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he prophet Daniel 1 is smiling, perhaps because he’s young, like you. In the Bible he is also presented as the champion of young people, defender of the young Susanna and witness to the freeing of the three young Jews condemned by the King of Babylon to be cast into a fiery furnace. The text on the scroll he is holding in fact comes from this episode: “our God whom we serve [is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king]1”. The three Jews in the furnace were interpreted by Bible scholars as representing the faithful Jewish people, waiting in Hell for the arrival of the Messiah who would deliver them, this being precisely what is portrayed in the left-hand arch of the Portico. Ten small crowned figures bearing scrolls appear in the upper archivolt, oppressed by a cylindrical moulding known as a torus, which represents the oppression of death or of the ancient law before the coming of the Messiah.
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ut deliverance is on its way. The lower archivolt 2 has similar small figures, but this time appearing between a profusion of plants that look something like cabbages; in the middle, between two naked figures —Adam and Eve— we can see a third holding a book in his left hand and blessing them. This is obviously Christ, who has descended into Hell to deliver the patriarchs of Israel. Notice that Christ appears in the other arches as a robust, bearded figure, whilst here he is shown as a beardless youth or boy. This is the way souls were represented in the Middle Ages, and how they still are in our petos de ánimas. The descent of Christ into Hell is therefore understood to be that of his soul, whilst his body remained in the tomb until the Resurrection.
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n the space between this arch and the central one you can see that the Hebrews delivered by Christ are also being transported into Glory, by angels in the form of children. On the other side, between the central and righthand arches, there is a similar group, with angels transporting other small figures into Glory. These, however, neither come from Limbo nor belong to the people of Israel: they are men and women of every condition and nation, who have heard the word of Christ, and their entrance into Glory takes place after the Last Judgement, which is portrayed in the right-hand arch. Carved on the keystones of this arch are two heads, those of Christ and St Michael the Archangel, displaying scrolls containing the call to judgement and the fate awaiting those who have been judged. On the lefthand side we can see the blessed, once more portrayed as children who have just got out of their bath —in the waters of Grace— and are being carried in the laps of angels 3. On the right-hand side we have the damned 4, those “corpses and demons” that inspired so much fear in poor Rosalía de Castro2. However, as is often the case in these medieval portrayals of hell, there is also a touch of humour, here shown in the way in which each person is meted out a punishment to suit his or her sins. If you look carefully, you will see that the glutton is condemned to taking a perpetual bite out of a pie —the
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Sins can also —and apparently even more so— be committed by our heads, through our hatreds, ambitions, jealousies, pride and idle gossip, which is why the heads and tongues of the damned are being bitten by other demons and snakes. Others have been hanged, like Judas, and like him will have been traitors and wicked money-grubbers, whilst yet others, thieves and cutpurses, are being bitten on the hands with which they carried out their dishonest business. You must remember that medieval society —and not only
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filling may well be sardines with all their bones— whilst the snake wrapped round his neck prevents him from swallowing a single mouthful. His companion, fond of good Ribeiro and Albariño wines, is even worse off: he is given the impossible task of drinking from a wineskin whilst in an upside down position. In other Galician portrayals of hell, the image of the drinker’s punishment is replaced by that of the innkeeper’s wife who waters down her wine, thus making a wrong out of two rights (even that far back consumer rights were starting to be taken into account).
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Dante in his Divine Comedy— left its best images of itself in hell and in heaven, rather than on earth, under the vigilant gaze of the Supreme Judge.
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e have already mentioned that the central arch was the final destination of the blessed from the two side arches. There they find their well-deserved rest, dressed in white tunics and wearing crowns on their heads, on either side of Christ. It is well worth looking at this section —and the Portico as a whole— through binoculars. You will observe that in the group on the left-hand side 6 one of the figures, smarter than the rest, is showing his companion how to pray, putting his hands together (above the two angels carrying the Cross), whilst on the right-hand 7 side there
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Before you leave this section of the Portico behind, take a good look at one of its most beautiful statues: the melancholy angel 5 holding a trumpet to his lips, next to the archivolt portraying the damned. Together with the other three angels, each in one of the other corners of the Portico, he constitutes the group of four who, in the words of the Gospel according to St Matthew, will ‘gather together His elect from the four winds’.
