The Exchange of Toledo was the most important of Spain. It was founded by Martin Ramirez, in the parish of St Nicholas, near San José. Near here the gilders and silversmiths worked, and their work was as prized as it was costly; while the tanners, leather-cutters and dyers were relegated to the barriers above the river, between the mills of the Hierro and San Sebastian. The potters lived at the top of the town, under San Isidro, and spread everywhere were countless weavers of cloth, and silk and fine embroiderers. Running from the Zocodover to the Puerta de Perpiñan was the famous street of arms where the sword-makers, the armourers, the iron and damascene-workers lived, and in the wide street opposite (now the calle del Comercio) the shoemakers and jewellers had their shops. The Jews had their own barrier before their expulsion, one of the wealthiest and most important of the city.
The four streets on the further side of the Cathedral were called the Alcayzerias, and here dwelt the silk-sellers, the hosiers, the linen-sellers, the clothiers and haberdashers. These shopkeepers did an enormous trade with Valencia, Xativa, Murcia; with Medina del Campo, Medina del Rioseca, Sevilla, Cádiz and Ecija, even as far as Portugal. After the discovery of America all the ships that went out laden with Spanish goods purchased these at Toledo. The scriveners dwelt round the Ayuntamiento.
In early days the Ayuntamiento was an insignificant body, and all the power lay between the sovereign and the mighty archbishop. But after the conquest of the Saracens, the kings of Castille found their realm too large and complicated for anything so minute as mere civic rule, and gradually the magistrature increased in power, till this Ayuntamiento, with its president, came to be the important body it was, and rivalled the Archbishopric in semi-royal powers. Pedro the Cruel was the first to grant it the privilege of the arms of Castille, and it was to the famous Corregidor, Gomez Manrique, who had his namesake’s famous inscription painted on the staircase, that Isabel the Catholic, on her first visit, gave the castles and gates of the city. Under the Corregidor were four mayors, who judged civil cases, one of whom sat only in the Zocodover to settle disputes between the traders. These magistrates were usually powerful nobles, such as the Toledos—the present dukes of Alba—the Castillas, the Silvas, the Ayalas, Montemayors and Fuensalidas, all great historic names. The city jury, half Latin, half Mozarabe, in religion, was furnished by all the parishes. As well as the Ayuntamiento, there was the Santa Hermandad behind the Plaza Mayor, with its prison and officers. To-day it is a muleteer’s inn, the Posada de la Hermandad, and the big kitchen, once the judgment chamber of the Inquisition, and the wooden benches around have not been changed, nor the dark-beamed ceiling within the Gothic façade, with the royal arms and the statues of the archers and members of the brotherhood.
The town prison was situated at San Roman, and was rebuilt and improved in 1575 by one of Toledo’s most enlightened corregidors, Juan Guttierrez Tello. Less joyous and profitable than the Tuesday fairs of the Zocodover were the terrible autos-da-fé, and, indeed, so agreeably wedded is the memory of this quaint little triangular plaza to the picture of heroes of capa and espada, to betitled loafers and dinnerless dons, that the mind with difficulty conceives it made over to gloomy and flaming images of the most solemn and atrocious hour of Spanish cruelty. More in keeping with the bright and busy scene are the bull-fights that used to be held here, when there were no seats or trees in the middle as now.
A curious document is the charter to Toledo of Alfonso the Emperor, after the conquest of the Moors: “In the name of God and His Grace, I, Aldefonso, by the will of God, Emperor of Spain, conjointly with my wife, the Empress, Doña Berenguela, with an agreeable spirit, and of our own will, without being forced by anyone, give this letter of donation and confirmation to all Christians who to this day have come to people Toledo, or will come, Mozarabe, Castillian and French, that they may pay toll neither on entering nor on leaving the city, nor in any part of my lands. They shall be free of duty on all the things they purchase and sell, except those who carry to or bring from the land of the Moors articles of trade, which shall be taxed according to their weight and value.” This little touch of spite against the vanquished Moor is the more intolerable when we remember the old relations of Alfonso’s predecessor with that same generous enemy; remember that the man he had conquered and exiled was the son of his benefactor and host when he was himself conquered and exiled by an unnatural brother; that the king, on whose throne he sat, had been his loyal and kindly comrade, and that the conquest his successor so grandiloquently recalls in this charter was the basest act of ingratitude perpetrated in the record of Castillian treachery.
