jewels of this people manifest the double influence of Rome and of Byzantium, and the latter influenced in its turn from Eastern sources. We learn from that extraordinary encyclopædia of early mediæval Spanish lore—the Etymologies of Isidore of Beja—that the Visigothic women decked themselves with earrings, necklaces, and bracelets, set with precious stones of fabulous price. Leovigild is stated by the same writer to have been the first of the Visigothic princes to use the insignia of royalty. One of his coins (engraved in Florez) represents him with an imperial crown surmounted by a cross resembling that of the Byzantines. Coins of a similar design, and also bearing the imperial crown, were minted at Toledo, Cordova, or Merida, in the reigns of Chindaswint, Wamba, Ervigius, and Egica.

But the true fountain-head of all our modern knowledge respecting the jewellery of Visigothic Spain is in the wonderful crosses, crowns, and other ornaments discovered in 1858 upon the site of some old Christian temple, two leagues distant from Toledo. These objects, known collectively as “the treasure of Guarrazar,” were stumbled on by certain peasants after a heavy storm had washed away a quantity of earth. Some were destroyed upon the spot; others were sold to the Toledo silversmiths and melted down by these barbarians of our day; but fortunately the greater part remained intact, or very nearly so. There were in all, composed exclusively of gold and precious stones, eleven crowns, two crosses containing legible inscriptions, fragments such as the arms of a processional cross, and many single stones which time had doubtless separated from the crosses or the crowns.⁶

Part of this treasure passed in some mysterious way to France, and is now in the Cluny Museum at Paris. The rest is in the Royal Armoury at Madrid. Paris can boast possession of nine of the crowns; Madrid, of two, together with a fragment of a third—this latter of a balustrade or basket pattern. Five of the nine crowns preserved at Paris are fashioned of simple hoops of gold. The most important of the five, the crown of Recceswinth, who ruled in Spain from 650 to 672 A.D., consists of two hinged semicircles of hollow gold, about a finger's-breadth across the interspace. It measures just over eight inches in diameter and four inches in depth. Both the upper and the lower rims are decorated to the depth of nearly half an inch with a design of four-pointed floral or semi-floral figures within minute circles. Amador de los Ríos has recognized this same design in the frieze of certain buildings at Toledo, and in the edges of mosaic discovered at Italica and Lugo, as well as in the Balearic Islands. The interstices of this design upon the crown are filled with a kind of red enamel or glaze, the true nature of which has not been definitely ascertained. Riaño calls it “a delicate ornamentation of cloisonné work, which encloses a substance resembling red glass.” The centre of the crown is filled with three rows of large stones, principally pearls and sapphires. There are also several onyxes, a stone which in those days was held in great esteem. The spaces between the rows of stones are ornamented with a somewhat rudimentary design of palm branches, the leaves of which appear to have been filled or outlined with the kind of red enamel I have spoken of.

This crown is suspended by four gold chains containing each of them five leaf-shaped links, percées à jour. The chains unite at a gold rosette in the form of a double lily, terminated by a stoutish capital of rock-crystal. This in its turn is capped by another piece of crystal holding the final stem of gold which served as a hook for hanging up the crown. Suspended from the gold rosette by a long chain is a handsome cross, undoubtedly of more elaborate workmanship, studded with union pearls and monster sapphires. Amador believed this ornament to be a brooch. If this were so it is, of course, improperly appended here. Twenty-four gold chains hang from the lower border of the crown, concluding in pyriform sapphires of large size. Each sapphire is surmounted by a small, square frame of gold containing coloured glass, and above this, in each of three-and-twenty of the chains, is one of the golden letters forming the inscription, ☩ RECCESVINTHVS REX OFFERET.

Besides this crown there are at Paris—

(1) A similar though slighter crown, the body of which is studded with fifty-four magnificent stones. A cross, now kept apart in the same collection, is thought by Spanish experts to have once been pendent from the crown. If so, the latter was perhaps presented to the sanctuary by one Sonnica, probably a Visigothic magnate, and not a woman, as the termination of the name induced some foreign antiquaries to suppose. The cross is thus inscribed:—

	IN DI
	NOM
	INE
OFFERET	____	SONNICA
	SCE
	MA
	RIE
	INS
	ORBA
	CES7

(2) Three crowns of plain design consisting of hoops of gold with primitive repoussé decoration, and, in the case of one, with precious stones.

(3) Four crowns, each with a pendent cross. The pattern is a basket-work or set of balustrades of thin gold hollow plates (not, as Riaño stated, massive) with precious stones about the intersections of the bars or meshes, and others hanging from the lower rim. Three of these crowns have three rows or tiers of what I call the balustrade; the other crown has four.

The custom of offering votive crowns to Christian temples was taken by the emperors of Constantinople from heathen peoples of the eastern world. In Spain this custom, introduced by Recared, outlived by many years the ruin of the Visigothic monarchy—survived, in fact, until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Thus in 891 Alfonso the Third presented to the monastery of San Adrian and Santa Natalia four crowns of gold and three of silver, while just a hundred years afterwards Ordoño the Second presented three silver crowns to the monastery of Samos. Other crowns were offered by the prelates and the secular nobility.

Returning to the crowns of Guarrazar, there has been great controversy as to whether these were worn upon the head. Some experts think they must have been so worn; and in this case the rings upon the rim, through which the chains are passed, would seem to have been added on the presentation of these objects to the sanctuary. Lasteyrie, on the other hand, considered that the crowns were merely votive and were never meant for personal use, arguing that the rings were fixed about the border from the very moment when the crowns were made;⁸ but Amador ingeniously replied to this by pointing out that in a few of the old Castilian coins—for instance, one of Sancho the Third—the crown, with rings about its rim, is actually upon the monarch's head. It is possible, adds the same authority, that these were old votive crowns proceeding from some church, although he thinks it still more likely that they were fashioned with the rings attached to them. We should remember, too, the hinge which serves to open and close the body of these crowns. It is difficult to guess the purpose of this hinge, unless it were to fit the crown more comfortably on the head.

Of that portion of the treasure of Guarrazar which has remained at Madrid (Plate i.), the most important object is the votive crown of King Swinthila, son of Recared, and described as “one of the most illustrious and unlucky princes that ever occupied the throne of Atawulf.” This crown measures nine inches in diameter by two and a half in height. It consists of thin gold plates united at the edge, leaving, between the inner and the outer side, a hollow space about a quarter of an inch across. The exterior is divided into a central horizontal hoop or band between two others, somewhat narrower, at the top and bottom, these last being slightly raised above the level of the third. A triple row of precious stones, amounting to one hundred and twenty-five pearls and sapphires in the entire crown, surrounds the outer surface of the same, the central band or zone of which contains besides, wrought in repoussé on the hoop, a simple circular device wherein each centre is a sapphire or a pearl, though many of these have fallen from their setting. The spaces which describe these circles are superposed on what looks like a red enamel retaining at this moment all or nearly all its pristine brightness of twelve hundred years ago. This substance was believed by French investigators to be a coloured glass or paste,⁹ but Amador, after protracted chemical experiments, declared it to be layers of cornelian. Some of these layers have fallen from their grip, and if the crown be stirred are heard to move within. It is worth remarking, too, that the fillets which form the setting of the precious stones were made apart and welded afterwards; nor are these settings uniform in shape, but tally in each instance with the outline of the gem.

TREASURE OF GUARRAZAR

(Royal Armoury, Madrid)

The chains which served for hanging up the crown are four in number. As in the crown of Recceswinth, each of them is composed of four repoussé cinquefoil links adorned along their edge with small gold beads minutely threaded on a wire and fastened on by fusing. The chains converge into an ornament shaped like two lilies pointing stem to stem, so that the lower is inverted, although they are divided by a piece of faceted rock crystal.¹⁰ Four gems are hung from either lily, and issuing from the uppermost of these a strong gold hook attaches to the final length of chain.

Possibly the chain and cross now hanging through the circuit of the crown were not originally part of it. This cross is most remarkable. It has four arms of equal length, gracefully curved, and is wrought of plates of gold in duplicate, fastened back to back by straps of gold along the edges. The centre holds a piece of crystal in the midst of pearls and gold bead work threaded on a wire of the same metal and attached by fusion. Several fairly large stones are hung from the lateral and lower arms of the cross by small gold chains.

The letters hanging from Swinthila's crown are cut and punched from thin gold plates. Their decoration is a zigzag ornament backed by the same mysterious crimson substance as the circular devices on the hoop. Hanging from the letters are pearls, sapphires, and several imitation stones—particularly imitation emeralds—in paste.

The cross before the letters points to a custom of that period. We find it also on Swinthila's coins, and those of other Visigothic kings. Of the letters themselves twelve have been recovered, thus:—

☩ SV TI NV REX OFF T

The chains, however, or fragments of them, amount to twenty-three—precisely (if we count the cross) the number needed to complete the dedication.¹¹

The Royal Armoury contains another crown, a great deal smaller and less ornamented than Swinthila's. The body of this crown, which was presented by the finder to the late Queen Isabella the Second, is just a hoop of gold, two inches deep and five across, hinged like the more elaborate and larger crowns, but merely decorated with a fine gold spiral at the rims, a zigzag pattern in repoussé, and a rudely executed scale-work. The dedication on this cross is in the centre of the hoop, and says—

☩ OFFERET MVNVSCVLVM SCO STEFANO

THEODOSIVS ABBA

We do not know who Theodosius was, but Amador, judging from the simple decoration of this crown, believes him to have been a priest of lower rank, and by no means a dignitary of the Visigothic church.

A votive cross also forms part of this collection, which has a simple sunk device along the edges and seven pendent stones, two of these hanging from each of the lateral arms, and three, a little larger, from the lower arm. The inscription, which is rough in the extreme, appears to be the work of some illiterate craftsman, and has been interpreted with difficulty:—

IN NOMINE DEI: IN NOMINE SCI OFFERET

LUCETIUS E

This reading gives an extra letter at the end, which may be construed as Episcopus—or anything else, according to the student's fancy.

I may close my notice of this collection in the Royal Armoury at Madrid by drawing attention to a greenish, semi-opaque stone, three-quarters of an inch in height. It is engraved en creux upon two facets with the scene of the Annunciation. The gem itself is commonly taken for an emerald, of which, referring to the glyptic art among the Visigoths, the learned Isidore remarked that “Sculpentibus quoque gemmas nulla gratior oculorum refectio est.” I shall insert a sketch of the cutting on this stone as a tailpiece to the chapter, and here append a full description. “The Virgin listens standing to the Archangel Gabriel, who communicates to her the will of the Almighty. Before her is a jar, from which projects the stem of a lily, emblematic of the chaste and pure, that reaches to her breast. Her figure is completely out of measurement. Upon her head appears to be a nimbus or amiculum; her breast is covered with a broad and folded fascia, enveloping her arms, while her tunic, reaching to the ground, conceals one of her feet. The angel in the cutting on the stone is at the Virgin's right. His attitude is that of one who is conveying tidings. Large wings folded upon his shoulders and extending nearly to the ground are fitted to his form, better drawn and livelier than the Virgin's. He executes his holy mission with his right hand lifted. His dress is a tunic in small folds, over which is a cloak fastened by a brooch and fitting closely. Upon his head he wears a kind of helmet.”¹²

The drawing of this design upon the stone is most bizarre and barbarous; for the Virgin's head is so completely disproportioned that it forms the one-third part of her entire person.

The merit of all this Visigothic gem or gold and silver work has been extolled too highly by the French and Spanish archæologists.¹³ It is, however, greatly interesting. Rudely and ponderously magnificent, it tells us of a people who as yet were almost wholly strangers to the true artistic sense. Such were the Visigoths and the Spaniards of the Visigothic era, of all of whom I have observed elsewhere that “serfdom was the distinguishing mark of the commons; arrogance, of the nobility; avarice, and ambition of temporal and political power, of the clergy; regicide and tumult, of the crown.”¹⁴ These crowns of Guarrazar proclaim to us in plainest language that the volume of the stones, and showiness and glitter of the precious metal were accorded preference of every other factor—the pondus auri preference of the manus artificis. We gather, too, from documents and chronicles and popular tradition, that the Visigothic princes, as they set apart their stores of treasure in secluded caves or in the strong rooms of their palaces, were ever captivated and corrupted by the mere intrinsic worth in opposition to the nobler and æsthetic value of the craftsmanship.

Thus we are told that Sisenand owned a plate of gold (no word is said of its design or style) five hundred pounds in weight, proceeding from the royal treasure of his race, and which, long years before, had been presented by the nobleman Accio to King Turismund. When Sisenand was conspiring to dethrone Swinthila, he called on Dagobert the king of France to come to his support, and promised him, as recompense, this golden plate. The French king lent his help forthwith, and then, as soon as Turismund was seated on the throne of Spain, despatched an embassy to bring the coveted vessel to his court. Sisenand fulfilled his word and placed the envoys in possession of the plate, but since his subjects, rising in rebellion, wrenched it from their power and kept it under custody, he compensated Dagobert by a money payment of two hundred thousand sueldos.¹⁵

Innumerable narratives and legends dwell upon the treasure taken by the Moors on entering Spain. Such as relate the battle of the Guadalete, or the Lake of Janda (as it is also called by some authorities), agree that when the fatal day was at an end the riderless steed of Roderick was found imbedded in the mire, wearing a saddle of massive gold adorned with emeralds and rubies. According to Al-Makkari, that luckless monarch's boots were also made of gold studded with precious stones, while the Muslim victors, stripping the Visigothic dead, identified the nobles by the golden rings upon their fingers, those of a less exalted rank by their silver rings, and the slaves by their rings of copper. The widow of the fallen king was also famous for her stores of jewellery. Her name was Eila or Egilona (Umm-Asim of the Moors), but she was known besides as “the lady of the beautiful necklaces.” After being made a prisoner she was given in marriage to the young prince Abd-al-Azis, who grew to love her very greatly, and received from her, “seeing that she still retained sufficient of her royal wealth,” the present of a crown.

