Of the origin of the city nothing is known. In the tenth and the eleventh centuries Conca[{343}] was an impregnable Arab fortress. In 1176 the united armies of Castile and Aragon, commanded by two sovereigns, Alfonso VIII. of Castile and Alfonso II. of Aragon, laid siege to the fortress, and after nine months' patience, the Alcázar surrendered. According to the popular tradition, it was won by treachery: one Martin Alhaxa, a captive and a shepherd by trade, introduced the Christians disguised with sheepskins into the city through a postern gate.
As the conquest of Cuenca had cost the King of Castile such trouble (his Aragonese partner had not waited to see the end of the siege), and as he was fully conscious of its importance as a strategical outpost against Aragon to the north and against the Moors to the south and east, he laid special stress on the city's being strongly fortified; he also gave special privileges to such Christians as would repopulate, or rather populate, the nascent town. A few years later Pone Lucio III. raised the church to an episcopal see, appointing Juan Yañez, a Tolesian Muzarab, to be its first bishop (1183).
Unlike Sigüenza, a feudal possession of the bishop, Cuenca belonged exclusively to the monarch of Castile; the castle was consequently[{344}] held in the sovereign's name by a governor,—at one time there were even four who governed simultaneously. Between these governors and the inhabitants of the city, fights were numerous, especially during the first half of the fifteenth century, the darkest and most ignoble period of Castilian history.
The story is told of one Doña Inez de Barrientos, granddaughter of a bishop on her mother's side, and of a governor on that of her father. It appears that her husband had been murdered by some of the wealthiest citizens of the town. Feigning joy at her spouse's death, the widow invited the murderers to her house to a banquet, when, "después de opípara cena (after an excellent dinner), they passed from the lethargy of drunkenness to the sleep of eternity, assassinated by hidden servants." The following morning their bodies hung from the windows of the palace, and provoked not anger but silent dread and shivers among the terror-stricken inhabitants.
With the Inquisition, the siege by the English in 1706, the invasion of the French in 1808, Cuenca rapidly lost all importance and even political significance. To-day it[{345}] is one of the many picturesque ruins that offer but little interest to the art traveller, for even its old age is degenerated, and the monuments of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries have one and all been spoilt by the hand of time, and by the less grasping hand of restauradores—or architect-repairers.
The Byzantine character, the Arab taste of the primitive inhabitants, has also been lost. Who would think, upon examining the cathedral, that it had served once upon a time as the principal Arab mosque? Entirely rebuilt, as were most of the primitive Arab houses, it has lost all traces of the early founders, more so than in other cities where the Arabs remained but a few years.
The patron saint of Cuenca is San Julian, one of the cathedral's first bishops, who led a saintly life, giving all he had and taking nothing that was not his, and who retired from his see to live the humble life of a basket-maker, seated with willow branches beneath the arches of the high bridge, and preaching saintly words to teamsters and mule-drivers as they approached the city, until his death in 1207.
In the same century the Arab mosque was[{346}] torn down and the new cathedral begun. It is a primitive ogival (Spanish) temple of the thirteenth century, with smatterings of Romanesque-Byzantine. Unlike the cathedral of Sigüenza, it is neither elegant, harmonious, nor of great architectural value; its wealth lies chiefly in the chapels, in the doors which lead to the cloister, in the sacristy, and in the elegant high altar.
The cloister door is perhaps one of the finest details of the cathedral church: decorated in the plateresque style general in Spain in the sixteenth century, it offers one of the finest examples of said style to be found anywhere, and though utterly different in ornamentation to the sacristy of Sigüenza, it nevertheless resembles it in the general composition.
The nave, exceedingly high, is decorated by a blind triforium of ogival arches; the aisles are sombre and lower than the nave. On the other hand, the transept, broad and simple, is similar to the nave and as long as the width of the church, including the lateral chapels. The croisée is surmounted by a cimborio, insignificant in comparison to those of Salamanca, Zamora, and Toro.