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CHAPTER VII.
EDUCATION AND RELIGION

THE fame of the Spanish universities has greatly fallen from what it was in the early Middle Ages, when Salamanca ranked with Bologna, Paris, and Oxford, as one of the four great universities in Europe; when its halls were thronged with thousands of eager though needy scholars, and it was the centre whence Semitic learning and civilization spread to the rest of Europe. Even in a later day, in the sixteenth century, under the patronage of Cardinal Ximenes, the university of Alcala de Henares (Complutum) flashed into sudden fame as one of the great offshoots of the Renaissance, with its 7800 students, and its noble production of the first great Polyglot Bible since primitive times. In the eighteenth century, however, this learning had all but disappeared from Spain, and the education given in its universities was all but worthless. Little was effected towards any true revival or improvement until 1845, though something had been attempted before this in secondary education by the successive reforms of 1771, 1807, and especially of 1824 and 1836.

The universities of Spain are now ten: Madrid, with 6672 students; Barcelona with 2459; Valencia, 2118; Seville, 1382; Granada, 1225; Valladolid, 880; Santiago de Compostella, 779; Saragossa, 771; Salamanca, 372; and Oviedo with 216: making a total of 16,874 university students. The number of regular professors is 415, with 240 supernumeraries and assistants, making a total of 655; that is, one professor to every 26 students. The salary of the professors varies from 120l. to 260l. per annum, except in Madrid, where it is from 160l. to 300l. The budget of the whole universities is a little over 1,000,000l., and the expenditure slightly in excess, leaving a deficit in 1879 of 4600l.. The average cost of each student to the university is a little over 6l..

Though the above institutions are all classed as universities by the State, yet the course of instruction is by no means the same in all. At Madrid alone the whole programme of university education is followed out. This comprises the faculties of civil, canon, and administrative law, of philosophy and literature, of science, of medicine, and of pharmacy. Since 1868 theology is no longer studied in the universities, but in the seminaries, of which there is one in each diocese, under the direction of the bishop. The total number of pupils studying in these institutions is 8562. At Valladolid are two theological colleges for English, Scotch, and Irish students, established, one at the close of the sixteenth, the other by the Jesuits at the close of the eighteenth century.

Law is studied in all the Spanish universities, and medicine in all but one—Oviedo; Madrid, Barcelona, Granada, and Compostella have faculties of pharmacy, under which head a certain amount of natural science is taught; of the exact sciences there are chairs only at Madrid, Barcelona, and Salamanca; philosophy and literature are studied in Madrid, Barcelona, Granada, Salamanca, Seville, and Saragossa. In Oviedo, Santiago, Valencia, Valladolid, only the first year's or preparatory course of law is read, this consists of Latin, general literature, and universal history.

Besides these State universities, there are several institutions supported by the provincial deputations; for instance, there is a faculty of medicine in Seville supported by the province, another in Salamanca at the joint expense of the province and of the municipality. In addition to these there are technical schools for the study of special branches of industry or of administration, such as those of roads, canals, and harbours, of mines, and of forests, in Madrid and Villa Viciosa. A school of industrial engineering, and of the application of chemistry and mechanics, is working at Barcelona. There are technical schools of commerce at Madrid and at Barcelona. Schools or colleges of veterinary science are to be found in Madrid, Saragossa, Cordova, and Leon. Naval schools are established in Santa Cruz (Teneriffe), in Palma (Majorca), in Masnou (Barcelona), in San Sebastian, supported by the funds of the provinces; there is also one at Gijon, in the Asturias, founded by Jovellanos; two other private foundations also exist at Lequeito and Santurce in Biscay. In Madrid there is a special school of architecture, and also one of painting, sculpture, and engraving. Excellent schools of the fine arts exist in Barcelona, Cadiz, Corunna, Granada, Malaga, Oviedo, Seville, Valencia, Valladolid, Saragossa, and at Palma in the Balearic Isles; this last is remarkable for the number of its pupils and its generally flourishing condition.