From such slight indications it will be seen that the commerce of Toledo flourished upon a large scale. There is something stately and commanding about this method of confining each trade and business to its own quarter. How dearly now one would like to evoke the street of arms, and follow some slim young knight down from the royal Alcázar on the higher hill-point, with slashed sleeves, cloak flung jauntily from shoulder, and plumed cap, on his way to this deadly and interesting street to purchase a “trusty Toledo,” and linger over an exquisitely-wrought poniard. Or earlier still, and more delightful, accompany a turbaned Turk, wonderfully arrayed, and gaze with him in ecstasy upon the rows of damascened scimitars.
Toledo was used to travellers in the days of her greatness for, near all the gates, Pisa tells us, there were inns for strangers. Not strangers only, but the bishops and great lords, and sovereigns even, seem to have patronised the inns of Toledo. Alfonso the Perfidious stayed at a posada near the town gates when he came to visit his old protector and host, Almenor, whom he invited to dinner here. More astonishing still than this hospitable provision for travellers, is the fact we learn that there was not only a foundling hospital for unclaimed children, but also several homes for lost or strayed animals. Spain was more advanced in this respect centuries ago than now, for it is pretty certain the race shows no concern that we know of on behalf of forlorn and unprotected brutes.
If you would have some dim notion of the castellated and walled aspect of Toledo in Pisa’s days, you have only to thread your way through his prolix geographical history of the town. He begins with the magnificent Puerta de Visagra, and when we examine this double gate in its present battered and defaced condition, we cannot carp at the word “sumptuous” which he applies to it. Sumptuous it must have been then, if now it is magnificent. It holds the imperial arms, two eagles and a crown, with castles and lions of middle size gilt, and an inscription. Outside this gate, which, Pisa tells us, was shut at night, there was a broad space, and another entrance without. Entering the city on this side, you came by the parish of Santiago and San Isidro, and the barrier of La Granja. The ascent was made by the old hermitage of the Cross to the Zocodover. Here were two gates in a strong wall, probably half Roman and half Gothic, and this was the entrance to the town. Pisa calls these gates intermediary. Between the Puerta de Visagra and this latter gate in the great tower, he describes another, smaller and less important, which was always closed, and was called the gate of Almohada. Beyond this was another called the gate of the twelve stones, descending from the monastery of the Carmen by the Bridge of Alcántara. Before Pisa’s time, this gate was lower, and the twelve stones around obtained it the odd name of Doce Cantos, there being supposed twelve fountains once here. Another gate anciently called Adabazim, and afterwards Hierro, was near the bridge and the mills, on the limits of the lovely gardens of Alcurnia. Above the old hermitage of the Cross were the tower and gate of King Aquila, and above Santo Domingo el Real, the tower of Alarcon, with another intermediate between it and the Zocodover. From this ran round a castellated wall, and here you entered the street of arms by the Puerta de Perpiñan.
The gardens of the Alcurnia were famed all over Spain, as beautiful as any of Valencia or Granada, or Cordova, laid down by the Moors between the bridges of St Martin and Alcántara. The Tagus was used here as the Turia is used still at Valencia, for purposes of irrigation, so that fruit and flowers and trees abounded. At the time of the conquest, these lovely grounds became the property of the Christian monarchs, until King Alonso the Good, in 1158, granted them to the Archbishop Rodrigo, who built the mills and greatly improved the grounds. The name is said to signify “horn-shaped,” on account of the curves the river takes as it runs under the bridge of Alcántara. But a fierce inundation swept away all this loveliness from the eyes of the dismayed Toledans in Cardinal Tavera’s time. The ungrateful waters of the Tagus laid waste this green and flowery paradise upon a burnt and rocky hill-side, and Tavera died before he could carry out his project of restoring it.
True, even then, the Cigarrales beyond the town walls were noted spots of refreshment, whither the jaded citizens and nobles betook themselves to their country houses for the enjoyment of orchards, gardens and trees. The apricots of the Cigarrales have always been famous. But they constituted small comfort for the loss of such radiance and perfume, such oriental splendour as the Huerta de Alcurnia. They spread still from the river bank up among the cool hill breezes, and make a charming walk towards sunset. In the huerta del Rey was one of the palacios de Galiana, known through the legend of Galafre’s fair daughter and Charlemagne, the other having served as Wamba’s palace or prætorium, and later still as the palace in which the Cortes sat to judge the case between the immortal Cid and his wretched sons-in-law. Westward from Santa Leocadia ran a long, broad space of foliaged and flowered land, vines, and pleasant country houses. The rich cigarrel of Cardinal Quiroga was here, and the dean and chapter of the Cathedral possessed on the other side gardens and orchards nearly as beautiful.