Three arches and four pillars, sumptuously decorated, uphold each of the clerestory walls, which are pierced at the top by a handsome triforium running completely around the church. The retablo of the high altar is richly decorated, perhaps too richly; the reja, which closes off the sacred area, is of fine seventeenth-century workmanship.

The choir stalls are of a surprising richness, carved scenes covering the backs and seats. They are famous throughout the country, and the genius, above all the imagination, of the artist who executed them (his name is unluckily not known, though it is believed to be Alemán) must have been notable. Pious when carving the upper and visible seats, he seems to have been exceedingly ironical and profane when sculpturing the inside of the same, where the reverse or the caustic observation produced in the carver's mind has been artfully drawn, though sometimes with an undignified grain of indecency and obscenity not quite in harmony with our Puritanic spirit of to-day. {290}

{291}

PART V

Eastern Castile

{292}

{293}

I

When Sancho II. fought against his sister locked up in Zamora, he offered her Vallisoletum in exchange for the powerful fortress she had inherited from her father. In vain, and the town seated on the Pisuerga is not mentioned again in historical documents until 1074, when Alfonso VI. handed it over, with several other villages, to Pedro Ansurez, who made it his capital, raised the church (Santa Maria la Mayor) to a suffragan of Palencia, and laid the first foundations of{294} its future greatness. In 1208 the family of Ansurez died out, and the villa reverted to the crown; from then until the reign of Philip IV. Valladolid was doubtless one of the most important cities in Castile, and the capital of all the Spains, from the reign of Ferdinand and Isabel to that of Philip III.

Consequently, the history of Valladolid from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century is that of Spain.

In Valladolid, Peter the Cruel, after three days' marriage, forsook his bride, Doña Blanca de Bourbon, and returned to the arms of his mistress Maria; several years later he committed most of his terrible crimes within the limits of the town. Here Maria de Molina upheld her son's right to the throne during his minority, and in Valladolid also, after her son's death, the same widow fought for her grandson against the intrigues of uncles and cousins.

Isabel and Alfonso fought in Valladolid against the proclamation of their niece, Juana, the illegitimate daughter of Henry IV., as heiress to the throne; the citizens upheld the Catholic princess's claims, and it is not surprising that when the princess became queen—the greatest Spain ever had{295}—she made Valladolid her capital, in gratitude to the loyalty of its inhabitants.

In Valladolid, Columbus obtained the royal permission to sail westwards in 1492, and, upon his last return from America, he died in the selfsame city in 1506; here also Berruguete, the sculptor, created many of his chefs-d'œuvres and the immortal Cervantes appeared before the law courts and wrote the second part of his "Quixote."

Unlucky Juana la Loca (Jane the Mad) and her husband Felipe el Hermoso (Philip the Handsome) reigned here after the death of Isabel the Catholic, and fifty years later, when Philip II. returned from England to ascend the Spanish throne, he settled in Valladolid, until his religious fanaticism or craze obliged him to move to a city nearer the Escorial. Then he fixed upon Madrid as his court. Being a religious man, nevertheless, and conscious of a certain love for Valladolid, his natal town, he had the suffragan church erected to a cathedral in 1595, appointing Don Bartolomé de la Plaza to be its first bishop. At the same time, he ordered Juan de Herrero, the severe architect of the Escorial,{296} to draw the plans and commence the building of the new edifice.

The growing importance of Madrid, and the final establishment in the last named city of all the honours which belonged to Valladolid, threw the city seated on the Pisuerga into the shade, and its star of fortune slowly waned. But not to such a degree as that of Salamanca or Burgos, for to-day, of all the old cities of Castile, the only one which has a life of its own, and a commercial and industrial personality, is Valladolid, the one-time capital of all the Spains, and now the seat of an archbishopric. It began by usurping the dignity of Burgos; then it rose to greater heights of fame than its rival, thanks to the discovery of America, and finally it lost its prestige when Madrid was crowned the unica villa.

The general appearance of the city is peculiarly Spanish, especially as regards the prolific use of brick in the construction of churches and edifices in general. It is presumable that the Arabs were possessors of the town before the Christian conquest, though no documental proofs are at hand. The etymology of the city's name, Medinat-{297}el-Walid, is purely Arabic, Walid being the name of a Moorish general.