Muza, on returning to the East, is said to have drawn near to Damascus with a train of thirty waggons full of Spanish silver, gold, and precious stones. Tarik ben Ziyed, marching in triumph through the land, secured at Cordova, Amaya, and other towns and capitals, enormous store of “pearls, arms, dishes, silver, gold, and other jewels in unprecedented number.” One object, in particular, is mentioned with insistency by nearly all the chronicles, both Mussulman and Christian. Quoting from the Pearl of Marvels of Ibn Alwardi, this was “the table which had belonged to God's prophet, Solomon (health be to both of them). It was of green emeralds, and nothing fairer had been ever seen before. Its cups were golden and its plates of precious jewels, one of them specked with black and white.” All manner of strange things are said about this table, though most accounts describe it as consisting of a single emerald. Perhaps it was of malachite, or of the bright green serpentine stone extracted formerly as well as nowadays from the Barranco de San Juan at Granada, and several other spots in Spain. Bayan Almoghreb says it was of gold mixed with a little silver and surrounded by three gold rings or collars; the first containing pearls, the second rubies, and the third emeralds. Al-Makkari describes it as “green, with its 365 feet and borders of a single emerald.” Nor is it known for certain where this “table” fell into the hands of Tarik. Probably he found it in the principal Christian temple at Toledo—that is to say, the Basilica of Santa María. Ibn Alwardi says that in the aula regia, or palace of the Visigothic kings, the lancers of the Moorish general broke down a certain door, discovering “a matchless quantity of gold and silver plate,” together with the “table.” Doubtless this strong room was the same referred to in the following lines. “It was for ever closed; and each time that a Christian king began to reign he added to its door a new and powerful fastening. In this way as many as four and twenty padlocks were gathered on the door.”

However, the most explicit and informative of all these ancient authors is Ibn Hayyan, who says; “The table had its origin in the days of Christian rulers. It was the custom in those times that when a rich man died he should bequeath a legacy to the churches. Proceeding from the value of these gifts were fashioned tables, thrones, and other articles of gold and silver, whereon the clergy bore the volumes of their gospel when they showed them at their ceremonies. These objects they would also set upon their altars to invest them with a further splendour by the ornament thereof. For this cause was the table at Toledo, and the [Visigothic] monarchs vied with one another in enriching it, each of them adding somewhat to the offerings of his predecessor, till it surpassed all other jewels of its kind and grew to be renowned exceedingly. It was of fine gold studded with emeralds, pearls, and rubies, in such wise that nothing similar had ever been beheld. So did the kings endeavour to increase its richness, seeing that this city was their capital, nor did they wish another to contain more splendid ornaments or furniture. Thus was the table resting on an altar of the church, and here the Muslims came upon it, and the fame of its magnificence spread far abroad.”

Another chronicle affirms that Tarik found the “table” at a city called Almeida, now perhaps Olmedo. “He reached Toledo, and leaving a detachment there, advanced to Guadalajara and the [Guadarrama] mountains. These he crossed by the pass which took his name, and reached, upon the other side, a city called Almeida or The Table, for there had been discovered the table of Solomon the son of David, and the feet and borders of it, numbering three hundred and sixty-five, were of green emerald.”

In any case this venerated jewel gave considerable trouble to its captors. When envious Muza followed up the march of Tarik, his lieutenant, he demanded from him all the spoil, and in particular the ever-famous table. Tarik surrendered this forthwith, but after slyly wrenching off a leg. Muza perceived the breakage, and inquired for the missing piece. “I know not,” said the other; “'twas thus that I discovered it.” Muza then ordered a new leg of gold to be made for the table, as well as a box of palm leaves, in which it was deposited. “This,” says Ibn Hayyan, “is known to be one of the reasons why Tarik worsted Muza in the dispute they had before the Caliph as to their respective conquests.” So it proved. Ibn Abdo-l-Haquem¹⁶ relates that Muza appeared before the Caliph Al-Walid and produced the table. Tarik interposed and said that he himself had taken it, and not the other leader. “Give it into my hands,” the Caliph answered, “that I may see if any piece of it be wanting,” and found, indeed, that one of its feet was different from the rest. “Ask Muza,” interrupted Tarik, “for the missing foot, and if he answer from his heart, then shall his words be truth.” Accordingly Al-Walid inquired for the foot, and Muza made reply that he had found the table as it now appeared; but Tarik with an air of triumph drew forth the missing piece which he himself had broken off, and said: “By this shall the Emir of the Faithful recognize that I am speaking truth; that I it was who found the table.” And thereupon Al-Walid credited his words and loaded him with gifts.

Comparing the statements of these writers, we may be certain that the “table” was a kind of desk of Visigothic or, more probably, Byzantine workmanship, for holding the gospels on the feast-days of the national church. Probably, too, seeing that a palm-leaf box was strong enough to keep it in, its size was inconsiderable. Its value, on the statement of Ibn Abdo-l-Haquem, was two hundred thousand dinares.

The sum of my remarks upon the Visigothic jewel-work is this. Distinguished by a coarse though costly splendour, we find in it a mingled Roman and Byzantine source, although it was upon the whole inferior to these styles, being essentially, as Amador observes, “an imitative and decadent art.” Yet it did not succumb before the Moors, but lurked for refuge in the small Asturian monarchy, and later, issuing thence, extended through the kingdom of León into Castile. We find its clearest characteristics in such objects as the Cross of Angels and the Cross of Victory. Then, later still, it is affected and regenerated by the purely oriental art of the invader; and lastly, till the wave of the Renaissance floods the western world, by Gothic influences from across the Pyrenees.

A similar sketch may be applied to other arts and crafts of Spain—particularly furniture and architecture.

THE CROSS OF ANGELS

(Oviedo Cathedral)

The pious or superstitious kings and magnates of this land have always taken pride in adding (at the instigation of the clergy) to the treasure of her churches and cathedrals. Such gifts include all kinds of sumptuous apparel for the priesthood; chasubles and dalmatics heavily embroidered with the precious metals, gold or silver crowns and crosses, paxes,¹⁷ chalices and patines, paraments and baldaquinos, reliquaries in every shape and style and size, and figures of the Virgin—such as those of Lugo, Seville, Astorga, and Pamplona—consisting of elaborate silver-work upon a wooden frame. Visitors to Spain, from leisurely Rosmithal five hundred years ago to time-economizing tourists of our century, have been continually astonished at the prodigal richness of her sanctuaries. Upon this point I quote a typical extract from the narrative of Bertaut de Rouen. “The treasure of this church,” he said of Montserrat, “is wonderfully precious, and particularly so by reason of two objects that belong to it. The first is a crown of massive gold of twenty pounds in weight, covered with pearls, with ten stars radiating from it also loaded with large pearls and diamonds of extraordinary value. This crown took forty years to make, and is valued at two millions of gold money. The second object is a gold crown entirely covered with emeralds, most of them of an amazing size. Many are worth five thousand crowns apiece. The reliquary, too, is of extraordinary richness, as also a service of gold plate studded with pearls, donated by the late emperor for use in celebrating Mass.”

Similar accounts to the above exist in quantities, relating to every part of Spain and every period of her history.

Reverting to the earlier Middle Ages, a few conspicuous objects thus presented to the Spanish Church require to be briefly noted here. Famous chalices are those of Santo Domingo de Silos (eleventh century), made to the order of Abbot Domingo in honour of San Sebastian, and showing the characteristic Asturian filigree-work; and of San Isidoro of León, made in 1101 by order of Urraca Fernandez, sister of the fourth Alfonso. The latter vessel, inscribed with the dedication of Urraca Fredinandi, has an agate cup and foot. A remarkably handsome silver-gilt chalice and patine (thirteenth century) belong to Toledo cathedral. The height of this chalice is thirteen inches, and the diameter of its bowl, which has a conical shape, eight and a half inches. Inside and out the bowl is smooth, but midway between the bowl and the foot is a massive knot or swelling in the stem, and on the knot the emblematic lion, eagle, bull, and angel are chiselled in high relief. Below the knot is a ring of graceful rosettes. The patine which accompanies this chalice measures twelve inches in diameter. It has upon it, thinly engraved within a slightly sunk centre with a scalloped edge, the figure of Christ upon the cross, between the Virgin and St. John. This central group of figures and the border of the plate are each surrounded with a narrow strip of decoration.

The cathedral of Valencia has a beautiful and early cup asserted to be the veritable Holy Grail (greal, garal, or gradal, in the old Castilian), “of which,” wrote Ford with his accustomed irony, “so many are shown in different orthodox relicarios.” However this may be, the chalice of Valencia is particularly handsome. According to Riaño it consists of “a fine brown sardonyx which is tastefully moulded round the lip. The base is formed of another inverted sardonyx. These are united by straps of pure gold. The stem is flanked by handles, which are inlaid with delicate arabesque in black enamel. Oriental pearls are set round the base and stem, which alternate with rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. This chalice is a work of the Roman imperial epoch, and the mounts are of a later date.”

A series of Spanish chalices, beginning chronologically with specimens which date from the early Middle Ages, and terminating with the chalice, made in 1712, of Santa María la Blanca of Seville, was shown in 1892 at the Exposición Histórico-Europea of Madrid. Among the finer or most curious were chalices proceeding from the parish church of Játiva, Las Huelgas, and Seville cathedral, and the Plateresque chalices of Calatayud, Granada, and Alcalá de Henares. Another chalice which is greatly interesting because of the date inscribed on it, is one which was presented to Lugo cathedral by a bishop of that diocese, Don Garcia Martinez de Bahamonde (1441–1470). The workmanship, though prior to the sixteenth century, is partly Gothic. An article by José Villa-amil y Castro, dealing with all these chalices, will be found in the Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Excursiones for April, 1893.

A small exhibition was held at Lugo in August 1896. Here were shown sixteen chalices, nearly all of them of merit from the point of view of history or art. Such are the chalice of San Rosendo, proceeding from the old monastery of Celanova; the Gothic chalices of Tuy cathedral, Lugo cathedral, Santa María del Lucio, Santa Eulalia de Guilfrei, San Pedro de Puertomarín, and the Franciscan friars of Santiago; and the chalice and patine of Cebrero (twelfth century), in which it is said that on a certain occasion in the fifteenth century the wine miraculously turned to actual blood, and the Host to actual flesh, in order to convince a doubting priest who celebrated service.

The Cross of Angels and the Cross of Victory—presents, respectively, from Alfonso the Chaste and Alfonso the Great—are now preserved at Oviedo, in the Camara Santa of that stately temple. The former of these crosses, fancied by credulous people to be the handiwork of angels—whence its title¹⁸—was made in A.D. 808. It consists of four arms of equal length, radiating from a central rosette (Pl. ii.). The core or alma is of wood covered with a double plate of richly decorated gold, chased in the finest filigree (indicative already of the influence of Cordova) and thickly strewn with sapphires, amethysts, topazes, and cornelians. Other stones hung formerly from six small rings upon the lower border of the arms. The cross is thus inscribed:—

“Susceptum placide maneat hoc in honore Dei

Offeret Adefonsus humilis servus Xti

Hoc signo tuetur pius

Hoc signo vincitur inimicus.

Quisquis auferre presumpserit mihi

Fulmine divino intereat ipse

Nisi libens ubi voluntas dederit mea

Hoc opus perfectum est in Era DCCXLVI.”

THE CROSS OF VICTORY

(Oviedo Cathedral)

The other cross (Pl. iii.) is more than twice as large, and measures just one yard in height by two feet four and a half inches in width. Tradition says that the primitive, undecorated wooden core of this cross was carried against the Moors by King Pelayo. The ornate casing, similar to that upon the Cross of Angels, was added later, and contains 152 gems and imitation gems. The following inscription tells us that this casing was made at the Castle of Gauzon in Asturias, in the year 828:—

“Susceptum placide maneat hoc in honore Dei, quod offerent Famuli Christi Adefonsus princeps et Scemaena Regina; Quisquis auferre hoc donoria nostra presumpserit Fulmine divino intereat ipse. Hoc opus perfectum et concessum est Santo Salvatori Oventense sedis. Hoc signo tuetur pius, hoc vincitur inimicus Et operatum est in castello Gauzon anno regni nostri. XLII. discurrente Era DCCCLXVI.”

These crosses are processional. Others which were used for the same purpose are those of San Sebastián de Serrano (Galicia), San Munio de Veiga, Santa María de Guillar (Lugo), San Mamed de Fisteos, and Santa María de Arcos. The five preceding crosses are of bronze; those of Baamorto and San Adriano de Lorenzana are respectively of silver, and of wood covered with silver plates, and all were shown at the Lugo exhibition I have spoken of.

Besides the Cross of Victory or Pelayo, and the Cross of Angels, interesting objects preserved at Oviedo are a small diptych presented by Bishop Don Gonzalo (A.D. 1162–1175), and the Arca Santa used for storing saintly relics. This beautiful chest, measuring three feet nine inches and a half in length by twenty-eight inches and a half in height, is considered by Riaño to be of Italian origin, and to date from between the tenth and twelfth centuries.

Another handsome box belonging to the cathedral of Astorga was once upon a time the property of Alfonso the Third and his queen Jimena, whose names it bears—ADEFONSVS REX: SCEMENA REGINA. The workmanship is consequently of the close of the ninth or the beginning of the tenth century. The material is wood covered with repoussé silver plates on which are figured angels and birds, together with the eagle and the ox as emblems of the evangelists John and Luke, whose names are also to be read upon the casket.

Next to the sword, no object in the history of mediæval Spain was more profoundly popular or venerated than the relicario. This in its primitive form was just a small receptacle, such as a vase or urn of gold or silver, ivory or crystal, used by the laity or clergy for treasuring bones, or hairs, or other relics of the Virgin, or the Saviour, or the saints. In private families a holy tooth, or toe, or finger thus preserved would often, as though it were some Eastern talisman, accompany its credulous possessor to the battlefield.

As time went on, the urn or vase was commonly replaced by chests or caskets made by Moorish captives, or by tranquil and respected Moorish residents within the territory of the Christian,¹⁹ or wrested from the infidel in war and offered by the Spanish kings or nobles to their churches. Here they were kept on brackets, or suspended near the altar by a chain²⁰ of silver, gold, or iron. Among the Moors themselves such chests and caskets served, according to their richness or capacity, for storing perfumes, clothes, or jewels, or as a present from a bridegroom to his bride; and since the sparsely-furnished Oriental room contains no kind of wardrobe, cabinet, or chest of drawers, their use in Moorish parts of Spain was universal.

