The Builders Did Not Know The Uses To Which Their Work Would Descend...
Oh, the magnificent cathedral in Toledo, Spain!
As I enter the great church, I am thinking of the scene near the end of Brideshead Revisited, when Charles Ryder steps into the house that holds so many memories for him. It is at this moment that he makes his way to a place he knows well, its small Catholic Chapel. There, he reflects on the life of the great manor…
“The builders did not know the uses to which their work would descend; they made a new house with the stones of the old castle; year by year, generation after generation, they enriched and extended it; year by year the great harvest of timber in the park grew to ripeness; until, in sudden frost, came the age of Hooper; the place was desolate and the work all brought to nothing; Quomodo sedet sola civitas. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
‘And yet,’ I thought that is not the last word; it is not even an apt word.
‘Something quite remote from anything the builders intended, has come out of their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played; something none of us thought about at the time; a small red flame - a beaten-copper lamp of deplorable design relit before the beaten-copper doors of a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw put out; that flame burns again for other soldiers, far from home, farther, in heart, than Acre or Jerusalem. It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians, and there I found it this morning, burning anew among the old stones.”
Like Brideshead, the Cathedral of Toledo is enormous. It is a sprawling edifice sitting in the middle of the ancient city. Along with the city's Alcázar (fortress), it dominates the town's skyline.
Toledo is a very old place. In the year 192 BC, the Romans conquered this city that strategically sits upon a rocky bluff, overlooking a gorge, surrounded below by the River Tagus. It is said the first Bishop of Toledo, built the initial church on the Cathedral's location in the first century AD. A successor church was constructed there by Toledo’s Visigothic rulers in the sixth century.
The inscription of the pillar from the 6th century church read…
“In the name of the Lord, the Church of Saint Mary was consecrated as Catholic, the first day of the ides of April, in the joyful first year of the reign of our most glorious king Flavius Reccared, 13 of April 587.”
Soon after this church was put up, the Moors overran the city and tore it down. It was replaced with a mosque. After some three hundred and fifty years of Islamic rule, the city was retaken by the Catholic King Alfonso VI in 1085. Initially, the mosque was converted to a Catholic Church, and then around the year 1225, the first stone was laid for the enormous church we see today.
There are hundreds of details in the cathedral on which one could focus, but on my most recent visit I decided to focus on the builders. To find them, I made way to the Chapter House Chapel (Sala Capitular). Recently, it has been beautifully restored; it’s ceilings and frescoes sparkle.
Around the interior walls of the room are portraits of the builders. These one hundred twenty Bishops, Archbishops, and Cardinals of Toledo were powerful men, the primates of Spain. Taken together, they have been the ecclesiastical rulers of the country for the last 2,000 years.
There are more…
I go to the beginning. I find the painting of Toledo’s first bishop, St. Eugenius. He is listed as starting there in the year 67 AD.
Following the portraits, I come to one I know well, Cardinal Enrique Pla y Deniel. He died in 1968, and is a prominent charachter in my first two books.
Finally, five places to the right of Cardinal Pla y Daniel, there is a spot waiting for the current Archbishop of Toledo, Francisco Cerro Chaves. Most certainly, his time will come too.
It is a sobering tour. I leave the little chapel and then my eyes are drawn upwards…towards heaven. High above the cathedral floor, hanging from the tall vaulted ceilings, red “galeros” float. Below them rests the tombs of the cardinals who wore these red hats.
While the paintings in the little chapel highlight the power of the Church’s continuity, it is the galeros that move me. They signify our final floating flight to eternity. Even the most powerful men must make this journey.
Truly, the builders did not know the uses to which their work would descend…