If the cathedral church was erected as late as the sixteenth century, it must not be supposed that the town lacked parish churches. On the contrary, there is barely a city in Spain with more religious edifices of all kinds, and the greater part of them of far more architectural merit than the cathedral itself. The astonishing number of convents is remarkable; many of them date from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and are, consequently, Romanesque with a good deal of Byzantine taste about them, or else they belong to the period of Transition. Taken all in all, they are really the only architectural attractions to be discovered in the city to-day. The traditions which explain the foundation of some of these are among the most characteristic in Valladolid, and a thread of Oriental romance is more predominant among them than elsewhere. A good example of one of these explains the foundation of the large convent of the Mercedes.

Doña Leonor was the wife of one Acuña, a fearless (?) knight. The King of Portugal unluckily fell in love with Doña Leonor,{298} and, wishing to marry her, had her previous marriage annulled and placed her on his throne. Acuña fled from Portugal and came to Valladolid, where, with unparalleled sarcasm, he wore a badge on his hat proclaiming his dishonour.

Both Acuña and the King of Portugal died, and Doña Leonor, whose morals were none too edifying, fell in love with a certain Zuñiguez; the daughter of these two was handed over to the care of a knight, Fernan by name, and Doña Leonor ordered him to found a convent, upon her death, and lock up her daughter within its walls; the mother was doubtless only too anxious to have her daughter escape the ills of this life. Unluckily she counted without the person principally concerned, namely, the daughter, for the latter fell secretly in love with her keeper's nephew. She thought he was her cousin, however, for it appears she was passed off as Fernan's daughter. Upon her mother's death she learnt her real origin, and wedded her lover. In gratitude for her non-relationship with her husband, she founded the convent her mother had ordered, but she herself remained without its walls!{299}

The least that can be said about the cathedral of Valladolid, the better. Doubtless there are many people who consider the building a marvel of beauty. As a specimen of Juan de Herrero's severe and majestic style, it is second to no other building excepting only that great masterwork, the Escorial, and perhaps parts of the Pillar at Saragosse. But as an art monument, where beauty and not Greco-Roman effects are sought, it is a failure.

The original plan of the building was a rectangle, 411 feet long by 204 wide, divided in its length by a nave and two aisles, and in its width by a broad transept situated exactly half-way between the apse and the foot of the church. The form was thus that of a Greek cross; each angle of the building was to be surmounted by a tower, and the croisée by an immense cupola or dome. (Compare with the new cathedral in Salamanca.) The lateral walls of the aisles were to contain symmetrical chapels, as was also the apse.

From the foregoing it will be seen that symmetry and the Greco-Roman straight horizontal line were to replace the ogival arch and the generally vertical, soaring effect of Gothic buildings.{300}

The architect died before his monument was completed, and Churriguera, the most anti-artistic artist that ever breathed,—according to the author's personal opinion,—was called upon to finish the edifice: his trade-mark covers almost the entire western front, where the second body shows the defects into which Herrero's severe style degenerated soon after his death.

Of the four towers and the cupola which were to render the capitol of Valladolid "second in grandeur to none excepting St. Peter's at Rome," only one tower was erected: it fell down in 1841, and is being reërected at the present time.

In the interior the same disparity is everywhere visible, as well as in the unfinished state of the temple. Greek columns are prevalent, and, contrasting with their simplicity, the high altar, as grotesque a body as ever was placed in a holy cathedral, attracts the eye of the vulgar with something of the same feeling as a blood-and-thunder melodrama. Needless to say, the art connoisseur flees therefrom.

To the rear of the building the remains of the Romanesque Church of Santa Maria la Mayor are still to be seen; what a{301} difference between the rigid, anti-artistic conception of Herrero, ridiculized by Churriguera, and left but half-completed by successive generations of moneyless believers, and the simple but elegant features of the old collegiate church, with its tower still standing, a Byzantine recuerdo of the thirteenth century.

{302}

II

Like the general aspect of the city is also{303} the character of the inhabitant, and it is but drawing it mildly to state that Avila's sons were ever foremost in battle and strife. Kings in their minority were brought hither by prudent mothers who relied more upon the city's walls than upon the promises of noblemen in Valladolid and Burgos; this trust was never misplaced. In the conquest of Extremadura and of Andalusia, also, the Avilese troops, headed by daring warrior-prelates, played a most important part, and, as a frontier fortress, together with Segovia, against Aragon to the east, it managed to keep away from Castilian territory the ambitions of the monarchs of the rival kingdom.

