A Christian Church Within a Mosque

The Mosque of Cordova was the first large Mohammedan Mosque erected in Europe (786 to 796), and it is still the most perfect specimen extant of the religious architecture of the Moors, and the finest type in Europe of a true temple of Islam. In the days of the Roman dominion a temple to Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, was erected here. The site was well chosen; just below it flows the river Guadalquivir, crossed by a Roman bridge that served as a causeway to a Roman temple. The Vandals destroyed and the Goths built upon its foundations a Christian Church, dedicated to the great martyr saint of Spain, St. Vincent (died 304 A. D.). When the Arab-Moors took Cordova they acted with some toleration towards the Christians. They destroyed all other churches, but divided this one, allowing the Christians to retain one-half for their form of worship, while the other half they converted into a Mosque, adding to it their sanctuary and courts. Thus, side by side, Christians and Mohammedans worshipped the same God until 786, when Abd-er-Rahman I. purchased the Christian half for what would now be $200,000, and allowed the Christians to rebuild their churches. He then rapidly demolished the Christian Church, resolved that his Capital should have the finest Mosque in the world. He labored with his own hands in its erection for an hour each day, that he might teach his people industry and humility; but death came, and his son, Hisham I., completed the work in ten years. For four hundred years (786 to 1235) the Mosque of Cordova was the pilgrim shrine of the West, as Mecca was of the East. "A stone forest" Gautier called it. It covered four acres of ground and contained 1200 columns, each a monolith, each one fashioned with care, and by far the largest number were strangers. From almost every Mediterranean port were shipped to the great Moslem King of Cordova, Abd-er-Rahman, columns of varied character and color--jasper, alabaster, porphyry, granite, serpentine, lapis-lazuli, verde antique--many of them the spoils of pagan temples, one hundred and forty of them the gift of "Christian Constantinople," and many were quarried from native marbles, with these for models. These columns have stood for one thousand years, forming nineteen aisles, twenty feet broad, from East to West, and thirty-three aisles from North to South. They tell many stories of the pagan and Christian world--of how "man proposes and God disposes," of the "rise" of nations founded by man, of their "fall" foretold by God. They tell of "Pagan Rome" and "Christian Constantinople"--both great lessons in the past; and, looking from the pillars to the arches and the present wall surfaces, Cordova past and present is seen--the glory of the one and the triumph of the other. The Arabs ingeniously adapted the short and varied height of their precious antiques to the required height of their building, which was only thirty-five feet. First they reduced the columns to the uniform height of ten feet, and from their capitals, of multifarious forms, they sprang their first row of arches, thus binding the columns together. Above these capitals they erected piers of stone, from which they sprang a second row of arches, with an architrave which supported the roof. The roof was of the imperishable wood, arbor vitae, as perfect when taken down to erect the present brick-vaulted roof, with its domes to admit the light of heaven, as when the Moors placed it there, and gilded it and studded it with stars. The arches were adorned with Byzantine mosaic, encrusted with gems whose facets twinkled in the light of 4700 lamps burning perfumed oil. Many of them were inverted bells, confiscated from Christian churches, swung by silver chains. But this magnificence reached its climax in the Moorish "Holy of Holies," the Mihrab, where they preserved a copy of the Koran copied by the Caliph Othman, and also in the private chapel of the Moorish King, now called the Villa Viciosa. These are still the best preserved parts of the Mosque. The Chapel is gorgeous, but it pales before the magnificence of the Mihrab--a recess in the rear of the Mosque, lined with mosaics. The roof is formed of a single block of pure white marble carved in the form of a shell. The cornices are inlaid with Arabic inscriptions in letters of gold. When lighted by the sacristan, it seems like a fairy cavern radiant with gold and jewels. Gautier says that the Spanish peasants believe that the Sultan of Turkey still pays tribute to Madrid, that Mass may never be said in this place, so sacred to the prophet of Islam. The screen, or entrance to the Caliph's Chapel, is formed of pillars formed of scalloped-like arches of white stone and red brick alternating. This design, in connection with the brilliant interior walls of variegated mosaics and rich gilding, forms a picture which once seen can never be forgotten. The formal conversion of the Mosque into a Christian Cathedral took place in 1238; the extreme side aisles were closed in as chapels. In 1547 the monks of Cordova persuaded Charles V. to let them remove nearly 100 beautiful columns in the center of the Mosque for the erection of a true Christian Church within its walls. When Charles V. visited the Mosque after this vandalism was accomplished, he reproved them in the memorable words: "You have built here what could have been built anywhere else; you have destroyed here what was unique in all the world." Yet it must be admitted that this Church within the Mosque is beautiful in form and proportion. Originally the nineteen aisles of the Mosque opened through bronze gates--the central one, being of pure gold, into the Grand Patio, or Grove of Oranges, where fountains played and exotic plants wafted their fragrant incense into even the farthest shrine. These gates have all been walled up except one, which opens into the still beautiful court whose trees were planted by the Moors.