“Anno ab Incarnatione Domini, MCLXXXVIII, Era MCCXXVI, die kalendarum Apriles, super liminaria principalium portalium--Ecclesiae Beati Jacobi sunt collocata per Magistrum Mathaeum, qui a fundamentis ipsorum portalium gessit magisterium.”
(In the year of the Incarnation of our Lord 1188, era 1226, on the calends of April, the lintels of the principal portico of the Cathedral of the Blessed St. James were put up by Master Matthew, who superintended the said work from its foundations.)
Perhaps this date, of which none have doubted the correctness, is the most astonishing part of the whole thing.
A masterpiece like the _Pórtico de Gloria_, dating a century, or even half a century, later would cause less surprise, but how it comes about that such a finished and perfect _chef d’œuvre_ could have been accomplished at so early a date and in such an out-of-the-way part of the civilised world--is a puzzle.[164] Frenchmen ply their pens with vigour to prove that Master Matthew was a native of _la belle France_. Spaniards are equally energetic in their assertions that he was a native of Spain, and some even go so far as to say that he must have been a native of Galicia. “There is as yet nothing to prove that Mateo was not a Gallegan,” writes Lopez Ferreiro. “He lived at Santiago, or at least in Galicia, from 1161 to 1217, to say the very least; and it is thought that he was born and educated in Galicia. He was a layman, with a wife and children.”--And as this writer is one of Spain’s greatest living historians as well as a famous archæologist, his opinion has weight. He tells us that from the end of the eleventh century there flourished in Santiago a school of artists for all branches of art--an institution which was the means of producing marvellous results. To begin with, it produced the cathedral itself, and at the same time it produced the most exquisite specimens of silver and copper workmanship. This school was enriched, in 1135, by Alfonso VII., with many privileges, which were also enjoyed by later generations of artists. There still exists a diploma given to Mateo by Ferdinand, King of Leon, on 23rd February 1168. This king, on the occasion of a royal pilgrimage to the sepulchre of St. James, granted Mateo a pension of 4200 pesetas (or francs) a year. It seems that Mateo started the work at once, and took twenty years to accomplish it; during those twenty years the Gothic style of architecture had been slowly gaining ground. We see it in the elegant vaulting of the _Pórtico_ and in its graceful groining.