In each of the forty-nine provinces of Spain are institutions of superior or secondary education. With the exception of the institutes of Cardinal Cisneros and of San Isidro at Madrid, which depend on the Government, and which hold the first and third rank as to the number of their pupils, these institutions are supported by the funds of the provinces or municipalities, but the professors are nominated by the Government; besides those in the capital of each province, there are also 11 others in various large towns in Spain. There are also 356 colleges of secondary education affiliated to the institutes, 58 of which are under religious corporations, making a total of 417 establishments of secondary education, with 2730 professors who have all taken degrees in science or literature.

The institutes give instruction to 14,872 pupils, and the colleges to almost the same number, 14,290; home or private education absorbs 4476; making a total in 1880 of 33,638; more than three times the number in 1848, and, including the episcopal seminaries, giving one pupil to every 398 inhabitants. All these pupils are admitted to the official examinations, and take their degrees equally on passing them. It is found that 13 per cent of the candidates are rejected at the examinations, 43.8 per cent. simply pass, and 43.1 gain honours of various kinds; while 9 per cent. take the degree of Bachelor from the colleges, and 37.2 proceed to take it from the universities.

The salary of the masters is from 120l. to 180l. (except in Madrid where it is from 160l. to 220l.), with a right to a portion of the fees for matriculation and degrees. The supernumerary masters receive 60l. in Madrid and 40l. in the provinces; auxiliary masters are unpaid. Pensions of 20l. are sometimes given to poor but distinguished pupils. The cost of all the institutes is 118,935l., the income, 44,818l., leaving a deficit of 74,117l. to be supplied either by the State, the provinces, or the municipalities.

The course of instruction is two-fold, general and special. The general comprises: Spanish and Latin grammar, two courses; rhetoric and poetry, geography, history of Spain, universal history, psychology, logic and ethics, arithmetic and algebra, geometry and trigonometry, physics and the elements of chemistry, natural history, physiology and hygiene, and elementary agriculture. The special courses are those of agriculture, the fine arts, manufactures and commerce.

Of public schools of primary instruction there are about 23,000 of all grades and classes, 1308 are infant schools and 1400 are for male and 100 for female adults.

The great drawback in the higher education of Spain is the disproportionate number of students in law, medicine, or pharmacy, in comparison with the few who cultivate the special branches of agriculture, industrial or commercial science. Hence the former professions are overstocked, with results productive of far-reaching evils to the country and to the administration. Notwithstanding its far inferior population the number of students in Spain who take their degrees in law and medicine is almost treble that of France and of Germany, while the total of degrees conferred in all the faculties of Spain is equal to that of France, which has double the population. Nothing more plainly shows the character of the people, and the mischief of "empleomania" than such a fact in a country whose natural riches in agriculture and mining are so great and so little developed, where there is so large a field for industrial enterprises of many kinds, and where the fruits of all these are at present almost wholly reaped by foreigners.

The primary education of Spain, though nominally everywhere alike, is really so very varied as to defy any average description. A few of her infant schools are equal to the best of those of other countries. Where the provincial deputations or the municipalities take an interest in education the primary schools are very fair, but in other parts the education is little more than nominal, and the schoolmaster's appointment is well-nigh a sinecure both in pay and labour; and probably at the present moment, notwithstanding the great improvements of late years, two-thirds of the people can still neither read nor write.

