On my first entry into Sevilla I was uninformed about Sevilla, its history and its origins. I was just a newly arrived American Navyman on his first trip to a foreign country, so I took little note of some the monumental churches along calle San Luís, some of whose foundations date to almost a millennium ago.
Plaque on the church of Santa Marina denoting the route of Mudéjar churches in Sevilla. The Islamic Art in the Mediterranean subtitle is a Freudian slip. Although Sevilla is a city much closer to the Atlantic Ocean than to the Mediterranean, the weather is influened by both bodies of water. The climate is very Mediterranean and hot in summer, but in winter the Atlantic influence takes over and Sevilla can be quite chilly. But, there is no doubt that visitors to Sevilla can easily believe they are in a Mediterranean city.
The next church along the calle San Luís is the church of Santa Marina, which was one of the first parishes established in this populous district after the Reconquest of Sevilla in 1248 by Fernando III. It is one of the oldest Gothic-Mudéjar churches in the city, dating its construction to 1262 under the reign of Fernando’s son Alfonso X el Sabio. Though there is some polemic about this; it is claimed by many scholars not to have been built on the site of mosque even though there was supposedly a mosque built here in the 10th century.
Looking at tower, the uninitiated visitor could easily assume that Santa Marina, like several other churches in Sevilla was built over a mosque, since the tower is of Mudéjar construction and could easily be mistaken for the minaret of a long-disappeared mosque. However, it was not unusual for Moorish craftsmen working under Christian rule—Mudejares—to build structures that spoke of Islam, not unusual since even their Christian conquerors had long been used to seeing Islamic architecture and not only that, many of them had an appreciation for the aesthetics of such buildings. Thus it was natural for them to retain such structures as La Giralda, the minaret tower of Sevilla’s main mosque. It was functional, attractive and it cost much, much less to leave standing that it did to build a towering new structure.
In the case of Santa Marina, not only was the tower built in the early 14th century in the Mudéjar style resembling a minaret, the church and tower were was destroyed by a powerful earthquake and rebuilt in the same style in the mid-to-later 14th century under Pedro I (the Cruel), who ordered numerous structures around Spain built by Mudéjar builders and craftsmen, including the Palace in the Alcázar and the exquisite Mudéjar palace in Tordesillas that he built for his favorite Maria de Padilla and has since become incorporated into the Convento de Santa Clara.
Interior of the Convento de Santa Clara, Tordesillas, built as a palace by Pedro I de Castilla (Pedro the Cruel).
Sevilla, Retracing Steps Part Two: Iglesia de San Gil A Remarkable Walk From El Arco de la Macarena to the Cathedral Featuring a Half Dozen Mudéjar-and-Gothic Churches Built on the Sites of Former Mosques in the 14th Century
* * * * *
More true than Don Quixote's vapouring?
Hath winged Pegasus more nobly trod
Than Rocinante stumbling up to God?
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