León Cathedral

The Roman baths and the first cathedral

Remains of the thermal baths of Legio VII in the crypt of Puerta Obispo.

Originally, under the current location of the cathedral, the Legio VII Gemina had built the baths, with a size larger than the current building. Remains of the first cathedral were explored near the south facade in 1997.

During the Christian reconquest the ancient Roman baths were converted into a royal palace. King Ordoño II, who had occupied the throne of Leon in 916, defeated the Arabs in the Battle of San Esteban de Gormaz in 917.[2] As a sign of gratitude to God for victory, he gave up his palace to build the first cathedral. Under the episcopate of Fruminio II, the building was transformed into a sacred place. The tomb of Ordoño II of Leon, who died in 924, is found in the cathedral.

The temple was guarded and governed by monks of the Order of St. Benedict, and it is likely that its structure was very similar to many others existing during the Leonese Mozarabic period. Almanzor campaigned through these lands in the late 10th century, devastating the city and destroying the temples. However, damage to the building of the cathedral appears to have been rapidly addressed, since in the year 999 King Alfonso V was crowned in the church.

After the political turmoil and Moorish raids that lasted till 1067 the state of the cathedral was in extreme poverty. This would move to King Ferdinand I of León, who, after transferring the remains of San Isidoro to León, sought to restore the temple. This king achieved success in the expansion of the kingdom.

The Romanesque cathedral

With the help of Princess Teresa Urraca of Navarre, sister of the king, the construction of a second cathedral, was started, and within its architecture. It fell within the Pelayo II episcopal see. Its style was essentially Romanesque, built in brick and masonry, with three naves finished in semicircular apses, the central one dedicated to Saint Mary, as in the previous church. While the cathedral was built according to the international style, examination of what has survived of its original facade, its originally indigenous nature can be noted. There is still the use of the horseshoe arch, at least decoratively. The cathedral was consecrated on November 10, 1073 during the reign of Alfonso VI. Presumably the same masons who were building the Basilica of San Isidoro of Leon worked on it.

This cathedral remained standing until the end of the next century. When the last proprietary king of Leon, Alfonso IX, rose to the throne, the city and the kingdom witnessed major social, artistic, and cultural changes.

León Cathedral, main facade

South facade

The cathedral around 1850, with plateresque gables in the facades and the baroque dome and pinnacles in the crossing.

Reconstruction of the Western facade, approximately 1890.

Construction of the third cathedral, now Gothic in style, began circa 1205, but problems with the foundation delayed continued work until 1255 under Bishop Martín Fernández with the support of King Alfonso X of Castile and León. The design is attributed to the master Enrique, perhaps a native of France, who had previously worked on the Cathedral of Burgos. Clearly, he knew the Gothic architectural form of the Isle of France. He died in 1277 and was replaced by the Spaniard Juan Perez. In 1289, Bishop Martín Fernández was also dying when the front of the temple was already open for worship. The basic structure of the cathedral was finished soon, and in 1302 Bishop Gonzalo Osorio opened the whole church to the faithful. The cloister and the north tower were completed in the fourteenth century. The south tower was not completed until the second half of the fifteenth century.

The Cathedral of Leon, like its sister predecessor, Burgos Cathedral, follows the layout of the Reims Cathedral. Like most French cathedrals, the one of Leon is built with a geometric module based on the triangle (ad triangulum), the primary lines of which relate to the square root of 3, and to which respond all of the parts and the whole. This aspect, as with the layout, the elevations, and the decorative and symbolic repertoires, makes this cathedral an authentic trans-Pyrenee building, removed from Hispanic fashion and belonging to the purest school of French Champagne. This has earned it the epithets of being "the most French of Spanish cathedrals" or the Pulchra Leonina (the Beauty of Leon), since its formal features are related to the Gothic style of Champagne.

