Leaving Spain

So after 55 days, I have left Spain. Overall, the research trip was quite successful. It has also been a good experience from a variety of perspectives: more time with my dad's family, great improvement in my Spanish skills, and I saw lots of great stuff. Overall though I feel like I have been gone way too long. I doubt I will do two months again.

This was also the first time I actually lived in a big city for any length of time. I can say unequivocally that I don't really like it. Madrid is a beautiful city, but the metroplex is a hot, sweaty, smelly, dirty place, with lots and lots of people. There are certainly advantages to living in big cities: you don't need to drive, lots of things to see and do, almost too many options for just about everything. But after this test, I think I can safely say that I am not a big city person.

My favorite part of this trip was definitely Toledo. That town is much more my speed, and it is absolutely gorgeous. I strongly suspect that Burgos and Segovia would be equally livable.

So all in all I am happy to be home. I will miss lots of little things, like jámon and Fanta de Límon, chorizo and sangria... mostly food I guess. I will also miss getting to treat my research like a full time job. The research is what makes academia great, but the reality of the matter is that it almost never gets one's undivided attention. Damian Smith, my friend from Saint Louis University, mentioned to me that every professor always talks about their PhD research as though it was the best time of their lives, but also admit that it was stressful, confusing, and difficult. I agree with that, and wholeheartedly hope that this was not the best two months of my life.

Campo de Moro

Speaking of the Almoravids, the Moroccan dynasty who invaded the Iberian Peninsula in the late eleventh century in order to salvage the deteriorating military situation in Al-Andalus... Yesterday I visited the Campo de Moro, the formal gardens between the Manzanares River and the Palacio Real in Madrid.

The Campo de Moro is so-called because in 1109, when an Almoravid army besieged Madrid, they camped in this spot below the Alcázar, the old castle which stood on the site of the Royal Palace. The name stuck, even after the space was incorporated into the grounds of the Palace in the sixteenth century. I had never been there before, somehow. It is like a mini-El Retiro, but less crowded and with peacocks wandering around.

Mio Cid

My final thoughts on Burgos revolve around Rodrigo Diaz, El Cid Campeador, Spain's most famous medieval resident. His titles derive from Arabic and Latin. El Cid is a Spanish derivation of the Arabic title cidi, meaning lord. Campeador is the romance (Spanish) version of the Latin title Campi Doctoris, meaning expert of battles.

Rodrigo Diaz was a knight from a minor noble family in the Burgos region. He came of age in the second half of the eleventh century, and served King Sancho II at a time when the kingdom of Castilla-León was divided amongst the three sons of King Fernando I. When Sancho was assassinated, Rodrigo transferred his services to Alfonso VI, his brother.

El Cid had a rocky relationship with Alfonso. He apparently suspected him of complicity in his brother's death, and in a semi-legendary episode, made him swear an oath in one of the churches of Burgos attesting to his innocence. Rodrigo was also an especially charismatic and popular person, and so had many jealous enemies at court. Eventually, Rodrigo was accused of embezzling tribute payments from some of Alfonso's Muslim clients. Alfonso exiled Rodrigo from Castilla as a result.

El Cid was not a man to simply accept such setbacks. He gathered his followers and placed himself in the service of Yusuf al-Mutamin, the ruler of the Muslim city-state of Zaragoza. He successfully helped his Muslim friend for several years, defending Zaragoza quite successfully against the Count of Barcelona, whom he captured twice. It was the second defeat of Barcelona that earned him his Campeador nickname, which first appears in a Latin poem, the Carmen Campidoctoris (Song of the War-leader), which dates from the 1080s.

Rodrigo became an expert in the politics of the eastern Iberian peninsula. In the early 1090s, when his Muslim ally al-Qadir was kicked out of his city of Valencia, El Cid set out to carve a principality for himself. He triumphantly entered the city in May of 1094, and held it for the rest of his life.