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appears to be something of a squeeze in the second row. In the middle we have the monumental crowned and seated figure of Christ 8, displaying the wounds on his feet, hands and side, by virtue of which he appears as Redeemer and Judge. The different times and places referred to in the carvings on the side arches —the Descent into Hell and the Final Judgement— come together in this figure: He is “Him which is, and which was, and which is to come”, in a perpetual presence throughout history, reiterated in the cycle of the Christian liturgy.
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nd it is precisely with the liturgy for Good Friday, with its sung Reproaches, that we can connect the presence of the angels bearing the attributes of the Passion 9 : the pillar against which Christ was scourged, the whip, the Cross —held up by two angels in exactly the same way that two deacons would hold it up to the faithful during the Good Friday service—, the crown of thorns, the nails, the lance that pierced his side, the sentence and the inscription that Pontius Pilate ordered to be placed on the Cross, a jug and a reed with a sponge dipped in vinegar and hyssop. If Roman emperors liked to be accompanied in their victory parades by the weapons with which they had made their opponents suffer, Christ appears, in his victory over death, with the “weapons” that he himself suffered in the flesh. The extent and drama with which these relics are so ostentatiously displayed helps us to understand the fascination for the knights of that period of the search for the Holy Spear and the mysterious goblet of The Story of the Grail, written precisely during these times, when the Christians were losing the Holy City of Jerusalem. The Christ shown in the Portico has just risen from the dead, which explains the presence of these attributes as well as the adjacent scenes of the Descent into Hell and the liberation of the faithful Jewish nation, but at the same time —or even over and above time— He appears as he will on the Last Day, as a Judge, with the same triumphal appurtenances. The story told by the Portico is none other than the history of Redemption, from its beginnings until the end of the world. This at least is how it was understood by a bishop called Martyr, who made the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela from far-off Armenia in the 15th century and subsequently wrote that the Portico shows “everything that has happened since the time of Adam and everything that will happen until the end of time.” The finishing touches to the tympanum take the form of statues of the four evangelists who, with the exception of St Matthew, are using, in a fashion that is as original as it is uncomfortable, their respective symbolic living creatures10 as writing
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desks. Their presence reaffirms the nature of Christ as Word, the Word of God, and are recognisably inspired by the Revelation of St. John the Divine. A further connection with the Apocalypse is the inclusion of the Twenty-four Elders, depicted as musicians, seated along the length of the archivolt and constituting the most amazing silent concert bequeathed to us by the Middle Ages. As she had also done in the case of the Apostles and prophets 11, Rosalía de Castro saw them whispering to each other whilst they tuned their instruments in preparation for a performance of their latest canticle. The variety of figures, in extraordinarily animated postures, is complemented by the unequalled wealth of different types of stringed instrument, reproduced with an accuracy that leads us to think that the mason who carved them possessed skills other than those of a sculptor. Amongst them we find a hurdy-gurdy, an instrument that has come down to us in humbler hands.
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Animation – the presence of the soul, not just of the body – is also what distinguishes, in works of art from this period, the figures of the Apostles and prophets,
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who rise up like symbolic pillars of the House of God12, as corresponds to the victors to which the Apocalypse refers. We have already mentioned the smile of young Daniel, with which European art learnt to smile again, after centuries of having forgotten how to do so. Each and every one of the other figures, however, also has his own character, one that corresponds to the style and nature of his writings or the role attributed to him in Biblical history. In a century that saw the appearance of the first universities and the figure of the “intellectual�, it comes as no surprise to see them debating with each other. This is another of the novelties introduced in the Portico of Glory. In other medieval porticoes, even those from a later date, the figures appear completely detached from each other, with their gaze, if they in fact have one, empty and lost in the infinite distance.
