Cáceres Cathedral: A Late Gothic Co-Cathedral in Spain
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History
Cáceres Cathedral, formally the Concatedral of Santa María, is a historic church in Cáceres, Spain, whose present building was constructed mainly between the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries in the Late Gothic style. It developed from the principal of the city’s four medieval parish churches after the Christian reconquest of Cáceres, and later received important Renaissance additions. In 1957, Santa María became a co-cathedral, sharing the seat of the Diocese of Coria-Cáceres with Coria Cathedral.
Medieval Parish Church
The church’s original dedication was the Assumption of Mary, although it became widely known as Santa María la Mayor, a name that expressed its primacy among Cáceres’s parish churches. The other medieval parish centers were San Mateo, Santiago, and San Juan. The church probably originated after the Christian reconquest of Cáceres in the thirteenth century. Romanesque elements may belong to that century, while other Gothic work may date from the fourteenth. A proposed reconstruction of an earlier, possibly unfinished building has been placed in 1171–1180 or, more plausibly, after the reconquest of 1229, but the foundation and early building sequence remain uncertain.
Santa María and San Mateo served as the two parish centers within the walled town. The principal bell of Santa María defined the parish’s “bell lands”, public common land extending from the Guadiloba River to the Camellas Pass and from the Sierra de la Mosca to the Sierrilla. This territory gave the parish a role that reached beyond the church itself, linking worship with the organization of communal land and local religious life.
Late Gothic Construction and Renaissance Expansion
The present church took shape principally from the late fifteenth century through the early sixteenth century. Its main structural phase was probably finished by the middle of the sixteenth century, although the exact completion date is unknown. The building retained traces of earlier Romanesque and Gothic work while adopting the complex ribbed vaults and pointed arches associated with Late Gothic architecture.
The sixteenth century brought a major Renaissance campaign. The principal altarpiece was produced between 1547 and 1551, while the bell tower was completed during the 1550s. The tower was designed by Pedro de Ibarra and built under the direction of Sancho Ortiz and Pedro de Marquina. Marquina also supervised the dismantling and reconstruction of the high choir so that it could be adapted to the new tower. The tower cost 470,000 maravedís, and the installed principal altarpiece cost 635,650 maravedís. The parish’s oldest surviving baptismal registers begin in 1545.
Later seventeenth- and eighteenth-century changes concentrated mainly on furnishings, sculptures, and other secondary features. Four smaller Baroque altarpieces and the organ were added in the eighteenth century. The parish was then an important cultural and economic institution in Cáceres. Six brotherhoods were based in the church, and five more were associated with dependent buildings, including the hermitages of Santa Ana, San Marcos, and Nuestra Señora de la Paz, the Sanctuary of the Mountain, and the chapel of the Sancti Spíritus Hospital. Eleven brotherhoods were therefore connected with the parish. Their income included rents from rural and urban properties and charges on land belonging to others.
Brotherhoods, Devotion, and Parish Change
The nineteenth-century confiscation of ecclesiastical property deprived the parish of most of its real estate and nearly all its brotherhoods. Santa Ana was abandoned around 1805, while the hermitage of San Marquino became ruinous after damage during the Napoleonic invasion. The former Sancti Spíritus Hospital became Cáceres’s first Civil Guard barracks. Nuestra Señora de la Paz survived, although its brotherhood was reorganized as a noble mayordomía, a religious stewardship association, in 1882.
The brotherhood connected with the Mountain sanctuary continued without interruption and received the title of royal brotherhood from Queen Isabella II in 1859. The Brotherhood of the Holy Christ of Santa María survived until 1879, while devotion to the Black Christ developed into one of Cáceres’s principal religious traditions. Founded in 1490, the Brotherhood of the Black Christ remains responsible for the image’s custody and organizes its celebrated Holy Week procession.
The festival of Saint George continued after the dissolution of its brotherhood because neighborhood ceremonies remained established. These included bonfires made with old furniture and traditional street battles involving the throwing of figs. From 1917, the city council formally organized the celebration under the banner of Saint George.
In 1795, the parish priest of Santa María la Mayor became archpriest of the Cáceres archpriesthood, an administrative subdivision of the Diocese of Coria. In 1889, the reopened hermitage of Santa Gertrudis became a school-home for poor girls and the origin of the present San José school. Although historically associated with San Juan, it was then placed under Santa María. Parish priest José Roldán briefly rehabilitated San Marquino in the early twentieth century and restored religious celebrations there, but the hermitage was soon abandoned again.
The Virgin of the Mountain was canonically crowned on 12 October 1924. This led in 1928 to the establishment of a novena during which the image was periodically brought from the Mountain sanctuary to Santa María. The church thus continued to connect parish worship with pilgrimage and wider devotional practice.