Avela of the Romans was a garrison town, the walls of which were partly thrown down by the Western Goths upon their arrival in the peninsula. Previously, San Segundo, one of the disciples of the Apostles who had visited Bética (Andalusia), preached the True Word in Avila, and was created its first bishop—in the first century. During the terrible persecution of the Christians under the reign of Trajanus, one San Vicente and his two sisters, Sabina and Cristeta, escaped from Portugal and came to Avila, hoping to be hospitably received. All in vain;{304} their heads were smashed between stones, and their bodies left to rot in the streets. An immense serpent emerged from the city walls and kept guard over the three saintly corpses. The first to approach was a Jew, drawn hither by curiosity; he was immediately enveloped by the reptile's body. On the point of being strangled, he pronounced the word, "Jesus"—and the serpent released him. So grateful was the Jew at being delivered from death that he turned Christian and erected a church in honour of San Vicente, Sabina, and Cristeta, and had them buried within its walls.

This church subsisted throughout the dark ages of the Moorish invasion until at last Fernando I. removed the saintly remains to Leon in the eleventh century. The church was then destroyed, and, it is believed, the present cathedral was built on the same spot.

The Moors, calling the city Abila, used it as one of the fortresses defending Toledo on the north against the continual Christian raids; with varying success they held it until the end of the eleventh century, when it finally fell into the hands of the Christians, and was repopulated a short time before{305} Salamanca toward the end of the same century.

During the centuries of Moorish dominion the see had fallen into the completest oblivion, no mention being made of any bishops of Avila; the ecclesiastical dignity was reëstablished immediately after the final conquest of the region to the north of the Sierra of Guaderrama, and though documents are lacking as to who was the first prelate de modernis, it is generally believed to have been one Jeronimo, toward the end of the eleventh century.

The city grew rapidly in strength; settlers came from the north—from Castile and Leon—and from the east, from Aragon; they travelled to their new home in bullock-carts containing household furniture, agricultural and war implements, wives, and children.

In the subsequent history of Spain Avila played an important part, and many a stirring event took place within its walls. It was besieged by the Aragonese Alfonso el Batallador, whose army advanced to the attack behind its prisoners, sons of Avila. Brothers, fathers, and relatives were thus obliged to fire upon their own kin if they{306} wished to save their city. The same king, it is said, killed his hostages by having their heads cut off and boiled in oil, as though severed heads were capable of feeling the delightful sensation of seething oil!

Of all the traditions as numerous here as elsewhere, the prettiest and most improbable is doubtless that of Nalvillos, a typical chevalier of romance, who fell desperately in love with a beautiful Moorish princess and wedded her. She pined, however, for a lover whom in her youth she had promised to wed, and though her husband erected palaces and bought slaves for her, she escaped with her sweetheart. Nalvillos followed the couple to where they lay retired in a castle, and it was surrounded by him and his trusty followers. The hero himself, disguised as a seller of curative herbs, entered the apartment where his wife was waiting for her lover's return, and made himself known. The former's return, however, cut matters short, and Nalvillos was obliged to hide himself. The Moorish girl was true to her love, and told her sweetheart where the Christian was hiding; brought out of his retreat, he was on the point of being killed when he asked permission to blow a last blast on his bugle{307}—a wish that was readily conceded by the magnanimous lover. The result? The princess and her sweetheart were burnt to death by the flames ignited by Nalvillos's soldiers. The Christian warrior was, of course, able to escape.

In 1455 the effigy of Henry IV. was dethroned in Avila by the prelates of Toledo and other cities, and by an assembly of noblemen who felt that feudalism was dying out, and were anxious to strike a last blow at the weak king whom they considered was their enemy.

The effigy was placed on a throne; the Archbishop of Toledo harangued the multitude which, silent and scowling, was kept away from the throne by a goodly number of obedient mercenary soldiers. Then the prelate tore off the mock crown, another of the conspirators the sceptre, another the royal garments, and so on, each accompanying his act by an ignominious curse. At last the effigy was torn from the throne and trampled under the feet of the soldiers. Alfonso, a boy of eleven, stepped on the dais and was proclaimed king. His hand was kissed by the humble (!) prelates and noblemen, who swore allegiance, an oath they had not the{308} slightest intention of keeping, and did not keep, either.

