After the defeat of the Armada, Bayona was left a prey to Drake and his worthy companions. They dealt the city a death-blow from which it has never recovered, and Vigo, the new, the commercial, has usurped its importance, as it did its church, which once upon a time, as is generally believed, was a bishopric.

The present ruinous edifice of Bayona is peculiarly Galician and shows the same characteristics as the remaining cathedrals we have spoken about so far. It was ordained in 1482 by the Bishop of Tuy. The windows of the nave (clerestory) are decidedly pointed or ogival; those of the aisles are pure Romanesque. The peculiar feature is the use of animal designs in the decorative elements of the capitals,—a unique example[{133}] in Galicia, where only floral or leaf motives were used in the best period of Romanesque. The design to be noticed here on one of the capitals is a bird devouring a toad, and it is so crudely and rustically carved that one is almost inclined to believe that a native of the country conceived and executed it. [{134}]

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PART III
The North

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I

OVIEDO

"Oviedo was born of a religious inspiration; its first building was a temple (monastery?), and monks were its first inhabitants."

In the valley adjoining Cangas, in the eighth century, the most important village in Asturias, a religious sect erected a monastery. Froila or Froela, one of the early noblemen (now called a king, though he was no king in those days) who fought against the Moors, erected in the same century a church in the vicinity of Cangas (in Oviedo?), dedicating it to the Saviour; he also built a palace near the same spot. His son, Alfonso the Chaste, born in this palace, was brought up in a convent near Lugo in Galicia. Upon becoming king he hesitated whether to establish his court in Lugo, or in the new village which had been his birthplace, namely Oviedo. At length, remembering[{138}] perhaps his father's love for the country near Cangas, he established it in the latter place in the ninth century, and formed the kingdom of Asturias as opposed to that of Galicia; the capital of the new kingdom was Oviedo.