In addition to its layout, the Cathedral of Leon is also inspired by that of Rheims in its structure, the form of the chapels of its ambulatory (in this case polygonal), and the development of its transept. The influence of Chartres Cathedral can be seen in the western porch. The one in Leon abandons the model of Rheims Cathedral in the elevations beyond the body of the clerestory, as it is transparent there and it accommodates the technical progress achieved in the Sainte Chapelle and Amiens Cathedral.

French influence is also found in developing the chancel, where initially the choir was to be put according to their custom. Specifically Leonese is the location of the cloister, with no organic tie to the temple, the exit in the floor plan of the towers of the main facade, displaying the elevation of the buttresses of the nave, and the discontinuity of the five naves at the front end of the main area of the temple, which were reduced to three.

The problem was that much of the foundation site sits upon Roman ruins, hypocausts of the second century, hampering a good foundation for the pillars. The accumulation of moisture and water seepage caused serious inconveniences to the master builders. Besides that, most of the stones of the cathedral are of poor quality rock, a limestone, with little resistance to atmospheric agents. In addition, the subtlety of its style is a challenge to its construction materials; the numerous supports are extremely fragile, the lines are reduced to a total optimization, to such a degree that several architects of the time questioned whether such a project could remain standing. This almost unreal structure, together with the poor quality of the stone and its poor foundation, forced it to suffer constant interventions and restorations from the fifteenth century on, changing the temple into a European model for transformative intervention, restoration and conservation.

Extensive modifications and additions have been made to the Cathedral, sometimes trying to improve its stability but also to adapt it to contemporary taste, until restorations beginning in the nineteenth century tried to remove most non-Gothic elements and restore the building to its original, purely Gothic state.

In the fifteenth century, the South tower was finished, in the Flamboyant Gothic style. Also in this style was the library, currently the Chapel of Santiago, built by Juan de Badajoz el Viejo at the end of the century.

In the sixteenth century, Juan de Badajoz el Mozo started the addition of non-Gothic elements with the construction of a plateresque gable in the Western facade, too tall and heavy. He also added a plateresque sacristy in the South-East end of the Cathedral and rebuilt some vaults.

Serious problems started in the seventeenth century. Parts of the largest vault in the crossing fell down in 1631. It was replaced by a baroque semicircular dome designed by Juan de Naveda. This addition damaged the delicate balance of the whole building, causing cracks in the Southern facade that needed restoration in the end of the century, including a new gable.

In the eighteenth century, Joaquin de Churriguera tried to improve stability by adding four pinnacles around the dome, but this caused further damage. The Cathedral was affected by the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. Extensive rebuilding of the Southern facade was done.

In 1857, stones started to fell down from the central nave and the crossing, causing fears of a complete collapse. Matías Laviña started a full restoration of the building in 1859. He dismantled the central dome and the pinnacles, parts of the transept and the Southern facade.

After Laviña died in 1868, Juan de Madrazo was commissioned to direct the restoration. He was a friend of Viollet-le-Duc and had a good knowledge of the French Gothic style. The goal of his extensive work was making the Cathedral stable and restoring its original pure Gothic style. He placed a complex wooden support structure to keep the vaults in place and proceeded to rebuild the vaults and the Southern facade. When the supports were removed in 1878 and the building resisted, it meant that the original Gothic balance system had been restored.

Madrazo's successors, Demetrio de los Ríos and Juan Bautista Lázaro, kept removing alien elements, like the plateresque gable in the Western facade, and replacing them with Neo-Gothic designs. The stained glass windows, that had been dismantled and stored for years, were restored after 1895. Finally, the Cathedral was reopened in 1901, after one of the most complex and extensive restoration projects in nineteenth century Europe.

Smaller restoration works were undertaken during the twentieth century. A fire caused by lightning consumed the rooftop in May 27th 1966, but the structure suffered no serious damage (thanks, partly, to the decision of not using too much water to put out the blaze). A general project to restore the stained glass started in 2009.