Philip III.'s decree expelling Moors from Spain, was, as in the case of Plasencia, the coup de grace given to the city's importance; half the population was obliged to leave, and Avila never recovered her lost importance and influence. To-day, with only about ten thousand inhabitants, thrown in the background by Madrid, it manages to keep alive and nothing more.

The date when the erection of the cathedral church of Avila was begun is utterly unknown. According to a pious legend, it was founded by the third bishop, Don Pedro, who, being anxious to erect a temple worthy of his dignity, undertook a long pilgrimage to foreign countries in search of arms, and returned to his see in 1091. Sixteen years later, according to the same tradition, the present cathedral was essentially completed, a bold statement that cannot be accepted because in manifest contradiction with the build of the church.

According to Señor Quadrado, the oldest part of the building, the apse, was probably erected toward the end of the twelfth century. It is a massive, almost windowless,{309} semicircular body, its bare walls unsupported by buttresses, and every inch of it like the corner-tower of a castle wall, crenelated and flat-topped.

The same author opines that the transept, a handsome, broad, and airy ogival nave, dates from the fourteenth century, whereas the western front of the church is of a much more recent date.

Be that as it may, the fact is that the cathedral of Avila, seen from the east, west, or north, is a fortress building, a huge, unwieldy and anti-artistic composition of Romanesque, Gothic, and other elements. The western front, with its heavy tower to the north, and the lack of such to the south, appears more gloomy than ever on account of the obscure colour of the stone; the façade above the portal is of one of the most peculiar of artistic conceptions ever imagined; above the first body or the pointed arch which crowns the portal comes the second body, divided from the former by a straight line, which supports eight columns flanking seven niches; on the top of this unlucky part comes an ogival window. The whole façade is narrow—one door—and high. The effect is disastrous: an unnecessary contortion{310} or misplacement of vertical, horizontal, slanting, and circular lines.

The tower is flanked at the angles by two rims of stone, the edges of which are cut into bolas (balls). If this shows certain Mudejar taste, so, also, do the geometrical designs carved in relief against a background, as seen in the arabesques above the upper windows.

The northern portal, excepting the upper arch, which is but slightly curved and almost horizontal, and weighs down the ogival arches, is far better as regards the artist's conception of beauty; the stone carving is also of a better class.

Returning to the interior of the building, preferably by the transept, the handsomest part of the church, the spectator perceives a double ambulatory behind the high altar; the latter, as well as the choir, is low, and a fine view is obtained of the ensemble. The central nave, almost twice as high and little broader than the aisles, is crowned by a double triforium of Gothic elegance.

Seen from the transept, it would appear as though there were four aisles on the west side instead of two, a peculiar deception produced by the lateral opening of the last chapels, exactly similar in construction to{311} the arch which crowns the intersection of the aisles and transept.

In the northern and southern extremity of the transept two handsome rosaces, above a row of lancet windows, let in the outside light through stained panes.

The impression produced by the interior of the cathedral is greatly superior to that received from without. In the latter case curiosity is about the only sentiment felt by the spectator, whereas within the temple does not lack a simple beauty and mystery.

As regards sculptural details, the best are doubtless the low reliefs to be seen to the rear of the choir, as well as several sepulchres, of which the best—and one of the best Renaissance monuments of its kind in Spain—is that of the Bishop Alfonso Tostado in the ambulatory. The retablo of the high altar is also a magnificent piece of work of the second half of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth.

{312}

III

The local saint is one San Fruto, who, upon the approach of the Saracen hosts, gathered together a handful of fugitives and retired to the mountains; his brother Valentine and his sister Engracia (of Aragonese fame?) died martyrs to their belief. San Fruto, on the other hand, lived the life of a hermit in the mountains and wrought many{313} miracles, such as splitting open a rock with his jack-knife, etc. The most miraculous of his deeds was the proof he gave to the Moors of the genuineness of the Catholic religion: on a tray of oats he placed the host and offered it to a mule, which, instead of munching oats and host, fell on its knees, and perhaps even crossed itself!