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t James the Great13 appears twice: once as an apostle, between his brother John and Paul, and again as the patron saint of the cathedral, seated on his throne on the mullion. In both instances he is carrying a tau-shaped crosier or traveller’s staff, which would be used as a distinctive attribute by the Archbishops of Santiago de Compostela from then onwards, until the 15th century. Notice that Moses, Isaiah and a third unidentified prophet (possibly Balaam) are also portrayed in the Portico with similar staffs. Prophets and patriarchs of the Ancient Law are thus presented as the quintessential image of the pilgrim Church on earth. This continuity between the times of the Law and the times of Grace is in fact one of the aspects that the sculptural programme of the Portico most sought to emphasise, and López Ferreiro3 was quite right when he summarised its content as representing the convergence of the faithful Jewish nation with that of the Gentiles in order that together they may build the people of God. Apostles and prophets are
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equally represented, and the same amount of space is given over to the narration of the final destiny of the just both before and after Grace. The Portico of Glory is far removed from the polemic tone in which other medieval porticoes depict the replacement of the Synagogue by the Church, no doubt reflecting contemporary ethnic and religious tensions. In those days Spain stood head and shoulders above other European kingdoms with regard to its relative tolerance of Jews. The fact that on the base of one of the pillars where the prophets and patriarchs are represented there is a griffin gnawing the head of a pig 14—a forbidden animal for Jews— may well be a matter of chance, since similar images are to be found in the Bestiaries of the Middle Ages —the “natural science” textbooks of the time— with no particular meaning needing to be attached to this detail (the griffin’s prey is usually a horse or an ox). The significance of the series of beasts, real or imagined, that act as a base to the Portico is by no means easy to determine. Similar figures can be found in other porticoes, acting as the symbolic guardians of the temple, but side by side with noble beasts such as the lion or the griffin, our Portico contains others, like the bear, with a manifestly more negative meaning that leads us to think of the forces of evil. As is the case in ancient Oriental cultures, in which similar beasts stood at the doors to their palaces, man is depicted as engaged in a struggle with them. The mythical hero Gilgamesh has been mentioned in relation to the figure holding down two lions at the base of the mullion. From his back there rises a pillar 15
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displaying the Tree of Jesse, or in other words, the genealogy of Christ as man, descended from the house of David. This is complemented, on the capital 16 that crowns the pillar, by an image of the Holy Trinity, as an expression of his eternal and divine descent. Above the figure of St James, the patron saint of the cathedral —the “Wise patron saint” lauded by Admiral Paio Gómez Chariño4— there is a second capital upon which the tympanum rests. This one shows the Temptations of Christ: his first victory over the devil in the desert, where he revealed himself to be the new Adam and the Redeemer. There could be no better foundation for the triumph that the Twenty-four Elders are getting ready to celebrate in the central Glory.
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f you look closely at the bottom edge of the lintels, you will see an inscription commemorating their laying on the first of April some eight hundred years ago. Here there appears the name of one Maestro Mateo, who directed the building of the cathedral from its foundations: there is a record of him working there twenty years
Until now we have referred to this Maestro Mateo mainly as a sculptor, but the documentary evidence we have quoted highlights his work as the architect or master builder of the cathedral. Indeed, the whole Portico is a work of figurative architecture, in which each part finds its equivalent form, whether human, animal or vegetable, as its symbolic referent. We spoke earlier of the conversations that the Apostles and prophets were indulging in. Human imagination, more profane than popular, has attempted to recon-
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earlier, in 1168, when he was generously rewarded by King Ferdinand II of Leon and Galicia. The equivalent of almost two and a half kilos of silver, or four hundred grams of gold, was the annual stipend he was granted, at a time when gold and silver, with the New World as yet undiscovered, were worth far more than they are today. The document or contract in question is preserved in the Cathedral Archives, and tradition has it that the stone figure kneeling on the other side of the central pillar, facing the high altar, is a portrayal of this unique artist. The statue is familiarly known as the ‘Saint of Bumps’17, thanks to the ancient tradition of youths and children banging their heads —especially at exam time— against the stone forehead in order to receive some of his wisdom and powers of memory. It has certainly done the trick over the years for those who study the hardest.