He was immediately challenged by the arrival of the Almoravid dynasty from Morocco, who had come at the request of the Andalusian Muslims to help them against their powerful Christian neighbors (El Cid and Alfonso VI). Alfonso VI was badly defeated by the Almoravids at the battle of Zallaqah in 1086. El Cid, however, managed to successfully defeat Almoravid attacks on his principality twice in the later 1090s.

Rodrigo Diaz died peacefully in Valencia in 1099, at about sixty years of age. He was a legend in his own time, and, within 100 years, was the subject of a major Latin biography, and Spain's first and most famous medieval epic, the Cantar de Mio Cid. Though later generations of Spanish Christians tried to turn El Cid into the ultimate Christian hero, he was, in all reality, a mercenary and free-booter, equally at home, as were many of the elites of his day, like Alfonso, in both the Christian and Muslim courts of eleventh century Spain.

Burgos Castle

I first visited the Castle of Burgos with my father in 1992. I have revisited lots of places on this trip which I had initially visited with my dad, but this was the only one for which I had very strong memories of being there with him. I was actually really sad as I climbed the hill to the Castle, which sits, naturally, at the highest point in the town. When we were there in 1992, the Castle was entirely a ruin. I actually took some pieces of the wall, which I still have at home. So, when I reached the top of the hill and discovered a partially restored Castle and museum, I was snapped out of my depressing state of deja vu.

The Castle now is a very well put together tourist attraction, complete with two reconstructed towers. You can even visit the extensive cave system beneath the Castle, where the garrisons drew their water.

The Castle has an impressive history. It was an Iron Age fort of Iberian people, which, unlike the rest of northern and central Iberia, was never conquered by the Celts. It was abandoned at some point during the Roman period, and not reoccupied again until the tenth century, when the Castillians fortified the hill as a defensive position against Muslim armies marching north to raid their lands.

Burgos is actually a Germanic word, "Burg", meaning town. The town was so-called to differentiate it from the Castle. So the burg which grew up around this military site is Burgos. The town prospered, especially in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as the military frontier with Al-Andalus was pushed southward, and as Burgos became an important stop for pilgrims making their was toward Santiago de Compostela, in the far northwest of the Peninsula.

The Castle was converted into a royal palace, but the city of Burgos gradually lost its important place in royal politics as the attention of the monarchs remained fixated on the south. Eventually the Castle fell into disuse and ruin.

The military function of the place was revived in the early nineteenth century, when the French army made Burgos its headquarters. The Castle was redesigned as a Napoleonic-era fort, complete with extensive batteries and outer-works. It was besieged by General Arthur Wellsley, commander of the British forces in the Peninsula, in October of 1812. The future Lord Wellington (that title had to wait on his final defeat of Napoleon in 1815) had roundly beaten the French by the time he reached Burgos, and they were compelled to surrender after a relatively brief siege. As they left, they decided to blow up the Castle.

So the Castle was ruined again, and remained that way until 2005, when renovations were completed and the new mueseum was opened. It is a neat site, though I am glad I got to see it both as it is and as it was.

Burgos Cathedral

Burgos has one of the most impressive Gothic cathedrals in Spain, or anywhere, for that matter. The bulk of the Cathedral was built between 1221 and 1300, with some major additions in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. It is a perfect example of French Gothic architecture in its purest form.

The Cathedral is in very good overall condition, having undergone some great recent renovations. Externally it is in better shape than the Cathedral of Toledo, which has some pretty deteriorated statues. All in all, this is an incredible church.

The problem with these churches, from my perspective, is that as living religious centers, they undergo extensive reconstructions which often obscure the historical nature of the buildings. Often the renovations are very consciously ideological, for example the transfer of the bodies of El Cid and his wife Jimena to the Cathedral in 1919. Sure, it was neat to visit the grave of Castilla's most famous knight, but how much more interesting would it be in its proper context (the Monastery of Silos, outside the city)?

My historical quibbles aside, this Cathedral is a massive, spectacular pile. It is without a doubt the single most impressive thing I have seen during my time in Spain. Just the detail of the Stations of the Cross in the stained-glass in the Sarmatel door rosette is fantastic (dates to 1240).

