Cathedral of the Sea

by Ildefonso Falcones

  “Can you see her smile, my son?” he asked.

  Author’s Note

  IN WRITING THIS novel I have closely followed the Crónica written by King Pedro the Third, adapting it where necessary to the requirements of a work of fiction.

  The choice of Navarcles as the site of the castle and estates of the lord of Navarcles is entirely fictional, but the baronies of Granollers, San Vicenc dels Horts, and Caldes de Montbui, which King Pedro offers Arnau as the dowry for his ward Eleonor (another fictional creation), did exist. These baronies were ceded in 1380 by the infante Martin, son of Pedro the Ceremonious, to Guillem Ramon de Montcada, of the Sicilian branch of the Montcada family, as reward for his good offices in support of the marriage between Queen María and one of Martin’s sons, who subsequently reigned and was known as “the Humane.” Guillem de Montcada held these estates for a much shorter time than the protagonist of my novel: no sooner had he been granted them than he sold them to the Count of Urgell and used the money to equip a fleet and dedicate himself to piracy.

  According to the Usatges of Catalonia, a feudal lord did have the right to lie with the bride of any of his serfs on her wedding night. The existence of privileges in old Catalonia, compared to the new Catalan territories, led the serfs to rebel repeatedly against their lords, until the 1486 Judgment of Guadalupe abolished these privileges, although it did stipulate at the same time that the lords stripped of their rights in this way should be paid generous compensation.

  The royal judgment against Joan’s mother, which obliged her to live enclosed in a room on bread and water until her death, was pronounced in 1330 by Alfonso the Third against a woman by the name of Eulàlia, consort of one Juan Dosca.

  The author in no way shares the opinions about women or peasants expressed throughout this novel: nearly all of them have been faithfully copied from the book written by the monk Francesc Eiximenis, approximately in the year 1381, entitled Lo crestià.

  As occurs with the marriage between Mar and Felip de Ponts, in medieval Catalonia rapists could marry their victims, even if the abduction had been a violent one, thanks to the Usatge “Si quis virginem.” This was not true in the rest of Spain, which was governed by the legal tradition of the Visigoths in the Fuero Juzgo, which prohibited it.

  The violator’s duty was to provide the woman with a dowry so that she could find a husband, or to marry her himself. If she was married, she was treated as an adulteress.

  No one is sure whether the episode in which King Jaime of Mallorca tries to abduct his brother-in-law Pedro the Third, which fails because a friar who is close to Pedro hears details of the plot during confession (helped in the novel by Joan), actually happened or not. It may well have been invented by Pedro the Third as an excuse for the legal action taken by him against the king of Mallorca, which ended with his requisitioning his kingdoms. What does appear to be true is King Jaime’s demand to have a wooden bridge built to link his galleys, anchored in the port of Barcelona, with Framenors convent. Perhaps this served to arouse King Pedro’s imagination to invent the plot mentioned in his chronicles.

  The attempt to invade Barcelona by Pedro the Cruel of Castille is described in minute detail in Pedro the Third’s Crónica. The buildup of land along the Barcelona coast meant that its earlier harbors could no longer be used, with the result that the city was defenseless against natural phenomena and enemy attacks. It was not until 1340 that, during the reign of Alfonso the Magnanimous, a new, more adequate port was built.

  The sea battle took place as Pedro the Third describes it, and the Castillian fleet was prevented from gaining access to the city because a ship—a carrack, according to the medieval chronicles of Capmany—was grounded on the offshore tasques (sandbanks) to halt their advance. It was during this battle that the first references are made to the use of artillery—a bricola mounted on the prow of the king’s galley—in naval warfare. It was not long before ships, which until then had been used chiefly as a means of troop transport, were equipped with heavy cannons, changing the whole concept of naval battles. In his Crónica, Pedro the Third delights in the way that the Catalan host ranged on the shore, or in the numerous small craft that set out to defend the capital mocked and insulted Pedro the Cruel’s army. He considers it, together with the effective use of the bricola, as one of the main reasons why the king of Castille was forced to reconsider his plans to invade Barcelona.

  In the revolt of Plaza del Blat during the first so-called bad year, when the citizens of Barcelona demanded they be given grain, the leaders were given summary justice and hanged. For plot reasons, I have placed these executions in Plaza del Blat. It is also true that the authorities thought that a simple oath could help put a stop to the hunger.

  Another person who was executed, in the year 1360, was the money changer F. Castelló. As stipulated by law, he was beheaded outside his countinghouse, close to what nowadays is Plaza Palacio.

  In 1367, after being accused of profaning a host and having been locked in the synagogue without food or water, three Jews were executed on the orders of infante Don Juan, King Pedro’s deputy.