Disputed by Arabs and Christians, like all Castilian towns, Segovia lagged along until it fell definitely into the hands of the latter. A Christian colony seems, nevertheless, to have lived in the town during the Arab dominion, because the documents of the time speak of a Bishop Ilderedo in 940.

The exact year of the repopulation of Segovia is not known, but doubtless it was a decade or so prior to either that of Salamanca or Avila.

Neither was the warlike spirit of the inhabitants inferior to that of their brethren in the last named cities. It was due to their bravery that Madrid fell into the hands of the Christians toward 1110, for, arriving late at the besieging camp, the king, who was present, told them that if they wished to pass the night comfortably, there was but one place, namely, the city itself. Without a{314} moment's hesitation the daring warriors dashed at the walls of Madrid, and, scaling them, took a tower, where they passed the night at their ease, and to their monarch's great astonishment.

In 1115, the first bishop de modernis, Don Pedro, was consecrated, and the cathedral was begun at about the same time. Several of the successive prelates were battling warriors rather than spiritual shepherds, and fought with energy and success against the infidel in Andalusia. One, Don Gutierre Girón, even found his death in the terrible defeat of the Christian arms at Alarcon.

The event which brought the greatest fame to Segovia was the erection of its celebrated Alcázar, or castle, the finest specimen of military architecture in Spain. Every city had its citadel, it is true, but none were so strong and invulnerable as that of Segovia, and in the stormy days of Castilian history the monarchs found a safe retreat from the attacks of unscrupulous noblemen behind its walls.

Until 1530 the old cathedral stood at the back of the Alcázar, but in a revolution of the Comuneros against Charles-Quint, the infuriated mob, anxious to seize the castle,{315} tore down the temple and used its stones, beams, stalls, and railings as a means to scale the high walls of the fortress. Their efforts were in vain, for an army came to the relief of the castle from Valladolid; a general pardon was, nevertheless, granted to the population by the monarch, who was too far off to care much what his Spanish subjects did. After the storm was over, the hot-headed citizens found themselves with a bishop and a chapter, but without a church or means wherewith to erect a new one.

The struggles between city and fortress were numerous, and were the cause, in a great measure, of the town's decadence. Upon one occasion, Isabel the Catholic infringed upon the citizens' rights by making a gift of some of the feudal villages to a court favourite. The day after the news of this infringement reached the city, by a common accord the citizens "dressed in black, did not amuse themselves, nor put on clean linen; neither did they sweep the house steps, nor light the lamps at night; neither did they buy nor sell, and what is more, they boxed their children's ears so that they should for ever remember the day." So great were the public signs of grief that it has been{316} said that "never did a republic wear deeper mourning for the loss of its liberties."

The end of the matter was that the queen in her famous testament revoked her gift and returned the villages to the city.

The old cathedral was torn down in November, 1520, and it was not until June, 1525, that the bishop, who had made a patriotic appeal to all Spaniards in behalf of the church funds, laid the first stone of the new edifice. Thirty years later the building was consecrated.

Nowhere else can a church be found which is a more thorough expression of a city's fervour and enthusiasm. It was as though the sacrilegious act of the enraged mob reacted on the penitent minds of the calmed citizens, for rich and poor alike gave their alms to the cathedral chapter. Jewels were sold, donations came from abroad, feudal lords gave whole villages to the church, and the poor men, the workmen, and the peasants gave their pennies. Daily processions arrived at Santa Clara, then used as cathedral church, from all parts of the diocese. To-day they were composed of tradesmen, of Zünfte, who gave their offerings of a few pounds; to-morrow a village would bring{317} in a cartload of stone, of mortar, of wood, etc. On holidays and Sundays the repentant citizens, instead of amusing themselves at the dance or bull-fight, carted materials for their new cathedral's erection, and all this they did of their own free will.

The act of consecrating the finished building constituted a grand holiday. The long aqueduct was illuminated from top to bottom, as was also the cathedral tower, and every house in the city. During a week the holiday-making lasted with open-air amusements for the poor and banquets for the rich.