Church and Religion

From the time of the Œcumenical Council of Nicea, A.D. 325, with the brief exception of the reigns of the Arian Visigoth kings, Spain has been the champion of orthodoxy in religion. From early times too the demarcation between Church and State has been less marked, or rather the influence of the former over the latter has been more constant and more powerful, than in perhaps any other European kingdom. The great councils of Toledo were scarcely more ecclesiastical than civil assemblies. The recognition of the sovereign, the order of succession, the validity of the laws, were either settled or sanctioned therein. Later, in the great struggle with the Moors, through the antagonism of exclusive beliefs, the war assumed the character of a religious crusade. The semi-monastic Spanish military orders, the preaching of the monks, the sanction and the bulls of the Popes—auxiliaries which the kings of Spain were forced to summon to their aid—gave a complexion to the conquest and to the national character quite different to what might have been the case had the contest been fought out by the sovereign, the lay warriors, and the civil power alone. Thus the triumph of the Christian over the Moor became in some sort also the triumph of the Roman over the national Spanish Church. The Mozarabic liturgy gave way to that of Rome. The peculiar institution of the inquisition, following on that of the Santa Hermandad in civil matters, developed in Spain a degree of power to which it never attained in other lands. The certainty and the secrecy of its proceedings, the mingled pomp and horror of its "autos de fe," the whispers and the shudder with which men told of the tortures of its hidden processes, deeply impressed and captivated the imagination of a people singularly greedy of, and susceptible to, strong and vivid emotions. The chivalrous respect for women, heightened by the reserve and half-seclusion which the Spanish knights had learned from the Moors, was transformed in the sphere of religion into an almost ardent passion of devotion to the Blessed Virgin. Centuries before the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was proclaimed by Pius IX. the cry of the Spanish beggar heard at every door throughout her vast dominions was, "Ave Maria purisima, sin pecádo concebida." Spain had been the champion of Christendom against the Jews and against the Moors; she had without remorse violated every compact she had sworn with the latter, and she became equally the champion of Roman Catholicism against the Reformation. Though Philip II. failed in his great armed struggle with the northern powers, and wasted and destroyed therein all the real resources of Spain, yet Spanish theologians were among the most eloquent and the most learned in the Council of Trent; and it was the Jesuits of Spain who headed the reaction of the seventeenth century, and who won back all but the Teutonic and Scandinavian races to the allegiance of Rome. This glory of Catholicism is never absent from the heart of a Spaniard. His whole literature is steeped in it; it inspires Spain's greatest painters. It is this deep but unconscious feeling that Protestanism is un-Spanish which is the real stronghold of Catholicism in Spain, and which, in spite of spoliation and political subjection, still gives the clerical party there a greater power than they possess in other countries. Yet the few Spaniards who embraced the reformed doctrines in the sixteenth century were not inferior to those of other lands in earnestness, in learning, in eloquence, or in high position, both in Church and State. There was just a moment when the court of Charles V. hovered on the verge of protest against Rome. When, as before related, the liberties of Spain fell beneath the iron rule of the Austrian sovereigns, it was the Church, by the hand of one of its greatest ornaments, Cardinal Ximenes, which became the willing instrument of despotism. In return for the servility of the court, and the presence and the sanction of the sovereign at the "autos," the inquisition lent its aid to the monarchy, and its assistance was called in to suppress the trade in horses, so senselessly forbidden, on the northern frontier. In the seventeenth century, however, the Spanish court fell under the influence of the French encyclopædists. The Jesuits were banished in 1767. We need not detail again the various vicissitudes of the abolition and re-establishment of the inquisition, of the suppression of tithes, of the sale of Church property, the destruction of the monasteries, and the exile of the monks, the effects of which have been sufficiently indicated above.

Since the Concordat of 1851, Spain is ruled ecclesiastically by nine archbishops; those of Toledo (the primate of all Spain), Burgos, Saragossa, Tarragona, Valencia, Granada, Seville, Valladolid, and Compostella, under whom are forty-six bishops, with their chapters, and about 35,000 clergy. The mode of episcopal appointment is this: the king presents three names to the Pope, of which his Holiness selects one, who is forthwith nominated to the vacant see. Since 1868, theological education is entirely under the hands of the bishops, who have a seminary in each diocese. The clergy are paid by the State; but the stipends of the country priests are said to be frequently in arrear. In some parts of Spain, as in the manufacturing towns of Barcelona, religion has to a great extent lost its hold upon the people; in other parts, as in the Basque Provinces, the majority are still devout. Since 1871 a reaction from extremes of scepticism and advanced socialistic views is manifest in many of the most popular writers. A small but increasing body of Protestants has been established since 1868; but the vicissitudes of revolution and reaction, and the present ambiguous state of the law have acted unfavourably on the movement. The pastors have honourably distinguished themselves by their zeal for the education of the classes utterly neglected by the dominant Church. On the whole, the clerical party in Spain, considered as a political body, seems gradually sinking into a like condition to that of France. It is powerful enough to thwart and check the policy of its opponents, but impotent to carry out its own measures. The extreme Ultramontane party, for whom the Comte de Chambord is too liberal and Pope Leo XIII. too comprehensive, has lately adopted the banner of the Carlists. Whatever the future of Spain may be, it is not probable that the Church will ever attain again the political influence and the exclusive control of education which it possessed in the past, in spite of the undoubted talents and virtues of many of its upholders.

