An Anachronist Abroad:  Sevilla-- La Catedral
by Dona Anabel Ravaya de Guzman

The second and last stop on the Swift Caravan from Madrid is Sevilla.

This city was a great center of Moorish learning and culture after the
fall of the Caliphate of Cordoba.  The Romans had named the city
Hispalis, from which the Arabs derived Ishbiliya. It eventually became
Sevilla.  Our lodgings were named after a poet who lived here, near the
center of town, very near the banks of the Guadalquivir.  Sevilla is
closer to the Atlantic Ocean; this is the north-easternmost point on
the river that smaller ships and barges can still navigate.  It was
here in A.S. XXVII-XXVIII  (1992, appropriately) that the World Expo
was held and for which the Swift Caravan was built and keeps paying for
itself.

The great gem of this city is La Catedral, the Cathedral, the third
largest finished Christian cathedral in the world after St. Peter's in
Rome and St. Paul's in London.  It was built on the site of a razed
mosque, that in its turn had been built on the site of the church of
Santa Rufina (yay!--ed.).  The one portion of the mosque left is the
minaret tower, La Giralda, which survived, it is said, because then
Prince Alfonso, the son of Fernando III who won the city from the Moors
in 1248, threatened to put under the knife anyone who touched one brick
of the structure. For a time it was one of the tallest in Europe, built
between 1184-1189.

Only the very top of the tower is changed from those times.  In 1356 an
earthquake toppled the three golden spheres at the top.  Twenty-four
bells  were put in its place, one bell for each Knighted Peer who
helped to take the city.  Their names are still seen at the base of the
bells today.  The tower's name today means "She that Turns" because in
1568 a hollow metal statue of a woman holding palm fronds in one hand
and a Roman banner in the other, a very ornate weather vane which turns
with the slightest breeze, was placed above the bells.

The tower is about nine of our floors high from the street to the
bells.  The bells are reached not by stairs but by a series of ramps
running at what felt like a 15-20 degree gradient along all four sides
of the interior of the tower.  Yes, my aunt, Master Minolta and I
climbed the tower, making several stops, and taking in all sorts of
details of the Catedral next to us and  the city below us along the
way.  I could only marvel at the lung capacity of the muezzin who had
to run up these ramps five times a day to call the faithful of this
city to prayer in days gone by.

The sides of the tower have the familiar arches and decorations of the
Moors along its balconies and windows, but the Catedral is pure Gothic,
with its high ceilings, ornate spires, rose windows, and flying
buttresses abounding.  The building as it stands today was begun in
1401, because the old structure was decaying, and finished a century
later.  It has been said that one of the chapter members suggested,
"Let us build a church so big that we shall be held to be insane."  As
far as I'm concerned, they succeeded.  There are five naves and many
side chapels, most of them poorly lit, all of them with high ceilings.
If the builders' intent was to call to mind the reach to Heaven, they
did their best.

One of the areas I had wanted to see the most was the Capilla Real
(Royal Chapel) because it is here that one of my favorite Castillian
monarchs, Alfonso X, the Learned (who saved the tower) is buried, along
with his father Fernando III and mother Beatriz de Swabia.  It was not
meant to be, however, as this was a Saturday and a wedding was to take
place there.  From the bits of conversation I heard from passers-by, I
gathered that the couple was quite well-to-do, (I guess they had to be,
to be married where Royalty and Peerage had been married or crowned
before them), and that they were to show up in a horse-drawn carriage.

I explored the rest of the church, the Capilla Mayor, the Main Chapel,
an impressive sight with a choir made of the same mahogany as that of
the one in Cordoba.  (I later learned that the wood for the choirs for
Cordoba's, Sevilla's, and Granada's cathedrals all came from Cuba.)
The retablo of the altar of the Main Chapel is said to be the largest
in Christendom, 65 feet high by 43 feet wide, lovingly sculpted into 44
reliefs depicting the life of Christ, lavishly adorned in gold leaf.
This took almost a century to build as well, finished in 1564.  One
just keeps looking up at this work, never seeing the same detail
twice.

Just south of this chapel is the monument to Cristobal Colon, where
part of his remains rest.  (The man who had known both triumph and
disgrace in life might well wonder at how vilified his name is in some
circles 505 years after his great enterprise.  I say leave the dead in
peace.  He was a product of his time; we are fools who force our
sensibilities on the mindset of the past.)  The monument was meant to
be part of the Catedral de La Habana, but with the formal independence
of Cuba in 1902, it was never taken to the island.  A large coffin is
borne on the shoulders of four heralds, each wearing the tabard and
coronet representing the four kingdoms of old Spain: Castilla, Aragon,
Leon and Navarra.  Were I a herald I would blazon them for you, but I
could only make out the canted castles of Castilla and the lions
rampant of Leon, and I only know in passing that part of Aragon's
heraldry includes a ship's steering wheel.

There were many treasures of art to behold in the side chapels as
well.  To detail them all would take more space than I have here.  I
will also leave the recounting of the rest of my stay in Sevilla and
then in Granada for another time.


from the March 1998 Seahorse