A typical Moorish casket of this kind (Plate iv.) is now in the cathedral of Gerona. It measures fifteen inches in length by nine across, fastens with a finely ornamented band and clasp of bronze, and is covered with thin silver-gilt plates profusely decorated with a bead and floral pattern superposed upon a box of non-decaying wood—possibly larch or cedar. A Cufic inscription along the lower part of the lid was formerly interpreted as follows:—

“In the name of God. (May) the blessing of God, prosperity and fortune and perpetual felicity be (destined) for the servant of God, Alhakem, Emir of the Faithful, because he ordered (this casket) to be made for Abdul Walid Hischem, heir to the throne of the Muslims. It was finished by the hands of Hudzen, son of Bothla.”

MOORISH CASKET

(Gerona Cathedral)

It is supposed, however, that the part of this inscription which contains the maker's name was rendered incorrectly by Riaño, who followed, on this point, Saavedra, Fita, and other archæologists; and that the casket was made to the order of Djaudar, as a gift to the heir to the throne, Abulwalid Hischem, the actual workmen being two slaves, Bedr and Tarif. That is to say, the name Hudzen is now replaced by Djaudar, whom Dozy mentions in his history of the Mussulman domination in Spain, and who is known to have been a eunuch high in favour with Alhakem, Hischem's father. These princes ruled at Cordova in the latter half of the tenth century and the beginning of the eleventh.

Spanish-Moorish caskets (arquetas) of ivory, silver, or inlaid work, are also preserved in the South Kensington Museum, the Archæological Museum at Madrid, and the cathedrals of Braga, Tortosa, and Oviedo. There is no reason to doubt that all these boxes were made in Spain, although an Eastern and particularly Persian influence is very noticeable in their scheme of decoration.

Two silver caskets which were once in the church of San Isidoro at León are now in the Madrid Museum. The smaller and plainer of the two, elliptical in shape and measuring five inches in length by two inches and a half in depth, is covered with a leaf and stem device outlined in black enamel. A Cufic inscription of a private and domestic import, also picked out with black enamel, runs along the top. The lid is ornamented, like the body of the box, with leaves and stems surrounded by a Grecian border, and fastens with a heart-shaped clasp secured by a ring.

The other, more elaborate, and larger box measures eight inches long by five in height. In shape it is a parallelogram, with a deeply bevelled rather than—as Amador describes it—a five-sided top. Bands of a simple winding pattern outlined in black enamel on a ground of delicate niello-work run round the top and body of the casket. The central band upon the lower part contains a Cufic inscription of slight interest. Some of the letters terminate in leaves. The bevelled lid is covered with groups of peacocks—symbolic, among Mohammedans, of eternal life—outlined in black enamel. These birds are eight in all, gathered in two groups of four about the large and overlapping hinges. Four leaves, trifoliate, in repoussé, one beneath the other, decorate the clasp, which opens out into a heart containing, also in repoussé, two inverted peacocks looking face to face. Between the birds this heart extremity is pierced for the passage of a ring.

Amador de los Ríos considers that both caskets were made between the years 1048 and 1089.

The use of coloured enamel in the manufacture of these boxes dates, or generally so, from somewhat later. Although the history of enamelling in Spain is nebulous and contradictory in the extreme, we know that caskets in champlevé enamel on a copper ground, with figures either flat or hammered in a bold relief, became abundant here. Two, from the convent of San Marcos at León, and dating from the thirteenth century, are now in the Madrid Museum. Labarte says that the lids of these enamelled reliquaries were flat until the twelfth century, and of a gable form thenceforward.

ALTAR-FRONT IN ENAMELLED BRONZE

(11th Century. Museum of Burgos)

Other old objects—boxes, triptyches, statuettes, incensories, book-covers, crucifixes, and processional crosses—partly or wholly covered with enamel, belong or recently belonged to the Marquises of Castrillo and Casa-Torres, the Count of Valencia de Don Juan, and Señor Escanciano. All, or nearly all, of these are thought to have proceeded from Limoges (Pl. v.). Champlevé enamel is also on the tiny “Crucifix of the Cid” (Pl. vi.) at Salamanca, as well as on the Virgin's throne in the gilt bronze statuette of the Virgin de la Vega at San Esteban in the same city.²¹ Of this image, although it properly belongs to another heading of my book, I think it well to give a reproduction here (Plate vii.). I will also mention, in spite of its presumably foreign origin, the enamelled altar-front of San Miguel de Excelsis in Navarre—a small sanctuary constructed by a mediæval cavalier who, by an accident occasioned by the dark, murdered his father and mother in lieu of his wife.²² This altar-front, conspicuously Byzantine in its style, measures four feet three inches high by seven feet five inches long, and is now employed as the retablo of the little church which stands in solitary picturesqueness on the lofty mountain-top of Aralar. The figures, coloured in relief upon a yellowish enamel ground, are those of saints, and of a monarch and his queen—possibly King Sancho the Great, who is believed to have been the donor of the ornament. If this surmise be accurate, the front would date from the eleventh century.

I have said that the history of Spanish enamel-work is both confused and scanty. The subject in its general aspects has been studied by M. Roulin, whose judgments will be found in the Revue de l'Art Ancien et Moderne, and in his article, “Mobilier liturgique d'Espagne,” published in the Revue de l'Art Chrétien for 1903. M. Roulin believes the altar-front of San Miguel in Excelsis to be a Limoges product, not earlier than the first half of the thirteenth century.

Ramírez de Arellano declares that no enamelling at all was done in Spain before the invasion of the Almohades. López Ferreiro, who as a priest had access to the jealously secreted archives of Santiago cathedral, gives us the names of Arias Perez, Pedro Martinez, Fernan Perez, and Pedro Pelaez, Galician enamellers who worked at Santiago in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Martin Minguez says that enamelling was done at Gerona in the fourteenth century, and Moorish enamels were certainly produced at Cordova and Cuenca from comparatively early in the Middle Ages. A few obscure workers in enamel are mentioned by Gestoso, in his Diccionario de Artistas Sevillanos, as living at Seville in the fifteenth century, though, in the entries which refer to them, little is told us of their lives and nothing of their labours. In the sixteenth century we obtain a glimpse of two enamellers of Toledo—Lorenzo Marqués and Andrés Ordoñez, and dating from the same period the Chapter of the Military Orders of Ciudad Real possesses a silver-gilt porta-paz with enamelling done at Cuenca. However, our notices of this branch of Spanish art have yet to be completed.

“THE CRUCIFIX OF THE CID”

(Salamanca Cathedral)

A long array of royal gifts caused, in the olden time, the treasure of Santiago cathedral to be the richest and most varied in the whole Peninsula, although at first this see was merely suffragan to Merida. But early in the twelfth century a scheming bishop, by name Diego Gelmirez, intrigued at Rome to raise his diocese to the dignity of an archbishopric. The means by which he proved successful in the end were far from irreproachable. “Gelmirez,” says Ford (vol. ii. p. 666) “was a cunning prelate, and well knew how to carry his point; he put Santiago's images and plate into the crucible, and sent the ingots to the Pope.”

The original altar-front or parament (aurea tabula) was made of solid gold. This altar-front Gelmirez melted down to steal from it some hundred ounces of the precious metal for the Pope, donating in its stead another front of gold and silver mixed, wrought from the remaining treasure of the sanctuary. Aymerich tells us that the primitive frontal bore the figure of the Saviour seated on a throne supported by the four evangelists, blessing with his right hand, and holding in his left the Book of Life. The four-and-twenty elders (called by quaint Morales “gentlemen”) of the apocalypse were also gathered round the throne, with musical instruments in their hands, and golden goblets filled with fragrant essences. At either end of the frontal were six of the apostles, three above and three beneath, separated by “beautiful columns” and surrounded by floral decoration. The upper part was thus inscribed:—

HANC TABULAM DIDACUS PRÆSUL JACOBITA

SECUNDUS

TEMPORE QUINQUENNI FECIT EPISCOPI

MARCAS ARGENTI DE THESAURO JACOBENSI

HIC OCTOGINTA QUINQUE MINUS NUMERA.

And the lower part:—

REX ERAT ANFONSUS GENER EJUS DUX RAIMUNDUS

PRÆSUL PRÆFATUS QUANDO PEREGIT OPUS.

This early altar-front has disappeared like its predecessor; it is not known precisely at what time; but both Morales and Medina saw and wrote about it in the sixteenth century.

THE “VIRGEN DE LA VEGA”

(Salamanca)

Another ornament which Aymerich describes, namely, the baldaquino or cimborius, has likewise faded from the eyes of the profane, together with three bronze caskets covered with enamel, and stated by Morales to have contained the bones of Saints Silvestre, Cucufate, and Fructuoso. One of these caskets was existing in the seventeenth century.

The silver lamps were greatly celebrated. Ambrosio de Morales counted “twenty or more”; but Zepedano made their total mount to fifty-one. The French invasion brought their number down to three. Three of the oldest of these lamps had been of huge dimensions, particularly one, a present from Alfonso of Aragon, which occupied the centre. The shape of it, says Aymerich, was “like a mighty mortar.” Seven was the number of its beaks, symbolic of the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost; and each beak contained a lamplet fed with oil of myrtles, acorns, or olives.

All kinds of robberies and pilferings have thus been perpetrated with the once abundant wealth of Santiago.²³ The jealous care which keeps the copious archives inaccessible to all the outside world is in itself of sinister significance. It has transpired, furthermore, that many of the bishops have “exchanged,” or simply stolen, portions of the holy property. Besides these clerical dilapidations, a cartload, weighing half a ton, was carried off by Marshal Ney, though some was subsequently handed back, “because the spoilers feared the hostility of the Plateros, the silversmiths who live close to the cathedral, and by whom many workmen were employed in making little graven images, teraphims and lares, as well as medallions of Santiago, which pilgrims purchase.”²⁴

SAINT JAMES IN PILGRIM'S DRESS

(Silver-gilt statuette; 15th Century. Santiago Cathedral)

Among the gifts of value which this temple yet preserves are the ancient processional cross presented by the third Alfonso in the year of grace 874,²⁵ and the hideous fourteenth-century reliquary shaped to represent the head of James Alfeo, and containing (as it is believed) this very relic (Pl. viii.). I make a reservation here, because the Chapter have forbidden the reliquary to be opened. In either case, whether the head be there or not, heads of the same apostle are affirmed to be at Chartres, Toulouse, and other places. Similarly, discussing these Hydra-headed beings of the Bible and the hagiology, Villa-amil y Castro (El Tesoro de la Catedral de Santiago, published in the Museo Español de Antigüedades) recalls to us the ten authenticated and indubitable mazzards of Saint John the Baptist.

The head-shaped reliquary is of beaten silver with enamelled visage, and the hair and beard gilt.²⁶ The workmanship is French. The cross, which hung till recently above the altar of the Relicario, but which now requires to be placed upon the lengthy list of stolen wealth, was not unlike the Cross of Angels in the Camara Santa at Oviedo, and had a wooden body covered with gold plates in finely executed filigree, studded with precious stones and cameos. Not many days ago, the wooden core, divested of the precious metal and the precious stones, was found abandoned in a field.

Visitors to the shrine of Santiago seldom fail to have their curiosity excited by the monster “smoke-thrower” (bota-fumeiro) or incensory, lowered (much like the deadly sword in Poe's exciting tale) on each fiesta by a batch of vigorous Gallegos from an iron frame fixed into the pendentives of the dome. “The calmest heart,” says Villa-amil, “grows agitated to behold this giant vessel descending from the apex of the nave until it almost sweeps the ground, wreathed in dense smoke and spewing flame.” Ford seems to have been unaware that the real purpose of this metal monster was not to simply scent the holy precincts, but to cover up the pestilential atmosphere created by a horde of verminous, diseased, and evil-smelling pilgrims, who, by a usage which is now suppressed, were authorized to pass the night before the services within the actual cathedral wall.

The original bota-fumeiro, resembling, in Oxea's words, “a silver boiler of gigantic bulk,” was lost or stolen in the War of Spanish Independence. It was replaced by another of iron, and this, in 1851, by the present apparatus of white metal.

Striking objects of ecclesiastical orfebrería were produced in Spain throughout the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries. Among the finest are the triptych-reliquary of Seville cathedral known as the Alfonsine Tables; the retablo and baldaquino of the cathedral of Gerona; the silver throne, preserved in Barcelona cathedral, of Don Martin of Aragon; and the guión, at Toledo, of Cardinal Mendoza.

MUDEJAR TRIPTYCH

(Interior of one leaf of the door. 14th Century. Royal Academy of History, Madrid)

Triptych-reliquaries, which had gradually expanded from the diptych form—three leaves or panels thus replacing two—were generally used in Spain from the eleventh century, and varied in dimensions from a few inches in height and width to several yards. We find them in the Gothic, Mudejar,²⁷ Romanic, or Renaissance styles—wrought either in a single style of these, or in effective combination of some two or more. The Academy of History at Madrid possesses a richly ornamented Mudejar triptych (Plate ix.) proceeding from the Monasterio de Piedra. It is inferior, notwithstanding, to the Tablas Alfonsinas,²⁸ “a specimen of Spanish silversmiths' work which illustrates the transition to the new style, and the progress in the design of the figures owing to the Italian Renaissance.”²⁹ In or about the year 1274, this splendid piece of sacred furniture was made by order of the learned king, to hold the relics of certain saints and of the Virgin Mary. The maker is thought by Amador to have been one “Master George,” a craftsman held in high esteem by the father of Alfonso and the conqueror of Seville, Ferdinand the Third. Romanic influence is abundant in this triptych, showing that, although exposed to constant changes from abroad, the Spanish mediæval crafts adhered upon the whole with singular tenacity to primitive tradition.

