the invader, the Moorish occupancy, the Visigothic episode, Rome, Carthage, the Greeks, the Phoenicians, and then the unfathomable painting of the caves that tell of unknown culture and dating from — when? We think of the Moorish Kaliphates as a brief interregnum, but they covered equal time with that which has
elapsed — for us — since the Landing of William the Conqueror. We look on the Visigothic Kingdom as a fleeting episode. It was just as long as our history since the Landing of the Pilgrims. And so it goes. Ages piled on ages, and something of the accumulated tradition has buried itself in the strong character of the people. Modernism, our own civilization once so highly spoken of, is just a century and a half old. What is that to the Spaniard who counts the years of his culture not in hundreds but in thousands? All the ephemera of today are dissolved fantasies. They buzz about his ears, sting, and are gone, while he works, plays, smokes his cigarette in the sun — and waits.
He waited patiently while corrupt politicians and profiteers picked the bones of his country, for he was helpless under a preposterous Constitution and a futile system of parliamentary government.
Then came the Marques de Estrella who “scrapped the lot, ” gave the government back to the King and the competent, saved Spain and started it on its new career of achievement. He waits with equal patience until another metes out the same justice to the raw industrialism of Barcelona and Bilbao, and crushes communist and profiteer in the same breath, exalting right ideals, old Spanish ideals, Christian ideals, once more to their rightful place. He will not wait in vain.
When in the Xth century the Christian remnants in the northwest of Spain began to assert themselves, it was about two centuries before they could fix their recovered civilization after a fashion sufficiently secure to permit of artistic expression. About the year 800 the body of St. James the Apostle had been discovered at Compostella, and as soon as conditions allowed, his shrine became the most popular focus of pilgrimages in all Europe. Some time in the XIth century the roads became comparatively clear, and now, across the Pyrenees came swarms of travelers along the great Pilgrim Ways, bringing with them artists and craftsmen from all France, and chiefly from Cistercian Burgundy. Simultaneously the push
APSE, OLD CATHEDRAL, SALAMANCA (From a photograph by Arthur Byne)
VIEW ACROSS NAVE AND AISLE, OLD CATHEDRAL,
SALAMANCA
(From a photograph by Arthur Byne,
elapsed — for us — since the Landing of William the Conqueror. We look on the Visigothic Kingdom as a fleeting episode. It was just as long as our history since the Landing of the Pilgrims. And so it goes. Ages piled on ages, and something of the accumulated tradition has buried itself in the strong character of the people. Modernism, our own civilization once so highly spoken of, is just a century and a half old. What is that to the Spaniard who counts the years of his culture not in hundreds but in thousands? All the ephemera of today are dissolved fantasies. They buzz about his ears, sting, and are gone, while he works, plays, smokes his cigarette in the sun — and waits.
He waited patiently while corrupt politicians and profiteers picked the bones of his country, for he was helpless under a preposterous Constitution and a futile system of parliamentary government.
Then came the Marques de Estrella who “scrapped the lot, ” gave the government back to the King and the competent, saved Spain and started it on its new career of achievement. He waits with equal patience until another metes out the same justice to the raw industrialism of Barcelona and Bilbao, and crushes communist and profiteer in the same breath, exalting right ideals, old Spanish ideals, Christian ideals, once more to their rightful place. He will not wait in vain.
When in the Xth century the Christian remnants in the northwest of Spain began to assert themselves, it was about two centuries before they could fix their recovered civilization after a fashion sufficiently secure to permit of artistic expression. About the year 800 the body of St. James the Apostle had been discovered at Compostella, and as soon as conditions allowed, his shrine became the most popular focus of pilgrimages in all Europe. Some time in the XIth century the roads became comparatively clear, and now, across the Pyrenees came swarms of travelers along the great Pilgrim Ways, bringing with them artists and craftsmen from all France, and chiefly from Cistercian Burgundy. Simultaneously the push
APSE, OLD CATHEDRAL, SALAMANCA (From a photograph by Arthur Byne)
VIEW ACROSS NAVE AND AISLE, OLD CATHEDRAL,
SALAMANCA
(From a photograph by Arthur Byne,