The galleries of the _patio_ are formed by fluted columns and adorned with the heads of warriors very skilfully executed.
This college is now occupied, as its modern name implies, by Irish theological students, whose original seminary was founded by Philip II. in 1592. A college for Scottish Catholics was founded at the same time in Valladolid.
Of the forty colleges which once composed the University of Salamanca, the three described above alone remain. Most have utterly disappeared; of others, a few columns or chambers still exist, forming part now of buildings of another sort. The Colegio de Calatrava has survived, as a building, the three other colleges founded by the great military orders. It was extensively restored at the end of the eighteenth century, but the old doorway was spared with the saint’s head and knights upholding the banner of the order carved above it. The fine court has been dismantled, and the large chapel with transept and cupola has been stripped of the paintings and altar-pieces which once adorned it.
Among the sacred edifices of Salamanca, next to the two cathedrals, ranks the church and convent of the Dominicans, variously known as Santo Domingo and San Estéban. The Dominicans, on their establishment at Salamanca in the year 1221, were first housed at San Juan el Blanco. Thirty years later they removed to San Estéban. Their convent was honoured in 1484 by the presence of Columbus, who found a generous host, a powerful protector, and a mind sufficiently broad to comprehend his project in the Friar Diego de Deza, afterwards grand inquisitor of Spain. His scheme, rejected by the university, was carefully considered by this learned man, and recommended to the queen. In gratitude, Columbus named the first town founded by him in the New World, Santo Domingo, after the order which had befriended him. From this monastery, too, departed the first Christian missionaries for America.
The building itself, unfortunately, has disappeared. It was pulled down in 1524 to make room for the present superb edifice, designed by Juan de Alava, the fellow-workman of Hontañon, who was succeeded by four other architects, till the completion of the work in 1610. The church is accounted one of the two or three most important monuments of the middle Renaissance period in Spain. The main façade, in the soft sandstone usual here, exhibits a marvellous profusion of figures, ‘excellently wrought, beautiful of themselves,’ remarks a critic, ‘but lacking in appropriateness, and not forming a part of a comprehensive scheme.’ On each side of the doorway, between pillars, are seen the figures of four of the Dominican saints; above, between four similarly placed statues of the doctors of the church, is an admirable relief of the Martyrdom of St. Stephen, executed by Juan Ceroni of Milan, who has carved his name and the date (1610) on the stones which were the instruments of the saint’s death. Above this, again, is a Crucifixion, overshadowed by the great arch which encloses the whole façade. The medallions and friezes exhibit very careful and graceful workmanship.