Conservation, War, and Co-Cathedral Status
Archaeologist and art historian José Ramón Mélida documented the church’s history and artistic heritage in his monumental catalogue of Cáceres, published in 1924. His work, together with cooperation between the Diocese of Coria and the Monument Commission, encouraged restrictions on alterations to those necessary to protect the building. During this period, the organ was moved from the nave to the choir.
By decree of 3 June 1931, the church was declared a Spanish Historic-Artistic Monument, a legal status now known as an Asset of Cultural Interest. In 1986, it became part of the Old Town of Cáceres UNESCO World Heritage property, whose inscription recognizes the cultural value of the historic walled city.
In 1935, the enlargement of Santa María Square removed an electrical transformer and a storehouse belonging to the Palace of the Duke of Valencia. José María de Narváez, Duke of Valencia, supported the work by relinquishing compensation and donating the land, avoiding expropriation.
During the Spanish Civil War, the conflict between the Republican and Nationalist sides that lasted from 1936 to 1939, General Francisco Franco attended Mass at Santa María on 6 September 1936. Bishop Francisco Barbado Viejo celebrated the service. On 23 July 1937, Republican aircraft bombed Cáceres, particularly affecting Santa María Square and the church. Nearby buildings housed the civil government and a militia barracks, giving the area possible military significance.
The bombing caused extensive casualties inside the church but did not damage its main structure. Shrapnel holes remain visible in the walls. The Franco dictatorship deliberately preserved them for propaganda purposes and placed a relief bearing the name José Antonio beside several of them. Postwar conservation included a temporary sacristy in the interior patio in 1946 and urgent roof repairs in 1950. José Manuel González Valcárcel redesigned the electrical installation in 1956 and also designed artistic lighting for the square in 1955 and improvements to its paving in 1956.
Santa María became a co-cathedral of the Diocese of Coria-Cáceres in 1957. A co-cathedral is a cathedral that shares a diocese’s seat with another cathedral. The Chapel of the Holy Sacrament was built in 1967–1968 to adapt the former parish church to its new function, with much of the financing provided by Bishop Manuel Llopis Ivorra. Bishop Jesús Domínguez Gómez was buried in the Chapel of the Blázquez in 1990. Since the nineteenth century, burials inside the church have been permitted only in exceptional cases.
Remains
Setting, Exterior, and Plan
Cáceres Cathedral stands on the eastern side of Santa María Square in the historic walled center of Cáceres. The square separates it from the Ovando, Episcopal, Mayoralgo, and Duchess of Valencia palaces. Amargura Street lies to the north, and the Palace of Carvajal stands beyond it. Tiendas Street begins near the church’s northern corner and leads toward the Espaderos Tower.
The cathedral occupies a cadastral plot of 1,456 square meters, including 1,304 square meters for the church and the remainder for an interior patio. The wider city block covers approximately three-quarters of a hectare and also contains the Provincial Council Palace and the Golfines de Abajo Palace. The cathedral is built entirely from granite ashlar, regularly cut stone blocks. Its exterior is mainly Late Gothic, with Romanesque traces and Renaissance additions.
The church has an unusual northeast orientation rather than the customary eastward alignment. Its apse points toward the Palace of Carvajal, the side facing the square is the Gospel side, or left side when facing the altar, and the main front faces southwest. The reason for this orientation is unknown. A local tradition gives it a symbolic meaning, associating the former Muslim lands of al-Andalus with western darkness and Castile with eastern light.
Gothic Portals
Two principal Gothic portals open onto the exterior. The Gospel portal, opposite the Episcopal Palace, has a pointed arch with finely molded archivolts, or bands following the curve of the arch, and a plain tympanum. Its double wooden door is divided by a central mullion carrying a corbel that supports a Gothic Virgin and Child. The portal at the foot of the church is simpler, with a single door set within a deeply recessed pointed arch. Its jamb capitals contain animal and vegetal figures. Both portals project from the wall and have cornices supported by carved corbels.
The exterior walls are strengthened by substantial buttresses and pierced by round-arched and pointed windows. A large circular window dominates the main front. Three upper windows on the Gospel wall have an unusual arrangement because the central opening is interrupted by the projecting portal structure.
Interior Structure
The interior follows a rectangular plan and ends in a semi-polygonal apse, the polygonal termination containing the main altar. Three aisles of five bays are divided by cruciform piers with Gothic bases. Their capitals vary from plain moldings to undulating Renaissance bands that form volutes. The nave arcades are pointed, while the outer longitudinal arches and the arches separating the bays are semicircular.