Santa Maria la Real de Las Huelgas

Las Huelgas is a very interesting Cistercian convent (nuns) founded by Alfonso VIII (the king I study) and his wife, Eleanor. Eleanor was the daughter of the King of England, Henry II, and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine. Henry and Eleanor senior patronized the monastery of Fontevrault in Chinon (France) as a sort of spiritual home and royal pantheon. The younger Eleanor kept in contact with her mother's court in southern France, and imported many people and ideas from her illustrious parents. Thus it is not surprising that around 1180, the new royal couple of Castilla founded there own version of Fontevrault.

Las Huelgas, and the city of Burgos, were the favored residence of Alfonso's court, which, do to the expediencies of ruling a large kingdom, was always on the move. Still, the royal family spent lots of time in Las Huelgas. From 1211, with the death of Fernando, Alfonso's oldest son, the Monastery became the royal pantheon. Alfonso and Eleanor both died in October of 1214, and lie together in a massive double coffin in the center of the church. All of their descendents for two generations lie there as well, with the exceptions of Fernando III and Alfonso X, who chose to be buried in Sevilla, which they conquered from the Muslims in the middle of the thirteenth century.

So, like Santa Maria de Huerta, Las Huelgas was something of a historical pilgrimege site for me. I almost did not make it, as my train arrived late in Burgos, and I got to the Monastery with barely an hour until closing time.

Unfortunately, Las Huelgas can only be visited in guided tours, and photography is strictly forbidden inside. I was able to visit the royal tombs, but only for a few minutes, as our very pregnant and very ignorant tour guide whisked us through the Monastery. So while I did get to see everything, I did not get to take pictures or really study the details.

I was able to spend a little extra time in the museum at the end of the tour, which preserves a fairly extensive set of thirteenth century royal clothing. The provenance of this collection is worth describing. In the early nineteenth century, much of Spain was occupied by Napoleonic troops. The French, fired by the spirit of the French Revolution, eagerly wrecked any and all Church property they came across, both at home and abroad. Burgos was the northern headquarters for the French Peninsular forces, and so Las Huelgas was badly desecrated. The royal tombs were all kicked over, and the corpses stacked in a corner. When Wellington kicked the French out of Burgos in 1812, the slow process of fixing the Monastery began. The nuns replaced all the royal bodies in their coffins (or new ones, if the old ones were too damaged), carefully wrapping each corpse in new linens. They kept their old clothes. So suddenly Las Huelgas had a large collection of thirteenth century royal garb, which eventually ended up in their museum. It is great stuff, too. Who would have guessed that Prince Fernando, who by all accounts wanted to be a crusader, would have been buried in a coif decorated with Arabic wrtiting? Or that his sister Berenguela, mother to San Fernando and aunt to Saint Louis of France, would have rested her dead head on a pillow bearing verses from the Qur'an? Great stuff...

Trip to Burgos

On Sunday I went to Burgos, one of the most important cities in northern Castilla. I had intended this to be part of my grand tour of the north, but was thwarted, as I mentioned earlier, by a sudden run on rental cars. So I had to resort to the train.

Despite buying my ticket on Saturday, I was unable to secure a seat on the high-speed line to Burgos, and so had to settle for the Regional Express. It was supposed take four hours to travel the 300 or so kilometers between Madrid and Burgos, but the train actually got there about thirty minutes late.

My time in Burgos was quite pleasant, and will be discussed in detail in subsequent posts. Unfortunately, my travel difficulties continued. My Rick Steve’s guide said that the Burgos train station was very close to the center of the city. I thought this was odd, as my earlier taxi-ride to the Monastery of Las Huelgas took some time. I decided, while walking to the train station, that the driver must have taken advantage of my ignorance of the city’s geography to get a larger fare.

