Toledo: an historical and descriptive account of the "City of generations"

by Albert Frederick Calvert

Wilder, more romantic still, and better known are the legends clustering round the last king of the Goths. The scene of most of these is laid in Toledo. Here was held that wonderful tournament, to which resorted all the crowned heads of Europe—aye, even such potentates as the Emperor of Constantinople and the King of Poland. A new city of palaces was reared in the Vega by the hospitable Roderic to accommodate his fifty thousand noble guests. This splendid function may have taken place before or after the king’s strange marriage with the bewitching Moorish princess Elyata (re-baptized Exilona), who had been washed ashore by the sea on the coast of Valencia. Lovely as was his consort, Roderic did not, as we all know, remain faithful to her. Here enters the mournful and very shadowy figure of Florinda, otherwise known as La Cava. This peerless damsel was confided to the care of the king by her father, the trusty Julian (or Illán), governor of Ceuta. Alas for the maiden! while bathing in the Tagus, her charms were only too well revealed to Roderic, gazing from his palace windows on the cliff above. A glimpse of a shapely leg scarce concealed by a diaphanous mantle decided the fate of Florinda—and of Spain. What he could not effect by persuasion, the king effected by violence. Perhaps he hoped that the proud Julian’s daughter would keep silence as to her own dishonour. He was mistaken. A trusty page, spurring night and day, quickly bore the fatal tidings to the father at distant Ceuta, and the missive in which the wronged Florinda implored vengeance on her betrayer.

To the no doubt conscience-stricken Roderic, seated in good old kingly fashion upon his throne, appeared two venerable strangers with a message of mysterious import. When Hercules had founded (as some men say) Toledo, not far from the city, among the mountains, he had reared a tower, of which these uncouth brethren were the guardians, as their ancestors, in an unbroken line, had been before them. On this tower and on its unknown and fearful contents, the demigod had laid a necromantic spell. It had been the custom of each of the Kings of Spain to affix to the massive doors a new lock, and now Roderic was summoned to fulfil this duty, for failing this and if any rash mortal should discover the secret of the tower, ruin, absolute and immediate, must overtake his kingdom. Agog with curiosity, with a brilliant cavalcade, the king clattered through the streets of his capital, and found the wondrous tower in the recesses of the hills. The aged custodians besought him to hasten and to affix his seal to the enchanted doors. In vain! it was with another intention the impetuous sovereign had come hither. He burst open the doors and rushed in, where never man since Hercules had dared to tread. Before him stood a gigantic statue in bronze, which dealt blows with a great mace unceasingly to right and left. On its breast were inscribed the words, I do my duty. Roderic sternly adjured the creature of enchantment to let him pass. It obeyed. In the interior of the tower the King found a casket of rich workmanship. A legend thereon warned him of the doom that would overtake him who should open it. Roderic forced open the lid. He beheld a fold of linen on which were painted the figures of Moorish warriors in battle-array. As he gazed the figures seemed to move, to grow larger, to assume the proportions of men. He beheld a battlefield where Goths and Moors contended for the mastery. Breathless, he awaited the issue. The Goths were flying, and he saw his own white steed, Orelia, galloping through the fray—riderless. Affrighted, the king and his attendants rushed to the door. There lay the two ancient custodians, dead. Thunder rolled, a storm burst over the land, and Roderic and his cavaliers drew not rein till they reached the palace of Toledo. Next day the stout-hearted Goths reascended to the hills. But as they approached, behold a great eagle swooped down from the sky holding in its talons a flaming brand! The tower blazed up like matchwood. Then arose a great wind which carried the ashes to every part of Spain; and every man on whom a portion of the ashes fell was afterwards slain in battle by the Moors.

These direful portents must surely have prepared Roderic for treachery, conspiracies, and unpleasantness of all kinds. But when Count Julian arrived, smiling and deferential, to take his daughter home to Ceuta, he seems to have suspected nothing, feared nothing. The rest of the story—Julian’s invitation to the Moors, the rout of Guadalete, the disappearance of Roderic—relates to the history of Spain generally, not to that of Toledo. Dozy believes that Julian actually existed, but he seems to have been a Byzantine governor of Ceuta, not a Spaniard. It is hardly necessary to say that Florinda is as much a figment of the imagination as the enchanted tower. Yet near the Puente de San Martin (above which never king’s palace stood) some fragments of masonry are pointed out as the Baños de la Cava (Florinda’s Bath). They are, in reality, but the remains of a Moorish tomb.

