help the Castillians against the Moors; but Ambrosio de Morales is of opinion that they were taken to Oviedo, which would have been at the date of the Moorish conquest, when Favila and Pelayo, with their Asturian followers, were at Rodrigo’s court. For their reception at Toledo, all the town went out in procession under triumphal arches, banners flying, trumpets blowing. A throne was erected at the Puerta Bisagra, and a chapel, where eight dignitaries and canons received the relics; and the procession turned back, with music, singing and dancing. Every parish had its banner wrought for the occasion, and each child carried a flag. More than a thousand monks walked behind; and, as well as fifteen hundred priests of the town, there were all the canons, the Brotherhood of the Hermandad, foreign priests, and every order of the Catholic Church was present. Then came all the officers and ministry of the Inquisition, more than seven hundred and forty doctors and masters, fifty-five juries, thirty-three magistrates, the mayor, the Duke of Maqueda, the Count of Fuensalida and Pedro de Silva, the city standard-bearer. All the grandees of Castille followed—six dukes, nine marquises, six counts, quantities of minor noblemen, and a regiment of cavaliers and lords. The procession went by all the principal streets from the Puerta Bisagra to the Cathedral. All were gaily decorated with tapestries and silks, and arches were built everywhere, with Latin inscriptions and elegant verses among their bright flowers. At the Cathedral doors, Philip II., his two children, Don Carlos and Doña Ysabel Clara, his sister, Doña Maria de Austria, and the Princes Rodolph and Ernest of Hapsburg stood in the porch to receive the relics. The majesty of the ceremony here becomes so dazzling that our prolix friend, Dr Pisa, lays down his pen and weeps from emotion. He cannot hope to trace such a picture, nor can we. But we strive to imagine the splendour of Cardinal Quiroga in his sumptuous pontifical robes, a blaze of gold, brocade and jewels, such as not to be beheld out of Eastern legend; the dignitaries with their jewelled mitres; the King, infantas and princes, all hardly less resplendent, and the laity rivalling them as far as possible, in the gemmed lights of Toledo’s glorious cathedral. A picture one would gladly have seen, if it could be seen at a price less terrible than that of Philip’s contemporary or subject.
The church is situated under the ruins of the old city walls, below the Puerta del Cambron. It is rough and simple enough, and derives its name from the wooden crucifix over the altar, to which legend attaches a romantic interest. Becquer and Zorilla have told the tale in thin and sentimental prose, and in thinner and more sentimental verse. A gallant pledged his word to marry a maid within sight of this crucifix: afterwards he forgot his promise and denied the pledge, on which the broken-hearted maid flung herself at the foot of the crucifix, and addressed it as the witness of violated vows. The crucified held out a wooden arm, and a voice from above exclaimed, “I testify.” There is one lovely thing in this quaint old basilica, the statue of St Leocadia by Berruguete, originally sculptured for the gate of Cambron. Nothing more sweet and delicate was ever wrought by that famous hand; no more fitting expression of brave and beautiful maidenhood was ever conceived in stone; and Italian influence in its best form is here visible, and Berruguete’s strength is subtilised by an exquisite and penetrative charm. As well as St Leocadia and St Ildefonso, an Arabian inscription in relief tells us that the first Moorish King of Toledo, Mahomad Ben-Raman, was buried here.
Some of the convents of Toledo have been famous. That of San Pedro de las Dueñas, in the reign of Henry the Impotent, created quite a scandalous interest. Tired of his mistress, Doña Catalina de Sandoval, he insisted on naming her abbess of this convent, and with this object ordered the public expulsion of the abbess, the Marquesa de Guzman. In his pretence lies the humour of the situation: he found the convent needed a purifying influence, and that the ladies were not sufficiently scrupulous in the maintenance of their vows. Spanish convents, before St Theresa’s time, were not harsh abodes. Indeed, I fancy they were freer and pleasanter dwellings than the home of father or husband. Cavaliers thronged the parlours, and there was much thrumming of lute and guitar, much singing of soft sequidilla between belted knights and veiled ladies, who only left off these gentle recreations when the bell summoned them to meal or prayer. However, St Pedro so exceeded the limit of ecclesiastical tolerance that the Archbishop Alonzo of Carrillo placed it under interdict, and forbade any priest to cross its threshold. The scandal only ended with the austere and lofty presence of Queen Isabel upon the scene.