  Jews were strictly forbidden to leave their houses during the Christian Holy Week. They were also ordered to keep the doors and windows of their homes closed so that they could not see or interfere with the numerous processions. Even so, Easter saw an increase in the fears of the Christian fanatics, and accusations of the celebration of heretical rites also grew at a time of year that the Jews came to have just reason to fear.

  Two main accusations were made against the Jews during Easter: the ritual murder of Christians, and especially children, in order to crucify and torture them, drink their blood, or eat their hearts; and the profanation of the host. Both of these were commonly seen as designed to re-create the pain and suffering of Christ believed in by the Catholics.

  The first known accusation of the crucifixion of a Christian child comes from the Holy Roman Empire in Würzburg, Germany, in 1147. As was so often the case with accusations against the Jews, popular feeling led to similar charges quickly spreading throughout Europe. Only a year later, in 1148, the English Jews in the city of Norwich were accused of crucifying another Christian boy. From then on, accusations of ritual murder, usually during Easter and often involving crucifixion, became widespread: Gloucester, 1168; Fulda, 1235; Lincoln, 1255, Munich, 1286 ... Hatred of the Jews and popular credulity were so strong that in the fifteenth century an Italian Franciscan friar, Bernardino da Feltre, predicted that a Christian child was to be crucified: an event that actually happened in Trent, where the little boy Simon was found dead on a cross. The Catholic Church beatified Simon, but the friar went on “prophesying” further crucifixions, in Reggio, Bassano, and Mantua. Simon was a martyr of fanaticism rather than faith, but it was not until midway through the twentieth century that the Catholic Church finally annulled his beatification.

  One occasion when the Barcelona host was summoned—although this took place in the year 1369, later than I have situated it in the book—was against the village of Creixell, when the local lord prevented the free passage and grazing of cattle headed for Barcelona, where by law the animals had to arrive alive. The seizure of animals was one of the main reasons why the host was called upon to defend the city’s privileges against other towns and feudal lords.

  Santa Maria de la Mar is without doubt one of the most beautiful churches to be found anywhere. It may lack the monumentality of others built at the same time or later, but its interior is filled with the spirit with which Berenguer de Montagut sought to infuse it: the people’s church, built by the people of Barcelona for Barcelona, is like an airy Catalan farmhouse. It is austere, protected, and protecting, and the light of the Mediterranean sets it apart from any other church in the world.

  According to the experts, the great virtue of Santa Maria is that it was built over an uninterrupted period of fifty-five years. This means it benefits from a unified architectural style, with few elements added on, making it the leading
example of Catalan Gothic. As was usual at that time, and in order not to interrupt the religious services, Santa Maria was built on and around the former construction. Initially, the architect Bassegoda Amigó placed the original church on the corner of Calle Espaseria. He calculated that the new church had been built in front of the old one, farther to the north, with what nowadays is Calle Santa Maria between them. However, when a new presbytery and crypt were being built in 1966, the discovery of a Roman necropolis underneath Santa Maria led to a modification of Bassegoda’s original idea. His grandson, also an architect and expert on Santa Maria, asserts that the successive versions of Santa Maria were always built on the same spot, one on top of the other. The Roman cemetery is said to have been where the body of Santa Eulàlia, patron saint of Barcelona, was buried. As described in the novel, her remains were transferred by King Pedro from Santa Maria to the cathedral.

  The statue of the Virgin of the Sea that figures in the novel is the one now on the high altar, and was previously part of the tympanum of the main doorway in Calle del Born.

  Nothing is known of the bells of Santa Maria until 1714, when King Felipe the Fifth of Castille defeated the Catalans. The king imposed a special tax on church bells in Catalonia in reprisal for the way they were constantly rung to call Catalan patriots to sometent, that is, to take up arms to defend their land. It was not only the Castillians who were enraged by bells calling citizens to defend a city. Pedro the Ceremonious himself, after he had put down an uprising in Valencia, ordered that the leaders of the uprising be killed by forcing them to swallow molten metal from the Union bell that had rung to call the people of Valencia to battle.

  Santa Maria occupied such a special place in Barcelona that King Pedro did choose to urge the citizens to aid him in his campaign against Sardinia from the square in front of it, rather than the Plaza del Blat outside the magistrate’s palace.

  The humble bastaixos, the port workers who offered to carry blocks of stone to Santa Maria without payment, are the clearest example of the popular fervor that helped build the church. The parish accorded them many privileges, and even today their devotion to the cult of Mary can be seen in the bronze figures on the main doorway and reliefs in the presbytery or marble capitals, on all of which are portrayed figures of port workmen.

