Cathedral Cities of Spain

by W. W. Collins

Over the sacristy door are the tombs of Count Ramon Berenguer II. and his wife Ermensendis, who died in 1058, predeceasing her husband by twenty-four years. The sacristy itself contains a remarkable piece of twelfth-century crewel work, said to be the earliest known specimen in existence. It is covered with figures of a type similar to those of contemporary MSS. The Romanesque cloisters form an irregular trapezium. The columns are doubled and about a foot apart, not unlike those of Tarragona.

The finest Romanesque example that Gerona possesses is the church of San Pedro de los Galligans. The apse, little damaged during the siege, forms a tower in the town wall. There is no doubt of the great antiquity of this building, which dates probably from the early part of the tenth century. The east end is mostly constructed of black volcanic scoriæ. The nave and aisles, the bays of which are very simply built, are almost prehistoric in their roughness.

In the cloisters attached to the church is the Museo Provincial. Many relics of Gerona's heroic defence can here be seen, as well as some early Christian and Hebrew remains.

TOLEDO

STANDING high above the yellow Tagus, which, confined in a deep gorge, rushes and swirls far below between precipitous granite cliffs, Toledo was always an ideal position for a fortress before modern firearms rendered Nature's defences of little avail.

Its name is associated with the great Cardinals of the Rodrigo, Tenorio, and Foncesca families, as well as scions of the houses of Ximenes, Mendoza, Tavera, and Lorenzana. The wealth of these Prelates was immense, and their power, Ecclesiastical and Temporal, proportionate. They practically had no rivals, they certainly feared none, they ruled kings as well as countries, and their allegiance to Rome was purely nominal. They made wars and fought in them. For their patronage of art and literature future generations have had good cause to be grateful. They built schools and improved the means of communication throughout the land. Under their influence the Church was omnipotent, and they have written their names deep in the pages of Spanish history. In fact, so great was the power of Toledo's clergy that it grew to be the cause of the foundation of the Capital at Madrid. Philip II., who removed the Court from Valladolid to Toledo, found it better, after a short residence here, to take himself and his Court to a town where he no longer encountered the arrogance of Ecclesiastical rule.

Under the Romans, who captured it in 193 B.C., "Toletum" became the capital of Hispania. Leovigild removed hither from Seville, and his successor, Reccared, who embraced the orthodox form of Christianity, made it the ecclesiastical as well as political capital of his dominions.

For nearly four centuries, from 712, when the Moors took Toledo, it was under their rule; but divided counsels and the treachery of the down-trodden Hebrew enabled Alfonso VI. to enter in triumph with the Cid. The King then styled himself Emperor, and promoted the Archbishop to the Primacy of Spain. Under Alfonso's rule the city grew rapidly in every way. Churches and convents were built, defences strengthened, and Toledo knew no rival.

With far-seeing wisdom, Moor and Christian were allowed to intermarry, and lived together in peace for wellnigh one hundred and fifty years. The advent in 1227 of that ecclesiastical firebrand, St. Ferdinand, however, altered this. One of his first acts was to pull down the Mosque, wherein the Moors of the city, by Alfonso's royal prerogative, had been allowed to worship, and commence the building on its site of the great Cathedral.