Santa Fé was originally a royal Moorish palace beautifully situated on the north edge of the Zocodover, which Alonso VI., the conqueror, at the instance of his French queen Constance, bestowed upon a French order for noble ladies. A charming and perfect suggestion of its antique moresque beauty may be had from the view of its wall in an old garden above the river where you see the Moorish apse and brick arcading. The ground covered by the palace must have been enormous, since in the time of Alfonso VIII. the priory of the Knights of Calatrara was established here. Nothing now remains but the Moorish choir and arcaded wall, and the best of it is to be seen from the wild patch of garden outside the convent walls. It is another case of senseless destruction, a monument we are only permitted to rebuild in imagination with the help of a few Moorish arches and brown brickwork half-hidden by exuberant foliage. A stately dream, if mournful and evanescent, San Juan de la Penitencia ineffectively situated below the Cathedral in a broken and dilapidated quarter, is a Franciscan convent founded by Cisneros for poor girls, where after six years’ free schooling they may remain as nuns, and if they prefer marriage the convent dowers them with about £15, with a life-seat in the choir. The church is one of the minor sights of Toledo. It was finished by the secretary of Cisneros, who lies buried here, Francisco Ruiz, Bishop of Avila. About the convent halls and corridors are still traces of Moorish ornamentation in which the Castillian conquerors delighted quite as much as the Moslem. The chapel ceiling is a good specimen of artesonado in terrible decay alas, and the architecture is a medley of Gothic, Moorish, and renaissance. Above the porch are the arms of Cisneros. Within it is of a gloomy and depressing simplicity: a single nave, a high altar, a tribune. True the plateresca frieze of the tribune is graceful, and the iron railing of the high altar is quite the best of the minor churches, and admirably decorative, while the tomb of the Bishop of Avila brought from Palermo is a most beautiful work of art. Writing of it, Ponz says:—“Above a large stone divided by three pilasters to form three pedestals, there are an equal number of statues seated, almost life-size, representing Faith, Hope, and Charity. Between the pilasters are the arms of the Bishop, five castles. In a framed niche are contained the urn, couch, and recumbent statue. In front of the urn there are two weeping children, and in the depths of the niche four angels hold up the curtains. On either side are two Doric pillars sustaining the architecture, frieze, and cornices, and along the frieze runs: Beato mortui, qui in Domino moriuntur. On the edge are two wrought columns of a very antique taste, excellently executed.... Between these columns and pilasters on either side is a statue, St James and St Andrew, and above the figures of children. Over the whole is a bas-relief of the Annunciation, with the statues of St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist, half the size of the Virtues below.” Ponz is of opinion that this magnificent work of art is of two distinct periods, the frame work having been wrought later by Toledan sculptures after the tomb within had been brought from Palermo, and revealing the delicacy, the finish and unerring taste of the finer Italian school. Nothing could be more graceful, more effective than the curtains held apart by the angels, or more delightfully touching than the slight shadow thus cast upon the recumbent statue, lending it something of the immediate stillness and impressiveness of recent death.
Santa Isabel is worth a visit. Some good azulejo and the artesonado ceiling testify to Moorish influences and a queen and a royal princess, daughter of Isabel the Glorious, were buried here, and the whole forms an agreeable note of quaintness and dimness without however any special attraction in architecture or decoration or art. Not so San Clemente. The façade is what my Spanish friends call una preciosidad, the strong and beautiful work of Berruguete. The architecture rests on two Ionic pillars, and above is the statue of the titular saint. The reliefs of the porch are exquisite, and the frieze abounds in all the wild and exuberant fancies of the Spanish renaissance, every caprice in figure, in leafage, in image, and phantasmal suggestion. Like Santa Fé the convent prides itself upon aristocratic traditions. In the church is buried the infante, Don Fernando, son of the founder, Alonso VII., the emperor, the tomb a restoration by order of Felipe II. in 1570. The interior is pleasing with an air of sober wealth, but has nothing to show in the way of art that can compare with the noble façade. It is stated that the archives contain 500 Arabian manuscripts, but these statements the intelligent foreigner must take on trust.
Santo Domingo el Real is another aristocratic convent of historical interest. It was founded by an illegitimate daughter of Pedro the Cruel, Doña Maria de Castilla, who was its first abbess. Two sons of Pedro were buried here, results of the thousand vagabond caprices of this crowned Blue-Beard; the infanta of Aragon, Queen of Portugal, hence the qualification, St Dominick the Royal, the Guzmans, the Silvas, and Ayalas reconciled first by marriage and then by death. There is a fine retablo if there were only light enough to see it by.
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Of the many hospitals of Toledo, two alone are famous, one what the Spanish guides very properly call “a sumptuous work of art.” Descending the steps through the Moorish archway of the Zocodover, you leave Cervantes’ inn on the right, and a little lower down on the left is the Hospital of Santa Cruz, the hospital of Mendoza, “The Cardinal of Spain,” now incongruously enough a school of infantry. The traveller, enamoured of the picturesque, in awed surrender to the charm of noble ruins, grows to loathe the military all over Europe. They take up their quarters so profanely in monuments one hardly dares to lift one’s voice in. They sprawl in their motley uniforms over the loveliest homes of romance and memories, and burthen the silence with their futile miseries, labours, and tyrannies. In times of war the army makes a gallant figure. Then each man is a hero, and we willingly tend his wounds. But in times of