  The Jew Hasdai Crescas existed. There was also a Bernat Estanyol, who was a captain of the Company of Almogavars. I deliberately chose the first of these two; the second is a simple coincidence. But it was my decision to make Crescas a moneylender, and the details of his life are my invention. In 1391, seven years after the official inauguration of Santa Maria (and more than a century before the Catholic monarchs ordered the expulsion of the Jews from their kingdoms), the Barcelona Jewry was burned down by the people. Its inhabitants were put to death, while those who managed to avoid death, by, for example, seeking refuge in a convent, were forced to convert to Christianity. The Barcelona Jewry was totally destroyed, and churches were built inside it, until King Juan, worried at the economic consequences for the royal coffers upon the disappearance of the Jews, attempted to coax them back to the city. He promised them tax exemptions until their community reached two hundred members, and annulled specific impositions such as having to give up their beds and other furniture whenever the royal court was visiting the city, or having to feed the lions and other wild animals kept by the sovereign. The Jews did not return, however, so that in 1397 the king conceded to Barcelona the right not to have a Jewry.

  The grand inquisitor general Nicolau Eimerich took refuge with the pope in Avignon, but on the death of King Pedro returned to Catalonia and continued his attacks on the works of Ramon Llull. In 1393, King Juan banished him from Catalonia, and the inquisitor again sought refuge with the pope. However, that same year Eimerich returned to Seu d’Urgell, so that King Juan had to urge the bishop to expel him at once. Nicolau fled to Avignon a second time, but on the death of King Juan was granted permission by King Martin the Humane to spend the last years of his life in his native Girona, where he died at the age of eighty. The references to Eimerich’s assertions that torturing several times was merely a continuation of the first torture, and on the conditions in which prisoners should be held, are true.

  Unlike Castille, where the Inquisition was created only in 1487, Catalan Inquisition tribunals had existed since 1249. These were completely separate from and independent of the traditional ecclesiastical jurisdiction as exercised by the Episcopal tribunals. This early establishment of the Inquisition in Catalonia is explained by its original objectives: to fight against heresy, which at that time was identified with the Cathars in the south of France and the Waldensians who followed Pedro Valdés in Lyons. Both these doctrines, considered heretical by the Catholic Church, found supporters among the inhabitants of old Catalonia because of geographical proximity. Many Catalan nobles in the Pyrenees became part of these movements, including Viscount Arnau and his wife, Ermessenda; Ramon, lord of Cadí; and Guillem de Niort, magistrate for Count Nuño Sane in the Cerdagne and Coflent.

  This explains why the Inquisition began its sad journey through the Iberian Peninsula in Catalonia. In 1286, however, the Cathar movement was finally extinguished, and by the fourteenth century the Catalan Inquisition was being instructed by Pope Clement the Fifth to direct its efforts against the banned order of the Knights Templar, as was happening in the neighboring kingdom of France. In Catalonia, however, the Knights were not regarded with such antipathy as they were by the French king (although this was principally for economic reasons). At a provincial synod called by the archbishop of Tarragona, the bishops unanimously adopted a resolution declaring the Knights Templar free of all blame, and finding no reason to accuse them of heresy.

  After the Templars, the Catalan Inquisition turned its attention to the Beghards, who had also won support in Catalonia. Several death sentences were passed, which, as was customary, were carried out by the secular authorities after the accused was handed over to them. By 1348, with the attacks on Jewries throughout Europe following the outbreak of the Black Death and widespread accusations against the Jews, the Catalan Inquisition began to persecute those whom it regarded as befriending or sympathizing with Jews.

  My thanks go to my wife, Carmen, without whom this novel would not have been possible; to Pau Pérez, who has lived it with as much passion as I have; to the Escola d’Escriptura of the Ateneo of Barcelona for their wonderful work in teaching and spreading Catalan literature; and also to my agent, Sandra Bruna, and my editor, Ana Liarás.

  ~Barcelona, November 2005

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Ildefonso Falcones lives in Barcelona with his wife and four children and works as a lawyer. Cathedral of the Sea is intended as a homage to a people who built one of the most beautiful churches on earth in only fifty-five years, which was remarkable for that time. First published in Spain, where it has become a publishing phenomenon, Cathedral of the Sea has been published in thirty-two countries, winning the Euskadi de Plata 2006 for the best novel in Spanish, the Qué Leer 2007 Prize for the best book, and the prestigious Italian Giovanni Boccaccio 2007 award for best foreign author.

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  Nick Caistor is an award-winning translator of more than thirty books from Spain and Latin America. He has edited The Faber Book of Contemporary Latin American Fiction and has translated other Barcelona-based writers, such as Eduardo Mendoza, Juan Marsé, and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán.