Some Account of Gothic Architecture in SpainStreet, George Edmund
History
Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain
Street, George Edmund
Architecture, Gothic -- Spain; Church architecture -- Spain
A few notices of the building of the cathedral have, however, come under
my eye, and of these the most important are the following:--In A.D.
1089[267] Pope Urban II. addressed an epistle to the faithful,
recommending them to aid in every way in the restoration of the church,
which had then just been recovered from the hands of the Moors. Not long
after this, in A.D. 1131, Pope Innocent II. issued a Bull, wherein he
recommended the suffragan churches to contribute to the cost of
rebuilding the cathedral.[268] More than a century after this, works
were again in progress, for in the necrology of the cathedral, on 11th
March, 1256, mention is made of “Frater Bernardus, magister operis hujus
ecclesiæ;” whilst again, in 1298, Maestro Bartolomé is mentioned as the
sculptor who wrought nine statues of the apostles for the western
façade, the remainder having been executed by Maestro Jayme Castayls in
1375.
Comparing this cathedral with that of Lérida, of which the date is
tolerably well ascertained, it is difficult to pronounce decidedly which
is the oldest, except that the eastern apse here, which is very peculiar
in its character, has every appearance of being a work of the middle of
the twelfth century, at the latest, and earlier by far, therefore, than
the foundation of the church of Lérida, which was not commenced until
A.D. 1203, and which was finished and consecrated in A.D. 1278. I
believe, indeed, that the eastern part of this cathedral may most
probably have been commenced about A.D. 1131, in consequence of the Bull
of Innocent II., though the greater portion of the fabric (including the
nave and its aisles and the cloister) seems to me to have been executed
at the end of the twelfth and during the first half of the thirteenth
century; and it is very possible, therefore, that the Brother Bernardus,
who died in 1256, may have been the architect of the larger part of the
existing fabric, both of the church and its cloister.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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