THE LAND, IBERIAN MYSTERIES, PLEASURES OF THE ROMANS
Let’s start with the geography, which could hardly have conferred more blessings upon a townsite. To the southeast, the Sierra Nevada arcs into view, the highest range on the Iberian peninsula, with peaks rising beyond eleven thousand feet. To the east, another range, the Sierra de Huetor, full of springs, forming the headwaters of the Darro River running at the base of the Albayzín. South, just across the Darro canyon, is the Sabika hill where the Alhambra was built. On the far side of the Sabika runs the boisterous Genil, coursing with snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada.
It has extraordinary sweetness: big mountains, broad foothills, a promontory aloft between two rivers, the warm high hill of the Albayzín looking toward that promontory, all complemented by a plain—the vega—of rich soil, superbly watered with torrents of fresh snowmelt, and stretching out under hot summer days. Circling the vega, more mountain ranges, leaving only narrow passes for entry. Formidable security, then, for the city, and for its agricultural lands. Early communities on the lookout for a place to settle must have counted the advantages and gone off straightaway to thank their gods.
It is the seventh century BC. In the eastern Mediterranean, the Assyrian empire shoulders its way into Egypt. In Greece, Athens is already a politically complex city governing most of Attica. In the west, Etruscan civilization is flourishing on the Italian peninsula. Celtic tribes, with their iron weapons, settle in Gaul. And right here on the hill of our Albayzín, the early peoples of Spain built a compact, fortified city. They are called los Iberos—the Iberians—and they still fascinate Spain, since they have whimsically withheld so many of their secrets. But they chose the site so intelligently that future settlers—Roman, Visigoth, and Arab—would build their walls on the foundations of Iberic walls.
They constructed their city at the high point of the hill, with good vantage up the Darro canyon and out toward the vega. Every day, on the way home from Gabriella’s school, we walked by an excavation that seemed to go on endlessly. Finally, we stopped and talked to the workers, who of course threw down their tools, lit cigarettes, and explained everything to us as Gabriella ate her ice cream.
It turned out that in the area near the site, closer to the stone gate that gives entry to Plaza Larga, near the bars and schools and bakeries, archaeologists have dug up the foundations of houses and sanctuaries twenty-seven hundred years old. They’ve found ceramics, money, inscriptions, and urns; even a whole necropolis. And slowly, in combination with other finds throughout Spain, the culture of los Iberos has come into view. They left us lovely small bronze horses and little soldiers with tiny shields and swords, who go into battle very warily indeed, since both sword and phallus are erect. They left famous sacred statuary of women in elaborate robes, tightly wound hairdos, and clunky necklaces; their female gaze is fixed so intently on some faraway world that we want to turn our heads and look carefully, just in case it swims into view.
They left us coins and tablets with their written notes and declarations in a language that has stumped the scholars who have studied it. So we await their poetry and their praises of the strange goddess. Best of all, they gave us what has to be my favorite sphinx, a muscular bull with the head of a man, mustachioed and irresistibly jolly. Even to look at the thing makes you laugh.
In their redoubt at the top of the hill, the Iberians lived for five centuries, until Rome began to march its legionnaires all over Europe. The date given for the beginning of decisive Roman influence on our hillside is 193 BC. Iberian culture makes a slow marriage with Roman law and custom. By 1 BC, Latin, which at least we can read, was the language stamped on money. Being no fools, the Romans took one look at the Iberian fortified city on the hill overlooking a river and a fertile vega and moved right in. They built stronger and higher walls, extending the footprint of the settlement to the west and south, that is, toward the vega and down the hill toward the river. We could walk with you from our carmen, going north up the gentle hill, and in two minutes arrive just where the Roman wall ran east to west along the present street of Aljibe de Trillo. From their freshly fortified vantage point, the Romans set to work, bringing to the art of ceramics what have to be the dullest pots in the history of the region—the pieces are covered with red varnish, making them look even more like mud than they would otherwise. But at least they had dishes.
