The death of Queen Isabel, and the proclamation of Juana and Felipe I. on May 22, 1502, put an end to the long spell of peace. Toledo sided at first with Ferdinand against his son-in-law, and was held by the Silvas against the latter’s forces under the Marquis de Villena. In the following year (1506) the Ayalas, supported by the townsmen generally, took possession of the town, and resolved to maintain its liberties against the Flemish favourites and centralising tendencies of the new régime. The Silvas, as a matter of course, ranged themselves on the opposite side, and the streets ran red with blood. Toledo was herself again.
The accession of the Flemish prince, Charles, afterwards emperor, determined the Castilians to make a stand for national independence. What city had so good a claim to be the headquarters of the movement, the focus of anti-foreign agitation, as Toledo the turbulent? In 1520 occurred the outbreak of the Comuneros movement. At its head were four gentlemen of Toledo: Hernando Dávalos, Gonzalo Gaytan, Pedro de Ayala, and (greatest of all) Juan de Padilla. Twenty thousand citizens rallied to the cry of “Padilla y Comunidad!” and the movement spread from the Tagus to Salamanca and westwards to the frontiers of Portugal. To Juana, imprisoned at Tordesillas, herself a Toledan, protestations of loyalty and devotion were addressed. But denounce her son’s fraudulently obtained sovereignty she would not. Meanwhile Charles’s forces were not idle. The Alcaide, Clemente de Aguayo, held the tower of San Martin, and Don Juan de Silva, the Alcazar, against the insurgents. But the townsmen were victorious. Padilla, however, was defeated at Villalar, and executed, with his brave lieutenants, Juan Bravo and Maldonado.
In the Comunero leader’s dauntless wife, Maria de Pacheco, liberty found a new champion and Spain a new heroine. “She was found praying at the foot of the Cross,” says Miss Lynch, “when her servants brought her the news of Padilla’s defeat and death. She rose, robed herself in black, and walked to the Alcazar between her husband’s lieutenants, Dávalos and Acuña, who bore a standard representing Padilla’s execution. They named her captain of the insurgents, and found her implacable and violent, but still a sovereign commander.” For sixteen months under this Castilian Joan of Arc the old city of the Visigoths held out against the armies of Charles V. Routed in a bloody sortie on October 16, 1521, by Zuñiga, prior of San Juan, the Comuneros were obliged, ten days later, to abandon the gates to the besiegers. A truce was agreed to, while the demands of the citizens should be presented to the Emperor. Maria remained in her own house, as in a fortress, guarded by her faithful troops. But on February 3 the murder of a citizen brought on a renewal of the conflict. Desperate battle waged in every street and lane. Maria, assailed and valiantly defended in her stronghold, at last cut her way through, and retired to Portugal, dying at Oporto years afterwards. The townsmen were worsted, and sullenly submitted. Toledo had fought her last fight.
Her day was over. Charles V. forgave her, and would come at times to live in the Alcazar. She was still the capital of Spain. But her haughty temper and the arrogance of her clergy matched ill with the policy of Philip II. In 1560 Madrid—upstart, provincial Madrid—was proclaimed the única corte. Less important than under the Khalifate, Toledo became a mere provincial town. But the Church did not desert her. She is still the metropolitan see of Spain.
Let us see what the monarchs of United Spain did for the old city, and what monuments remain of the days when it was Court and capital.
The church of San Juan de los Reyes, near the Puente de San Martin, was built in 1476 by Ferdinand and Isabel, in thanksgiving for the victory of Toro gained over the Portuguese allies of Juana, nicknamed “la Beltraneja.” The first architect was a Fleming, Juan Guas, one of the builders of the cathedral. The church was intended to receive the ashes of the royal founders, but after the capture of Granada it was decided to establish the mausoleum in that city, and the completion of San Juan de los Reyes was delayed till the seventeenth century. In consequence, the architecture exhibits the transition from the Late Gothic to the Late Renaissance style. “Nothing,” remarks Street, “can be more elaborate than much of the detail of this church, yet I have seen few buildings less pleasing or harmonious.” The exterior is unpromising, and is decorated, if we can use the word in such a connection, with festoons of rusty chains which fettered the limbs of the Christians in Moorish prisons. The chief entrance, to the north, was completed by Covarrubias in 1610, and is in the decadent style of architecture. It is adorned with inferior statuary, and the arms and initials of the Catholic sovereigns.
The interior is composed of a single nave, two hundred feet long and from forty-three to seventy feet wide. There are four chapels on one side and three on the other. At the east end of the church is a shallow five-sided apse, forming the Capilla Mayor. Over the junction of the nave and transept is an octagonal cupola, resting on four fine pillars, with a pointed dome and a window in each face. At the west end of the church is a deep gallery, containing the choir. The altar dates from the Renaissance period, and is brought well forward into the nave. It came from the suppressed church of Santa Cruz. Above it is a blue velvet canopy, embroidered with the eagle, the symbol of St. John. The whole fabric is enriched with statuary, tracery, carving, and heraldic devices in almost reckless profusion. The yoke and the arrows—the devices of the Catholic sovereigns—and their coats of arms are repeated again and again. Among the inscriptions is one commemorating the foundation of the church. It runs: “Este monasterio é églesia mandaron hacer los muy esclarecidos Principes é señores D. Hernando é Doña Isabel, Rey y Reina de Castilla, de Leon, de Aragon, de Sicilia, los cuales señores por bienaventurado matrimonio y uñaron los dichos Reinos, seyendo el dicho rey y señor natural de los reinos de Aragon y Sicilia, y seyendo la dicha señora Reina y señora natural de los Reinos de Castilla y Leon; el cual fundaron á gloria de nuestro señor Dios, y de la bienaventurada Madre suya, nuestra Señora la Virgén Maria, y por especial devocion que le ovieron.”
Admirable as is the church in its general structure, and in the detail and execution of its ornamentation, it is garish and ostentatious. There is a superabundance of light and luxury. Here there is no dim religious light, no suggestion of mystery or devotion. Prayer would seem incompatible with the whole character of the edifice. More favourable was the opinion of Théophile Gautier, who declared that “Gothic art never produced anything more suave, more elegant, or more fine.”
Attached to the church is the convent, bestowed on the Franciscans, and pillaged by the French in 1808. It has been converted into a museum, which does not contain much of great interest. The most important exhibits are fragments of Visigothic inscriptions and Moorish tile-work.
The cloister of San Juan de los Reyes is a gem of florid Gothic, and the finest part of the whole fabric. There are two galleries, one above the other, the lower with traceried openings, the upper with large open arches. As in the church, there is here an excess of decoration, hardly a square inch on pillar, arch, and vaulting being free from sculptured ornamentation. There is a bewildering profusion of statues of angels, men, and animals, of scroll-work and foliage, heraldic devices and inscriptions. The whole is dazzlingly white—more like a temple of the Sun than a shrine of “the pale Galilean.” The original effect, perhaps, was less crude, for the church and cloisters have been recently restored, and, it must be confessed, not too skilfully.