The triptych is of larch, or some such undecaying wood, and measures, when the leaves are opened wide, forty inches over its entire breadth, by twenty-two in height. Linen is stretched upon the wood, and over that the silver-gilt repoussé plates which form the principal adornment of the reliquary. “The outside is decorated with twelve medallions containing the arms of Castile and Aragon, and forty-eight others in which are repeated alternately the subjects of the Adoration of the Magi and the Annunciation of the Virgin, also in repoussé. In the centres are eagles, allusive, it is possible, to Don Alfonso's claim to be crowned Emperor. … The ornamentation which surrounds the panels belongs to the sixteenth century” (Riaño). The arms here spoken of contain the crowned lion and the castle of three towers; and the interesting fact is pointed out by Amador that the diminutive doors and windows of these castles show a strongly pointed Gothic arch. The sixteenth-century bordering to the panels is in the manner known as Plateresque.³⁰ The clasps are also Plateresque, and prove, together with the border, that the triptych was restored about this time.

THE “TABLAS ALFONSINAS”

(View of Interior; 13th Century. Seville Cathedral)

Inside (Plate x.), it consists of fifteen compartments, “full of minute ornamentation, among which are set a large number of capsules covered with rock crystal containing relics, each one with an inscription of enamelled gold, cloisonné. Several good cameos with sacred subjects appear near the edge of the side leaves” (Riaño). These cameos, handsomely engraved with figures of the Virgin and other subjects of religious character, are fairly well preserved; but the designs upon enamel are almost obliterated. Eight precious stones, set in as rude a style as those upon the ancient crowns and crosses of the Visigoths, have also fallen out, or been removed, from the interior.

The retablo of Gerona cathedral and its baldachin date from the fourteenth century. “The Retablo is of wood entirely covered with silver plates, and divided vertically into three series of niches and canopies; each division has a subject, and a good deal of enamelling is introduced in various parts of the canopies and grounds of the panels. Each panel has a cinq-foiled arch with a crocketed gablet and pinnacles on either side. The straight line of the top is broken by three niches, which rise in the centre and at either end. In the centre is the Blessed Virgin with our Lord; on the right, San Narciso; and on the left, St. Filia. The three tiers of subjects contain figures of saints, subjects from the life of the Blessed Virgin, and subjects from the life of our Lord.”³¹

San Narciso is patron of the city of Gerona; which explains the presence of his image here. From the treasury of the same cathedral was stolen, during the War of Spanish Independence, a magnificent altar-front of wrought gold and mosaic, a gift of Countess Gisla, wife of Ramón Berenguer, count-king of Barcelona. It had in the centre a bas-relief medallion representing the Virgin, another medallion with a portrait of the donor, and various saints in niches, interworked with precious stones.

The great armchair of Don Martin, called by Baron Davillier a “beau faudesteuil gothique,” which possibly served that monarch as a throne, and was presented by him to the cathedral of Barcelona, dates from the year 1410. The wooden frame is covered with elaborately chiselled plates in silver-gilt. This most imposing object is carried in procession through the streets upon the yearly festival of Corpus Christi.

“THE CUP OF SAN FERNANDO”

(13th Century. Seville Cathedral)

SHIP

(15th Century. Zaragoza Cathedral)

The guión de Mendoza, now in Toledo cathedral, is a handsome later-Gothic silver-gilt cross, and is the same which was raised upon the Torre de la Vela at Granada on January 2nd, 1492, when the fairest and most storied city in all Spain surrendered formally to Ferdinand and Isabella. Many other interesting crosses, of the character known as processional, are still preserved in various parts of the Peninsula, at South Kensington, and elsewhere. The more remarkable are noticed under various headings of this book. Their workmanship is generally of the fifteenth or the sixteenth century.

The Seo or cathedral of Zaragoza possesses a handsome ship (Plate xii.), presented to this temple, towards the end of the fifteenth century, by the Valencian corsair, Mosén Juan de Torrellas. The hull is a large shell resting on a silver-gilt dragon of good design, with a large emerald set in the middle of its forehead, and a ruby for each eye. Ships of this kind were not uncommon on a Spanish dining table of the time, or in the treasuries of churches and cathedrals. Toledo owns another of these vessels (in both senses of the word), which once belonged to Doña Juana, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella.

Hitherto I have confined my notice almost wholly to the treasure of the Spanish temples. Turning from ecclesiastical to secular life, we find, all through the Middle Ages, the humbler classes kept by constant penury and war aloof from every form of luxury. Jewellery and gold and silver work were thus essentially the perquisite or, so to speak, the privilege of princes, nobles, and the Church. The mediæval kings and magnates of this land were smitten inveterately with a passion for display, and chronicles and inventories of the time contain instructive details of the quantities of gems and precious metals employed by them to decorate their persons and their palaces. The richness of their bedsteads will be noticed under Furniture. Quantities of jewellery and plate belonged to every noble household. For instance, the testament of the Countess of Castañeda (A.D. 1443) includes the mention of “a gilded cup and cover to the same; a silver vessel and its lid, the edges gilt, and in the centre of both lid and vessel the arms of the said count, my lord; a silver vessel with a foot to it; a diamond ring; a silver vessel with gilt edges and the arms of the count, companion to the other vessels; a jasper sweetmeat-tray with silver-gilt handles and feet; four coral spoons; a gilt enamelled cup and lid; a small gilt cup and lid; two large silver porringers; two French cups of white silver; two large plates of eight marks apiece; two middling-sized silver vessels; two silver-gilt barrels with silver-gilt chains.”³²

On each occasion of a court or national festivity, the apparel of the great was ponderous with gold and silver fringe, or thickly strewn with pearls—the characteristic aljofar or aljofar-work (Arabic chawar, small pearls), for which the Moors were widely famed. Towards the thirteenth century unmarried Spanish women of high rank possessed abundant stores of bracelets, earrings, necklaces, gold chains, rings, and gem-embroidered pouches for their money. Their waist-belts, too, were heavy with gold and silver, and aljofar.³³ The poem of the Archpriest of Hita (1343) mentions two articles of jewellery for female wear called the broncha and the pancha. The former was an ornament for the throat; the other, a plate or medal which hung to below the waist. An Arabic document quoted by Casiri, and dating from the reign of Henry the First of Castile, specifies as belonging to an aristocratic lady of that time, “Egyptian shirts of silk and linen, embroidered shirts, Persian shirts with silk embroidery, Murcian gold necklaces, ear-pendants of the same metal, set with gems; finger-rings and bracelets, waist-belts of skins, embroidered with silk and precious stones; cloaks of cloth of gold, embroidered mantles of the same, coverings for the head, and kerchiefs.”

For all the frequency with which they framed and iterated sterile and exasperating sumptuary pragmatics for their people, the Spanish kings themselves went even beyond the nobles in their craze for ostentatious luxury. Upon the day when he was crowned at Burgos, Alfonso the Eleventh “arrayed himself in gold and silver cloth bearing devices of the castle and the lion, in which was much aljofar-work, as well as precious stones innumerable; rubies, emeralds, and sapphires.” Even the bit and saddle of the monarch's charger were “exceeding precious on this day, for gems and gold and silver covered all the saddle-bows, and the sides of the saddle and its girths, together with the headstall, were curiously wrought of gold and silver thread.”

Similar relations may be found at every moment of the history of mediæval Spain. Another instance may be quoted from the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. When these sovereigns visited Barcelona in 1481, the queen was dressed as follows:—“She advanced riding upon a fine mule, and seated on cushions covered with brocade, rising high above the saddle. Her robe was of gold thread and jewel-work, with a rich brocade skirt. Upon her head she wore a crown of gold adorned with richest diamonds, pearls, rubies, balas rubies, and other stones of passing price.” During the same visit, a royal tournament was given in the Plaza del Born, in presence of the aristocracy and wealthy townspeople, “the counts, viscounts, deputies, councillors, caballeros, gentiles hombres, burgesses, and others without number.” Ferdinand, who “with virtue and benignity” had deigned to break a lance or two in tourneying with the Duke of Alburquerque, the Count of Benavente, and several gentlemen of Cataluña, was wearing “over his harness a jacket all of gold brocade. His horse's coverings and poitral also were of thread of gold, richly devised and wrought, and of exceeding majesty and beauty. And on his helm he wore a crown of gold, embellished with many pearls and other stones; and above the crown a figure of a large gold bat, which is the emblem of the kings of Aragon and counts of Barcelona, with white and sanguine bars upon the scutcheon.³⁴ The queen and the cardinal of Spain were in a window of the house of Mossen Guillem Pujades, conservator of the realm of Sicily. Her highness wore a robe of rich gold thread with a collar of beautiful pearls; and the trappings of her mule were of brocade.”³⁵

Eleven years later the youthful prince, Don Juan, son of these rulers, appeared before the citizens of Barcelona dressed in “a robe of beautiful brocade that almost swept the ground, and a doublet of the same material; the sleeves of the robe thickly adorned with fine pearls of large size.” He carried, too, “a gold collar of great size and beauty, wrought of large diamonds, pearls, and other stones.”³⁶

It was an ancient usage with the people of Barcelona to present a silver service to any member of the royal family who paid a visit to their capital. The service so presented to Ferdinand the Catholic cost the corporation a sum of more than twelve hundred pounds of Catalan money, and included “a saltcellar made upon a rock. Upon the rock is a castle, the tower of which contains the salt. … Two silver ewers, gilt within and containing on the outside various enamelled devices in the centre, together with the city arms. Also a silver-gilt lion upon a rustic palisade of tree-trunks, holding an inscription in his right paw, with the arms of the city, a flag, and a crown upon his head. This object weighs thirty-four marks.”³⁷ The service offered on the same occasion to Isabella, though less in weight, was more elaborately wrought, and cost on this account considerably more. It included “two silver ewers, gilt within and enamelled without, bearing the city arms, and chiselled in the centre with various designs of foliage. Also a silver saltcellar, with six small towers, containing at the foot three pieces of enamel-work with the arms of the city in relief. This saltcellar has its lid and case, with a pinnacle upon the lid, and is of silver-gilt inside and out.”³⁸

From about the fifteenth century the goldsmiths and the silversmiths of Barcelona enjoyed considerable fame. Among their names are those of Lobarolla, Roig, Berni, Belloch, Planes, Mellar, Corda, Fábregues, Farrán, Perot Ximenis, Rafel Ximenis, Balagué, and Antonio de Valdés. Riaño quotes the names of many more from Cean's dictionary. The most important facts relating to these artists were brought to light some years ago by Baron Davillier, who based the greater part of his research upon the Libros de Pasantía or silversmiths' examination-books (filled with excellent designs for jewel-work) of Barcelona. These volumes, formerly kept in the college of San Eloy, are now the property of the Provincial Deputation of this city.

The goldsmiths' and the silversmiths' guild of Seville also possesses four of its old examination-books, of which the earliest dates from 1600. Gestoso, in his Dictionary of Sevillian Artificers describes the actual ceremony of examination for a silversmith or goldsmith. Once in every year the members of the guild assembled in their chapel of the convent of San Francisco. Here and upon this day the candidate was closely questioned, to begin with, as to his “purity of blood”—that is, his freedom from contamination by relationship with any Moor or Hebrew. When it was duly and precisely ascertained that he, his parents, and his grandparents were uniformly “old Christians,” untainted with the “wicked race of Moors, Jews, heretics, mulattoes, and renegades,” and that neither he nor his ancestors had ever been put on trial by the Inquisition or by any other tribunal, “whether publicly or secretly,” he was permitted to proceed to his examination proper.³⁹ The formula of this was simple. The candidate was summoned before the board of examiners, consisting of the Padre Mayor or patriarch of the guild, and the two veedores or inspectors, the one of gold-work, the other of silver-work. The book of drawings was then placed upon the table, and a ruler was thrust at haphazard among its leaves. Where the ruler chanced to fall, the candidate was called upon to execute the corresponding drawing to the satisfaction of his judges.

Riaño lays too slight a stress upon the Moorish and Morisco jewellery of Spain. Although the use of gold and silver ornaments is forbidden by the Koran, the Muslim, wherever his vanity or his bodily comfort is involved, tramples his Bible underfoot almost as regularly, tranquilly, and radically as the Christians do their own. The Moors of Spain were not at all behind their oriental brethren in displaying precious stones and metals on their persons or about their homes. Al-Jattib tells us that the third Mohammed offered to the mosque of the Alhambra columns with capitals and bases of pure silver. Or who does not recall the Caliphate of Cordova; the silver lamp that measured fifty palms across, fitted with a thousand and fifty-four glass lamplets, and swinging by a golden chain from the cupola of the entrance to the mirhab in the vast mezquita; the silver candlesticks and perfume-burners in the same extraordinary temple; the precious stones and metals employed in mighty quantities to decorate the palaces of Az-zahyra and Az-zahra?—

“A wilderness of building, sinking far

And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth,

Far sinking into splendour without end!

Fabric it seemed of diamond and of gold,

With alabaster domes and silver spires,

And blazing terrace upon terrace, high

Uplifted.”

In brief, just as the prelates of the Christian Church habitually precede the Christian laity in trampling underfoot the elemental doctrine of Our Lord, so were the most exalted and responsible of all the Mussulmans—that is, their sultans—indefatigably foremost in neglect of the Koranic law.

The Spanish sultans wore a ring of gold containing one large stone (such as an emerald, or ruby, or turquoise), on which was cut the royal seal and signature. Such was the ring belonging to Boabdil el Chico, worn by him on the very day of the surrender of his capital, and by his hand presented to a Spanish nobleman, the Count of Tendilla, governor-elect of the Alhambra. According to Rodriguez de Ardila, the following inscription was upon the stone:—“La Ala ile Ala, abahu Tabiu. Aben Abi Abdalá,” meaning, “There is no God but God; this is the seal of Aben Abi Abdalá.” Ardila, who was the author of a history of the Counts of Tendilla (which still remains in manuscript), adds that he saw the ring, although, as Eguilaz observes, two words of the inscription are inaccurately rendered.

Among the Moors of Spain the use of signet rings was general. The stone employed was commonly cornelian, richly mounted and inscribed in various ways, as with the owner's name, his name together with a date, or the name of the town of which he was a native. In other instances we meet with pious phrases or quotations from the Koran; or perhaps a talismanic figure, such as the open eye to guard the wearer from the dreaded mal de ojo; or the open hand that still surmounts the gateway of the Tower of Justice at Granada.⁴⁰

Undoubtedly, too, the Moorish sultans of this country owned enormous hoards of silver, gold, and precious stones. Al-Makkari says that the treasure of the Nasrite rulers of Granada included quantities of pearls, turquoises, and rubies; pearl necklets; earrings “surpassing those of Mary the Copt” (Mohammed's concubine); swords of the finest temper, embellished with pure gold; helmets with gilded borders, studded with emeralds, pearls, and rubies; and silvered and enamelled belts.