Farther afield, the Romans did their Roman things: found gold in the Darro and Genil and created quarries in the foothills so they could carry on building. Above all, they grew satisfied and prosperous from that root and font of wealth, agriculture. With the vega under their military vigilance and production organized into large estates, their tables were laden with grapes and cereals and olives. With the heat of the summer, the swollen and luscious grapes of the region made their way, suitably stored and aged, to wine-bibbing citizens who partied in seigniorial mansions whose foundations have been excavated in the Albayzín. Those mansions, of worked stone, sometimes built up ingeniously without mortar—called in Spanish mampostería—were so well put together that their walls, in the open air after twenty centuries, stand intact and strong. In our wanderings around the barrio, we have seen them; they look as if they were held together by some undiscovered cosmic force. Some houses even had the mosaic floor found elsewhere in the empire—an oddly direct precursor of some of the streets in the present-day Albayzín, which have pebbles inlaid laboriously in the form of flowers, or pomegranates, or arabesques sinuous as wind.
The Ibero-Roman city held the usual Roman accoutrement—a forum, basilica, courtyards with columns, marble statues, and the lot—so that the soil of the Albayzín has proved to be a lumpy staging ground for the discovery of cornices, fountains, republican and imperial coins, fluted columns, and affectionate inscriptions in praise of slave boys. And we find also one detail that was to mark the Albayzín forever: reading of it now, we have the sense of something coming to be born. In the upper reaches of the Albayzín hill, a Roman house was excavated with a fine small pool, lined with bricks, which must have looked out over the countryside. And why not, since the ingenious use of water would transform the Albayzín—the clear, fresh water from the mountains, in its full sensuality, that has flowed into the neighborhood over centuries like some benediction of history.
When on a mercilessly hot day in the summer we throw ourselves into the cool water of the alberca in our garden, I think of our Roman antecedents, who doubtless did the same, with the same joy and relief. There were springs on the hill of the Albayzín, and on the hill above, and Roman roofs were designed to drain water into underground cisterns, just as hundreds of years later, cisterns would be built throughout the neighborhood, even within houses. We have an ancient one in our own carmen. We have thought to make a cellar, or fill it with garden vegetables on shelves, or set down racks for wine. But it seems somehow to want to persist in its historic form.
In this Roman period of the Albayzín, the region steps out onto the stage of the world. In the first century of the Christian era, Pliny the Elder wrote his Natural History, wildly subtitled “An Account of Countries, Nations, Seas, Towns, Havens, Mountains, Rivers, Distances, and Peoples Who Exist Now or Who Formerly Existed.” He tells us, wonderfully, that the region “excels all the other provinces in the richness of its cultivation and the peculiar fertility and beauty of its vegetation.” Two Roman emperors—Trajan, who broke the monopoly of Italians in that august position, and Hadrian, the orphan turned lover and warrior—were born in Andalusia. And the future Albayzín turns up in Pliny’s summary of the towns in the region, under the name of Iliberri or Ilupula. My guess is that these names were chosen because they feel ripe in the mouth.
And we begin to see others come forth from the hillside of the future Albayzín to historical notice. Let us name one of them: Publio Cornelio Anulino, who was, if we may be permitted a deep breath, quaestor, tribune, legate, commander of the Seventh Legion, sometime governor of the Roman provinces of his home territory Baet
ica, as well as Africa, and Germania Superior (which is present-day eastern France), and eventually a prefect in Rome—that is, a key player in the administration of the empire. The compatriots of this gentleman, over the centuries, were variously soldiers and consuls and priestesses, giving us a sense of the high energy of the locals. Perhaps it was the trustworthy sunlight and delicious red wine of their hillside neighborhood.
It is at the close of Roman domination that we witness the Albayzín begin to consider how to mix pagan devotion with Christian and Jewish practice, since all three ways of worship existed here. With foreboding and fascination, we may watch how, very early on, men of faith in the Albayzín tried to turn the centuries in their direction.