It was at that point that I arrived at the train station, which had been closed and abandoned since 2005. I looked around, figuring that the new station must be very close by, since my brand new 2009 Rick Steve’s could not possibly have made such a critical mistake. Unfortunately, all I could see were empty streets and abandoned warehouses, and the 25 minutes until my train departed for Madrid slowly ticking away. Luckily a man on a bike happened to pass by, and noticed my confused look. He informed me that I needed to get to the new station, about 5 miles away on the other side of town. I ran to the nearest busy street, and stumbled upon a taxi right away. The driver laughed at me, but drove like a madman to ensure that I got to the correct train station on time.

My return trip was on a “Talgo” train, which must have been a high-end Renfe vehicle in 1990 or so. This weird, old, slow diesel train took me on a direct trip to Madrid, with no stops. Somehow, unfortunately, it took nearly as long as my outward-bound trip, which made nearly a dozen stops. For some reason the old Talgo could not seem to make much more than 60 miles per hour, and was far too often going far too much slower than that. In total, I was on the train for eight hours for only seven hours in Burgos.

The Monastery of Santa Maria de Huerta

The Monastery of Santa Maria de Huerta, the object of all my 4th of July adventures, is an incredible pile of Cistercian architecture. The monastery was founded in the first half of the twelfth century, and quickly grew to one of the largest houses in Spain.

Strategic donations from the royal family, especially Alfonso VII and Alfonso VIII, along with several noble families of the province of Soria, allowed the Monastery to engage in quite a building program during the later twelfth and early thirteenth century. The original church was expanded into a massive externally Romanesque but internally Gothic structure. A beautiful cloister was added, complete with a refectory large enough to simultaneously feed about 300 monks (it is now down to 20). A major wing was also added for the lay-brothers.

The lay-brothers were an interesting Cistercian institution: these men, not full monks, lived at the monastery and undertook all of the physical labor, especially construction and farming. They did not take part in the daily prayers or religious observances of the monks, except for morning mass. Even then, they were physically separated from the monks by the choir screen. Essentially they did all of the Monastery’s heavy-lifting, without getting to fully partake in the religious life which they sought.
This Monastery is of particular interest to me because it houses the tomb of Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada, archbishop of Toledo from 1209-1247, and impresario of the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212. Having read several hundred pages of the man’s extensive historical writings, and having studied the events of his life in detail, a pilgrimage to his tomb seemed fitting. The good Archbishop managed to not be buried in the Cathedral of Toledo, which he founded, because he died in France, while returning from a visit to Rome. He was mummified in Marseilles, and shipped back to Castilla, and dropped off at the first major church willing to take responsibility for him, namely Santa Maria de Huerta. The Canons of the Cathedral of Toledo were mad at their Archbishop over a whole series of nasty but petty disputes, and decided not to pay to have him shipped home. The Cistercians of Santa Maria were happy to have such a famous corpse, and so put him in the corner of their church. There he lay, largely forgotten, until the eighteenth century, when Spanish historians began looking around for this important medieval character. Being buried in an obscure place (which is definitely what Santa Maria became during the 1500s, as the importance of the Cistercian Order faded) worked out well for the preservation of Rodrigo’s tomb: he was undisturbed by the French, who looted many an important grave during the Napoleonic Wars. He was also ignored by the anarchists during the Civil War, who smashed many a clerical grave. He was not, however, ignored by the Church and interested historians. His grave has been open a total of five times, as successive generations decided to satisfy their morbid curiosity. Finally, after an extensive photo shoot in the 1940s (and the removal of most of his clothing to a museum), the monks reburied him in their main altar, leaving his well-trafficked medieval coffin in its original corner. There he lies, beneath a rather flattering sixteenth century mural of his role in the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa.

Edit: Today, in the Biblioteca Nacional I was reading through a late thirteenth century copy of Rodrigo Ximenez de Rada's historical writings. Inside the back cover, I found this written in a more modern (1500s?) handwriting: "Este Santo Arzobispo esta sepultado en el monasterio de Huerta cerca de Medinaceli, en su sepultura esta este lettero: Mater Navarra, Nutrix Castilla, Schola Pahrisius, Sedes Toletus, Ortus Mausoleum, Requies Caelum". Awesome. I assume that epitaph must have been on the original lid of his coffin (that one isnt the original).

