Iberia and Beyond 2--A Cynic at Large in Cordoba, Spain

Cordoba, Spain

October 12, 2014

Latitude 37° 88' N

It was Columbus Day weekend and Americans weren't the only ones observing the holiday.  It was also a long weekend in Spain as they, too, honored the man who founded the New World and began the expansion of the Spanish Crown onto two new continents.

I was in Cordoba to visit the Mezquita--an almost perfect fusion of refined Islamic architecture and Renaissance artistry.  But I was not prepared for the crowds that swamped the medina-like historic center of the city.  Its twisty, curving streets were chock-a-block with  tourists--hordes off the steppes of China, countless groups of Japanese and throngs of Spanish families in town for the weekend.

There were lines everywhere--lines to buy a ticket into a place, lines to enter the place you just bought a ticket for, lines, even, for queuing up for the perfect photographic shot.

It was depressing from the start.

My only real goal for the day was the Mezquita--Cordoba's premier church/mosque/church--that charted the evolution of  Western and Islamic art over a 1,000 year span and which has a fascinating history.  First it was a church built in the 600's honoring St. Vincent, a 7th century martyr.  In 785 Muslims from North Africa  invaded the city and converted the church to a mosque that, over centuries, was expanded and enlarged and enlarged again into a massive 124,000 square foot prayer hall, the most lavish in the Islamic world.

 In 1236  Cordoba was recaptured by the Catholic king Ferdinand.  The mosque was rededicated as a church and by the 1500's work was underway to incorporate a High Renaissance cathedral within the prayer hall.

Three cheers for the architects who didn't destroy one Islam's greatest architectural achievements.

Once inside, I was stunned by the sheer immensity of mosque cum church. A veritable “forest” of 856 columns, most recycled from Roman ruins, supported extraordinary horseshoe arches in warm shades of cream and terracotta. Surrounding the four sides of the mosque were 37 tiny chapels dedicated to every saint imaginable including one with a painting of Mexico's Virgin of Guadalupe.

Some of the chapels had small silver ossuaries containing human skulls and others had small sarcophagi, relics of the “Good Death” where entrance to heaven was easier if you were buried within a church.

Highly stylized Renaissance paintings depicted a never-ending number of virgins and martyrs dripping in blood, trance-like prophets and aging apostles. One painting depicted a female martyr tied to a stake, her torso naked showing surprisingly perky breasts. Images of St. Stephen and another of Jesus and the beloved apostle, John, were almost homoerotic. Religious iconography masking as Renaissance soft porn.

Despite my awe, it was almost impossible to enjoy the place.  Nothing was sacred, no spot untouched by a human being's presence.  People seemed to pour out of the woodwork. Whole neighborhoods, it seemed, of Tokyo had emptied out into Cordoba and most of them were at the Mezquita on this particular Sunday afternoon. People were lined up to have their pictures taken in front of just about everything. Spanish mothers put their very small and very loud children on tiny altars and had them pose. Asians stood in a line to have their photos taken in front of the silver streaked altar of the cathedral. A young Spanish couple, seemingly oblivious to to everyone else, sat in a pew at the back of one of the chapels and made out. A teenage girl, in shorts way too short for anywhere but the beach, struck a sexy pose in front of the many altars.

No place seemed sacred. The one chapel that clearly said “Silencio, por favor. This is a place of prayer” was filled with tourists needing to sit down, relax and chat. Japanese tourists who probably couldn't read Spanish yakked away while taking selfies.

Everyone had a camera—Smart phones, point-and-shoots, SLR's. Everyone wanted to shoot the same thing at the same time so there was a perennial queue in front of just about every astounding thing, of which there were many.

All of this just wore on me until every one of my cynical cells of religiosity tingled with annoyance. It didn’t help that I was constantly seeing amazing works of arts created by Europe's best silversmiths of the 14^th, 15^th and 16^th century. Gorgeous candelabras, massive reliquaries, astounding silver lecterns, a ten foot I-don't know-what-it's-called that holds a consecrated hosts, and every sort of ecclesiastical bling possible dripped out of almost every chapel and on the altar of the cathedral.  

The problem with all this is that I'd been to the silver mines in Potosi, Bolivia where, under the Spanish crown, more than 6,000,000 indigenous were enslaved and died to mine the metal to make these things. I knew too well the ravages of Spanish/church sanctioned colonization.

All of this, plus the massive hordes of tourists, just piled on itself to make this a far-less-than-spiritual excursion. I grew more and more cynical as the afternoon progressed.

Despite all of this I was still unable to leave the Mezquita. I'd circle the massive prayer hall, reexamine its tiny chapels, investigate yet again another over-the-top mythologized Renaissance painting of flying angels and a seemingly endless pantheon of Christian sub-deities that make up Middle Ages Catholic Christendom,  photograph yet again another set of the cream and terracotta arches in the forest of columns that made up the original prayer hall. I knew I was standing is a work of genius that was unfathomably beautiful and that it was something I may never see again.

But these places are never good for me spiritually. It's impossible for me to go inward when there's this much distraction. And it made more so at the Mezquita. There was an almost yin/yang juxtaposition of architectural style—the refined and clean lined Islamic and the wildly over-the-top Renaissance.

And I knew, too, the origins of all the sliver that produced these magnificent pieces of religious art.I'd been to the silver mines in Potosi, Bolivia where 6,000,000 Indigenous were enslaved and died under the Spanish to mine the metal to produce these works.

Oh, I knew the difference between the Church and the People of God.  It's doubtful any Spaniard in the 16th century had any idea what horrors were being enacted by its Crown and its Church.  No one can blame anyone but those in power.  Still, it's one of those inconvenient truths the church never addresses, and I have a problem with that.

I know that some would say that this art honors God, and maybe for them that's true.  For me, though, the human is far more important than an object that is meant to honor God. No life lost to slavery is worth the art it produced.

The cynic in me won out that day. And that cynicism stayed with me again and again as I stepped into magnificent churches with magnificent silver art.

In the end I finally did leave—just as museum security was shooing everyone out. I walked out into the bright light of an Andalusian Sunday afternoon. The late afternoon sun glowed warmly on the ochre colored blocks of the Mezquita.  Looking back as I returned home, I turned my head for one last look.  It was stunning and a perfect last image of work of art.