Cathedral of Zamora: A Romanesque Cathedral in Spain
Site at a Glance
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- 4.5
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- Medium
- Country
- Spain
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Crown of Castile, Kingdom of León, Spanish
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Cathedral
On this page16 sections
History
The Cathedral of Zamora is a Catholic cathedral in Zamora, Spain, dedicated to the Saviour and serving as the seat of the Diocese of Zamora. Built principally in the 12th century in the Romanesque period, it is regarded as the oldest and smallest of the eleven cathedrals in Castile and León and is a major example of Duero Romanesque architecture.
Foundation and episcopal development
Zamora’s recovery and repopulation under Alfonso III, king of Asturias and León, in 893 created the setting for renewed ecclesiastical development. A bishopric was established in 901. The city was later conquered and destroyed by Almanzor in 986. Almanzor was the leading military commander and de facto ruler of al-Andalus, the Muslim-ruled territories of the Iberian Peninsula. Subsequent repopulation and growth under Fernando I, Alfonso VI, and Alfonso VII increased the need for a cathedral suited to the city’s status.
In 1120 Zamora received its own permanent episcopal seat under Bernardo of Sahagún, a monk of Sahagún and cantor of Toledo. The earlier church of San Salvador, probably located on the site of the present cathedral, was considered inadequate. In 1135 Alfonso VII donated the church of Santo Tomás for temporary cathedral use while a more suitable building was developed.
Construction was already under way at least at foundation level in 1139, although its exact beginning remains uncertain. Important bequests to the cathedral are recorded between 1150 and 1160, while documentation from 1169 confirms the existence of a Romanesque church. Construction is traditionally placed between 1151 and 1174, but the cathedral developed through successive phases rather than in a single campaign.
Romanesque construction
By Bernardo’s death, the apse, southern nave, and southern portal had been completed. His successor, Bishop Esteban, consecrated the cathedral in 1174, although building continued under Bishop Guillermo between 1176 and 1192. The principal structure was completed by 1204. The cloister and tower were added during the first third of the 13th century.
The cathedral probably rose on the site of San Salvador beside Zamora’s castle. Its construction was attributed to Bishop Esteban and supported by Alfonso VII of León and his sister, Infanta-Queen Sancha Raimúndez. The principal architect and master builder remains unidentified. He has been proposed as a foreign, probably French, master brought by Bernardo and familiar with architectural developments associated with Norman Sicily, but he cannot securely be identified with the documented builders Guillermo maçonerius, Munendo pedreyo, or Magister Oddo. His influence extended to Romanesque buildings in Toro, Salamanca, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Benavente. The master Fruchel probably participated in later phases, and his presence is documented between 1182 and 1204.
The rapid construction produced a notably coherent building with restrained decoration and strong Cistercian tendencies. The Cistercians were a reform branch of Western monasticism that emphasized stricter observance and relatively restrained architectural decoration. The original design followed classical Burgundian models, while later changes to the vaulting introduced Cistercian and eastern influences. The early ribbed vaults of the central nave were among the earliest of their kind in Spain and anticipated Gothic architecture.
Later chapels, furnishings, and collections
The Chapel of Saint Bernard was founded in the mid-14th century by Bishop Alfonso Fernández of Valencia as a private burial chapel. The bishop died in 1365 and was buried there. On 10 January 1421, the cathedral chapter granted the chapel’s patronage to Juan de Valencia, Marshal of Castile and nephew of the founder.
A choir existed in the cathedral from the early 13th century, and two choirs are recorded from 1389. The present choir was renewed during the episcopate of Diego Meléndez de Valdés, between 1494 and 1506. Juan of Brussels was selected to design and execute it with help from workshop members, carpenters, and other craftsmen. It served the liturgical offices of the canons and clerical community. Its facing sections supported the singing of the Liturgy of the Hours, and cathedral processions began or ended there. Its arrangement expressed a hierarchy headed by the bishop, followed by dignitaries, canons, and other clergy.
Four principal high altarpieces successively served the cathedral. The original Romanesque altarpiece was replaced by a Hispano-Flemish Gothic altarpiece painted by Fernando Gallego and his workshop between 1490 and 1494. It was sold in 1715 to the parish of Arcenillas for 3,240 reales and quantities of grain. Gallego had previously painted an altarpiece for the Chapel of Saint Ildefonsus in the late 1470s. That work remains in the cathedral and is considered the earliest surviving work by the painter.
The Gallego altarpiece contained at least 35 panels. Nineteen passed to Manuel Ruiz-Zorrilla during the confiscation process. Two were donated to the diocesan bishopric in 1925 and are displayed in the Cathedral Museum. Another panel was missing from the 1897 inventory. Four of the 15 known panels were stolen on 22 November 1993 and remain unrecovered. Only three of the other 24 panels have known locations: two in the Cathedral Museum and one in the Museum of Fine Arts of Asturias. The latter, an Adoration of the Magi, was identified as coming from Arcenillas in 2005.
A Baroque high altar by the sculptor Joaquín Benito Churriguera replaced the Gothic altarpiece. The Lisbon earthquake of 1 November 1755 damaged it. It was dismantled in 1758 and apparently sold for firewood in 1759. The present high altar was designed in the Neoclassical style by Ventura Rodríguez, using as a model an altar designed by Sabatini, an Italian architect, for Segovia Cathedral.
The image known as the Christ of the Insults has been venerated in the Chapel of Saint Bernard since 1835. It was transferred there from the dissolved Monastery of Saint Jerome of Zamora during the confiscations of Mendizábal. During the Peninsular War, the conflict in which Spain and its allies fought Napoleonic France, French soldiers nearly burned the image, but Canon Martín Pérez de Tejeda rescued it.
Protection and continuing interpretation
The cathedral was declared a National Monument of Spain by royal order on 5 September 1889 and is also classified as an Asset of Cultural Interest. Its walls preserve numerous symbols and inscriptions, some of which continue to be identified. One recovered inscription concerns church possessions in places corresponding to present-day Roelos and Carbellino. The cathedral museum is housed in the cloister, and recovery work connected with the complex has helped preserve evidence of the institution’s historical possessions.
An epitaph placed on the left wall of the presbytery, the part of a church around the main altar traditionally reserved for the clergy, in 1620 or 1621 claims that Sancha Raimúndez was buried there. Documentary evidence instead places her burial in the Royal Pantheon of San Isidoro in León, where her incorrupt body is preserved. The epitaph remains part of the cathedral’s interior while illustrating the difference between a later commemorative claim and the documentary record.
Remains
The cathedral stands in the southwestern part of Zamora’s historic old town, beside the castle and near the Duero. Its plan forms a Latin cross with three aisled naves, each divided into four bays, and a relatively shallow transept, the cross-arm of a church. The building combines the heavy masonry and rounded or slightly pointed arches of Romanesque architecture with early Gothic vaulting and later Gothic additions.
Plan, vaults, and crossing tower
Naves and transept
The original eastern end had three semicircular apses, which were later replaced by the present Gothic head. Pointed barrel vaults cover the transepts, while the side aisles have groin vaults. The central nave carries a late Romanesque or early Gothic rib vault. Large pointed arches resting on massive piers connect the naves and give the interior an appearance approaching a hall church. The largely unarticulated walls are interrupted mainly by pointed windows.
The cimborrio
The crossing, where the nave and transept intersect, is crowned by a cimborrio, a tower or domed structure raised above that space. Its drum contains 16 windows and supports an internal semicircular, lobed dome and a slightly pointed outer dome covered with stone scales or shell-like tiles.
Four small corner turrets with miniature domes stand on the crossing tower’s diagonal axes. They rise above the pendentives, the triangular or curved supports that transition from the square crossing to the dome, and counteract the dome’s diagonal thrust as well as contributing to the tower’s appearance. The transverse axes end in projecting flat volumes, while the drum is decorated with stone carving, miniature arcades, and cornices.
Four small cupolas reinforce the outer corners of the tower, and four gables facing the cardinal directions help buttress the vault. The cimborrio became the cathedral’s most distinctive architectural feature and a symbol of Zamora. Its design served as a model for related “Byzantine-Leonese” crossing towers at the Old Cathedral of Salamanca, the Collegiate Church of Toro, and the chapter house of Plasencia Cathedral. Byzantine-Leonese is a modern art-historical term for Iberian crossing towers with domed forms influenced by eastern Mediterranean traditions.
Portals, tower, and cloister
Bishop’s Portal
The Bishop’s Portal is the only one of the cathedral’s three original portals to survive complete. It occupies the southern side toward the bishop’s palace and is divided into three vertical sections and two levels. Its decoration is restrained apart from the principal figurative elements. The lower level contains semicircular arcades with sculptures of Saints John and Paul on one side and the Virgin Theotokos on the other. Theotokos is a Christian title for Mary meaning “God-bearer.” Above them is a blind arcade, and three slightly pointed arches form the gabled termination over the portal.
Tower of the Saviour
The cathedral has a single square bell tower, the Tower of the Saviour, which rises 45 metres. Built in the 13th century in a Romanesque style, it probably also had a defensive function and may originally have carried battlements. Until the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, it served as the chapter’s prison.
Cloister and museum
The cloister is connected to the Cathedral Museum through covered galleries. The museum contains Flemish tapestries dating from the 15th to the 17th centuries, including scenes concerning the Trojan War, Hannibal’s campaign in Italy, and the life of Tarquinius Superbus, described as an Etruscan king of Rome. It also preserves two panels from Gallego’s former high altarpiece, Pentecost and Noli me tangere, together with a late Gothic monstrance dated 1515. A monstrance is a liturgical vessel used to display the consecrated host.
Choir and interior furnishings
Carved choir
The carved choir forms an open rectangle divided into western, northern, and southern zones. Its doors are placed at the rear to facilitate movement, and decorative stairs connect its two seating levels. Relief figures on the stairs include fantastic creatures. Individual seats are joined by pegs and knobs into a unified enclosure. Gothic elements appear in the arches of the dado, while the bishop’s seat divides the ensemble between the Dean’s Choir and the Cantor’s Choir.
The choir’s imagery brings together saints, biblical figures, and people from Christian history with pagan subjects introduced through Renaissance humanism. Animals, fantastic creatures, legendary and mythological scenes, fables, proverbs, and satirical representations of moral and social behavior appear among the reliefs. Scenes include Hercules and the Dragon of the Hesperides, a man fighting a dragon, a dragon and lion confronting each other, and a man and monkey in combat. Hercules is a hero of Greek and Roman mythology. The dragon represents evil and sin, while the lion can signify Christ and qualities including wisdom, vigilance, strength, forgiveness, and vitality.
The high choir stalls follow an ordered program based on the appearance of figures in the biblical books, including references to both the Old and New Testaments. The lower stalls contain fewer figures and depend more heavily on identifying inscriptions than on attributes. Names carved beside the figures help distinguish them.
Chapels, altar, and burials
The Chapel of Saint Bernard contains an anatomically precise statue of Jesus Christ. The cathedral also contains numerous burials, including the tomb of Doctor Grado, whose monument has carved Gothic tracery.
The present Neoclassical high altarpiece is made of marble and gilded bronze. The sanctuary also contains an iron grille, a marble altar table, and two pulpits in the Mudejar style. Mudejar architecture uses Muslim-influenced forms produced in Christian-ruled Iberia. The left wall of the presbytery carries the 17th-century epitaph concerning Sancha Raimúndez, while symbols and inscriptions remain distributed across the cathedral’s walls, including the recovered inscription concerning church possessions in Roelos and Carbellino.
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