The central nave rises above the side aisles and has small upper openings that illuminate the lateral windows. Its bays are covered by tierceron vaults, ribbed vaults with secondary ribs branching from the main ribs. The main chapel and the two flanking chapels have star vaults. The seven sides of the semi-polygonal apse are distributed around the three aisles, creating two oblique lateral apses and a regular central apse. An additional tierceron bay links the central nave with the star vault of the main chapel.
Choir and Bell Tower
High Choir
The high choir occupies the final bay of the central nave. A depressed arch encloses it, and a tierceron-vaulted sub-choir supports it from below. The baptistery lies beside the choir on the Epistle side, or right side when facing the altar, while the bell tower stands on the Gospel side. The choir also contains the large Baroque organ made in 1703 by Manuel de la Viña. Its present appearance reflects modernization by Orgamusik of Alcobendas in 1973. The instrument has twenty-seven stops, two keyboards, and a pedalboard.
Renaissance Tower
The Renaissance bell tower is a tall rectangular ashlar structure divided into three sections by horizontal moldings. Square openings serve as windows, while the upper section has large semicircular openings for the bells. Four flameros, flame-shaped ornamental pinnacles, crown its corners.
The choir and tower share an interior entrance with a Renaissance portal adapted by Pedro de Ibarra from a design by Sebastiano Serlio, the Italian Renaissance architect and architectural theorist. A spiral staircase follows the tower’s outer corner and receives light through five small openings on the south side. The staircase and bell chamber are both vaulted. Five bells occupy the chamber. The largest, facing the Plaza Mayor, was cast in 1909 by Constantino de Linares Ortiz of Carabanchel Bajo. It measures 112 centimeters in diameter and weighs 813 kilograms. The southern bell above the main front was cast in 1892 by Campanas Rivera of Montehermoso.
Chapels, Patio, and Sacristy
Epistle-Side Chapels
The Epistle side has a more irregular plan than the main front and Gospel side. Its third historical portal is Gothic and pointed, with fluted pilasters, capitals decorated with fig-leaf festoons, molded archivolts, and a molded rectangular frame. It now opens into a lateral chapel rather than directly into the patio.
The Chapel of the Holy Sacrament, also called the Chapel of the Tabernacle, projects into the patio as a small rectangular nave. Designed by Joaquín Silos in 1967–1968, it has a ribbed vault and contains an eighteenth-century altarpiece. Bishop Manuel Llopis Ivorra is buried beside its altar.
The Chapel of the Blázquez lies beside the presbytery. Two brothers from Cáceres who were canons of Coria and Plasencia cathedrals funded it in the sixteenth century. A Mayoralgo tomb was later transferred there. In 1989, a crypt 170 centimeters deep was found beneath the chapel, containing human remains associated with the Blázquez and Ovando families.
The Blázquez Chapel is also known as the Chapel of the Holy Christ because it houses the Black Christ of Cáceres, a fourteenth-century Gothic crucifix. The image is carved from iroko. A prevailing hypothesis attributes an African origin to it because of the material and facial and physical features associated with Ethiopia, although its provenance is undocumented.
The Chapel of Saint Michael, opposite the Blázquez Chapel, was built in the mid-sixteenth century by the Carvajal family as a funerary chapel beside their palace. It contains an ornate iron grille decorated with heraldic shields and an eighteenth-century Baroque altarpiece. The small Chapels of Saint John and Saint Lawrence beside the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament were intended respectively for the Becerra and Ulloa families. Other shallow recesses on the Gospel wall are locally regarded as chapels, including the fifteenth-century Chapel of Saint Anne, a large arch for the Espadero family, and two pointed arches forming the Figueroa Saavedra funerary monument.
Interior Patio
An irregular interior patio separates the church from the Provincial Council Palace. It contains two Gothic funerary arches with worn marble inscriptions. One commemorates Michael Iohannis and his descendants and bears the date 1316. The other commemorates Ioannes, his first wife, son, and nephew. Noble coats of arms appear on the monuments.
The patio may preserve the development of a medieval cloister, although that interpretation remains hypothetical. It served as a cemetery until 1820, principally for common people, while nobles and clergy were buried inside the church. Until the twentieth century, the patio was reached from Amargura Street through a grille.
Sacristy
The sacristy lies beside the apse on the Epistle side. Its 1527 Plateresque entrance, made by Alonso de Torralba, is a richly ornamented semicircular arch crowned by a niche containing a statue of Saint Francis. The interior has tierceron vaulting.