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struct these dialogues, lending them words and arguments, sensing perfectly well the nature of the work as a drama being performed in three dimensions. Whether they be alive or merely stone, as Rosalía herself doubted, the figures appear to dwell in the architecture with us, rather than decorate it. The architecture, in short, is also part of the images, a kind of stage or set on which they appear.
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f you go down to the crypt18, to what is known as the Old Cathedral, and then go up to the gallery above the Portico, you will get a much better idea of this vision of the building designed and constructed by Mateo as a single grandiose architectural image. You won’t find any sacred themes portrayed on the capitals in the crypt; everything there appears to refer to the pettiness of the human comedy, to the vices that we have just seen being punished on the floor above. In each of the keystones of the central vaults you can see an angel holding on one side the sun 19, and on the other the moon 20, which goes to confirm that the crypt was conceived as an image of the Earth, covered by the canopy of heaven. Above this vault —above the heavens— we in fact find the Glory that we have just described. Going up to the gallery 21, you’ll see
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that here the keystone portrays the Lamb of God22, surrounded, on the ribs of the vault, by four angels holding thuribles23. These motifs were not chosen at random. The Apocalypse tells us that the new Jerusalem, the holy city that will come down from God out of heaven at the end of days, shall have “no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it… for the Lamb is the light thereof.” And this is why in the area corresponding to the Earth, evoked in the semi-darkness of the crypt, the sun and moon are visibly portrayed —on keystones that still preserve the hooks from which lamps used to be hung— and why there is no need for these heavenly bodies in the area above the skies, the image of a Jerusalem yet to come.
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All medieval churches aspired to evoke this Heavenly Jerusalem in a symbolic fashion, but only a major shrine of pilgrimage such as that in Santiago de Compostela, with the help of royal patronage, could imbue that image with such appropriateness and clarity, as is written in the Apocalypse: “the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it.� A city with its gates never shut by day, and one in which there shall be no night, is how the Apocalypse describes the New Jerusalem: neither did our Cathedral, with its Portico, have any doors, in keeping with its symbolic function, until the 16th century. And this was the period during which it received the highest numbers of pilgrims from all corners
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of the known world, and when the most lavish honours were bestowed on it by the kings of the earth. Before you leave the gallery, don’t forget to look out over the broad expanse of the cathedral below, so that you may experience the same emotion that Aymeric Picaud, our first guide to the cathedral, felt eight and half centuries ago: “Whosoever shall go up to the galleries, should he bear any sorrow, must surely feel his spirits rise on contemplating the beautiful splendour of this temple”. May this be so, and may you return to earth glad of heart.
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GLOSSARY
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are frequently associated with a stone cross. Their figurative decoration makes them one of the most outstanding examples of popular Galician art. SCROLL: In ancient times books were pieces of papyrus or parchment that were stored rolled up. In medieval art these books are shown unfurled so as to display their texts, and are thus referred to as “scrolls”. Strictly speaking, “scrolls” should only be held by the prophets (the Jews still keep their sacred texts in this ancient format), but the apostles who were not authors of the gospels are also portrayed with them, as a symbol of the spoken word. SYMBOLIC REFERENT: A referent is the object or entity that is being referred to. Communicating through symbols is to do so with ideas or concepts that are felt to be directly embodied in objects or images, with no need for words to explain them. But maybe I’ve complicated matters for you even more, so perhaps I should just give you an example. The marble column in the mullion of the Portico displays the genealogy of Christ, who would be the referent of the images sculpted on it. But there is also an underlying symbolic referent in the fact that this genealogy has been portrayed by means of a tree, the “Tree of Jesse” or any other kind of family “tree”. Mateo found the most appropriate architectural medium for this image or symbol in the shaft of a pillar, which evokes the trunk of a tree, and that is why we say his architecture is also an image, or representational.