The date of the construction of the new building was contemporaneous with that of Salamanca, and the architect was, to a certain extent, the same. It is not strange, therefore, that both should resemble each other in their general disposition. What is more, the construction in both churches was begun at the foot (west), and not in the east, as is generally the case. The oldest part of the building is consequently the western front, classic in its outline, but showing among its ogival details both the symmetry and triangular pediment of Renaissance art. The tower, higher than that of Sevilla, and broader than that of Toledo, is simple in its{318} structure; it is Byzantine, and does not lack a certain cachet of elegance; the first body is surmounted by a dome, upon which rises the second,—smaller, and also crowned by a cupola. The tower was twice struck by lightning and partly ruined in 1620; it was rebuilt in 1825, and a lightning conductor replaced the cross of the spire.

Though consecrated, as has been said, in 1558, the new temple was by no means finished: the transept and the eastern end were still to be built. The latter was finished prior to 1580, and in 1615 the Renaissance dome which surmounts the croisée was erected by an artist-architect, who evidently was incapable of giving it a true Gothic appearance.

The apse, with its three harmonizing étages corresponding to the chapels, aisles, and nave, and flanked by leaning buttresses ornamented with delicate pinnacles, is Gothic in its details; the ensemble is, nevertheless, Renaissance, thanks to a perfect symmetry painfully pronounced by naked horizontal lines—so contradictory to the spirit of true ogival. Less regularity and a greater profusion of buttresses, and above all of flying buttresses, would have been more agreeable,{319} but the times had changed and new tastes had entered the country.

Neither does the broad transept, its façade,—either southern or northern,—and the cupola join, as it were, the eastern and the western half of the building; on the contrary, it distinctly separates them, not to the building's advantage.

The interior is gay rather than solemn: the general disposition of the parts is as customary in a Gothic church of the Transition (Renaissance). The nave and transept are of the same width; the lateral chapels, running along the exterior walls of the aisles, are symmetrical, as in Salamanca; the ambulatory separates the high altar from the apse and its seven chapels.

The pavement of the church is of black and white marble slabs, like that of Toledo, for instance; as for the stained windows, they are numerous, and those in the older part of the building of good (Flemish?) workmanship and of a rich colour, which heightens the happy expression of the whole building.

The cloister is the oldest part of the building, having pertained to the previous cathedral. After the latter's destruction, and the successful erection of the new temple, the{320} cloister was transported stone by stone from its old emplacement to where it now stands. It is a handsome and richly decorated Gothic building, containing many tombs, among them those of the architects of the cathedral and of Maria del Salto. This Mary was a certain Jewess, who, condemned to death, and thrown over the Peña Grajera, invoked the aid of the Virgin, and was saved.

Another tomb is that of Prince Don Pedro, son of Enrique II., who fell out of a window of the Alcázar. His nurse, according to the tradition, threw herself out of the window after her charge, and together they were picked up, one locked in the arms of the other.

{321}

IV

Such is the state of affairs at present. The{322} recent governmental closure of the old cathedral in Alcalá has deprived the partisans of the double see of one of their chief arguments, namely, the possession of a worthy temple, unique in the world as regards its organization. Consequently, it is generally stated that the title of Madrid-Alcalá will die out with the present bishop, and that the next will simply be the Bishop of Madrid.

Madrid

The city of Madrid is new and uninteresting; it is an overgrown village, with no buildings worthy of the capital of a kingdom. From an architectural point of view, the royal palace, majestic and imposing, though decidedly poor in style, is about the only edifice that can be admired.

In history, Madrid plays a most unimportant part until the times of Philip II., the black-browed monarch who, intent upon erecting his mausoleum in the Escorial, proclaimed Madrid to be the only capital. That was in 1560; previously Magerit had been an Arab fortress to the north of Toledo, and the first in the region now called Castilla la Nueva (New Castile), to distinguish{323} it from Old Castile, which lies to the north of the mountain chain.

Most likely Magerit had been founded by the Moors, though, as soon as it had become the capital of Spain, its inhabitants, who were only too eager to lend their town a history it did not possess, invented a series of traditions and legends more ridiculous than veracious.

On the slopes of the last hill, descending to the Manzanares, and beside the present royal palace, the Christian conquerors of the Arab fortress in the twelfth century discovered an effigy of the Virgin, in an almudena or storehouse. This was the starting-point for the traditions of the twelfth-century monks who discovered (?) that this effigy had been placed where it was found by St. James, according to some, and by the Virgin herself, according to others; what is more, they even established a series of bishops in Magerit previous to the Arab invasion.

