Castile was now the most powerful state in the peninsula, and its capital, Burgos, the most important city north of Toledo.
Two hundred years later the centralization of power in Burgos was an accomplished fact, as well as the death in all but name of the ancient kingdom of Leon, Asturias, and Galicia. Castile was Spain, and Burgos its splendid capital (1230, in the reign of San Fernando).
The above events are closely connected with the ecclesiastical history, which depends entirely upon the civil importance of the city.
A few years after Fernando I. had inaugurated the title of King of Castile, he raised the parish church of Burgos to a bishopric (1075) by removing to his new capital the see that from time immemorial had existed in Oca. He also laid the first stone of the cathedral church in the same spot where Fernan Gonzalez had erected a summer palace, previous to the Arab raid under Almanzor. Ten years later the same king had the bishopric raised to an archiepiscopal see.[{178}]
San Fernando, being unable to do more than had already been done by his forefather Fernando I., had the ruined church pulled down, and in its place he erected the cathedral still standing to-day. This was in 1221.
So rapidly was the main edifice constructed, that as early as 1230 the first holy mass was celebrated in the altar-chapel. The erection of the remaining parts took longer, however, for the building was not completed until about three hundred years later.
Burgos did not remain the sole capital of Northern Spain for any great length of time. Before the close of the thirteenth century, Valladolid had destroyed the former's monopoly, and from then on, and during the next three hundred years, these two and Toledo were obliged to take turns in the honour of being considered capital, an honour that depended entirely upon the caprices of the rulers of the land, until it was definitely conferred upon Madrid in the seventeenth century.
As regards legends and traditions of feudal romance and tragedy, hardly a city excepting Toledo and Salamanca can compete with Burgos. Historical events, produced by throne usurpers and defenders, by continual[{179}] strife, by the obstinacy of the noblemen and the perfidy of the monarchs,—all interwoven with beautiful dames and cruel warriors—are sufficiently numerous to enable every house in and around Burgos to possess some secret or other, generally gruesome and licentious, which means chivalrous. The reign of Peter the Cruel and of his predecessor Alfonso, the father of four or five bastards, and the lover of Doña Leonor; the heroic deeds of Fernan Gonzalez and of the Cid Campeador (Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar); the splendour of the court of Isabel I., and the peculiar constitution of the land with its Cortes, its convents, and monasteries,—all tend to make Burgos the centre of a chivalrous literature still recited by the people and firmly believed in by them. Unluckily their recital cannot find a place here, and we pass on to examine the grand cathedral, object of the present chapter.
The train, coming from the north, approaches the city of Burgos. A low horizon line and undulating plains stretch as far as the eye can reach; in the distance ahead are two church spires and a castle looming up against a blue sky.[{180}]
The train reaches the station; a mass of houses and, overtopping the roofs of all buildings, the same spires as seen before, lost as it were in a forest of pinnacles, emerging from two octagonal lanterns or cimborios. In the background, on a sandy hill, are the ruins of the castle which once upon a time was the stronghold of the Counts of Castile.