THE CLERGY GATHER IN THE ALBAYZÍN TO TAKE A CRACK AT HISTORY
In the first centuries of our era, Christian communities, fledgling and persecuted, spread though the Mediterranean and had a beachhead, literally and figuratively, on the Iberian peninsula. Official tolerance throughout the empire was not, of course, granted until February of 313, with the Edict of Milan, which gave Christians legal rights, restored their confiscated property, and permitted the founding of churches. So it is with astonishment that we read of a council of the church held in southern Spain that predates the Edict of Milan. Called the Council of Elvira, it took place around 306 AD. A mighty weight of church officials—nineteen bishops with assorted presbyters, deacons, and legates—gathered on this hillside overlooking the Darro and the vega and cogitated piously about orthodoxy, sin, punishment, women, pagans, and Jews. We wonder if they knew what they were doing, especially how their musings would reverberate down the centuries. For the Council of Elvira was not just the first church council in Spain. It was the first council anywhere from which written canons survived. It is a fascinating episode, for we see in its daft propositions a young church besieged with events and confusions, and trying to figure out what on earth to do. Some of these early canons have the feel of grumpy social judgments, such as:
62. Chariot racers and pantomimes must first renounce their profession and promise not to resume it before they may become Christians.
So were those rakish charioteers and suspicious entertainers cast off by this stern group. And the church wanted to tidy up the churches, even venturing this bold proclamation:
36. Pictures are not to be placed in churches, so that they do not become objects of worship and adoration.
Iconoclasts before their time, this attitude would destroy, in the centuries to come, uncounted mosaics and paintings. For the sake of Fra Angelico, Raphael, Bellini, and the countless other luminaries of Christian art of the ensuing centuries, we may be permitted a prayer of thanksgiving that this canon did not prevail.
But beyond the housekeeping, the reach of the canons is extraordinary. They are seeds, set down in the Albayzín, that grew into history. An extraordinary number of them—a full quarter of the total—assert control over women’s conduct, especially of woman’s sexuality. As to conduct, some canons are so persnickety that we want to know the story behind them. There is, for example,
67. A woman who is baptized or is a catechumen must not associate with hairdressers or men with long hair. If she does this, she is to be denied communion.
This particular canon has the smell of a grudge: a hopeful deacon, say, mad at a lovely Christian girl cavorting near the Darro, her hands in the long hair of her suitor. A long-haired charioteer, perhaps? There is another of this same stamp:
81. A woman may not write to other lay Christians without her husband’s consent. A woman may not receive letters of friendship addressed to her only and not to her husband as well.
No doubt such letters had been discovered, who knows with what promising innuendos.
But beyond such curiosities, the struggling church exerted itself to name and regulate the sexual antics of Christians. To judge from the canons, the council must have spent long days on the subject. Perhaps the sensual climate of Andalusia had heated the theological reasoning of our clerics. Witness the following canons. Some are crisp and forgiving. Such as:
44. A former prostitute who has married and who seeks admission to the Christian faith shall be received without delay.
A host of canons then go on to study adultery with what we might call algebraic exactitude, and try to cook up different punishments, depending on gender, faith, and the sexual facts at hand. The permutations are endless, as though the august assembly of clerics felt compelled to list all the couplings ever confessed. Some of these are wonderfully phrased, with a lot of ferocious prohibitions which give way to a wonder of hedging, backtracking, and exception-making. The results are bizarre, even for a church:
9. A baptized woman who leaves an adulterous husband who has been baptized, for another man, may not marry him. If she does, she may not receive communion until her former husband dies, unless she is seriously ill.
Then, of course, what about sexual variety? And certainly they had to consider the case of a cleric who adores his adulterous wife—
72. If a widow has intercourse and then marries the man, she may only commune after five year’s penance. If she marries another man instead, she is excluded from communion even at time of death …
65. If a cleric knows of his wife’s adultery and continues to live with her, he shall not receive communion even before death in order not to let it appear that one who is to exemplify the good life has condoned sin.
We note that it seems to have been common for a priest to have a wife.