No foundations are of course at hand for such fabulous inventions, and if the effigy really were found in the almudena, it must have been placed there by the Moors themselves, who most likely had taken it as their{324} booty when sacking a church or convent to the north.

The patron saint of Madrid is one Isidro, not to be confounded with San Isidoro of Leon. The former was a farmer or labourer, who, with his wife, lived a quiet and unpretentious life in the vicinity of Madrid, on the opposite banks of the Manzanares, where a chapel was erected to his memory sometime in the seventeenth century. Of the many miracles this saint is supposed to have wrought, not one differs from the usual deeds attributed to holy individuals. Being a farmer, his voice called forth water from the parched land, and angels helped his oxen to plough the fields.

Save the effigy of the Virgin de la Almudena, and the life of San Isidro, Madrid has no ecclesiastical history,—the Virgin de la Atocha has been forgotten, but she is only a duplicate of her sister virgin. Convents and monasteries are of course as numerous as elsewhere in Spain; brick parish churches of a decided Spanish-Oriental appearance rear their cupolas skyward in almost every street, the largest among them being San Francisco el Grande, which, with San Antonio de la Florida (containing{325} several handsome paintings by Goya), is the only temple worth visiting.

As regards a cathedral building, there is, in the lower part of the city, a large stone church dedicated to San Isidro; it serves the stead of a cathedral church until a new building, begun about 1885, will have been completed.

This new building, the cathedral properly speaking, is to be a tenth wonder; it is to be constructed in granite, and its foundations stand beside the royal palace in the very spot where the Virgin de la Almudena was found, and where, until 1869, a church enclosed the sacred effigy; the new building is to be dedicated to the same deity.

Unluckily, the erection of the new cathedral proceeds but slowly; so far only the basement stones have been laid and the crypt finished. The funds for its erection are entirely dependent upon alms, but, as the religious fervour which incited the inhabitants of Segovia in the sixteenth century is almost dead to-day, it is an open question whether the cathedral of Madrid will ever be finished.

The temporary cathedral of San Isidro was erected in the seventeenth century; its{326} two clumsy towers are unfinished, its western front, between the towers, is severe; four columns support the balcony, behind which the cupola, which crowns the croisée, peeps forth.

Inside there is nothing worthy of interest to be admired except some pictures, one of them painted by the Divino Morales. The nave is light, but the chapels are so dark that almost nothing can be seen in their interior.

This church, until the expulsion of the Jesuits, was the temple of their order, dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul; adjoining it a Jesuit school was erected, which has been incorporated in the government colleges.

Alcalá de Henares

About twenty miles to the east of Madrid lies the one-time glorious university city of Alcalá, famous above all things for having been the cradle of Cervantes, and the hearth, if not the home, of Cardinal Cisneros.

Its history and its decadence are of the saddest; the latter serves in many respects as an adequate symbol of Spain's own tremendous downfall.

The Romans founded Alcalá; it was their{327} Complutum, of which some few remains have been discovered in the vicinity of the modern city. Yet, notwithstanding this lack of substantial evidence, the inhabitants of the region still proudly call themselves Complutenses.

When the West Goths were rulers of the peninsula, the Roman monuments must have been completely destroyed, for all traces of the strategic stronghold were effaced from the map of Spain. The invading Arabs, possessing to a certain degree both Roman military instinct and foresight, built a fortress on the spot where the State Archives Building stands to-day. This castle was used by them as one of Toledo's northern defences against the warlike Christian kings.

In the twelfth century the fortress fell into the hands of the Christians; in the succeeding centuries it was strongly rebuilt by the cardinal-archbishops of Toledo, who used it both as their palace and as their stronghold.

Outside the bastioned and turreted walls of the castle, the new-born city grew up under its protecting shadows. Known by the Arabic name of its fortress (Al-Kalá), it was successively baptized Alcalá de San Justo,{328} Alcalá de Fenares, and since the sixteenth century, Alcalá de Henares (heno, old Spanish feno, meaning hay). Protected by such powerful arms as those of the princes of the Church, it grew up to be a second Toledo, a city of church spires and convent walls, but of which only a reduced number stand to-day to point back to the religious fervour of the middle ages.

The world-spread fame acquired by Alcalá in the fifteenth century was due to the patronage of Cardinal Cisneros, who built the university, at one time one of the most celebrated in Europe, and to-day a mere skeleton of architectural beauty.

The same prelate raised San Justo to a suffragan church; its chapter was composed only of learned professors of the university, as were also its canons; Leon X. gave it the enviable title of La Magistral, the Learned, which points it out as unique in the Christian world. The Polyglot Bible, published in the sixteenth century, and famous in all Europe, was worked out by these scholars under Cisneros's direction, and the favoured city outshone the newly built Madrid twenty miles away, and rivalled{329} Salamanca in learning, and Toledo in worldly and religious splendour.

Madrid grew greater and greater as years went by, and consequently Alcalá de Henares dwindled away to the shadow of a name. The university, the just pride of the Complutenses, was removed to the capital; the cathedral, for lack of proper care, became an untimely ruin; the episcopal palace was confiscated by the state, which, besides repairing it, filled its seventy odd halls with rows upon rows of dusty documents and governmental papers.

To-day the city drags along a weary, inactive existence: soldiers from the barracks and long-robed priests from the church fill the streets, and are as numerous as the civil inhabitants, if not more so; convents and cloisters of nuns, either grass-grown ruins or else sombre grated and barred edifices, are to be met with at every step.

Strangers visit the place hurriedly in the morning and return to Madrid in the afternoon; they buy a tin box of sugar almonds (the city's specialty), carelessly examine the university and the archiepiscopal palace, gaze unmoved at some Cervantes relics, and at the façade of the cathedral. Besides, they are{330} told that in such and such a house the immortal author of Don Quixote was born, which is a base, though comprehensible, invention, because no such house exists to-day.

That is all; perchance in crossing the city's only square, the traveller notices that it can boast of no fewer than three names, doubtless with a view to hide its glaring nakedness. These three names are Plaza de Cervantes, Plaza Mayor, and Plaza de la Constitución, of which the latter is spread out boldly across the town hall and seems to invoke the remembrance of the ephemeral efforts of the republic in 1869.

In the third century after the birth of Christ, two infants, Justo and Pastor, preached the True Word to the unbelieving Roman rulers of Complutum. The result was not in the least surprising: the two infants lost their baby heads for the trouble they had taken in trying to trouble warriors.

But the Vatican remembered them, and canonized Pastor and Justo. Hundreds of churches, sown by the blood of martyrs, grew up in all corners of the peninsula to commemorate pagan cruelty, and to induce all men to follow the examples set by the two babes.{331}

No one knew, however, where the mortal remains of Justo and Pastor were lying. In the fourth century their resting-place was miraculously revealed to one Austurio, Archbishop of Toledo, who had them removed to his cathedral. They did not stay long in the primate city, for the invasion of the Moors obliged all True Believers to hide Church relics. Thus, Justo and Pastor wandered forth again from village to village, running away from the infidels until they reposed temporarily in the cathedral of Huesca in the north of Aragon.

In Alcalá their memory was kept alive in the parish church dedicated to them. But as the city grew, it was deemed preferable to build a solid temple worthy of the saintly pair, and Carillo, Archbishop of Toledo, had the old church pulled down and began the erection of a larger edifice. This took place in the middle of the fifteenth century, when Ximenez de Cisneros, who ruled the fate of Spain and its church, gave it the ecclesiastical constitution previously mentioned.

Fifty years later the weary bodies of the two infants were brought back in triumph to their native town amid the rejoicings and admiration of the people, and were placed{332} in the cathedral of San Justo, then a collegiate church of Toledo.

A few years ago the cathedral church of San Justo was denounced by the state architect and closed. To-day it is a dreary ruin, with tufts of grass growing among the battlements. The chapter, depriving the hoary building of its high altar, its precious relics and paintings, its stalls and other accessories, installed the cathedral in the Jesuit temple, an insignificant building in the other extremity of the town. Recently the abandoned ruin has been declared a national monument, which means that the state is obliged to undertake its restoration.

La Magistral is a brick building of imposing simplicity and severity in its general outlines. Its decorative elements are ogival, but of true Spanish nakedness and lack of elegance. Though Renaissance principles have not entered into the composition, as might have been supposed, considering the date of the erection, nevertheless, the lack of flying buttresses, the scarcity of windows, the undecorated angles of the western front, the barren walls, and flat-topped, though slightly sloping, roofs prove that the "simple and severe style" is latent in the minds of artists.