THE CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN SPAIN

The Cathedral Series

The following, each 1 vol., library 12mo, cloth, gilt top, profusely illustrated. $2.50

The Cathedrals of Northern France BY FRANCIS MILTOUN

The Cathedrals of Southern France BY FRANCIS MILTOUN

The Cathedrals of England BY MARY J. TABER

The following, each 1 vol., library 12mo, cloth, gilt top, profusely illustrated. Net, $2.00

The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine BY FRANCIS MILTOUN

The Cathedrals of Northern Spain BY CHARLES RUDY

L. C. PAGE & COMPANY New England Building, Boston, Mass.

Copyright, 1905
By L. C. Page & Company
(INCORPORATED)
——
All rights reserved

Published October, 1905

COLONIAL PRESS
Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
Boston, U. S. A.

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PREFACE

It is à la mode to write prefaces. Some of us write good ones, others bad, and most of us write neither good nor bad ones.

The chapter entitled "General Remarks" is the real introduction to the book, so in these lines I shall pen a few words of self-introduction to such readers as belong to the class to whom I have dedicated this volume.

My love for Spain is unbounded. As great as is my love for the people, so great also is my depreciation for those who have wronged her, being her sons. Who are they? They know that best themselves.

Spain's architecture is both agreeable and disagreeable, but it is all of it peculiarly Spanish. A foreigner, dropping as by accident across the Pyrenees from France, can do nothing better than criticize all architectural monuments he meets with in a five days' journey across Spain with a Cook's ticket in his pocketbook. It is natural he should do so. Everything is so totally different from{4} the pure (sic) styles he has learned to admire in France!

But we who have lived years in Spain grow to like and admire just such complex compositions as the cathedrals of Toledo, of Santiago, and La Seo in Saragosse; we lose our narrow-mindedness, and fail to see why a pure Gothic or an Italian Renaissance should be better than an Iberian cathedral. As long as harmony exists between the different parts, all is well. The moment this harmony does not exist, our sense of the artistically beautiful is shocked—and the building is a bad one.

Personality is consequently ever uppermost in all art criticism or admiration. But it should not be influenced by the words pure, flawless, etc. Were such to be the case, there would be but one good cathedral in Spain, namely, that of Leon, a French temple built by foreigners on Spanish soil. Yet nothing is less Spanish than the cathedral of Leon.

Under the circumstances, it is necessary, upon visiting Spain, to discard foreignisms and turn a Spaniard, if but for a few days. Otherwise the tourist will not understand the country's art monuments, and will be inclined{5} to leave the peninsula as he entered it, not a whit the wiser for having come.

To help the traveller to understand the whys and wherefores of Spanish architecture, I have written the "Introductory Studies." I hope they will enable him to become a Spaniard, or, at least, to join the enthusiastic army of Hispanófilos.

C. Rudy.

Madrid, July, 1905

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CONTENTS