The sacristy contains paintings displayed mainly as oils on canvas. Seventeenth-century works include the penitent Saint Jerome, the Crucifixion with the Apostle John, and Saint John. Eighteenth-century paintings show Christ Carrying the Cross and Saint Ignatius with two angels. The 1919 Entombment of Christ was donated by the local painter Pedro Campón. A fragment of a sixteenth-century mural depicting the Lamentation over the Dead Christ survives in the fourth bay on the Gospel side.
Its liturgical collection includes silver and gilded silver objects dating from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. These comprise a decorated tray, seven silver chalices and one gilded-bronze chalice, two candelabra, four candlesticks, two scepters and two detached scepter heads, two ciboria, two processional crosses, two monstrances, a thurible, a boat-shaped incense vessel, a pyx, a pax, three altar cards, and two cruets. The sacristy also contains an eighteenth-century Rococo wooden cabinet with rocaille decoration, diocesan documents including papal bulls, choral music, and the cathedral’s historical lectern.
Altarpieces, Images, and Liturgical Furnishings
Altarpieces and Sculptures
The principal altarpiece is a Plateresque work made between 1547 and 1551 by Diego Guillén Ferrant and Roque Balduque. Carved from unpainted Flanders pine and cedar, it has three tiers and five vertical divisions. High-relief sculpture and full-length apostolic figures fill its architectural framework. The central division presents themes connected with the Virgin, the infancy of Christ, and the Passion, with the Assumption of the Virgin as its principal sculpture.
Four smaller Baroque altarpieces from the eighteenth century are dedicated to Saint Louis, Saint John the Baptist, Saint Lawrence, and Saint Michael. The Saint Michael altarpiece has always housed the image of that saint. The similar altarpieces of Saint John the Baptist, Saint Lawrence, and Saint Michael were made by Diego Martín Durán.
The church houses a late-fifteenth-century image of the Virgin Mary and a sixteenth-century Calvary group formerly attached to the principal altarpiece. Eighteenth-century polychrome images represent Saints Lawrence and Raymond Nonnatus, while a seventeenth-century polychrome Saint John the Baptist stands in the baptistery.
Cross, Pulpit, and Baptismal Font
The processional cross of Santa María is a gilded-silver work with enamel, made by the silversmith Juan de Pedraza in 1574–1575. Its central knot forms a small temple with Composite-order columns, four pediments, and a dome from which the cross rises. Blue and white enamel decorates its convex projections.
A fifteenth-century Gothic iron pulpit, originally from the former convent of Santa María de Jesús, now stands ornamentally on a pedestal in the baptistery. Its cylindrical body has square bars, pinnacles, two tiers of arches, foliage, openwork, and tracery. A sixteenth-century Plateresque support was added for a lectern or crucifix.
Two sixteenth-century holy-water basins of alabaster and marble stand on the Gospel side. One has vegetal ornament, while the other bears shields. The marble baptismal font was carved in Estremoz as a hemispherical bowl on a pedestal and installed in 1552 by the stonemason Pedro Gómez.
Funerary, Heraldic, and Exterior Decoration
The cathedral contains extensive funerary and heraldic material. Sixteenth-century wall tombs carry family shields and reliefs, and 150 floor slabs were catalogued in 2007. The best-known tomb belongs to Francisco de Godoy, a sixteenth-century Cáceres nobleman who participated in the foundation of Lima and supported the conquest of the Inca Empire. He was buried in the sacristy.
Three heraldic shields appear on the exterior apse, while the arms of the Orellana family occupy a prominent position above the main portal. Two large medallions on the second section of the tower represent the Virgin’s lily. A statue of Saint Peter of Alcántara, made in 1954 by Enrique Pérez Comendador, stands against the tower’s outer base. The corbel of the Gospel portal carries a Gothic-style Virgin and Child made in the 1960s by Pepe de Arganda and carved from Atarfe stone. The corbel itself is older and may have supported a lost statue.
Five pairs of zoomorphic gargoyles project from the Gospel-side buttresses. The upper gargoyles represent lions guarding the sacred building, while the lower row, including a sixth gargoyle beside the tower, represents different sins. Eight further gargoyles on the tower’s upper edges form imagery of condemnation.
Among the archivolts of the main portal is a relief of an ithyphallic hare, traditionally interpreted as an exhortation to procreation within Christian values. Two low zoomorphic reliefs, apparently lions, look downward from the buttress marking the boundary between Santa María Square and Tiendas Street.
Five engraved crosses appear on the exterior stonework. These include a swastika on the apse facing the Palace of Carvajal, another swastika and two Latin crosses on the Gospel wall, and a Greek cross beside the main portal. One Latin cross rests on a straight base, while the other stands on a triangle interpreted as a representation of Calvary.