MOORISH BRACELETS

The Moorish women of this country, and in particular the Granadinas,⁴¹ were passionately fond of jewellery. Ornaments which once belonged to them are sometimes brought to light in Andalusia, Murcia, or Valencia, including pendants, rings, necklaces, and axorcas or bangles for the ankle or the wrist, and bracelets for the upper portion of the arm. The National Museum contains a small collection of these objects, dating from the time of the Moriscos, and including a handsome necklace terminating in a double chain, with ball and pyramid shaped ornaments about the centre, a square-headed finger-ring with four green stones and a garnet, and a hollow bracelet filled with a substance that appears to be mastic, similar to those which are reproduced in Plate xiii.

These jewels, I repeat, are of Morisco workmanship, and therefore date from later than the independent empire of the Spanish Moors. Nevertheless, the geometrical or filigree design was common both to Moorish and Morisco art. As I observed in my description of the casket-reliquaries, we note continually the influence of these motives on the arts of Christian Spain. The Ordinances relative to the goldsmiths and the silversmiths of Granada, cried at various times between 1529 and 1538, whether “in the silversmiths' street of the Alcaycería, that has its opening over against the scriveners'”; or in “the street of the Puente del Carbon, before the goldsmiths' shops”; or “in the street of the Zacatin, where dwell the silversmiths,” prove also that for many years after the Reconquest the character and nomenclature of this kind of work continued to be principally and traditionally Moorish.

Firstly, the Ordinances complain that the goldsmiths of Granada now employ a base and detrimental standard of the precious metals, especially in the bracelets or manillas of the women. The goldsmiths answer in their vindication that equally as poor a standard is employed at Seville, Cordova, and Toledo. These city laws herewith establish twenty carats as a minimum fineness for the gold employed in making ornaments. The makers, also, are ordered to impress their private stamp or seal on every article, or in default to pay a fine of ten thousand maravedis. A copy of each stamp or seal to be deposited in the city chest. The alamín or inspector of this trade to test and weigh all gold and silver work before it is exposed for sale.

We learn from the same source that the gold bracelets were sometimes smooth, and sometimes “covered over with devices” (cubiertos de estampas por cima). The technical name of these was albordados. The silver bracelets were also either smooth, or stamped, or twisted in a cord (encordados). Bangles for the ankle, upper arm, and wrist are mentioned as continuing to be generally worn, while one of the Ordinances complains that “Moorish axorcas are often sold that are hollow, and filled with chalk and mastic, so that before they can be weighed it is necessary to rid them of such substances by submitting them to fire, albeit the fire turns them black.”

The weapons and war-harness of the Spanish Moors were often exquisitely decorated with the precious stones or metals. Splendid objects of this kind have been preserved, and will be noticed in their proper chapter.

The ruinous and reckless measure known to Spain's eternal shame as the Expulsion of the Moriscos, deprived this country of a great—perhaps the greatest—part of her resources. Fonseca estimates this loss, solely in the quantity of coin conveyed away, at two million and eight hundred thousand escudos, adding that a single Morisco, Alami Delascar de Aberique, bore off with him one hundred thousand ducats.⁴² To make this matter worse, the Moriscos, just before they went on board their ships, fashioned from scraps of tin, old nails, and other refuse, enormous stores of counterfeit coin, and slyly sold this rubbish to the simple Spaniards in return for lawful money of the land. In the course of a few days, and in a single quarter of Valencia, more than three hundred thousand ducats of false coin were thus passed off upon the Christians. Besides this exportation of good Spanish money, the cunning fugitives removed huge quantities of jewellery and plate. Chains, axorcas, rings, zarcillos, and gold escudos were taken from the bodies of many of the Morisco women who were murdered by the Spanish soldiery; but the greater part of all this treasure found its way to Africa. In his work Expulsión justificada de los Moriscos (1612), Aznar de Cardona says that the Morisco women carried “divers plates upon the breast, together with necklaces and collars, earrings and bracelets.” It is recorded, too, that the Moriscos, as they struggled in the country regions to avenge themselves upon their persecutors, did unlimited damage to the ornaments and fittings of the churches. “This people,” says Fonseca, “respected not our temples or the holy images that in them were; nor yet the chalices and other objects they encountered in our sacristies. Upon the contrary, they smashed the crosses, burned the saints, profaned the sacred vestments, and committed such acts of sacrilege as though they had been Algerian Moors, or Turks of Constantinople.”

Legends of hidden Moorish and Morisco wealth are still extant in many parts of Spain. The Abbé Bertaut de Rouen⁴³ and Swinburne among foreigners, or Spaniards such as the gossiping priest Echeverría, who provided Washington Irving with the pick of his Tales of the Alhambra, have treated copiously of this fascinating and mysterious theme. The Siete Suelos Tower at Granada is particularly favoured with traditions of this kind. Peasants of the Alpujarras still declare that piles of Moorish money lie secreted in the lofty buttresses of Mulhacen and the Veleta, while yet another summit of this snowy range bears the suggestive title of the Cerro del Tesoro, where, almost within the memory of living men, a numerous party, fitted and commissioned by the State, explored with feverish though unlucky zeal the naked cliffs and sterile crannies of the lonely mountain.⁴⁴

Reducing all these fables to the terms of truth, Moorish and Morisco jewellery and coin are sometimes brought to light on Spanish soil. Such finds occur, less seldom than elsewhere, within the provinces of Seville, Cordova, Granada, and Almeria (Plate xiv.), but since they are neither frequent nor considerable, although the likeliest ground for them is being disturbed continually, we may conclude that nearly all the Muslim wealth accumulated here slipped from the clumsy if ferocious fingers of the mother-country, and found its way, concealed upon the bodies of her persecuted offspring, to the shores of Africa.⁴⁵

MORISCO JEWELLERY

(Found in the Province of Granada)

Sometimes, too, an early gold or silver object would be melted down and modernized into another and a newer piece of plate. This was a fairly common usage with the silversmiths themselves, or with an ignorant or stingy brotherhood or chapter. Thus, the following entry occurs in the Libro de Visita de Fábrica belonging to the parish church of Santa Ana, Triana, Seville. In the year 1599 “the large cross of silver-gilt, together with its mançana and all the silver attaching thereto, was taken to the house of Zubieta the silversmith, and pulled to pieces. It weighed 25 marks and 4 ochavas of silver, besides 5 marks and 2 ounces and 4 ochavas of silver which was the weight of the three lamps delivered to Zubieta in the time of Juan de Mirando, aforetime steward of this church. It is now made into a silver-gilt cross.”⁴⁶

A similar instance may be quoted from a document of Cordova, published by Ramírez de Arellano in his relation of a visit to the monastery of San Jerónimo de Valparaiso. In the year 1607 Gerónimo de la Cruz, a Cordovese silversmith, agreed with the prior of this monastery to make for the community a silver-gilt custodia. For this purpose he received from the prior, doubtless a man of parsimonious spirit and a boor in his appreciativeness of art, eight pairs of vinegar cruets, four of whose tops were missing; a silver-gilt chalice and its patine; a viril with two angels and four pieces on the crown of it; a small communion cup; some silver candlesticks; four spoons and a fork, also of silver; and a silver-gilt salt-cellar. The total value of these objects was 1826 reales; and all of them were tossed, in Ford's indignant phrase, into the “sacrilegious melting-pot,” in order to provide material for the new custodia.

SILVER-GILT PROCESSIONAL CROSS

(Made by Juan de Arfe in 1592. Burgos Cathedral)

The gold and silver work of Christian Spain attained, throughout the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries, a high degree of excellence (Plates xv., xvi., etc.). The best of it was made at Seville, Barcelona, Toledo, and Valladolid. Objects of great artistic worth were also produced at Burgos, Palencia, León, Cuenca, Cordova, and Salamanca. I have already mentioned some of the principal orfebreros of Barcelona. Juan Ruiz of Cordova, whom Juan de Arfe applauds as “the first silversmith who taught the way to do good work in Andalusia,” was also, in this region, the first to turn the precious metals on the lathe. A famous silversmith of Seville was Diego de Vozmediano, whom we find living there in 1525. Toledo, too, could boast, among an army of distinguished gold and silver smiths (Riaño gives the names of no fewer than seventy-seven), Cristóbal de Ordas, Juan Rodríguez de Babria, and Pedro Hernandez, plateros, respectively, to Charles the Fifth, to Philip the Second, and to the queen-dowager of Portugal; and also the silversmith and engraver upon metals, Pedro Angel, whose praise is sung by Lope de Vega in the prologue to his auto called The Voyage of the Soul:—

“Y es hoy Pedro Angel un divino artífice con el buril en oro, plata, ó cobre.”

By far the greater part of all Toledo's gold and silver work was made for service in her mighty temple. Such were the statue of Saint Helen, presented by Philip the Second; the crown of the Virgen del Sagrario, wrought by Hernando de Carrión and Alejo de Montoya; the bracelets or ajorcas made for the image of the same Madonna by Julián Honrado; and the exquisite chests carved in 1569 and 1598 by Francisco Merino from designs by the two Vergaras, father and son, as reliquaries for the bones of San Eugenio and Santa Leocadia, patrons of this ancient capital.⁴⁷ A magnificent silver lamp was also, in 1565, offered by the chapter of the cathedral to the church of Saint Denis in France, in gratitude for the surrender of the bones of San Eugenio to the city of his birth. These and other objects of Toledan gold and silver work are stated to be “worthy of comparison with the very best of what was then produced in Germany, Italy, and France.”⁴⁸

Baron Davillier also held a high opinion of the Spanish orfebreros of this time. After remarking that the Italian influence was powerful among the Spaniards in the sixteenth century, and more particularly for some fifty years at Barcelona, he says: “A cette époque les plateros espagnols pouvaient rivaliser sans désavantage avec les Italiens, les Français, les Flamands, et les Allemands.”

The same authority also says that the Spanish plateros of this period were skilled enamellers on gold and silver, and quotes some entries from French inventories of the time in which we read of cups, salt-cellars, washing-basins, and other objects executed or enamelled “à la mode d'Espagne.”⁴⁹

As we have seen, the exodus of the Moriscos lost to Spain a great proportion of her total wealth, although, conjointly with this loss, new wealth flowed into her in marvellous abundance from the New World.⁵⁰ Thus, the silver-mines of Potosi, discovered in 1545, sent over to the mother-country, between that year and 1633, no less than eight hundred and forty-five millions of pesos. And yet this mighty influx of new riches cannot be said, except in the artistic sense, to have enriched the nation. She had renounced the service of the most industrious and, in many instances, the most ingenious of her native craftsmen; while on the other hand the Christians, with but limited exceptions, were far too proud and far too indolent to set their hand to any form of manual exercise; just as (I much regret to add) a great proportion of them are this very day. Foreign artificers in consequence (particularly after the royal pragmatic of 1623 encouraging their immigration), attracted by the treasure fleets that anchored in the bay of Cadiz, came trooping into Spain and filled their pockets from the national purse, fashioning, in return for money which they husbanded and sent abroad, luxurious gold and silver objects that were merely destined to stagnate within her churches and cathedrals.

Riaño and Baron de la Vega de Hoz extract from Cean Bermudez a copious list of silversmiths who worked in Spain all through the Middle Ages. This long array of isolated names and dates is neither interesting nor informative. Newer and more attractive notices have been discovered subsequently. Thus, in the National Library at Madrid, Don Manuel G. Simancas has disinterred quite recently the copy made by a Jesuit of a series of thirteenth-century accounts relating to various craftsmen of the reign of Sancho the Fourth (“the Brave”). Two of them are concerning early orfebreros:—

“Juan Yanez. By letters of the king and queen to Johan Yanez, goldsmith, brother of Ferran García, scrivener to the king; for three chalices received from him by the king, CCCCLXXVIII maravedis.”

The second entry says:—

“Bartolomé Rinalt. And he paid Bartolomé Rinalt for jewels which the queen bought from him to present to Doña Marina Suarez, nurse of the Infante Don Pedro, MCCCL maravedis.”⁵¹

Among Spain's gold and silver craftsmen of the fifteenth century we find the names of Juan de Castelnou, together with his son Jaime, who worked at Valencia; of Lope Rodríguez de Villareal, Ruby, and Juan Gonzalez, all three of whom worked at Toledo; and of Juan de Segovia, a friar of Guadalupe. Papers concerning Juan Gonzalez, and dated 1425, 1427, and 1431, are published among the Documentos Inéditos of Zarco del Valle. One of Segovia's masterpieces was a silver salt-cellar in the form of a lion tearing open a pomegranate—clearly allusive to the conquest of Granada from the Moors. Upon their visiting the monastery, Ferdinand and Isabella saw and, as was natural, conceived a fancy for this salt-cellar; and so, whether from inclination or necessity, the brotherhood induced them to accept it.

Sixteenth-century plateros of renown were Juan Donante, Mateo and Nicolás (whose surnames are unknown)—all three of whom worked at Seville; and Duarte Rodríguez and Fernando Ballesteros, natives of that city. In or about the year 1524 were working at Toledo the silversmiths Pedro Herreros and Hernando de Valles, together with Diego Vazquez, Andres Ordoñez, Hernando de Carrión, Diego de Valdivieso, Juan Domingo de Villanueva, Diego Abedo de Villandrando, Juan Tello de Morata, Francisco de Reinalte, Hans Belta, and Francisco Merino. Several of these men were natives of Toledo.

Among the silversmiths of sixteenth-century Cordova were Diego de Alfaro and his son Francisco, Francisco de Baena, Alonso Casas, Alonso del Castillo, Luis de Cordoba, Sebastián de Cordoba, Cristóbal de Escalante, Juan Gonzalez, Diego Fernandez, Diego Hernandez Rubio (son of Sebastián de Cordoba), Rodrigo de León, Gómez Luque, Ginés Martinez, Melchor de los Reyes (silversmith and enameller), Andrés de Roa, Pedro de Roa, Alonso Sanchez, Jerónimo Sanchez de la Cruz, Martin Sanchez de la Cruz (Jerónimo's son), Pedro Sanchez de Luque, Alonso de Sevilla, Juan Urbano, and Lucas de Valdés.