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ARCHIVOLT: The lower curve of an arch, or the band of mouldings on it, particularly over an arched doorway or window. CAPITAL: The head of a pillar, the piece that comes between the latter and the beam or arch it supports. CRYPT: An underground room in a church, usually located beneath the high altar and used as a burial chamber or for private prayer. The so-called “Old Cathedral” is in fact a false crypt, because it is built at ground level, although not when seen from the Praza da Quintana. The sloping ground on which the Cathedral was built made its construction necessary so it could serve as a base for the Portico. GRIFFIN: A fantastic animal, a cross between a lion (the body) and an eagle (the wings and beak), these being the two most noble creatures in their respective kingdoms. The Ancient Greeks considered griffins to exist in the frozen lands of the north, where they guarded treasures. KEYSTONE: The wedge-shaped block of stone that is placed at the summit of an arch or vault, the pressure it exerts locking the others together and preventing the arch or vault from collapsing. MULLION: a vertical pillar or bar that divides a doorway or window in two. PETO DE ÁNIMAS: A collection box for alms given as an intercession for the souls of those in purgatory. They are to be found in churches or by the wayside, where they
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TAU: A letter of the Greek alphabet, with a sound similar to our “T”, and a shape like that of its upper-case form. It is used to describe the heads of bishop’s crosiers derived from the staffs used by foot-travellers, as opposed to those that reproduce the shape of a shepherd’s crook. It would have been easier to call a stick by a different name, but the tau was also a symbol in Biblical tradition – that of salvation – as well as in Greek tradition – that of a crossroads – and the use of this kind of crosier cannot be separated from these mystical meanings. THE STORY OF THE GRAIL: A romance in verse written by Chrétien de Troyes, between 1180 and 1191, in which he recounts the adventures of Percival and other knights of King Arthur’s court in their search for the Grail and the spear that pierced Christ’s side. In Chrétien’s story, the Grail was a kind of tray on which a Mass wafer was served to the wounded father of the Fisher King, miraculously sustaining him. In other versions
of the legend, the Grail becomes the chalice that held the blood of Christ. THURIBLE: a metal incense burner suspended from chains, allowing it to be swung to increase the flow of air to the charcoal. TORUS: A large convex moulding, usually cylindrical. The word is Latin for “trunk”. It is therefore more closely connected to the English word “torso” than to the star sign Taurus, despite its pronunciation. TYMPANUM: A tympanum was also a sort of hand drum in Ancient Greece and Rome. Imagine one of these cut in half, and you will get the semicircular blocks of stone that fill the inner space of an arch in a Romanesque doorway. In our Portico, only the central arch has a tympanum. REVELATION OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE:
Another name for the Apocalypse, a prophetic book of the New Testament that had an enormous influence on medieval art in Spain. Most of its text is interpreted as referring to the end of days.
Endnotes 1
Translator’s Note: All quotations from the Bible are taken from the Authorised Version of 1611.
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Translator’s Note: Rosalía de Castro (1837-1885), Galician poet and author whose collection of poems Cantares Gallegos (1863) was the first work to be published in Galician in modern times. Beloved by all Galicians, she is seen as the symbol of the revival of their language and literature.
3 Translator’s Note: Antonio López Ferreiro (1837-1910), Canon of Santiago Cathedral, historian and author of a history of the cathedral in eleven volumes as well as three historical novels. 4
Translator’s Note: Paio Gómez Chariño (c. 1225-1295), Galician troubador and nobleman who led the Castilian fleet that captured Seville from the Moors in 1248. He was made an admiral in 1284.
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