Cathedral of Toledo - Citations

Citations

The Cathedral of Toledo has long been widely admired by art critics and historians, and it has been extravagantly praised by some. Here are citations from authorities in the study of art and of architecture:

• The French historian and archeologist Élie Lambert (1888–1961) made a profound study of Gothic art in general and of the Cathedral of Toledo in particular. He wrote:

"The Cathedral of Toledo is a world in itself, the centuries bestowing it with such an accumulation of great works of art, very diverse one from another, that the fabulousness of its riches and the attractiveness of its diversity, produce to the point of incredulity an impression of astonishment."

• Manuel Bartolomé Cossío (1857–1935), pedagogue and Spanish university professor, made the following critique:

"The Cathedral of Toledo is the example most clearly Spanish of all Gothic architecture, and exemplifies here the transition to the Classical style; it is first in Spain and one of the most singular in the world in terms of beauty and perfection. It has resolved, by means of rectangles and triangles, the problem of the ambulatory."

• The architect, Leopoldo Torres Balbás, born in Madrid (1888–1960), says (Ars Hispaniae, VII):

"Upon entering its interior, in the enormous hall of more than 120 meters of longitude and around 60 wide, a master work of calm and harmony, we find ourselves in a world very different from that of the French cathedrals, to think of the similarity of their forms. In place of the magnificent ascendant rhythm of these, the Toledan, its five naves in steps, without great differences of height, without any theatricality, is of balanced proportions. The sanctuary has a small elevation, flattened, if we compare it to that of whichever French cathedral. In something so essential in architecture as is the feeling of space, the Castilian temple differs radically from the French models from which it is derived."

• King Alfonso X the Wise explains the reason for its construction in these terms:

"And the king with the archbishop Don Rodrigo, walking by the church of Toledo, savouring it and conversing about it, taking it for too old already; and restraining in him his wine, the spirit of God and of sanctity came into him and restrained the King don Ferdinand so that God renewed him and gave him to make many conquests of the Moors in lands that Christianity lost, which good it would be to renew by those gains the church of Saint Mary of Toledo and had this reason for very good and very right, and King Don Ferdinand and Archbishop Don Rodrigo put it into work. Then they laid the first stone of the church of Saint Mary of Toledo, the king and the archbishop, they both placed one... And the work grew marvelously from day to day."