Not much is told us of the lives and labours of these artists. The best reputed of them as a craftsman was Rodrigo de León, who stood next after Juan Ruiz, el Sandolino. Ramírez de Arellano, from whom I have collected these data, publishes a number of León's agreements or contracts, which from their length and dryness I do not here repeat. In 1603 we find him official silversmith to the cathedral, under the title of “platero de martillo (“silversmith of hammered work”) de la obra de la catedral desta ciudad.”

Francisco de Alfaro, although a Cordovese by birth, resided commonly at Seville. In 1578 he received 446,163 maravedis for making four silver candlesticks for use in celebrating divine service. These candlesticks are still in the cathedral.

Sebastián de Cordoba was one of the foremost artists of his age. He died in 1587, leaving, together with other children, a son, Diego, who also won some reputation as a silversmith. Ramírez de Arellano publishes a full relation of the property which Sebastián de Cordoba bequeathed at his decease, as well as of the money which was owing to him. Among the former, or the “movable effects,” we read of “Isabel, a Morisco woman, native of the kingdom of Granada; her age thirty-four years, a little less or more.” The same inventory includes a curious and complete account of all the tools and apparatus in Sebastián's workshop.

But the quaintest notice of them all, though it does not apprise us of his merit as a silversmith, is that concerning Cristóbal de Escalante. Cristóbal suffered, we are told, from “certain sores produced by humours in his left leg; wherefore the said leg undergoes a change and swells.” He therefore makes a contract with one Juan Jiménez, “servant in the Royal Stables of His Majesty the King,” and duly examined as a herbalist (“licensed,” in the actual phrase, “to remedy this kind of ailments”), who is to heal his leg “by means of the divine will of the cure.” As soon as Cristóbal shall be thoroughly well, “in so much that his ailing leg shall be the other's equal in the fatness and the form thereof,” he is to pay Jiménez five-and-fifty reales, “having already given him ten reales on account.”

Probably, as Señor Ramírez de Arellano facetiously supposes, Cristóbal, after such a course of treatment, would be lame for all his life. At any rate, he died in 1605, though whether from the gentle handling of the stableman and herbalist is not recorded in these entries.

Still keeping to the sixteenth century, in other parts of Spain we find the silversmiths Baltasar Alvarez and Juan de Benavente, working at Palencia; Alonso de Dueñas at Salamanca; and Juan de Orna at Burgos, about the same time that the foreigners Jacomi de Trezzo and Leo Leoni were engaged at the Escorial. Cuenca, too, boasted three excellent silver-workers in the family of Becerril, mentioned by Juan de Arfe in company with other craftsmen of the time of the Renaissance.⁵² Stirling says of Cuenca and the Becerriles: “They made for the cathedral its great custodia, which was one of the most costly and celebrated pieces of church plate in Spain. They began it in 1528, and, though ready for use in 1546, it was not finished till 1573. It was a three-storied edifice, of a florid classical design, crowned with a dome, and enriched with numberless groups and statues, and an inner shrine of jewelled gold; it contained 616 marks of silver, and cost 17,725½ ducats, a sum which can barely have paid the ingenious artists for the labour of forty-five years. In the War of Independence, this splendid prize fell into the hands of the French General Caulaincourt, by whom it was forthwith turned into five-franc pieces, bearing the image and superscription of Napoleon.”⁵³

A more reliable notice says that this custodia was begun by Alonso Becerril and finished by his brother Francisco. The third member of this family of artists, Cristóbal, who flourished towards the end of the sixteenth century, was Francisco's son.

GOTHIC CUSTODIA (15th Century)

Towards the close of the Gothic and during the earlier phases of the Renaissance movement in this country, enormous quantities of gold and silver began to be employed in making these custodias or monstrances of her temples; so that the fifteenth century may well be called, in Spanish craftsmanship, the “age of the custodia.” A century ago the reverend Townsend, loyal to the Low Church prejudices of his day, spoke of this object with something of a sneer as “the depository of the Host, or, according to the ideas of a Catholic, the throne of the Most High, when, upon solemn festivals, He appears to command the adoration of mankind.” Riaño's description is more technical. “The name of custodia,” he says, “is given in Spain, not only to the monstrance or ostensoir where the Blessed Sacrament is exposed, but also to a sort of temple or tabernacle, of large size, made also of silver, inside which is placed the monstrance, which is carried in procession on Corpus Christi day (Plate xvi.). In order to distinguish these objects one from another, the name of viril is given to the object which holds the consecrated Host; it is generally made of rock crystal, with a gold stem and mount ornamented with precious stones. The small tabernacles are generally objects of the greatest importance, both from their artistic and intrinsic value.” A third description of the monstrance, written in quaint and antiquated Spanish verse by Juan de Arfe, is truthfully if not melodiously translated into English rhyme by Stirling:—

“Custodia is a temple of rich plate,

Wrought for the glory of our Saviour true,

Where, into wafer transubstantiate,

He shows his Godhead and his Manhood too,

That holiest ark of old to imitate,

Fashioned by Bezaleel, the cunning Jew,

Chosen of God to work His sov'ran will,

And greatly gifted with celestial skill.”⁵⁴

Notwithstanding that the monstrance of Toledo, surmounted by a cross of solid gold, turns the scale at ten thousand nine hundred ounces, and that of Avila at one hundred and forty pounds, the weight of nearly all of these custodias is far exceeded by the value of their workmanship. The style employed in their construction is the Gothic, the Renaissance, or the two combined. Custodias of the eastern parts of Spain are more affected than the others by Italian influence, noticeable both in decorative motives which recall the Florentine, and in the use, together with the silver-work, of painting and enamels. In other parts of Spain the dominating influence is the later Gothic. Among the former or Levantine class of monstrances, the most important are those of Barcelona, Vich, Gerona, and Palma de Mallorca; and of the others, those of Cordova, Cadiz, Sahagún, Zamora, Salamanca, and Toledo—this last, according to Bertaut de Rouen, “à la manière d'un clocher percé à jour, d'ouvrage de filigrane, et plein de figures.” Custodias in the purest classic or Renaissance style are those of Seville, Valladolid, Palencia, Avila, Jaen, Madrid, Segovia, Zaragoza, Santiago, and Orense.

Juan de Arfe y Villafañe, who may be called the Cellini of Spain's custodia-makers, was born at León in 1535. He was the son of Antonio de Arfe, and grandson of Enrique de Arfe, a German who had married a Spanish wife and made his home in Spain. The family of Juan, including his brother Antonio, were all distinguished craftsmen, and he himself informs us that his grandfather excelled in Gothic platería, as may be judged from the custodias, by Enrique's hand, of Cordova, León, Toledo, and Sahagún, and many smaller objects, such as incensories, crosiers, and paxes.

The father of Juan, Antonio de Arfe, worked in silver in the Renaissance or Plateresque styles, and executed in the florid manner the custodias of Santiago de Galicia and Medina de Rioseco; but the training and tastes of Juan himself were sternly classical. His work in consequence has a certain coldness, largely atoned for by its exquisite correctness of design and unimpeachable proportions. Arfe's ideal in these matters may readily be judged of from his written verdict on the Greco-Roman architecture. “The Escorial,” he says, in the preface to his description of the custodia of Seville cathedral, “because it follows the rules of ancient art, competes in general perfection, size, or splendour with the most distinguished buildings of the Asiatics, Greeks, and Romans, and displays magnificence and truth in all its detail.”

In point of versatility Juan de Arfe was a kind of Spanish Leonardo. His book, De Varia Conmensuración, etc., published in 1585, is divided into four parts, and deals, the first part with the practice of geometry, the second with human anatomy, the third with animals, and the fourth with architecture and silver-work for use in churches.

This book is prefaced by the portrait of the author, given above. It shows us—what he really was—a quiet, cultured, gentle-hearted man. Indeed, while Arfe was studying anatomy at Salamanca, it gave him pain to lacerate the bodies even of the dead. “I was witness,” he records, “to the flaying of several pauper men and women whom the law had executed; but these experiments, besides being horrible and cruel, I saw to be of little service to my studies in anatomy.”

Arfe's workmanship of the custodia of Avila cathedral, which he began in 1564 and terminated in 1571, won for him an early and extended fame. He also made the custodia of Burgos (brutally melted during the Spanish War of Independence), and those of Valladolid (finished in 1590), Lugo, Osma, and the Hermandad del Santísimo at Madrid. The custodia of Palencia is also thought by some to be his handiwork.

But Arfe's crowning labour was the Greco-Roman custodia of Seville cathedral (Plate xvii.). The chapter of this temple selected his design in 1580, and nominated the licentiate Pacheco to assist him with the statuettes. Pacheco also carried out his portion of the task with skill and judgment. A rare pamphlet, written by Arfe and published at Seville in 1587, gives a minute description of the whole custodia. In Appendix C, I render this description into English, together with a similarly detailed notice of the custodia (1513 A.D.) of Cordova. This last, which we have seen to be the work of Juan de Arfe's grandfather, Enrique, is not to be surpassed for fairy grace and lightness, seeming, in the eloquent metaphor of a modern writer, “to have been conceived in a dream, and executed with the breath.”

CUSTODIA OF SEVILLE CATHEDRAL (By Juan de Arfe. Late 16th Century)

Spain in the seventeenth century had reached the lowest depth of her decadence and impoverishment; and yet we find that century an age—to quote a Spanish term—of “gallantries and pearls,” in which a craze for reckless luxury continued to prevail in every quarter. Narratives innumerable inform us of the life and doings of that prodigal court and prodigal aristocracy; their ruinous and incessant festivals; the fortunes that were thrown away on furniture, and jewels, and costume. True, we are told by Bertaut de Rouen that, except upon their numerous holidays, the costume of the Spanish men was plain enough. This author, who calls them otherwise “debauched and ignorant,” says that their clothes were all of “méchante frise,” and adds that they continually took snuff, “dont ils ont toujours les narines pleines, ce qui fait qu'ils n'ont que des mouchoirs de laine, de toile grise, et peinte comme de la toile de la Chine.” The same traveller, attending an ordinary reception in the royal palace at Madrid, was unable to distinguish the nobles from the lower orders, except that, by the privilege peculiar to this country, the former kept their hats on in the presence of the sovereign. Even of Philip himself he says: “Le Roy d'Espagne estoit debout avec un habit fort simple et fort ressemblant à tous ses portraits”; alluding, probably, to those of Philip the Fourth by Velazquez, in which the monarch wears a plain cloth doublet.

But when the Spaniard dressed himself for any scene of gala show, his spendthrift inclinations swelled into a positive disease. The women, too, squandered enormous sums on finery. The Marchioness of Liche, said to have been the loveliest Española of that day, is spoken of by Bertaut as wearing “un corps de brocard d'argent avec de grandes basques à leur mode, la jupe d'une autre étoffe avec grand nombre de pierreries, et cela luy fetoit fort bien.” An anonymous manuscript of the period, published by Gayangos in the Revista de España for 1884, describes the fiestas celebrated at Valladolid in 1605, in honour of the English ambassador and his retinue. In this relation the Duke of Lerma is quoted as possessing a yearly income of three hundred thousand cruzados, besides “as much again in jewellery and furniture, and gold and silver services.” At the state banquets which were given at that wasteful court, even the pies and tarts were washed with gold or silver; and at a single feast the dishes of various kinds of fare amounted to two thousand and two hundred. At the banquet given by the Duke of Lerma, three special sideboards were constructed to sustain the weight of four hundred pieces of silver, “all of them of delicate design and exquisitely wrought of silver, gold, and enamel, together with innumerable objects of glass and crystal of capricious form, with handles, lids, and feet of finest gold.”

The whole of Spain's nobility was congregated at these festivals, “richly attired with quantities of pearls and oriental gems,” while everybody, young and old alike, wore “diamond buttons and brooches on cloaks and doublets,” feather plumes with costly medals, gold chains with emeralds, and other ornaments. The ladies of the aristocracy were also “clothed in costliest style, as well as loaded with diamonds and pearls and hair-ornaments of pearls and gold, such as the women of Castile lay by for these solemnities.”

The Spanish churches, too, continued to be veritable storehouses of treasure. The manuscript published by Gayangos says that in 1605 the church of La Merced at Valladolid had its altars “covered with beautiful gold and silver vessels, of which there are a great many in the whole of Castilla la Vieja, and particularly here at Valladolid.” Bertaut de Rouen's notice of the shrine of Montserrat in Cataluña has been inserted previously. In 1775 Swinburne wrote of the same temple:—“In the sacristy and passages leading to it are presses and cupboards full of relics and ornaments of gold, silver, and precious stones; they pointed out to us, as the most remarkable, two crowns for the Virgin and her Son, of inestimable value, some large diamond rings, an excellent cameo of Medusa's head, the Roman emperors in alabaster, the sword of Saint Ignatius, and the chest that contains the ashes of a famous brother, John Guarin, of whom they relate the same story as that given in the Spectator of a Turkish santon and the Sultan's daughter. … Immense is the quantity of votive offerings to this miraculous statue; and as nothing can be rejected or otherwise disposed of, the shelves are crowded with the most whimsical ex votos, viz., silver legs, fingers, breasts, earrings, watches, two-wheeled chaises, boats, carts, and such-like trumpery.”

Many pragmatics from the Crown vainly endeavoured to suppress or mitigate the popular extravagance. Such was the royal letter of 1611, which forbade, among the laity, the wearing of “gold jewels with decoration or enamel in relief, or points with pearls or other stones.” Smaller jewels, of the kind known as joyeles and brincos,⁵⁵ were limited to a single stone, together with its pearl pendant. The jewellery of the women was exempted from these laws, though even here were certain limitations. Rings for the finger might, however, bear enamel-work, or any kind of stone. Enamel was also allowed in gold buttons and chains for the men's caps, as well as in the badges worn by the knights of the military orders.

“It is forbidden,” continues this pragmatic, “to make any object of gold, silver, or other metal with work in relief, or the likeness of a person; nor shall any object be gilt, excepting drinking vessels, and the weight of these shall not exceed three marks. All other silver shall be flat and plain, without gilding; but this does not apply to objects intended for religious worship.”

