The modern church of San Marcelo, which gives its name to the square, was founded by Ramiro I. in the ninth century, and was liberally endowed in after years by Alfonso VI. Marcelus is a reputed local martyr, a Roman legionary who refused to adore the divinity of Cæsar, and was beheaded, having blessed his executioners. By another account the martyrdom took place at Tangier, whence, at all events, the saint’s relics were brought here in 1493. The tympanum of a thirteenth-century doorway in the wall at the back of the church is all that remains of the original fabric. A deserted esplanade beyond the walls, to the south-west of the city, marks the site of the once famous shrine of San Claudio, erected first in Constantine’s day on the place of martyrdom of Claudius, Lupercius, and Victoricus. Al Mansûr is said to have been struck with sudden panic when about to attack this church. Successive fanes of great magnificence rose over the spot, the last being destroyed by fire in the sixteenth century.
Santa Maria del Mercado still exhibits much ancient work. Its arching and capitals are Byzantine in style. The suburban church of San Pedro de los Huertos was, it is said, the cathedral, before the time of Ordoño II. In the tenth century we hear of it as a monastery for both sexes. Another extremely old foundation is San Salvador del Nido, founded as a monastery by Queen Urraca. A local guide states that Carlo Alberto, the ex-King of Sardinia, received the last sacraments and expired in this church on April 8, 1849. I confess I have not troubled to verify this, but have hitherto laboured under the impression that the unlucky predecessor of Victor Emmanuel breathed his last at Oporto.
Having noticed this link with the history of our own times, we take leave of Leon, and hasten across the plains to the city which succeeded it as capital of the growing monarchy of Leon and Castile.
II
BURGOS
THE CAPITAL OF CASTILE
Burgos, the red and white city in the broad valley of the Arlanzon, is more mediæval than many an older town. For she was no inheritance from Celts or Romans, but was born in the Dark Ages, waxed prosperous within them, and declined with the Renaissance and the dawn of the modern era. There is nothing that is classical, little that is modern, about this old capital of Castile. All her memories are of Gothic, mediæval, romantic Spain. To her belong knights and barons, shield and helm and lance, tournaments and jousts, soaring Gothic spires, and the quiet of the cloister—all the pageant and panorama of mediævalism.
Burgos was born amid the clash of arms. This dry, desert-like province of Castile, which is now the very heart of, and whose name is almost synonymous with Spain, was a thousand years ago a very debatable ground between Moor and Christian. Leon, to the west, looked fiercely east and south towards the dusky garrisons of Medina Sarakusta (Zaragoza), and Tolaitola (Toledo). In itself the country seemed hardly worth settling in or fighting for. It was the frontier, the ‘marches,’ as we should have called it in olden England. And in the Dark Ages danger ever ran like a hedge along the border of two lands. The valley of the Arlanzon, a veritable oasis in this desert, was early peopled with shepherds and tillers of the soil. To protect these against the forays of the Beni Kasim from Zaragoza, early in the ninth century a fort or advanced post was established here by the kings of Asturias and Leon. Its defence was entrusted by Ordoño I. to a count (850-866), despite whose efforts the post was destroyed by the Moors under Abd-ur-Rahman in the year 865.
Rallying from these disasters, the new king Alfonso III. (866-910) took steps to defend the frontier, and appointed Diego Porcellos count or warden of the marches. This personage—the first whose name is particularly associated with Burgos—found the settlement on the Arlanzon reduced to six groups of houses. He threw together three or four hamlets, including, it is said, the churches of Santa Coloma, Santa Gadea, and San Juan Evangelista, and surrounded the whole with a wall. The dissensions among the Moors themselves favoured the development of the nascent town, and also permitted its governors, like those of the other frontier forts, to turn their attention to domestic politics. Don Gonzalo Fernández, who reigned as count from about 884 to 915, was a party to various conspiracies and intrigues against his sovereign, the net result of which appeared to be to confirm him in his petty sovereignty. Patriotism was an unknown virtue in those days, and the counts of Castile were bent rather upon consolidating their own authority than combining against the Infidel. They are said in fact to have flatly refused to accompany the king on one of his campaigns. Revenge for such treason could in the tenth century take but one form. Ordoño II. summoned four of the rebellious vassals—Abu-l-Mundhir (evidently a Moor), Nuño Fernández, another Diego Porcellos, and Fernando Ansúrez—into his presence, and sent them in chains to Leon, where, after a painful captivity, they were put to death. Spanish writers, who express no particular horror at the atrocities of the Inquisition in after years, appear somewhat unaccountably shocked at such rough and ready justice.
As a stroke of policy this deed of violence was a bad one. The Castilians, as it is now time to call the inhabitants of the marches, conceived a lasting aversion to the government of Leon, and the desire for independence grew stronger. An interregnum seems to have taken place at Burgos after the execution of Nuño Fernández and his colleagues. We hear at this time of two famous but nebulous personages, Nuño Nuñez Rasura and Lain Calvo, who were elected as judges to rule over the little commonwealth. Their reign as actual rulers was brief, for about the year 930 we find all authority in Castile in the strong hands of the greatest Spaniard of that age—Fernan González, the king-maker.
The fame of the good Conde Castellano, as González is lovingly called by the annalists, is overshadowed in the song and story of Spain only by that of the Cid himself. His heroic exploits against Moor and Christian are magnified and set forth in popular ballads and legends, dating mostly, it is true, from the thirteenth century. The real Fernan González is a difficult person to understand and appraise, when we have cleared away as much as possible the clouds of tradition and romance which obscure his features. Like the Cid, we find him repeatedly revolting against his sovereign, and striving very much harder for the independence of Castile than for the interests of the whole kingdom. But unlike the greater Spanish hero, he never seems to have been in the pay of the Moslems, or to have in concert with them turned his sword against his fellow Christians. Judged by the standard of that day, Fernan González was a great man. He was a good lord to his immediate vassals, a valiant and determined enemy of the Moor, a patriot in a very parochial sense, and a strong man.
Ramiro the king, jealous of Fernan González’s power and influence, dispossessed him of his countship, and released him from prison only when he had sworn fidelity and obedience anew. His daughter Urraca was given in marriage to the king’s son, Ordoño, by whom, however, she was afterwards repudiated. Till the death of Ramiro the count was not suffered to return to Burgos, which was meanwhile governed by the Infante Don Sancho. Meanwhile the Moors ravaged the country, destroying the monastery of Cardeña without the walls of Burgos, and greatly profiting by the internal disorders of Leon.