But Toledo did not fully awake to its importance till the fifth century after Christ, when it fell into the hands of the Goths, who made it their capital and enlarged and embellished it, especially in the good old times of King Wamba, whose name is still popular in Castile, and corresponds to that of King Dagobert in France. It now became renowned for its splendor and wealth, and, when taken by the Moors at the end of the seventh century, they found here an immense booty, including the spoils of Alaric from Rome and Jerusalem, among which was the famous table of talismanic powers, wrought for King Solomon out of a single
emerald by the genii of the East, which had the power of revealing, as in a mirror, all future events, and from which that monarch acquired so much of his wisdom.
All these and many other things were flitting through our minds as we crossed the bridge of Alcantara, with its tower of defence and tutelary saint, and wound up the steep hillside into the city. We alighted in the court of the Fonda de Lino, where we learned once more that an old bird sometimes gets caught with mere chaff. It soon became alarmingly evident that, between the Goth and the Moor, but little had been left behind—at least, at the Fonda. But “Affliction is a divine diet,” says Izaak Walton, and we took to it as kindly as possible. In this state of affairs, we gave ourselves unresistingly up to a valet-de-place, who lay in wait for his prey, and, for once in the world, did not regret it; for he proved quite indispensable in the maze of narrow, tortuous streets, and was tolerably versed in the archæology of the place. Few cities are more rich in historic, religious, and poetic memories, or have as many interesting monuments of the past. At every step we were surprised by something novel and curious. The streets themselves run zigzag, so that we were always dodging around a corner, like our old friend Mr. Chevy Slyme, and soon began to feel very mean and pitiful indeed. This must have been convenient in days when arrows were weapons, but to honest, straightforward folk in these pacific times they are peculiarly trying. One side of you always seems getting in advance of the other, and you soon begin to feel as if blind of one eye. It is to be hoped obliquity of the moral sense does not follow from
this necessity of going zigzag. The streets are extremely clean, but so narrow as to afford passage only to men and donkeys, or men on donkeys, sometimes looking, in their queer accoutrements, “like two beasts under one skin,” as Dante says. These sombre, winding streets are lined with lofty houses that are gloomy and solid as citadels, with few windows, and these defended by strong iron grates. The portals are flanked with granite columns and surmounted by worn escutcheons carven in stone. They are frequently edged with the cannon-ball ornaments peculiar to Castile, like rows of great stone beads. The doors themselves are so thick and massive that they have withstood all ancient means of assault, and the resinous wood of which they are made seems to defy the very tooth of time itself. They are studded with enormous nails of forged iron, with diamond-shaped or convex heads, sometimes as large as half a cocoanut, and curiously wrought. Frequently they are not content with their primitive forms, but go straying off into long, artistic ramifications that cover the door like some ancient embroidery. The gabled ends of the houses often project over the streets with huge beams, carved and stained, that add to the gloom. These streets do not seem to have changed for ages. Every instant we saw some trace of the Goths or an Arabic inscription, or Moorish galleries and balconies. Once we entered an old archway, and found ourselves in a court with sculptured granite pillars that supported Oriental-like galleries, to which we ascended by stairs faced with colored azulejos, old and glittering, as the Moors alone knew how to make them. Once the city contained two hundred thousand inhabitants;
now there are not more than twenty thousand. The streets are deserted and silent, the houses empty. Everywhere are ruins and traces of past grandeur over which nothings of modern life is diffused. You seem to be wandering in a museum of antiquities. Above all, you feel it was once, and perhaps still is, a city of deep religious convictions, from the numerous monasteries and magnificent churches. Pious emblems are on the houses. Among others, we remember the cord of St. Francis, carven in stone, with its symbolic knots of the Passion. At the Ayuntamiento, built after the designs of El Greco, who, like several other eminent artists, was at once painter, architect, and sculptor, is an inscription on the side of the staircase by the poet Jorje Manrique worthy of a place over the entrance of every city-hall: “Ye noble, judicious lords who govern Toledo, on these steps leave all your passions—avarice, weakness, fear. For the public good forget your own private interests; and since God has made you the pillars of this august house, continue always to be firm and upright.”
We were now near the cathedral—one of the grandest, and certainly the richest, in Spain. Its first foundation is lost in the obscurity of legendary times. The people, however, are not so indefinite in their opinion. With a true Oriental love of the marvellous, they not only attribute the foundation of Toledo to patriarchal times, but declare this church was built by the apostles, and that even the Blessed Virgin herself took a personal interest in its erection. It is at least certain that a church was consecrated here in the time of King Ricared the Goth, after the condemnation of the Arians by the Council of Toledo,
and it was probably built on the site of a previous one. It was placed under the invocation of the Virgin, and her ancient statue, which has been preserved to this day, was regarded then, as now, with special veneration. The old Gothic kings were noted for their devotion to Mary, and hung up at her altar the beautiful crowns of pure beaten gold and precious stones discovered a few years ago near Toledo, and now at the Hôtel Cluny at Paris.[190]
The Moors, when they took Toledo, seized this church, so sacred to the Christians, razed it to the ground, and erected a mosque in its place; and when Alfonso VI. triumphantly entered the old capital of the Visigoths, May 25, 1085—the very day the great Hildebrand died at Salerno, exclaiming: “I have loved justice and hated iniquity, and therefore I die an exile”—having left the Moors in possession of the building, he was forced to hear Mass in a little mosque of the tenth century, afterwards given to the Knights Templars and called the Christo de la Luz, where may still be seen the wooden shield hung up by King Alfonso, with its silver cross on a red ground.
The people, of course, were dissatisfied to see the infidel left to defile a spot where the Gospel had first been announced to their forefathers and the Christian mysteries first celebrated, and, as soon as the king left the city, determined to regain possession of it. Queen Constanza
herself, though a native of France, favored the movement, and had the doors of the mosque forced open in the night. The archbishop purified it with incense, aspersions, and prayer; an altar was hastily set up, and a bell hung in the tower, which, after a silence of four centuries, rang out as soon as daylight appeared, to call the people to a solemn service of thanksgiving.