“All niello-work is prohibited, as are silver brasiers and buffets.”⁵⁶

What I may call the private jewel-work of Spain, largely retains throughout its history the characteristic lack of finish of all the Visigothic treasure found at Guarrazar. From first to last, until extinguished or absorbed by foreign influences two centuries ago, it strives to compensate in ponderous and bulky splendour for what it lacks in delicacy, elegance, and taste. It is just the jewellery we should expect to find among a military people who once upon a time possessed great riches simultaneously with little education, and who, from this and other causes, such as the strenuous opposition of the national church to pagan sentiments expressed in fleshly form, were never genuinely or profoundly art-loving. Long residence and observation in their midst induce me to affirm that as a race the Spaniards are and always have been hostile, or at least indifferent, to the arts; and that their most illustrious artists have made their power manifest and raised themselves to eminence despite the people—not, as in Italy, on the supporting shoulders of the people.

Dazzle and show monopolized, and to a great extent monopolize still, the preference of this race. The Spanish breast-ornaments of the seventeenth century, preserved at South Kensington and reproduced by Riaño on pages 37 and 39 of his handbook, are strongly reminiscent of the Visigothic ornaments. Who would imagine that a thousand years had come and gone between the execution of the new and of the old? As late as the reign of Charles the Second the culture of a Spanish lady of high birth was little, if at all, superior to a savage's. “False stones enchant them,” wrote Countess d'Aulnoy. “Although they possess many jewels of considerable value and the finest quality, it is their whim to carry on their person wretched bits of glass cut in the coarsest fashion, just like those which pedlars in my country sell to country girls who have seen nobody but the village curate, and nothing but their flocks of sheep. Dames of the aristocracy adorn themselves with these pieces of glass, that are worth nothing at all; yet they purchase them at high prices. When I asked them why they like false diamonds, they told me they prefer them to the genuine as being larger. Indeed, they sometimes wear them of the bigness of an egg.” Even where the stones were real, the Spanish taste in setting and in wearing them was no less execrable. The Countess says: “the ladies here possess great stores of beautiful precious stones, and do not wear, like Frenchwomen, a single article of jewellery, but nine or ten together, some of diamonds, others of rubies, pearls, emeralds, and turquoises, wretchedly mounted, since they are almost wholly covered with the gold. When I inquired the cause of this, they told me the jewels were so made because the gold was as beautiful as the gems. I suppose, however, the real reason is the backwardness of the craftsmen, who can do no better work than this, excepting Verbec, who has no lack of skill, and would turn out excellent jewels if he took the trouble to finish them.”

“In the neck of their bodices the ladies fasten pins profusely set with precious stones. Hanging from the pin, and fastened at the lower end to the side of their dress, is a string of pearls or diamonds. They wear no necklace, but bracelets on their wrists and rings on their fingers, as well as long earrings of so great a weight that I know not how they can support them. Hanging from these earrings they display whatever finery they may fancy. I have seen some ladies who wore good-sized watches hanging from their ears, strings of precious stones, English keys of dainty make, and little bells. They also wear the agnus, together with little images about their neck and arms, or in their hair. They dress their hair in various ways, and always go with it uncovered, using many hairpins in the form of coloured flies or butterflies of diamonds, emeralds, and rubies.”

Book-worm authorities, addicted to “dry bones” of letters, are prone just now to doubt this visit of Countess d'Aulnoy to the capital of Spain. But if such patient doubters will compare her narrative with those of other foreigners, e.g. Bertaut de Rouen, or the manuscript description of Valladolid, written by a Portuguese, and now in the British Museum library, their scepticism will—or should—be done away with on the moment. The letters of the countess make it plain by copious inner testimony that she actually performed her Spanish visit; and though from time to time she over-colours or misreads the truth, it was the very usages of Spain that were absurd and out of joint, and not, except in isolated instances, the sprightly and observant Frenchwoman's account of them.⁵⁷

Elsewhere the Countess says: “Utensils of common metal are not employed here, but only those of silver or of ware. I hear that a little while ago, upon the death of the Duke of Alburquerque, six weeks were needed to make out an inventory of his gold and silver services. His house contained fourteen hundred dozen plates, five hundred large dishes, and seven hundred of a smaller size, with all the other pieces in proportion, and forty silver ladders for climbing his sideboard, made in grades like an altar in a spacious hall.”

These statements have been proved in later years. Dating from 1560, an inventory of the ducal house of Alburquerque was found not many years ago. In it we find the detailed list of gold and silver; cups and dishes, bowls and basins, plates and salt-cellars, trenchers, wine and water flagons, sauce-spoons, salad-spoons, conserve-spoons, and innumerable other articles. Here, too, we find, upon the mighty sideboard mounted by its forty silver stairs, such objects as the following:—

“A gold cup with festoon-work above and beneath, wrought with leaves in relief. At the top of the foot there issue some leaves that fall down over a small gold staple, and below this, about the narrowest part of the foot, are leaves in relief and several dolphins. The broad part of the foot is decorated with festoons. The lid of this cup is wrought with leaves in relief, and on the crest thereof is a lion, crowned. The cup weighs three hundred and fifty-one castellanos and a half.”

“A Castilian jar from which my lord the duke was wont to drink, weighing two marks and five ounces.”⁵⁸

“A cup with a high foot, gilt all over, with the figure of a woman in its midst, and decorated in four places in the Roman manner.”

“A flagon of white silver, flat beneath the stem, with a screw-top surmounted by a small lion; for cooling water.”

“A small silver dish, of the kind they call meat-warmers.”

“A large silver seal for sealing provisions, with the arms of my lord the duke, Don Francisco.”

“A large silver vessel, embossed, with a savage on top.”

“A gold horse, enamelled in white upon a gold plate enamelled in green and open at the top; also a wolf, upon another gold plate enamelled in green, with lettering round about it; also a green enamelled lizard upon blue enamel; and a gold toothpick with four pieces enamelled in green, white, and rose; also a small gold column enamelled in black and rose.”

“A silver lemon-squeezer, gilt and chiselled, with white scroll-work about the mesh thereof, through which the lemon-juice is strained.”

“A large round silver salt-cellar, in two halves, gilt all over, with scales about the body, and two thick twisted threads about the flat part. One side of it is perforated.”

Among the property of the duchess, Doña Mencía Enriquez, we find “a small gold padlock, which opens and closes by means of letters”; two gold bangles; a gold necklace consisting of forty-two pieces “enamelled with some B's”;⁵⁹ a gold signet ring with the duchess's arms; and “a gold and niello box with relics, for wearing round the neck.” Also, resting on a table covered with silver plates, “a box of combs; the said box wrought in gold upon blue leather, containing five combs, a looking-glass, a little brush, and other fittings; girt with a cord in gold and blue silk.”

The seventeenth century and a race of native Spanish kings declined and passed away together. A dynasty of France succeeded to the throne of Spain, and with the foreigner came a fresh reactionary movement towards the neo-classic art, coupled with the canons of French taste. Henceforth a century of slow political reform goes hand in hand with slow suppression of the salient parts of Spanish character. Madrid transforms or travesties herself into a miniature Versailles, and national arts and crafts belong henceforward to a Frenchified society which found its painter in Goya, just as the preceding and eminently Spanish society had found its painter in Velazquez.

Another of the causes of the falling-off in Spanish orfebrería at this time, is stated to have been the craftsmen's overwhelming tendency to substitute the slighter though venerable and beautiful gold or silver filigree (Plate xviii.), for more artistic and ambitious, if less showy work in massive metal. Thus, in 1699, a supplementary chapter of the Ordinances of Seville complained in bitter phrases of this tendency, denouncing it as “a source of fraud and detriment to the republic,” and deploring that “of the last few years we have forsaken our goodly usages of older times, in the matter of the drawings entrusted to the candidates who come before us for examination.”

In the same year the goldsmiths' and the silversmiths' guild of Seville enacted that none of its members were to work in filigree, unless they were qualified to execute the other work as well. Such efforts to suppress this evil were not new. More than a century before, on April 15th, 1567, the inspectors of the guild had entered the shop of Luis de Alvarado, silversmith, and seized some filigree earrings “of the work that is forbidden,” breaking these objects on the spot, and imposing a fine of half-a-dozen ducats on the peccant of obvious Alvarado.⁶⁰

The modern gold and silver work of Spain is thus exempted from a lengthy notice, seeing that its typical and national characteristics have succumbed, or very nearly so. I may, however, mention the giant silver candelabra in the cathedral of Palma de Mallorca, which were made at Barcelona, between 1704 and 1718, by Juan Matons and three of his assistants. They measure eight feet high by four feet and a quarter across, weigh more than eight thousand ounces, and cost 21,942 pounds, 15 sueldos, and 11 dineros of Majorcan money. The State seized them during the Napoleonic wars, in order to melt them down for money; but the chapter of the cathedral bought them back for eleven thousand dollars.

EARLY CHALICE AND CROSS IN FILIGREE GOLD-WORK

(Church of Saint Isidore, León)

During this century Riaño mentions several factories of silver articles established at Madrid, including that of Isaac and Michael Naudin (1772) and the Escuela de Platería (1778), protected by Charles the Third; but since the work of these was purely in the French or English manner, they call for no particular notice. The principal objects they produced were “inkstands, dishes, dinner-services, chocolate-stands, cruets, knives and forks, together with buckles, needle-cases, brooches, snuff-boxes, frames for miniatures, and similar trinkets.”

Early in the nineteenth century Laborde wrote that “the fabrication of articles of gold and silver might become an important object in a country where these metals abound; but it is neglected, and the demand is almost entirely supplied from foreign markets. What little they do in this branch at home is usually very ill executed, and exorbitantly dear. Madrid, however, begins to possess some good workmen; encouragement would increase their number and facilitate the means of improvement; but manual labour is there excessively dear. Hence the Spaniards prefer foreign articles of this kind, which, notwithstanding the expense of carriage, the enormous duties that they pay, and the profits of the merchants, are still cheaper than those made at home.”

Several of the inherent characteristics of the national orfebrería may yet be noticed somewhat faintly in the ornaments and jewels of the Spanish peasants, though even these are being discarded. A century ago Laborde described the dress of the Mauregata women, near Astorga, in the kingdom of León. “They wear large earrings, a kind of white turban, flat and widened like a hat, and their hair parted on the forehead. They have a chemise closed over the chest, and a brown corset buttoned, with large sleeves opening behind. Their petticoats and veils are also brown. Over all they wear immense coral necklaces, which descend from the neck to the knee; they twist them several times round the neck, pass them over the shoulders, where a row is fastened, forming a kind of bandage over the bosom. Then another row lower than this; in short, a third and fourth row at some distance from each other. The last falls over the knee, with a large cross on the right side. These necklaces or chaplets are ornamented with a great many silver medals, stamped with the figure of saints. They only wear these decorations when not working, or on festivals.”

I have a manuscript account in French of Spanish regional costumes at the same period. The dress of the peasant women of Valencia is thus described: “Elle se coiffe toujours en cheveux, de la manière appelée castaña, et elle y passe une aiguille en argent que l'on nomme rascamoño; quelque fois elle se pare d'un grand peigne (peineta) en argent doré. Son cou este orné d'une chaine d'or ou d'argent (cadena del cuello) à laquelle est suspendue une croix ou un reliquaire.” This was the Valencian peasant's dress for every day. On festivals the same woman would adorn her ears with “pendants (arracadas) de pierres fausses; mais lorsque la jardinière est riche, elles sont fines. Une relique (relicario) dans un petit médaillon en argent, est suspendue à son cou; ainsi qu'un chapelet très mince (rosario) en argent doré.”

The peasant women of Iviza, in the Balearics, are described in the same manuscript as wearing “un collier en verre, quelque fois en argent, et rarement en or”; while Laborde wrote of Minorca, another of these islands, that “the ladies are always elegantly adorned; their ornaments consist of necklaces, earrings, bracelets, rings, and chaplets. The peasants wear these also.” Of the women of Barcelona he said: “Silk stockings are very common in every class; and their shoes are embroidered with silk, gold, silver, pearls, and spangles.”

But Spain, like Italy or Switzerland, or many another country, is throwing off her regional costumes, of which these various jewels form a prominent and even an essential feature. More rarely now we come across the gold and seed-pearl necklaces of Salamanca, the Moorish filigree silver-work of Cordova, the silver-gilt necklaces of Santiago, and the heavy arracadas, hung with emeralds and sapphires, of Cataluña. Murcia, nevertheless, retains her Platería, a street of venerable aspect and associations, where to this hour the oriental-looking silver pendants of the neighbourhood are made and trafficked in.

¹ Ordenanza de la Limpieza (1537), Tit. 9: “We command that nobody remove sand from the aforesaid river Darro unless to extract gold, in which case he shall fill up the holes he made, or pay a fine of fifty maravedis for damaging the watercourses that enter this city and the buildings of the Alhambra.”

² “I am not aware of any Spanish mine containing silver in a state of absolute purity; though some, I think, would be discovered if they were searched for.”—Bowles: Historia Natural de España.

³ Possibly, as Bowles suggests, for Cabo de Agata—“Agate Cape.” “It would not be strange,” he adds, “if diamonds were found at this cape, since there are signs of their presence. I found white sapphires, slightly clouded, together with cornelians, jaspers, agates, and garnets.”

⁴ A fresh find of torques and fibulæ has occurred in the spring of this year at La Moureta, near Ferrol.

⁵ These ornaments were retained in use by the Visigoths, and find their due description in the Etymologies of Saint Isidore; e.g.:—

“Inaures ab aurium foraminibus nuncupatae, quibus pretiosa genera lapidum dependuntur.”

“Tourques sunt circuli aurei a collo ad pectus usque dependentes. Torques autem et bullae a viris geruntur; a foeminis vero monilia et catellae.”

“Fibulæ sunt quibus pectus foeminarum ornatur, vel pallium tenetur: viris in humeris, seu cingulum in lumbris.”

⁶ There is also in the Archæological Museum at Madrid a small collection of what has been described as Visigothic jewellery, consisting of a handsome phalera, necklaces, finger-rings, and earrings. Most of these objects were found at Elche in 1776. The Museo Español de Antigüedades published a full description by Florencio Janer. Their interest is by no means as great as that of the treasure of Guarrazar, nor is the date of their production definitely ascertained. From various details I suspect that many of them may be purely Roman.