CHAPTER VIII.
LITERATURE AND THE ARTS

THOUGH one of the most interesting countries of Europe with regard to architecture, Spain can lay claim to no style peculiar to itself, or that originated wholly within the Peninsula. It contains, however, noble specimens of art and architecture of very varied epochs and character, from the work of the unknown sculptors who carved the so-called "toros" of Guisando and erected the huge dolmens and other megalithic monuments so thickly strewed over its soil, to the architects and artists of the present day. Almost all the races which have trodden the land have left monuments upon it—the Carthaginians, perhaps, the fewest. Scarcely anywhere else does the solid, practical character of Roman architecture appear more fully than in the amphitheatres, aqueducts, and especially in the bridges of Spain. The amphitheatres, temples, and walls of Murviedro (Saguntum), Tarragona, Toledo, Coria, Plasencia; the aqueducts of Merida, Seville, and Segovia; the bridges of Tuy over the Minho, of Zamora over the Douro, Salamanca over the Tormes, of Alcantara, Garrovillas de Alconetar, and Puente del Arzobispo over the Tagus, of Merida and Medellin over the Guadiana, of Seville, Cordova, and Ubeda over the Guadalquiver, and of Lerida over the Segre, are noble relics of Roman work. Of the period when Roman art was gradually modified under Christian influences, and the basilica was transformed into the Christian church, very few remains exist. To the Vandal and Gothic conquerors belong part of the walls of Toledo, and a few chapels and small churches in the north and north-west may belong in part to this date (417-717); but the most peculiar artistic remains of this period are the jewellers' and goldsmiths' work, preserved in the metal crowns and treasure of Guarrazar (624-672), of a style which, though probably derived from the East through Byzantium, continued to influence Spanish goldsmiths' work down to the eleventh century.

The architecture and art of the race that succeeded to the Visigoths is of much more notable character. The civil and religious architecture of the Spanish Arabs is well worthy of most careful study, and is a grand example of the artistic talent of a race which, though debarred by its religious faith from the reproduction of human, or even of animal form, and delighting neither in the scenes of the theatre or the circus, has yet left masterpieces of architectural beauty in lands so wide apart as Spain, Egypt, Persia, and Hindostan. The architecture of the Arabs in Spain may be roughly divided into three periods: The first, from the eighth to the tenth century, tells most clearly of its origin as an imitation or modification of the Byzantine style; its masterpiece is the Mosque of Cordova. The second period, from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries, shows the architects seeking their real style—it is a period of transition; its finest erection is the Giralda of Seville. The third period is when the Moorish style acquired its fullest development in the glorious Alhambra, from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. Contemporary with the last period is the Mudejar style, the modification which Arabic art underwent in the hands of the Christian conquerors. To this belong the Alcazar of Seville, 1353; the Mudejar gates of Toledo and Saragossa, and the Chapel of St. James in Alcala de Henares. In their domestic architecture the Arabs alone have almost solved the problem how to unite ventilation and ornament by means of currents of air of different temperatures. The pendulous stucco fretwork by which they conceal the angles of their apartments serves not only for ornament but to equalize the temperature and to admit of concealed openings whereby air can penetrate without draught or chill. The sense of true harmony of colour seems to be an intuitional gift of Oriental races, and is practically understood by them as it never has been by any other. The Mosaics of Greece and Rome, and those of mediæval Italy, in their storied designs, appeal more to the intellect; but those of Arabic art rest and charm the eye by the purity and harmonious blending of tone as do none other.

In spite of some apparent exceptions, and those of the earliest date, as the Mosque of Cordova (788), and the cloisters of Tayloon at Cairo (879), Arabic architecture, like Grecian, depended for its effect more on the exquisite symmetry and exact proportion of all details to a consummate whole, than to impressions of awe derived from vast size or immense solidity. It is thus that the massive Roman arch became moulded into the light horse-shoe shape, peculiar to the Spanish Arabs from the eighth to the tenth centuries. The originality of this architecture is not, however, so great as appears at first sight. The influence of Byzantine architecture and of that of the Christian churches with which the Arabs had become acquainted during their conquests, and of constant accessions from Oriental art, can be clearly traced therein. But in Spain there is perhaps a juster proportion, a greater variety and richness of ornamentation and colour than is to be found elsewhere. The grandest of Moorish buildings in Spain is undoubtedly one of the earliest, the great Mosque of Cordova, with its forest of 1200 columns, its fifty-seven naves, nineteen gates, and upwards of 4000 lamps, recalling the impression produced by the Egyptian hall of Karnac at Thebes,—an impression so vivid that even the iconoclast emperor, Charles V., whose own palace mars the beauty of the Alhambra, rebuked the Archbishop of Cordova for destroying what he never could replace, when he cut away some of the columns to make room for a Christian chapel. Not less beautiful in their graceful proportions than the Campanile of Italy are the minarets and towers of Arabian art in Spain, as the Giralda of Seville and others; even the quaintness of the leaning tower of Pisa finds its counterpart in the leaning tower of Saragossa. The Moorish gates of Toledo, of Seville, and the Alcazar of Segovia show how castellated strength may be wedded to artistic elegance; but the most perfect union at once of fortress and of palace is to be found in the noble group of buildings known as the Alhambra, on the hill of Granada. Though trembling on the verge of debasement when the severer forms of Arabian art were beginning to admit the representation of animal shapes, whose rude sculpture forms a contrast to the exquisite correctness of the alphabetic and geometrical designs which ornament the walls, these buildings may yet be regarded as marking the culmination of Moorish art. The fertility of decorative design, the exquisite use made of Arabic lettering, and the simple yet subtle forms of geometrical interlacing—apparently most fantastic, yet really ever subordinated to a just proportion with the whole—these are a theme of wondering admiration to every student. A whole grammar of ornament might be illustrated by examples taken from these buildings alone. The architecture of the houses of the Moorish aristocracy which still remain in Seville, Granada, Toledo, and Saragossa is wonderfully adapted both to the necessities of the climate and to domestic ornament. In the more northern examples the open galleries, in the more southern the flat roof, of the apartments surrounding the inner quadrangle make a delightful resort in the cool of the day; while the court or patio itself, with its fountains and shade, its flowers and creepers and odoriferous shrubs, its mingled play of light and colour, through which the delicate grace of ornament is seen uninjured by the dust and contact with the outside traffic, appears to the northern tourist almost like one of the fairy homes of which his ancestors dreamed, and which have been described to him in many a legend, as a thing too lovely to be gazed upon by mortal eyes unless unsealed.

The influence and the impress of Arabian art was not confined in Spain to mosques or to buildings consecrated to the use of Mohammedans alone. Some of the most beautiful specimens of this architecture were erected for Christians or for Jews. Arabic inscriptions used as ornaments are still to be seen on the altar of the Cathedral of Gerona, in the Shrine of San Isidore at Leon; Arabic architecture is seen in the palace of the archbishops of Toledo, in a chapel in Alcala de Henares, and in more than one synagogue of the Jews. Christian bishops used as episcopal seals rings on which were engraved the praises of Allah. Long after the conquest of the great cities of the centre and of the south, Moorish and Mudejar architects were retained in the pay of Christian monarchs to keep in repair the cathedrals and palaces, the beauty of whose architecture the Christians could appreciate but could not imitate, much less surpass. It is this fact, and the mingling of style and ideas consequent thereon, which gives its sole peculiar characteristic to Spanish art.

Meanwhile, contemporaneously with the flourishing period of Arabian art in the south, a Christian architecture, strikingly in contrast from its poverty of style and of invention, was slowly being reconstructed in the north. Of the eighth century we have the crypt of the Church of Santa Cruz, at Cangas in the Asturias, and some remains in parts of the churches of Oviedo. To the tenth century belong parts of the Church of San Pablo at Barcelona, and other Catalan churches, with here and there a chapel in the Western Pyrenees. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries the more important churches of Northern Spain were almost reproductions of those of Southern France; the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostella is almost a copy of the Church of St. Sernin at Toulouse; but the Romanesque (semi-Byzantine) style lingered somewhat longer in Spain than in the neighbouring country, and especially in North-eastern Spain. In the twelfth century edifices of real beauty are beginning to be built; such are the cloisters of Tarragona and the cathedrals of Lerida and of Tudela. The cathedrals of Avila and Siguenza are of more native Spanish character; while those of Toledo, Burgos, and Leon show the influence of French artists in their general plan, but with an added ornamentation derived from the richer and more florid fancy of the south. Of these perhaps Leon is the noblest and Burgos the richest example in Spain. Segovia, Salamanca, and Seville, of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, are the latest of the great Gothic churches of Spain, before the rise of the Renaissance.

