We also examined his ivory chalice on a Byzantine tray, and the carved crook of his staff. San Rosendo was not only a powerful bishop, he had royal blood in his veins, and was a near relative to Ramiro II., so that his influence in Galicia was very considerable.
It occupied quite an hour to look at all the relics stowed away in a chest inlaid with tortoiseshell in the sacristy. Here were relics of San Rosendo packed in a beautiful silver box, specially made for them; and the skulls of several other saints, each in a separate glass case on a gold or silver stand, the most precious of all being that of San Torquato, the disciple of St. James, kept with his ossified heart. Drawers were now opened, and magnificent chasubles and other priestly garments, rich velvets covered with silk embroidery and gold thread, were spread out before us one by one, till our eyes grew weary of admiring.
Above the broad stone staircase is a ceiling with stalactite work like that of the Alhambra, and quite Arabic. But we were reminded of the Moors even more forcibly by a strange little chapel that the monks now took us to see in their garden, a chapel with roofing of red tiles. This was no other than the famous and much-written-about Eremita de San Miguel.
This little chapel or oratory is quite apart from, but close to, the monastery wall. It is rectangular in form, with a tiny transept and a square apse. At first sight its interior appears to consist of three little rooms opening one into the other, with horseshoe arches; between them are no columns or ornaments of any kind. Before the entrance there is a
| CLOISTER IN THE COLEGIATA DE JUNQUERA DE AMBIA, ORENSE | CLOISTER IN THE MONASTERY OF CELANOVA, ORENSE |
square portico. The whole is of granite, but one sees nothing but whitewash. All the arches are in the shape of a horseshoe; and, noting this fact, some writers have hazarded the opinion that the building must originally have been a Moorish mosque. That idea has now been abandoned in favour of the supposition that it was most probably designed by a Moorish architect in the pay of Christians, and completed towards the close of the ninth or beginning of the tenth century. It is much admired by architects for the beauty of its proportions.[299] According to tradition, San Rosendo was in the habit of repairing thither to say Mass. Yepes believed it to have been built by San Rosendo’s brother Froila. One of the monks kindly copied for me the inscription, which he described as being in Lombard characters peculiar to the tenth century—