⁷ The last word is commonly believed to be the name of a place—Sorbaces. There has been much discussion as to its meaning.

⁸ Description du trésor de Guarrazar.

⁹ “Ce que je puis affirmer, après l'examen le plus minutieux, c'est que la matière qui fait le fond de cette riche ornementation est réellement du verre.”—Lasteyrie, supported by Sommerard.

¹⁰ “In Spain,” said Bowles (Hist. Nat. de Esp., p. 498), “are found two species of rock crystal. The one, occurring in clusters, are transparent, six-sided, and always have their source in rocks. There are great quantities all over the kingdom, and at Madrid they are found near the hills of San Isidro. The other species are found singly, and are rounded like a pebble. I have seen them from the size of a filbert to that of my fist. Some were covered with a thin, opaque integument. … The river Henares abounds with these crystals, and as it passes San Fernando, at two leagues' distance from Madrid, sweeps some of them along which are the size of the largest ones at Strasburg, though very few are perfect.”

¹¹ A veritable cryptogram awaited the decipherers of these legends. When King Swinthila's crown was brought to light, four of the letters only were in place, thus:—

☩ … … I … V.R. … F. …

Eight of the others were recovered shortly after; two more, an E and L, appeared at a later date, and eight continued to be missing. The inscription dangling from the crown of Recceswinth arrived at Paris in this eloquent form:—

☩ RRCCEEFEVINSTVSETORHFEX

¹² Amador de los Ríos, El Arte latino-bizantino en España y las Coronas Visigodas de Guarrazar, p. 121.

¹³ E.g. Sommerard: “Une collection sans égale de joyaux les plus précieux qui, par la splendeur de la matière, le mérite de l'exécution, et plus encore, peut être, par leur origine incontestable et par leur étonnante conservation, surpassent tout ce qui possédent d'analogue les collections publiques de l'Europe et les trésors les plus renommés de l'Italie.”

¹⁴ Toledo and Madrid; p. 16.

¹⁵ Ajbar Machmua. Lafuente y Alcántara's edition; p. 27, note.

¹⁶ Account of the Conquest of Spain, published, with an English translation and notes, by John Harris Jones. London, 1858.

¹⁷ The pax or osculatory used in celebrating High Mass is commonly, says Rosell de Torres, “a plate of gold or ivory, or other metal or material, according to the time and circumstances of its manufacture. The priest who celebrates the Mass kisses it after the Agnus Dei and the prayer ad petendam pacem, and the acolytes present it, as a sign of peace and brotherly union, to all the other priests who may be present. This usage springs from the kiss of peace which was exchanged, prior to receiving the communion, between the early Christians in their churches. The pax has commonly borne an image of the Virgin with the Holy Infant, the face of Christ, or else the Agnus Dei.” Its Latin name was the deosculatorium.

¹⁸ This marvel is related by the Monk of Silos. A quotation from another of my books is applicable here. “Last year,” I wrote in 1902—(pp. 64, 65 of Toledo and Madrid: Their Records and Romances)—“the young King Alfonso the Thirteenth paid a visit to Oviedo cathedral, and was duly shown the relics and the jewels. Among these latter was the ‘Cross of the Angels.’

“ ‘Why is it so called?’ inquired the king.

“ ‘Because,’ replied the bishop of the diocese, ‘it is said that the angels made it to reward King Alfonso the Chaste.’

“ ‘Well, but,’ insisted the young monarch, ‘what ground is there for thinking so?’

“ ‘Señor,’ replied the prelate, ‘none whatever. The time for traditions is passing away.’ ”

¹⁹ In many towns a hearty friendship sprang up between the Spaniard and the Moor. This was a natural consequence in places where the vanquished had a better education than the victor. The warrior population of both races might be struggling on the field at the same moment that their craftsmen were fraternizing in the workshop. Ferdinand the First and Alfonso the Sixth were particularly lenient in their usage of the dominated Muslim. Thus, the former of these princes recognised the Moorish townspeople of Sena as his vassals, while those of Toledo were freely allowed by Alfonso to retain their worship and their mosque.

²⁰

“Fallaron ay de marfil arquetas muy preçiadas Con tantas de noblezas que non podrian ser contadas Fueron para San Pedro las arquetas donadas; Están en este dia en el su altar asentadas.”

Poem of Ferran Gonzalvez (13th century).

²¹ Together with the statuette of Ujué in Navarre, the Virgen de la Vega of Salamanca may be classed as one of the earliest “local Virgins” of this country. Sometimes these images are of wood alone, sometimes of wood beneath a silver covering, sometimes, as that of the Claustro de León, of stone. But whatever may be the substance, the characteristics are the same:—Byzantine rigidness and disproportion, the crude and primitive anatomy of artists only just emerging from the dark. The Virgin and Child of Santa María la Real of Hirache in Navarra may be instanced as another of the series. This image dates from late in the twelfth or early in the thirteenth century, although a crown and nimbus have been added subsequently. It measures rather more than a yard in height, and consists of wood covered with silver plates, except the hands and face, which are painted. The Virgin, seated, holds the Infant with her left arm; in her right hand is an apple. A kind of stole bearing the following inscription in Gothic letter falls upon the Infant's breast; “Puer natus est nobis, venite adoremus. Ego sum alpha et omega, primus et novissimus Dominus.” Before this statuette the King Don Sancho is stated to have offered his devotion.

²² I quote this legend in Appendix A.

²³ A recent instance, not devoid of humour, is as follows. About three years ago, a silly rogue removed and carried off the crown from Santiago's head; but since the actual jewel is only worn on solemn festivals, his prize turned out to be a worthless piece of tin. An odd removal of the treasure of another Spanish church was noted by the traveller Bowles. “The curate of the place, a worthy fellow who put me up in his house, assured me that a detachment of a legion of locusts entered the church, ate up the silk clothes upon the images, and gnawed the varnish on the altars.” Perhaps these adamantine-stomached insects have assailed, from time to time, the gold and silver plate of Santiago.

²⁴ Ford, Handbook, vol. ii. p. 671. I briefly notice, in Appendix B, the Santiago jet-work, also practised by these craftsmen.

²⁵ To lend my censures further cogency, I leave this statement as I set it down some weeks ago; since when, on picking up a Spanish newspaper, I read the following telegram:—

“Theft in Santiago Cathedral

“Santiago, May 7th, 1906 (9.15 p.m.).

“This morning, when the canon in charge of the Chapel of the Relics unlocked the door, he was surprised to observe that some of these were lying in confusion on the floor. Fearing that a theft had been committed, he sent for the dean and others of the clergy, who had examination made, and found the following objects to be missing:—

“A gold cross, presented by King Alfonso the Great, when he attended the consecration of this temple in the year 874.

“Another cross, of silver, dating from the fifteenth century—a present from Archbishop Spinola.

“An aureole of the fifteenth century, studded with precious stones belonging to a statuette of the apostle Santiago.

“The authorities were summoned and at once began their search.

“They find that two of the thick iron bars of the skylight in the ceiling of the cloister have been filed through. This cloister has a skylight which opens upon the chapel.

“They have also found, upon the roof, a knotted rope. This rope was only long enough to reach a cornice in the chapel wall. The wall itself affords no sign that anybody has attempted to descend by it.”

²⁶ This form of reliquary was not uncommon. Morales, in his Viaje Sacro, describes another one, also preserved at Santiago, saying that it was a bust of silver, life-size and gilded to the breast, “with a large diadem of rays and many stones, both small and great, all or most of them of fine quality, though not of the most precious.” Other bust-reliquaries belong, or have belonged, to the Cathedrals of Burgos and Toledo.

²⁷ The Mudejares were the Mussulmans who submitted, in the conquered cities, to the Spanish-Christian rule. The word Mudejar is of modern growth, nor can its derivation be resolved with certainty. From the thirteenth century onwards, and formed by the fusion of the Christian and the Saracenic elements, we find Mudejar influence copiously distributed through every phase of Spanish life and art, and even literature.

²⁸ Amador prefers to call these Tables “the triptych of the learned king,” in order to distinguish them by this explicit title from the Astronomical Tables prepared by order of the same monarch.

²⁹ Riaño, Spanish Arts, p. 16.

³⁰ So named because the silversmiths (plateros) of this country used it in their monstrances (custodias) and in many other objects or utensils of religious worship. The most refined and erudite of Spanish silver-workers, Juan de Arfe, thus referred to it in rhyme:—

“Usaron desta obra los plateros

Guardando sus preceptos con zelo;

Pusiéronle en los puntos postrimeros

De perfección mi abuelo.”

³¹ Street, Gothic Architecture in Spain.

³² Count of Clonard.

³³ Ibid.

³⁴ Four pallets gules, on a field or; which were the arms of Cataluña and subsequently of Aragon.

³⁵ Archives of the Crown of Aragon.

³⁶ Ibid.

³⁷ Sanpere y Miquel, Revista de Ciencias Históricas, art. La Platería catalana en los siglos XIV. y XV., vol. i. p. 441.

³⁸ Ibid.

³⁹ Gestoso mentions that Juan de Luna, a silversmith of Seville, was turned into the gutter from the workshop where he was employed, solely because his father had been punished as a Morisco by the Inquisition (Diccionario de Artífices Sevillanos, vol. i. p. lvi.).

⁴⁰ An article by Señor Saavedra on these inscribed jewels and signets of Mohammedan Spain will be found in the Museo Español de Antigüedades.

⁴¹ “As to the ornaments and jewels of the ladies of Granada, these wear at present necklaces of rich design, bracelets, rings (upon their ankles), and earrings of pure gold; together with quantities of silver and of precious stones upon their shoes. I say this of the middle class; for ladies of the aristocracy and of the older noble families display a vast variety of gems, such as rubies, chrysolites, emeralds, and pearls of great value. The ladies of Granada are commonly fair to look upon, shapely, of good stature, with long hair, teeth of a shining white, and perfumed breath, gracefully alert in their movements, and witty and agreeable in conversation. But unfortunately at this time their passion for painting themselves and for arraying themselves in every kind of jewellery and costly stuffs has reached a pitch that is no longer tolerable.”—Al-Jattib, in The Splendour of the New Moon concerning the Nasrite Sultans of Granada.

⁴² There was, however, from long before this time a prohibition to export from Spain the precious metals, in any form, whether as objects of plate or as coined money. The penalty for a repetition of this offence was death. Another law prohibited all foreigners who were resident in Spain, not excluding the Moriscos, from buying gold or silver in the bar (Suma de Leyes, p. 46). It was also forbidden to sell the jewels or other objects of value belonging to a place of worship (ibid. p. 87).

⁴³ This entertaining and inquisitive tourist describes, in 1659, a wondrous cavern in the south of Spain, “ou l'on conte que les Mores ont caché leurs trésors en s'en retournant en Afrique, et ou personne n'ose aborder de peur des esprits que l'on dit que l'on y voit souvent. Mais comme il commencait a se faire nuit, je n'eus pas le loisir de m'y amuser beaucoup.” With this our author shelved his curiosity, and prudently retired.

⁴⁴ Leonard Williams. Granada: Memories, Adventures, Studies, and Impressions, p. 90.

⁴⁵ Ford was more hopeful as to the preservation of this wealth in Spain. “No doubt much coin is buried in the Peninsula, since the country has always been invaded and torn by civil wars, and there never has been much confidence between Spaniard and Spaniard; accordingly the only sure, although unproductive, investment for those who had money, was gold or silver, and the only resource to preserve that, was to hide it.”—Handbook, vol. ii. p. 682.

⁴⁶ Gestoso, Diccionario de Artífices Sevillanos, vol. ii. p. 360.

⁴⁷ A full description of these chests will be found in Cean Bermudez, vol. iii. pp. 135–137.

⁴⁸ Rada y Delgado, in his reply to the Count of Cedillo's address in the Royal Academy of History. For particulars of the silver lamp, which was made by Marcos and Gonzalo Hernandez, Toledanos, and by Diego Dávila, see Zarco del Valle, Documentos Inéditos para la Historia de las Bellas Artes en España, vol. lv. p. 580.

⁴⁹ Recherches sur l'Orfévrerie en Espagne, pp. 61 et seq.

⁵⁰ Ulloa, Memorias Sevillanas, vol. i. p. 199.

⁵¹ Libro de diferentes Cuentas y gasto de la Casa Real en el Reynado de Don Sancho IV. Sacado de un tomo original en folio que se guarda en la Librería de la Santa Iglesia de Toledo. Años de 1293–1294. Por el P. Andres Marcos Burriel de la Comp^a de Jesus.

⁵²

“Con estos fué mi padre en seguimiento Joan Alvarez tambien el Salmantino, Becerril, que tambien fué deste cuento, Juan de Orna, y Juan Ruiz el Vandolino.”

⁵³ Annals of the Artists of Spain, vol. i. pp. 161, 162.

⁵⁴ Op. cit., p. 159, note.

⁵⁵ Brinco (brincar, to jump or spring). These jewels were so called from their vibrating as the wearer walked. The Balearic Islands were famous for their manufacture; and the late Marquis of Arcicollar possessed a case of valuable examples, most of which proceeded from this locality.

⁵⁶ Suma de Leyes, 1628, p. 116 (2).

⁵⁷ But on the other hand I much suspect that the following passage in Alvarez de Colmenar's Annales d'Espagne et de Portugal (vol. iii. p. 326) is stolen from Countess d'Aulnoy. “Elles ne portent point de colier, mais en échange elles ont des bracelets, des bagues, et des pendans d'oreille, plus gros que tous ceux qu'on voit en Hollande. Telle est la diversité des gouts des nations différentes, en matière de beauté. Il y en a même quelques-unes, qui attachent quelque beau joli bijou à leurs pendans d'oreilles, quelque ornement de pierreries, par exemple, ou d'autres choses semblables, selon leur quantité ou leur pouvoir.”

⁵⁸ The mark was a standard of eight ounces, and was divided into fifty castellanos.

⁵⁹ For Beltran de la Cueva, ancestor of this family.

⁶⁰ Gestoso, Diccionario de Artífices Sevillanos, vol. ii. p. 134.