Having begun to tidy up the lascivious behavior of the married clergy and laypeople, they forged bravely ahead in the hopes of assuring that virgins remained virgins; unless, of course, they didn’t, in which case the ex-virgin could make amends. This was tougher for so-called consecrated virgins, the forerunners of nuns. For a lay-woman, all depended on the number of her lovers. The more sexually active the woman, the more amends would be required. What’s interesting is that even though such amorous conduct got a big frown in the canons, such women still had a way to enter the community of Christians.
13. Virgins who have been consecrated to God shall not commune even as death approaches, if they have broken the vow of virginity and do not repent. If, however, they repent and do not engage in intercourse again, they may commune when death approaches.
14. If a virgin does not preserve her virginity, but then marries the man, she may commune after one year, without doing penance, for she only broke the laws of marriage. If she has been sexually active with other men, she must complete a penance of five years before being readmitted to communion.
Having reviewed in such detail the sexual frolics of the community, it probably was inevitable that the clergy address their own conduct. And so fate had its way when the council, having cast so critical an eye on the embraces of laypeople, now turned with severity on each other.
27. A bishop or other cleric may have only a sister or daughter who is a virgin consecrated to God living with him. No other women who is unrelated to him may remain.
Note the daughter! And the sizable begged question, crying out to be answered: What about a woman who is related to him, who does remain? And the council dropped its bombshell:
33. Bishops, presbyters, deacons, and others with a position in the ministry are to abstain completely from sexual intercourse with their wives and from the procreation of children. If anyone disobeys, he shall be removed from clerical office.
It is a calm, stunning, momentous prohibition, the first such canon of the Catholic church. It does not forbid the marriage of clerics; rather, it reaches into the heart of such marriages, to forbid the physical celebration of a man and woman promised to one another. To cherish the pleasures of a wife is to abandon the work of the church. And implicit in this reasoning is the idea that such cherishing cannot lead a couple in love close to life, or closer to the divine.
It is the declaration of one small church council, in a small settlement on a hillside in southern Spain, far from Rome and
Constantinople, early in the history of Christianity. Yet we should not discount its power and influence. Later canon law tended to build upon the cracked foundation of Elvira. Not only that, but of the nineteen bishops in attendance, some of them would go on to play crucial roles in later councils. To mention only one: Hosius of Córdoba, a key player in the Council of Elvira, went on to participate in the authoritative Council of Nicaea in 325, perhaps in the name of the pope himself. Hosius even managed to totter, at age 99, all the way to the Council of Milan in 355. Such councils, with the promulgation of the Nicene Creed and its confirmation thereafter, set down a fierce and final theology that has remained in place to our day. If the Council of Elvira had understood the world differently, today our world would be different. And whatever one thinks of the blizzard of prohibitions of the Council of Elvira, some of their canons we must read today as a planting of evil seeds:
49. Landlords are not to allow Jews to bless the crops they have received from God … Such an action would make our blessing invalid and meaningless. Anyone who continues this practice is to be expelled completely from the church.
78. If a Christian confesses adultery with a Jewish or Pagan woman, he is denied communion for some time. If his sin is exposed by someone else, he must complete five year’s penance before receiving the Sunday communion.
So Jewish blessing is condemned, and as to sex, a Jew is no better than a pagan. But the council was not done.
50. If any cleric or layperson eats with Jews, he or she shall be kept from communion as a way of correction.
A mere three centuries after the death of Jesus, a Jewish teacher in Palestine, it is an early, clear expression of contempt.
The Christian community in the Albayzín, entrenched and literate, continued to be influential. In the fourth century, a bellicose and orthodox bishop, Gregory, lived in the Albayzín. In addition to penning five volumes on the Song of Songs, he took the time in another book on the Old Testament to detest Jewish religious observance. And we must not forget the hysterically ambitious Juvencus, also of the early fourth century, born into the neighborhood, a presbyter and budding epic poet. Juvencus wanted to get rid of those ancient pesky storytellers, Homer and Virgil. To replace their unholy paganism and messy digressions, he left us a tidy Latin commentary on the New Testament—no fewer than 3,211 verses in dactylic hexameter. No old-fashioned muses are to be found; he happily substitutes, in their stead, the freshly minted Holy Spirit.
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