The cathedral has been recently restored (not before it was necessary, according to Street’s description); but this difficult work has been admirably executed, though the newness of the stone still renders it rather conspicuous to the eye. The interior is gorgeous with carving and tapestry; and a word may be spared for the Gotho-Renaissance cloisters, and for the great western portals with the Last Judgment graven over the doors. Some of the details of the latter are not without suspicion of humour. A monarch, walking delicately like Agag towards the gates of Paradise, is remorselessly barred by St Peter, and directed to the opposite road. One blessed spirit has been set to play the organ—and another has been deputed to blow it! Truly “one star differeth from another star in glory”; but an eternity of organ-blowing must rank low in the scale of bliss!
Scarcely less famous than the cathedral is the Collegiate Church of St Isidore; not the shepherd saint of Madrid, but the Doctor of Spain who{60} compiled the Mozarabic ritual;[8] the “second Daniel” of Pope Gregory the Great. It is a queer patchwork edifice, but mostly of the eleventh century. The tower forms a bastion in the city rampart; and the little Panteon Chapel beneath it is the burial-place of the early monarchs of Leon.
Here in 1065 occurred the strange death scene of the founder, the warrior monarch Fernando I. of Leon and Castile. Smitten with sore disease while camping on the marches of Valencia, he had been borne back to make his dying confession before the altar of his metropolitan church. There he laid aside his crown and robes, and clad his wasted limbs in sack-cloth, and for a full day and night lay writhing in ashes on the pavement till his self-inflicted penance was at last ended by his death. We are assured that his original sickness really had been mortal from the first.
Few capitals of Spain are without some memorial of Las Navas de Tolosa, the great victory won by Alfonso VIII. in 1212, which crippled the Spanish Moslems for offensive warfare, and paved the way for the conquest of Andalusia by Ferdinand III. Búrgos and Pamplona have the trophies of the{61} fighting; but Leon has only a legend; and it is to San Isidoro and King Fernando that they are indebted for having anything at all. For it came to pass on the eve of the battle that a sound was heard at midnight in the streets of the slumbering city. A sound as of the passage of a mighty army, the clang of armour and the tramp of horse and man. The priest who was keeping vigil at the shrine of St Isidore heard the phantom host halt before the portal and their thundering summons beat upon the door. “Who knocks?” he cried; and the ghostly captains answered him, “Ferdinand Gonzalez and Roderic of Bivar![9] And we are come to call King Fernando the Great, who lies buried in this holy temple, that he may rise and ride with us to deliver Spain!” The terrified monk fell fainting on the pavement, and when he revived the door stood open. The last great recruit had joined the colours, and the spirit host had passed upon their way.
No doubt we may read in this legend the rebuke of the Church against the selfish policy of the Crown, for no soldier of Leon drew sword in that great battle for the deliverance of Christendom. Castile and Navarre and Aragon were the people{62} that jeoparded their lives in the high places of the Morena. Nay, the Leonese monarch was even mean enough to seize the occasion for “rectifying his frontier” at the expense of his brother the Castilian. And this at a crisis when the very dead could rise from their graves and forget the feuds of their lifetime in the hour of national stress!