E non de Zurraquin, ca fue buen barragan.”[40]
A second band would take up the strain:
“Cantan de Roldan, e cantan de Olivero,
E non de Zurraquin, ca fue buen caballero.”[41]
After rebuilding Avila Count Raymond of Burgundy retired to his province of Galicia, and, dying March 26, 1107, he was buried in the celebrated church of Santiago at Compostella. It was his son who became King of Castile under the name of Alonso VIII., and Avila, because of its loyalty to him and his successors, acquired a new name—Avila del Rey—among the chroniclers of the time.
But the city bears a title still more glorious than those already mentioned—that of Avila de los Santos. It was in the sixteenth century especially that it became worthy of this name, when there gathered about St. Teresa a constellation of holy souls, making the place a very Carmel, filled with the “sons of the prophets.” Avila cantos y santos—Avila has as many saints as stones—says an old Spanish proverb, and that is saying not a little. The city has always been noted for dignity of character and its attachment to the church.
The piety of its ancient inhabitants is attested by the number and grave beauty of the churches, with their lamp-lit shrines of the saints and their dusky aisles filled with tombs of the old knights who fought under the banner of the cross. In St. Teresa’s time it was honored with the presence of several saints who have been canonized: St. Thomas of Villanueva, St. Peter of Alcantara, St. John of the Cross, and that holy Spanish grandee, St. Francis Borgia, besides many other individuals noted for their sanctity. But St. Teresa is the best type of Avila. Her piety was as sweetly
austere as the place, as broad and enlightened as the vast horizon that bounds it, and fervid as its glowing sun.
“You mustn’t say anything against St. Teresa at Avila,” said the inevitable Englishmen we met an hour after our arrival.
“We are by no means disposed to, here or anywhere else,” was our reply. On the contrary, we regarded her, with Mrs. Jameson, as “the most extraordinary woman of her age and country”; nay, “who would have been a remarkable woman in any age or country.” We had seen her statue among the fathers of the church in the first Christian temple in the world, with the inscription: Sancta Teresa, Mater spiritualis. We had read her works, written in the pure Castilian for which Avila is noted, breathing the imagination of a poet and the austerity of a saint, till we were ready to exclaim with Crashawe: