Leon, Burgos and Salamanca: a historical and descriptive account

by Albert Frederick Calvert

Las Huelgas

The other great ecclesiastical building of Burgos belongs nearly to the same period as the cathedral. The Cistercian convent of Santa Maria la Real de las Huelgas was founded in 1180 by Alfonso VIII. and his Queen Eleanor, daughter of our Henry II.—to propitiate the Heavenly Powers after the rout of Alarcos, it is asserted by some. The architect appears to have been a countryman of his royal mistress—an Angevin—and his work was certainly copied in those churches which were built by Spaniards.

This historic pile stands about a mile from the city, on the road to Valladolid. The name is derived from the verb holgar (to rest), the site having been formerly occupied by pleasure in grounds. Many of the most striking events in Castilian history were enacted here. Here Edward I. was knighted by Alfonso el Sabio; here, in after years, the Black Prince lodged, fresh from his much-to-be-regretted victory at Navarrete. Many royal personages were wedded here, and not a few were buried here besides. Great was the dignity of the abbess, who exercised ‘the high, the low, and the middle justice,’ or, in other words, could hang offenders on her own gallows; whose authority extended over half a hundred towns and villages, and who was exempt from all episcopal jurisdiction or control. Though shorn of her proudest prerogatives and much of her wealth, the abbess of Las Huelgas is still one of the greatest ladies of Spain. The rule, too, of St. Bernard is observed with primitive strictness, and the high-born nuns refuse to permit even the most sober of archæologists to examine their cloisters.

A thirteenth-century postern leads into the compás or square formed by the convent, a graceful fourteenth-century tower, and the ancient palace of the Castilian monarchs, now a school. The church, built by St. Ferdinand in 1279, is of the usual cruciform plan. It is stern, simple, very pure Gothic, despite the restorations and alterations effected in successive ages. The nave is inaccessible to strangers, and is reserved exclusively to the nuns, who may be seen, through the screen, assisting at the offices in their grandly carved stalls. We loiter in the transept, and notice the lofty lantern over the crossing, and the revolving pulpit from which St. Vincent Ferrer is said to have preached, though the date of its construction (1560) may be discerned carved upon it. The chancel, with its green tapestries woven with gold—the gift of Philip the Handsome—is flanked on either side by two chapels, but our interest centres in the nave, of which we can only obtain a glimpse through the grille. The tombs facing us are those of the founders, Alfonso VIII. and Eleanor Plantagenet. The conqueror of Las Navas is shown on a relief, enthroned, handing the charter of the abbey to the first abbess. To the right of these tombs lies Queen Berenguela, mother of St. Ferdinand; and farther back in the aisles are the sarcophagi of thirty-six members of the royal house of Spain, among them the ‘Emperor’ Alfonso VII., Sancho I., Enrique I., and Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Savoy. Anne of Austria, daughter of the great Don John, was the last princess entombed within these venerable precincts. Unapproachable by visitors is the chapel of Santiago, wherein is preserved an effigy of St. James, which by means of some hidden mechanism could place the crown on the royal brow and confer the accolade of knighthood.

The remarkable Moorish fabric, generally believed to have been a trophy of the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, is hung in the nun’s choir, but a replica may be seen hanging in the chancel. A detailed description of this interesting relic is contained in Riaño’s Spanish Arts. Amador de los Rios rejects the tradition that this was the Almohade standard, and thinks it was the curtain or flap of the Amir’s tent, taken in the battle. Riaño goes farther, and opines that it was an offering made, not by Alfonso VIII., but by the eleventh monarch of that name. Adopting this theory, it remains probable that the fabric was one of the spoils of war, for the character of the texts from the Koran woven upon it are a sufficient proof that it could not have been worked by Moorish weavers under Christian direction.

Not far from Las Huelgas is the Hospital del Key, built by Alfonso VIII. as a hospice for pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela. There is little about this building now to suggest a twelfth-century origin. Rebuilt in the sixteenth century and restored by Carlos III., it has been styled one of the finest specimens of the plateresque in Castile. The Puerta de Romeros exhibits a bewildering wealth of ornament, against which stands out, as the most interesting features, the vigorous figure of the apostle, and the crowned busts of Alfonso and Eleanor. The court is bordered on two sides by cloisters, the symmetry of which is marred by the excess of arches. The cornice, with its heraldic achievement and busts, is, on the whole, in good taste. One side of the court is formed by the façade of the church, restored in the plateresque style by Carlos III. in 1771. The original structure may be recognised in some dilapidated and deserted chambers with Mudejar ceilings, adjacent to the Magdalena arcade. There are some graceful Mudejar capitals and Arabic inscriptions of the thirteenth century likewise to be seen in the stables of the Hospice.

Far more interesting and substantially more ancient, though of a later foundation, is the Cartuja de Miraflores in an arid spot some two and a half miles from the city. Here once stood the hunting palace of Enrique III.—placed like so many abodes of Spanish royalty in a naturally uninviting site, and converted by that king’s son and successor, Juan II., into a Carthusian monastery in 1442. In consequence of a fire, all had to be rebuilt, a few years later, under the direction of Juan de Colonia. The edifice was not actually completed till the time of Isabel the Catholic. The monastery is now inhabited by only a few monks, each having his own house or cell, according to the rule of St. Bruno. Grass grows in the courtyard, and everything wears an aspect of desolation and neglect. The church recalls San Juan de los Reyes at Toledo. It rises high above the adjacent buildings, simple in plan and rather spoilt by plateresque additions. The interior, consisting of a single nave and apse, is divided by rejas or grilles into three parts, reserved respectively to the laity, the lay brothers, and the clergy. The two last have their own choirs. The stalls of the lay brothers are beautifully carved in walnut, and display the figures of the apostles. They were carved in 1558 by Simon de Bueras for the sum of 810 ducats. The priests’ stalls, also in walnut, show the fine workmanship of Martin Sanchez (1489), a Spaniard whose style was very Flemish. The quadrangular altar, designed by Gil de Siloe, was adorned with gold brought from America in the second expedition of Columbus. The altar-piece, by the same artist and Diego de la Cruz, is a triumph of design and colouring. It is impossible to describe in detail the almost innumerable subjects and sculptures which make up this marvellous work. To be easily distinguished among the religious compositions are the figures of Juan II. and his Queen Isabel, kneeling on faldstools and attended by their guardian angels. Above the tabernacle a superb cluster of angels encircles a crucifix, over which is seen the symbolical figure of the pelican. Very fine, also, is the seat occupied by the celebrating priest during the sermon. It is the work of Martin Sanchez, and is an exquisite specimen of Gothic carving, described by one authority as ‘one of the most beautiful and sumptuous pieces of ecclesiastical furniture of its kind and period in Spain or elsewhere.’

But the supreme objects of interest in this Castilian Charterhouse are the superb tombs of Juan II., his queen, and their son, the Infante Alfonso. These were designed and in great measure executed by Gil de Siloe, by order of Isabel the Catholic. The effigies of the king and queen recline on an alabaster tomb, the ground plan of which is a star of eight points formed by two squares placed diagonally. On the angles of the lower slab are placed figures of children supporting the royal escutcheon, and accompanied by lions. Each of the sixteen spaces between the points of the star is occupied by the statue of an apostle or a cardinal virtue placed in a niche. The tracery of this part of the tomb is indescribably rich. The angles of the upper slab are rounded off and marked by pinnacles, statuettes, and the statues of the Four Evangelists. Here and there the charming figures of cherubim, all in different postures, seem about to detach themselves from the marble. In the intervals between the points of the substructure are disposed lions in various attitudes: on some amorini are mounted, while others are about to devour nude children. Such fantastic conceptions—monsters, genii, etc.—are displayed in marvellous profusion all over the surface of the monument. All this detail, which, in Street’s opinion, is for beauty of execution, vigour, and animation of design, finer than any other work of the age, serves but as a setting for the recumbent figures of Juan II. and Queen Isabel of Portugal—the parents of that other and more famous Isabel. The king is shown in his crown and robes; the face is weak, but beautiful, boyish almost, smooth-shaven, and framed by long curling locks; on the breast falls a magnificent collar of state. The right hand, which held the sceptre, has been broken off, the left, with a natural gesture, gathers up the folds of the robe. On the feet are pattens, which seem to have been in use by both sexes in Spain in the fifteenth century. The robe is of the most magnificent description, encrusted with embroidery and precious stones. The statue of the queen remains intact. Her gloved hands hold an open book, from which she seems to have raised her eyes to regard the spectator between half-closed lids. Her mantle is as splendid as her husband’s. Siloe’s embroidery in marble, his moulding of the draperies, are as delicate as the work of the weaver of the robes itself could ever have been. The lace-work is so fine that one expects a breath of wind to ruffle it. Assuredly, the price paid to the architect (442,667 maravedis) was not an exorbitant one.

The same skill is apparent in the kneeling effigy of the Infante Alfonso, who died while in rebellion against his half-brother Enrique III., at the age of fifteen years. Also by Siloe, this monument is contained within a recessed arch in the north wall of the sanctuary, festooned with a vine to which children cling. Men-at-arms support the tomb, over which is seen a vigorous figure of St. George and the Dragon. The monument is hardly less significant than that of the young prince’s parents. All three tombs were a labour of love with Isabel the Catholic, who looked upon this church as in quite a peculiar sense the property of her family. It is said that on seeing the escutcheon of the family of Soria painted on one of the stained-glass windows, she at once broke it with one of her attendants’ swords, admonishing the community that they must accept no other patronage than hers. And to-day, in truth, what glory there is at this forlorn monastery is of her creation. A statue, in painted wood, of St. Bruno, founder of the Carthusian Order, in one of the chapels, deserves notice if only as one of the rare specimens of Portuguese art—it was the work of one Manoel Pereira.

It is difficult to treat of the minor churches of Burgos in chronological order, for here, as in so many other cities, the existing fabric of the earliest-founded church may be of recent date, and far surpassed in antiquity by the actual masonry of some less historic fane. Street assigns the date of San Estéban to somewhere between the years 1280 and 1350. It stands on the castle hill, and exhibits some features of architectural interest. The portico is good Gothic work of the late thirteenth century, the reliefs representing the martyrdom of the patron saint. An early instance of realism is the stones adhering to the folds of the saint’s robe in one of the statues. Above is a fine wheel-window of the middle fourteenth century. The church consists of three parallel naves, all terminating in apses. At the west end is a raised gallery for the choir, with a fine late Gothic balustrade. Some beautiful arabesque work may be seen in the last chapel in the south aisle; the retablos and pulpit are comparatively modern. This church, which belonged by the way to the Knights Templars, is entered through an early fourteenth-century cloister—one of the smallest to be met with.

Next in order of interest, and probably of date, comes San Gil, a cruciform structure in the north of the city, founded, or at any rate rebuilt, in the fourteenth century. Its chief treasure is a wrought-iron pulpit, with very beautiful tracery, in part gilded. Very curious are the effigies in the floor of the church, with bodies of black marble and heads and hands of white. Another feature of the building worthy of notice is the mixture of painting and sculpture and carving in the decoration of the chapels on each side of the choir. The retablos are gorgeous, and some of the tombs interesting and apparently very ancient.

Only the very patient or enthusiastic sightseer will trouble to visit the other churches of Burgos, which, as it seems to me, contain little to reward one’s curiosity. San Nicolás, a sixteenth-century parish church, being close to the cathedral, should not be neglected. The life of the saint—the patron of youth—is illustrated in some ancient paintings in the north aisle and on the admirably carved stone retablo of the high altar. This fine work, as an inscription declares, was the gift of Gonsalvo Solanco and his wife Leonor de Miranda, both of whom are buried here. The tombs in these old forgotten churches are generally interesting. St. Lesmes contains the sepulchre of the patron, a devout French monk, who lived in the reign of Alfonso VI., but whose cult never seems to have spread beyond Castile.

The old convent of San Pablo, now appropriated to military uses, is hardly worth a visit, but the story of its founder, Bishop Pablo de Santa Maria, is, as Street remarks, worth telling. Originally a Jew, he was baptized a Christian in 1390. Of his four sons one at least followed his example, and afterwards became Bishop of Siguenza; but his wife, Juana, remained deaf to all his persuasions and refused to abandon the faith of her fathers. Accordingly he had the marriage legally dissolved, and was ordained priest. In 1415, being then at Valladolid, he was raised to the episcopal see of his native city, and among those who met him upon his induction were ‘his venerable mother, Doña Maria, and his well-loved wife, Juana.’ His well-loved wife, despite their religious differences, she seems to have remained, for she was buried near her husband in this church of San Pablo, unconverted to the last. The bishop survived her fifteen years. It is strange that these tombs should have been spared in the days of Torquemada, when many bishops of Jewish ancestry were compelled to disinter the bones of their remote ancestors to save them from the fury of the new school of Christians.

Of that tutelary divinity of Burgos, the Cid, there are several shrines, mostly, alas! spurious. You may visit the church variously called Santa Agueda and Santa Gadea, a fourteenth-century building, which succeeded the historic church where the champion constrained Alfonso VI. to take the oath. That event is recorded by the stone cross near the entrance, and the iron lock over the door. But the real lock on which the oath was taken was stolen by the French, who showed themselves particularly greedy for relics of Spain’s national hero. Of the church of San Martin, where he was baptized, no trace remains. The site of the Casa solar del Cid is hardly worth visiting. The house, as might be expected, has long since disappeared, and the present uninteresting monument was erected by Carlos III. in the eighteenth century. The very monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña, which the hero chose for his last resting-place, and to which he was brought across Spain seated, dead, but still dreadful, on his war-horse, has been modernised, and contains little to assist the imagination. Its memories are stirring enough. The foundation dates from Visigothic times, and here, in the ninth century, two hundred monks were massacred by the Moors. Somewhere here is buried Babieca, the horse of the Cid, one of those four-footed heroes who have attained to world-wide fame. ‘Bury him deep,’ was his master’s last injunction, ‘for it is not meet that he should be eaten by dogs who has trampled under foot so many dogs of Moors.’ The honourable interment of animals who have endeared themselves to their masters is far from being a modern craze and a proof of the degeneracy of a people, as some pseudo-moralists of to-day appear in their ignorance to believe.

The Cid’s own tomb at Cardeña is now empty. Some of his bones were carried off by the French during the Peninsular War, and were ultimately discovered at Sigmaringen, when they were restored to the Spanish Government. Meanwhile the rest of the skeleton and that of the Cid’s wife, Doña Ximena, had been removed from their insecure place of sepulture, and are now contained in a walnut case, to be seen in a modern chapel at the Ayuntamiento, or town hall. In the same building—an eighteenth century structure—is shown the bench from which those early judges of the nation, Lain Calvo and Nuño Rasura, are affirmed by tradition to have administered justice. The archives are said to merit exhaustive examination, and are rich in rare autographs and manuscripts.

Burgos, like many other provincial capitals in Spain, is rich in old mansions of the nobility. Our English country towns have lost much historic and monumental interest from the immemorial practice of our aristocracy living on their estates, remote from towns. Quite small towns in France and in western Europe generally, usually contain two or three residences of the local nobility which do something to redeem the place from utter provincialism. It is the absence of such buildings perhaps that gives even our large country towns the aspect of mere agricultural centres or overgrown villages. The finest example of civil architecture in Burgos is the Casa del Cordon, now the residence of the Captain-General. This was the palace of that family whose tombs we have seen in the Capilla del Condestable. It was in all probability built by the same workmen in the middle of the fifteenth century, under the direction of the famous Mudejar architect of Segovia, Mohammed, and by order of the illustrious High Constable, Don Pedro Fernandez de Velasco, and his consort, Doña Mencia de Mendoza de la Vega. Here Ferdinand the Catholic and Charles V. held their courts, and here the first Duchess of Frias presided over a little coterie composed of the most brilliant men of letters and artists in Spain. This lady was the natural daughter of Ferdinand, her mother having been a Catalan girl who accompanied her royal lover in all his campaigns disguised as an esquire. The accomplished duchess was the firm friend of her half-sister, the hapless Queen Juana, and took the latter’s husband, Philip the Handsome, to task so severely, that he caused her to be ejected from her own house. Within these walls the Burgundian prince expired, his body being jealously watched by the queen and the duchess to save it, tradition avers, from a lady by whom he had been passionately loved and who had sworn to possess him in death. The Casa del Cordon has nobler memories, too, of Columbus who, on his return from his second voyage to America, here presented himself to the Catholic Sovereigns with offerings of the choicest products of the New World. Here was signed, on June 11, 1515, the act of the incorporation of the kingdom of Navarre with Castile, the unity of the whole of Spain being thus achieved. A copy of the document is preserved in the city archives. And in this house, in 1526, Francis I. was entertained on his way back to France by the High Constable of Castile.

The mansion, which has thus loomed so large in the history of Spain, occupies one side of the Plaza de la Libertad. It belongs to the last period of Gothic, and is not wanting in dignity and grace. The walls are surmounted by a parapet or balustrade of pinnacles and crestwork, in which is repeated the Cross of St. Andrew, in remembrance of a victory gained by a Velasco on that saint’s day. The façade is flanked by two square towers, rising one story above the ordinary roof level. The windows and arcades are later additions, and in bad style. The rope carved in stone over the entrance, from which the house derives its modern name, is held by some to be part of the insignia of the Teutonic Order, by others, with more probability, to be the cord of St. Francis of Assisi, a saint who was the object of a special veneration by the Velasco family. Within it are contained the escutcheons of the allied houses of Velasco, Mendoza de la Vega, and Figueroa, the first displaying the castles and lions of Castile and the device Un buen morir honra toda la vida. The halls and courts, now devoted to the military administration of the province, reveal some interesting traces of the former magnificence of this old home of one of the most powerful and illustrious of the great families of Spain.

On the south side of the river, in the Calle de la Calera, are two interesting houses which give the neighbourhood a thoroughly sixteenth-century aspect. The portal of the fortress-like Casa de los Angulos or of Iñigo de Angulo is adorned by two lions placed on the pillars flanking the archway, above which is a shield with seven quarterings. A few doors farther on is the more interesting Casa de Miranda, considered the best example of the Renaissance style in Burgos. It now serves the prosaic purposes of a candle factory. It is entered through a noble doorway decorated with heraldic achievements. Between the capitals of the inner court may be deciphered the inscription: Franciscus de Miranda salon abbas de salas et canonicus burgen protonotarius et scriptor aplicus patrie restitutus faciendum curavit anno De MDXLV. The escutcheon of the Mirandas is displayed on the friezes, which are in the usual Renaissance style, relieved with the figures of genii, medallions, etc. The architecture of the staircase exhibits a harmonious blending of late Gothic and early plateresque. Fine workmanship is to be seen in the decoration of the façade of the old Colegio de San Nicolás (1570), where the Provincial Institute has its quarters.

Two more conspicuous monuments of the sixteenth century are the fine arches of Santa Maria and Fernan González. The former occupies the site of the old tower of Santa Maria, where the town council at one time held its sittings, and whence the body of Garcilaso de la Vega was hurled by Pedro the Cruel; it was erected between 1536 and 1540 by the municipality to conciliate Charles V., it is said, for the events of the Comunidad. The arch is of three stories, and flanked by two rounded towers. Over the arch are shown in niches six statues: those of Charles V. and the Castilian worthies, the Cid, Fernan González, Nuño Rasura, Lain Calvo, and Diego Porcellos. The upper part of the structure is battlemented and adorned with statues of the Virgin, of the guardian angel of the city, and of kings-at-arms supporting escutcheons. The probability is that the entrance arch, and indeed the whole lower story, is older by a century than the sculptured parts.

The arch of Fernan González was erected in 1592 to mark the site of the castle of the redoubtable count. It is in the severe and imposing Doric style of Herrera, and was evidently intended to receive a statue of the hero, which an impoverished city is not likely to provide now. Burgos has, however, done its best to keep green the memory of its illustrious sons—an example set by so many continental towns, which we, in England, seem loth to follow.

Of the castle, whose history was so long the history of Castile, little that is ancient, nothing of the earliest structure, remains. The oldest masonry is probably the gate, called the Puerta San Estéban, a brick structure pierced with a horse-shoe arch. Popularly ascribed to the period of the Moorish domination (which practically was never asserted over Burgos), there can be little doubt that it dates from the fourteenth century, and was the work of Mudejar masons, like so many other Spanish buildings of that time. The old citadel of Castile is now a heap of ruins, but it was strong enough as late as a century ago to resist the assaults of Wellington. The next year, however (1813), the French completely dismantled the fortifications and evacuated the city.

The provincial museums of Spain are, as a rule, disappointing, but the Burgos collection, housed in the Puerta Santa Maria, is enriched by the spoils of numerous ancient churches and suppressed convents. The alabaster effigy of Don Juan de Padilla, believed to be by Gil de Siloe, is one of the noblest sepulchral monuments in the kingdom. It was brought here from the ruined monastery of Fres del Val, where the knight was interred in 1491, having met his death at the age of twenty years, before the walls of Granada. He is shown kneeling in an attitude of prayer, beside a prie-Dieu. The face is beautiful and expressive, and probably a portrait. An ample robe of extraordinary richness reveals the shirt of mail, the cuirass, and the plate armour worn by the young warrior. The style reminds one of the statues of Don Juan II. and Prince Alfonso in the Cartuja, and reflects the greatest credit on Spanish sculpture. Hardly less beautiful is the tomb itself, decorated with shields upheld by angels, and an inscription recording the age of the deceased. In the museum is also a very curious and interesting altar-front from the convent of Santo Domingo de Silos, dating from the eleventh century. It is of bronze, with figures of saints in coloured enamels, in a bastard Byzantine style. The Moorish ivory casket from the same monastery and of the same century is profoundly interesting, as exhibiting in relief the Persian theory of the origin of good and evil, like the basin from Medina Az Zahara, preserved in the National Museum of Archæology. The Byzantine reliefs of saints on one side of the casket were evidently carved by the Christians when they became the possessors. Few small provincial collections contain more important antiquities than the Museum of Burgos.

III
SALAMANCA

‘Sword never blunted pen,’ says a Spanish proverb, ‘nor pen sword.’ The history of Salamanca illustrated this truth. Its people were doughty warriors and learned scholars. The name of Salamanca was feared by Moor and Portuguese, as much as it was respected in all the halls of learning of the mediæval world. The seat of a university which all but successfully competed for pre-eminence with Oxford and Paris, it was at the same time the permanent camp of as fierce a race of fighting men as ever marched beneath the banners of Spain. The pen has made the city famous in every land, but it was by her sword that she came to be better known in her own country. Decayed and ruined, she has yet made herself illustrious in the two great fields of human activity, and has a twofold claim on the respect and interest of men of every European tongue.

The city, far older than Leon and Burgos, existed prior to the Roman conquest. It is identified by some with the Elmantica of Polybius, in which others recognise the neighbouring town of Alba de Tormes. Plutarch speaks of it as Salmatica, ‘a great town of Spain,’ and relates the heroic exploits of its womenfolk. Besieged by the Carthaginians under Hannibal, the inhabitants were forced to surrender. They were ordered to evacuate the town, leaving behind them all their arms and property as spoils for the victors. They were then placed under a guard of Massilians, while the rest of the Punic host hastened to plunder the forsaken city. But the women, who had accompanied the prisoners and whom no one had thought of searching, produced weapons which they had concealed about them, and armed their husbands, who fell upon their guards and cut them to pieces. The Carthaginian army was thrown into dismay by this unexpected attack, and the brave Salamantians were enabled to make good their escape to the hills. Hannibal is stated by Plutarch to have graciously pardoned the enemy that had eluded his vengeance.

Salamanca, with the rest of the province of Lusitania, passed under the sway of Rome, and seems to have been a place of some importance. Money was coined here in the reign of Tiberius, and the town was governed by duumvirs. Christianity must have early taken root here, for when the Goths conquered Spain they found an episcopal see already established at Salamanca. It had already been for a time the seat of a Vandal governor, Genseric, brother of King Huneric. Money was struck bearing the names of the city and of the kings Erwig and Egica. Certain bishops are mentioned as assisting at the councils of Toledo: Eleutherius at the third; Hiccila at the fourth and fifth; Egered at the seventh, eighth, and tenth; Providentius at the twelfth; Holemund at the thirteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth. When in 715 Salamanca was submerged by the Moorish invasion, her bishop sought refuge with Pelayo in the glens of Asturias, and we read that Alfonso the Chaste assigned the basilica of San Salvador at Oviedo, to Quindulfo, the occupant of the see then in partibus infidelium. The city did not long remain in the undisturbed possession of the Moor. It was taken by Alfonso I. in 750, and again in 858 by Ordoño I., who made captive the Moorish amir, and released him only after extorting better terms for his Christian subjects. But this promise did not tempt back the bishops from their safe retreat in the north. Sebastian, who wore the mitre about the year 880, occupied himself with writing a chronicle of Spain from the reign of Wamba to his own day. His patron, Alfonso el Magno, succeeded in expelling the Mohammedans from Salamanca, and thought to annex it definitely to his kingdom; but it was recaptured by Abd-ur-Rahman, the Khalifa, five years later, the Christian inhabitants, including priests, to the number of two hundred, being put to the sword.

The city continued to change hands according to the varying fortunes of war till the conquest of Toledo by Alfonso VI. (1085). The country between the Douro and the Tagus, desolated by three centuries of unintermittent warfare, had become almost denuded of inhabitants. Alfonso appointed his son-in-law, Count Raymond of Burgundy, governor of Salamanca, with a mandate to repeople the town and surrounding district, and to repair the ravages of war. The count drew his colonists mainly from Castile, from the neighbouring towns of Toro and Braganza, from other parts of Portugal, from Galicia, from the ‘Sierra,’ and from his native province of Burgundy. These, together with the Mozarabes or original inhabitants, constituted the seven classes into which the population was divided, each with its separate quarter and local authorities. The whole community was subject to a code of laws framed by Count Raymond, and later amalgamated with the code preserved in the municipal archives, dating from the thirteenth century. From this document it would appear that an important part was taken in the work of colonisation by the Benedictine monastery of San Vicente, a foundation already some two or three centuries old.

Count Raymond and his wife, Urraca, were assisted in their beneficent labours by the famous bishop, Jeronimo Visquio. This prelate, a native of Perigord, and a monk of the order of St. Benedict, had come to Spain with the equally illustrious Don Bernard, Archbishop of Toledo. He accompanied the Cid as chaplain to Valencia, and on the reduction of that kingdom became its bishop. On the death of his patron he returned to Toledo, and was almost immediately appointed to the joint see of Salamanca and Zamora. In a deed, dated July 1102, the count confers upon him extensive privileges and revenues, which were confirmed by the king in 1107, the towns included in the diocese being furthermore specified. To Jeronimo we owe the old cathedral of Salamanca in which he was at last, full of years and honours, laid to rest. It had been his wish to have been laid beside his old master at Cardeña. He lived to witness the troubles attendant on the second marriage of Queen Urraca, to whom he was ever faithful; and was the first to acknowledge the primacy of the powerful Gelmirez, Archbishop of Santiago.

On Jeronimo’s death in 1120, his successor, Gerardo, was driven from the see by the Aragonese opponents of Urraca, and found an asylum with his metropolitan. The accession of Alfonso VII. resulted in the deposition of the next bishop Munio, who was a violent partisan of Aragon. He made determined efforts to recover his authority, without success, the intercession even of St. Bernard availing him nothing. Meanwhile a certain count, Don Pedro Lope, who appears to have been all-powerful in the town, shut the gates against the canonical bishop, Berengario, who succeeded at last in taking possession of his see only by the direct intervention of the king in 1135, after a lapse of four years.

The rebellious temperament of the Salamancans thus early manifested itself. A year or two later it was to cost them very dear. Scorning the leadership of any count or chief, the townsmen made repeated forays into Estremadura in search of glory and plunder. Returning laden with booty, they were met by a powerful Moorish army. The Mohammedan commander demanded a parley with their leader. The Salamancans replied that each man was his leader, whereupon the Moor thanked God for the folly of his adversaries. An engagement ensued, which might be better described as a massacre than as a battle, and but few returned to Salamanca to tell of the fate of their comrades.

The bitter lesson was repeated thrice in after years before the insensate citizens were sufficiently humbled to appeal to the king for assistance. He sent them as commander a famous warrior, Don Ponce Vigil de Cabrera, who was received in sorely tried Salamanca with much enthusiasm. The indomitable spirit of the citizens under able captainship achieved wonders. The castle of Albalat was taken and razed to the ground, and the whole district of Ciudad Rodrigo subjugated. Alfonso VII. in 1147, as a mark of favour, empowered the Alcaldes to build or to rebuild the city wall, and to encircle the suburbs with another.

Yet in 1170 we find the Salamancans allied with the people of Avila in arms against Fernando II., King of Leon. They regarded the founding of Ciudad Rodrigo as an encroachment on their privileges, and elected one Nuño Serrano as their king. On the field of Valmuza they gave battle to the king. Consulting the direction of the wind, they set fire to the brushwood, hoping that the smoke would be driven in the faces of their opponents. The wind suddenly changed, however, to the utter discomfiture of the rebels. The luckless Nuño was captured and burnt alive, and haughty Salamanca lay at the feet of the conqueror.

Fernando did not cherish resentment against the rebellious town. He called a Cortes here in 1178, and liberally endowed the see. In gratitude for the royal favour, Bishop Vital upheld the marriage of Alfonso IX. with his cousin, Teresa of Portugal, thereby bringing upon himself the fulminations of Pope Celestine III., and ultimately the sentence of suspension and deposition. Meanwhile the fighting spirit of the Salamancans was gratified by the establishment of the military order of Alcantara by two of the townsmen, Don Suero Fernández and his brother Gomez. The knights attached themselves to the Cistercian Order, their headquarters being the hermitage of San Julian de Pereo, on the banks of the Coa. The order was approved in 1177 by a bull of Pope Alexander III., afterwards confirmed by Lucius III.

Alfonso IX. endowed Salamanca with the university, which was destined to make its name known to the utmost confines of Christendom. This was a flourishing time in Salamanca. The Dominicans and Franciscans settled in the town; buildings, colleges, churches, and convents sprang up on all sides. The banner of Salamanca was seen in the forefront of the battle at Caceres, at Montanchez, at Merida; it fluttered over fallen Trujillo and Medellin; it waved before the walls of Ubeda in 1234, and of Granada two years later. The townsmen followed the Infante Alfonso to the sieges of Murcia and Seville (1248) and were rewarded for their valour by the privilege of holding open markets—probably heretofore the prerogative of the governor.

To these halcyon days there succeeded for Salamanca a long period of discord and warfare. Sancho el Bravo, when prince, held the town against his father; and in 1288 it was severely punished for its loyalty to the king by the rebellious Infante Don Juan, whose father-in-law, Don Lope de Haro, seized on the citadel. Under its walls halted the Portuguese army of King Diniz, marching upon Valladolid. In 1308 Salamanca made a vigorous defence, in the interests of the Queen Regent, Maria de Molina, against Nuñez de Lara.

The city is honourably distinguished by the refusal of the ecclesiastical council, held here in 1310, to condemn the doomed order of Knights Templars, who were, however, despoiled of their property here as elsewhere by decree of the Council of Vienne. A more cheerful function, the year following, was the baptism of the Infante Alfonso, born here, August 13, 1311. The lordship of his native city was afterwards given by this king to his wife, Maria of Portugal. The Salamancans fought well at the battle of the Salado (1340) under their bishop Juan Lucero. It was this prelate who in 1354 dissolved the marriage of Pedro the Cruel with Blanche of Bourbon, and celebrated the king’s amazing union with Juana de Castro, whom he repudiated on the following day. Lucero’s successor, Alfonso Barrasa, was a fervent partisan of Enrique de Trastamara. He followed him to the field with a force of five hundred archers, and held the city against his enemies. Meanwhile the Tejadas, one of the most powerful families of Salamanca, had declared for Don Pedro, and threw themselves into Zamora. The town was taken by Enrique’s partisans, while Don Alfonso Lopez de Tejada retired to the citadel, leaving his sons in the hands of the enemy. On their father’s refusal to surrender, the miserable lads were put to death. Don Alfonso escaped to Portugal, where he did not return till the reign of Juan I. He died in his native city in the year 1404. Bishop Barrasa on the triumph of Enrique II. was liberally rewarded for his devotion, and entrusted with important and honourable embassies to Flanders and Italy.

We read that St. Vicente Ferrer was in Salamanca at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and as a Spanish writer has it, converted the Jews to the unity of the faith on the ruins of their synagogue. He does not appear to have been equally successful in converting the Christians to the spirit of their faith, to judge from the following tragic incident which stained the history of Salamanca in his day. A quarrel arose over a game of pelota between two brothers of the family of Manzano and two of the Enriquez. The two latter were slain, and their slayers fled to Portugal. The mother of the victims, Doña Maria Rodriguez de Monroy, shed no tears, but silently and stoically gathered together her retainers and retired to her country seat at Villalba. A day or two later she, with a few followers, suddenly fell upon the murderers of her sons as they sat in fancied security at their inn in some Portuguese town, killed them, and bore their heads in triumph back to Salamanca, where she flung them upon the tombs of the Enriquez. But from this deed of vengeance sprang a bloody vendetta between the two families and their partisans, which the eloquence of St. Juan de Sahagun in 1460 allayed but could not extinguish. When forced to lay aside the sword and dagger, the bowl and philtre became the instruments of this unquenchable hate. Nay, as late as the reign of Philip II., the rival factions wore different colours, and eagerly seized the opportunity to contend against each other in jousts and tournaments. Juan de Sahagun, whose good deeds are strikingly relieved against so dark a background, himself fell a victim to poison, administered by a lady, whom his preaching and exhortations had deprived of her lover. Acclaimed at once (1479) as the patron of the city, it was not till October 17, 1690, that he was formally enrolled in the list of the saints of the Catholic Church. His feast is celebrated on the day of his death (June 11).

The fierce passions of the Salamancans were inflamed throughout the fifteenth century not only by private but political animosities. In the reign of Juan II. the city was alternately the prey of the partisans and the opponents of the royal favourite, Alvaro de Luna. When the king visited the town in 1440, the Archdeacon Juan Gómez, son of the late bishop, Don Diego de Anaya, a furious adversary of the Constable, garrisoned the alcazar of San Juan and the tower of the cathedral, and compelled his sovereign to take refuge in the house of one Acevedo. The fortress was again garrisoned against the king (Enrique IV.) six years later by Pedro de Gutiveros, but this time the bishop was on the royal side, and, with the help of Suero de Solis, expelled the rebel from the town. In gratitude for this and his friendly reception by the citizens in 1465, the unfortunate king ordered a fair or open market to be held every year from the 8th to the 21st of September, and to the delight of the townsmen decreed the demolition of the alcazar.

The disputed succession on the death of Enrique again plunged the city into civil war; both claimants, Juana and Isabel, finding partisans within its walls. Hoping to profit by these disorders, the Conde de Alba de Tormes entered the town at the head of his vassals and endeavoured to obtain possession of it. After much fighting he was expelled by the citizens, headed by Don Alfonso Maldonado and Suero de Solis. Upon the triumph of Isabel’s faction, the Portuguese quarter was promptly sacked in revenge for the assistance given by that nation to Juana. Another Maldonado was seized by King Fernando and ordered to deliver up his castle of Monleon under pain of death. The captive lord gave the necessary orders to his wife, commanding the garrison, who, at first, obstinately refused to obey them. It was only when the headsman was about to strike off her husband’s head in view of the ramparts that she relented and admitted the king’s troops.

The Salamancans were assuredly of stern stuff. The Catholic Sovereigns amused them with tournaments and pageants, and found employment for their swords before the walls of Granada. In the year 1497 Fernando, returning defeated from the Portuguese frontier, found his only son, Prince Juan, at the point of death. He expired on the 4th of October, after thirteen days’ sickness, at the age of nineteen, his mother arriving too late to see him alive. It is related that Fernando caused the queen to be informed that he also was dead, that her joy on finding him alive should somewhat soften the blow. Isabel never returned to the scene of her greatest bereavement; but we find Fernando, now a widower, here in the winter of 1505-1506.

The failure of the harvest about this time caused so much distress that the university was closed, and the ecclesiastical authorities had to leave the city. Hard upon these dark days came the rising of the Comuneros, into which the Salamancans threw themselves with all their hearts. Even the nobility espoused the popular cause, as also did the dean of the cathedral, various professors of the university, and the more prominent merchants. The leaders of the movement in Salamanca were young Maldonado Pimentel, and a skinner called Valloria, who was the idol of the populace, and by them hailed as ‘pope and king.’ But neither Valloria’s popularity nor Maldonado’s valour and rank availed to save them from the scaffold to which, with so many illustrious Castilians, they were doomed after the crushing defeat of the Comuneros at Villalar.

The establishment of the new monarchy meant for Salamanca, as for so many other cities, the end of liberty and the end of bloodshed. Family quarrels were henceforward to be adjusted by the king’s judges, wrongs avenged by his justice, not by the stiletto and poisoned draught. Outwardly Salamanca made merry over the change, and fêted Charles V. on his state entry in May 1534. His son was married here at the age of sixteen to Maria of Portugal—amid great rejoicings, as we are always told of such events.

Years passed by, and Salamanca partook of the senile decay which seemed to be creeping over Spain. The old feudal fights were recalled by the sanguinary town and gown riots, which filled the streets with dead and dying towards the close of the seventeenth century. Then came bad harvests, inundations, and the earthquake of 1755. It was but a poor and desolate city on which the French levied severe contributions in 1809, and which they sacked from end to end, three years after, in revenge for their disastrous defeat by Wellington before its walls. Salamanca has worshipped Mars and the Muses; but the War-god has turned savagely on his devotees, and from the scene of so many bloody conflicts the Genius of Learning seems at last to have fled shuddering away.