Nowhere had the classical revival in architecture more influence than in Spain. The almost exclusive type of church which, both in Spain and in her vast colonies, is pointed out as the Spanish church, is that either of the Renaissance or of the styles which have sprung from it. This soon became fashionable, but its semi-pagan additions frequently harmonize but ill with the deeper religious feeling of the preceding styles. Still it has many fine examples; the works of Berruguete and Herrera are well worthy of study. The Escorial, the work of the latter, is redeemed from ugliness or meanness by the noble proportions of its central chapel and pantheon. But to this semi-classical style succeeded, in the eighteenth century, the Churrigueresque, the most debased of all styles, wherein plaster took the place of sculpture, sham that of reality, and masses of gilding and an incongruous medley of meaningless ornament concealed the blunders in proportion and poverty of idea. The adoption of this style by the Jesuits procured its prevalence in many districts of Spain and of her colonies; occasionally the size of the buildings constructed gives a certain grandeur and hides the debasement of the methods.

The domestic, palatial, and castellated architecture of Spain has little peculiar beyond what has been already indicated. The royal palace at Madrid, however, is one of the most successful architectural efforts of the eighteenth century. The sculptured coats of arms on mean dwellings are perhaps the most notable distinction of Spanish houses. Traces of the influence of Moorish traditions may not unfrequently be observed. In the north, the cottages and farms of the Basques, with overhanging roofs and wooden galleries, recall in some degree those of Switzerland; in the south the iron bars or rails (rejas) before the lower windows, and the lattices (celosias) in the upper stories tell of insecurity and of habits of almost Oriental seclusion of women.

Finer even than the architecture and the exterior of the buildings is the church furniture in Spain. It is unsurpassed for beauty and interest. The carved and sculptured wood-work in some of the cathedrals is finer than even that of the Netherlands and of Germany. The storied screens and choir stalls at Toledo; the retablos of Gerona and Salamanca, of Avila and Seville; the choir fittings of Santiago, Zamora, and of Burgos; the lecterns and pulpits both of brass and wood; and the rails and gates and screens of noblest metal-work are often of simply grand proportion; nay, even the polychrome wooden statues in the churches will often be found to be of rarest beauty. The monuments erected to the memory of the dead are equal to anything which affection and piety have raised elsewhere, from that of Archbishop Maurice at Burgos, in the thirteenth century—of the tombs of the constable and of those of Juan II. and Isabel of Portugal, in the Cartuja de Miraflores, of the fifteenth century; and that of Prince Juan, the only son of Ferdinand and Isabella, at Avila, erected in 1497—down to the noble mausoleum of inlaid metal-work by Zuloaga, lately placed in the Church of the Atocha to the memory of Prim. In these and many more, Spain can show a sequence able to vie with that of any other land. Hardly less beautiful are the minor accessories of Catholic worship; the gold and silver smiths' work of the chandeliers, the jewelled work of crosses, custodias or shrines, and sacred vessels is often worthy of admiration. In all such works of art, before the pillage of the French in the war of liberation, and the destruction of the convents, Spain was probably one of the richest of Christian lands. If we seem to insist too much on ecclesiastical art in Spain, it is because, as we shall see still more clearly in the case of painting, art has here concentrated its choicest effort on religious subjects, and in them has won its greatest triumphs. Except, perhaps, in arms and in porcelain, in portrait-painting and in furniture, all the masterpieces of Spanish art are in some sense ecclesiastical. Take away religion from her art, how poor would be the residue, for even Arabian and Moslem art in Spain were essentially religious.