In July 711, King Roderic set out from Toledo, never to return. Upon the news of the rout of Guadalete, all the magnates and prelates abandoned the city. Its surrender to the Moorish host of the one-eyed Tarik was the work of the Jews, who had not forgotten the persecutions of Sisebert and Egica. There were Jews in the invading army under the command of Kaula-al-Yahudi. When Tarik appeared before the walls, a venerable Israelite was let down in a basket, and, approaching him, offered to admit him to the city if liberty and the free exercise of their religion were guaranteed to his race. The Berber joyfully accepted these terms, and on the following day proud Toledo—deserted by its Christian inhabitants—was annexed to the Saracen Khalifate.

TOLEDO UNDER THE MOOR

Never again was Toledo to attain to the wealth and splendour it possessed under Wamba and his successors. The invaders, fresh from the conquest of the richest provinces of Africa, were dazzled by the magnificence of the spoils that fell to them in the dark-browed city above the Tagus. The Arabian historians have need of all their powers of hyperbole to over-estimate the richness of the treasure. There was enough and to spare, Al Leyth Ibn Saïd tells us, for every soldier in the army. The humblest troopers might have been seen staggering under the weight of priceless silks and garments, chains of gold, and strings of precious stones. The rude Berbers, fresh from their mountains, but ill appreciated the value of the loot, and cut the costliest fabrics in two or more pieces to adjust their shares. A magnificent carpet, composed of superb embroidery, interwoven with gold and ornamented with filigree work, and profusely set with gems, is said to have been treated in this way by the troopers into whose greedy hands it fell. It would be interesting to learn the place of manufacture of this carpet, for from the silence of St. Isidore upon the subject of textile fabrics, it would seem that they were not made in his time in Spain.

But, to credit the Moorish chroniclers, the rarest of exotic treasures had been accumulated in the Visigothic capital. Here were found the Psalms of David, written upon gold leaf in a fluid made from dissolved rubies! and most wonderful of all, the Table of Solomon made out of a single emerald! It was brought to Toledo—so runs one version—after the taking of Jerusalem, and was valued in Damascus at one hundred thousand dinars—equal to about £50,000. We are not surprised to hear that this unique piece of furniture “possessed talismanic powers”; for tradition affirms it was the work of genii, and had been wrought by them for King Solomon the Wise, the son of David. This marvellous relic was carefully preserved by Tarik as the most precious of all his spoils, being intended by him as a present to the Khalifa; and, in commemoration of it, the city was called by the Arabs, Medina Almyda, that is to say, “The City of the Table.”

Thus far Washington Irving. With characteristic credulity, Ibn Hayyan, the historian, gives in the translation of Gayangos a substantially different account of the treasure: “The celebrated table which Tarik found at Toledo, although attributed to Solomon and named after him, never belonged to the poet-king. According to the barbarian authors, it was customary for the nobles and men in estimation of the Gothic Court, to bequeath a portion of their property to the church. From the money so amassed the priests caused tables to be made of pure gold and silver, gorgeous thrones and stands on which to carry the Gospels in public processions, or to ornament the altars on great festivals. The so-called Solomon’s table was originally wrought with money derived from this source, and was subsequently emulously enlarged and embellished by successive kings of Toledo, the latest always anxious to surpass his predecessor in magnificence, until it became the most splendid and costly gem ever made for such a purpose. The fabric was of pure gold, set with the most precious pearls, emeralds and rubies. Its circumference was encrusted with three rows of these valuable stones, and the whole table displayed jewels so large and refulgent that never did human eye behold anything comparable with it.... When the Muslims entered Toledo it was discovered on the altar of the Christian Church, and the fact of such a treasure having been found soon became public and notorious.”

Gibbon accounts for the presence of the Table of Solomon at Toledo—assuming that there ever was such a thing, and that it ever was there at all—by supposing it to have been carried off by Titus to Rome, whence it may have been taken by Alaric when the Goths sacked the city. Whichever version of the table’s origin be accepted, it seems strange that it was not carried away by the clergy in their flight from Toledo. Of its ultimate fate nothing is known, unless we can accept the little that is revealed in the following history.

Upon Musa approaching the city to supersede Tarik, the latter broke off and concealed one of the legs of the table. Musa was already incensed against his lieutenant for having deprived him of the glory of the conquest of Spain, and emphasised his reprimands with strokes of a whip. When he found that the leg of the table was missing, his anger was very great. Tarik assured him he had found it in that mutilated condition, and Musa caused the missing leg to be replaced by one of gold. His subordinate, however, he cast into prison, where the One-Eyed One remained till released by orders from the Khalifa himself. He was amply revenged on Musa, when upon the latter presenting the table to his sovereign as his own discovery, he was able triumphantly to give him the lie by producing the missing leg of emerald. And so the wonderful Table of Solomon, of emerald, or of gold, or of both, passes out of the ken of history.