Visitng Arcos de Jalón and Santa Maria de Huerta

On Saturday I visited Santa Maria de Huerta, a large Cistercian monastery in the province of Soria, close to the old frontier between Castilla and Aragón.

My original plan was to rent a car, and visit the towns of Soria and Sigüenza as well, both of which have sites of some significance to my research. Alas, it was not to be. It seems that the Spaniards, to get a jump on the usual August holidays, actually start going on vacation in droves in early July, and so there was no rental car to be had in Madrid (for anything approaching a reasonable price). So it was back to Renfe. I had avoided taking this trip earlier because the published train schedule looked dicey. Basically I had to change trains in a small town called Arcos de Jálon (left) in order to make it to the monastey and village of Santa Maria de Huerta. I was entirely correct in my skeptical approach to this train trip, but for the wrong reason: there was plenty of time to change trains, but there was no return train to Arcos. Apparently the schedule changed in June, and the Renfe website was the last to know.

I overcame this unforseen inconvenience, but not without some problems. The man at the train station in Arcos clued me in when I bought my ticket for Santa Maria de Huerta, and suggested I call a taxi and arrange a pickup ahead of time. He gave me a number to a guy who said he thought there would be no problem picking me up.

So I took the train to Santa Maria de Huerta, which it turns out was barely five miles from Arcos. I arrived at 1pm, and the monastery closed for the siesta at 1:15. With three hours to kill, I decided to walk around the village surrounding the Monastery. That only took about fifteen minutes, as the inhabited parts of the village are smaller than the monastery precinct. There was a considerable number of very abandoned houses (empty for over 50 years), and it appears that the village today is about one-third of its original size. There is literally nothing there: a very small grocery store, two restaurants, an out-of-business hotel, and a bar.

I decided to treat my self to a somewhat expensive lunch at the nicer of the two restaurants. I had a great meal full of vegetables which the proprietor assured me were from his or his family's gardens. He kept reminding me that Huerta means both orchard and market-garden. The village is aptly named, as the only thing that seemed to make life possible in this particularly hot and dusty part of Castilla was the stream and surrounding wetlands, which fed the village's irrigation ditches. The restaurateur also wildly exaggerated about the history of the Monastery, not knowing, of course, that I was certainly more educated about it than the average tourist he sees.

I spent the rest of my waiting period sitting by the small stream watching the village's two geese swin about in the small stream and trying to guesstimate the distance back to Arcos, should a problem arise with my taxi. This line of thinking made me decide to call the guy to confirm my ride... good idea, as it turns out. Jose informed me that he did not think he could make it all the way out to Santa Maria de Huerta because he had to get home earlier than he thought. Faced with the possibility of having to skip the monastery and hike back to Arcos in time for my 7pm train, I decided to ask around town to see if anyone had any suggestions. Luckily the first person I talked to, the lady at the bar, told me that Jose was a fool, but Miguel Angél, who also owned a "cab" would be happy to pick me up. I called my new driver, who sounded drunk, made arrangements, and headed to the monastery.

After an hour and a half of interesting Cistercian history (to be discussed in my next post), I waited by the main gate for my taxi. A gold (not bronze, gold) Chevy Impala pulled up a minute or two later, and Miguel Angél and I immediately recognized each other since nothing else was moving in the entire village. On the quick drive back to Arcos, he explained to me that he was retired, owned a car, and like to drive around, have some beers, and meet people, so he became an unofficial cabby. We got back to Arcos in five minutes, giving me almost an hour to kill before the train back to Madrid. I went into the bar next to the station, and was not surprised to see Miguel Angél working on his next beer. He very quickly bought me a beer as well, and proceeded to harrangue me about what he did and did not like about the Tour de France, which was on the TV. Javi, the bar-tender, bought me my next beer, as an excuse to have another himself. Thanks to two old drunken townies, my trip was not only salvaged from my transportation nightmare, but actually ended on a very pleasant note.