The Project Gutenberg eBook of Toledo, by Albert F. Calvert.

Printed by Ballantyne & Co. Limited
Tavistock Street, London
{v}

TO

S.A. INFANTA MARIA TERESA

IN WHOSE SYMPATHY

THE ANCIENT GRANDEUR IS LINKED WITH

THE FUTURE GREATNESS OF SPAIN

THIS VOLUME

WITH AN ASSURANCE OF SINCERE ESTEEM

IS DEDICATED
{vii}{vi}

PREFACE

The author would, in the ordinary way, be hard put to it to frame a reasonable apology for compiling a new volume on the subject of the ancient and royal city of Toledo. Artists have reproduced its wonder of imposing and picturesque detail; archæologists have explored its many monuments; historians have discovered in its archives a record which, for many centuries, represents the log-book of Spain. There is no secret, apart from the impenetrable mystery of its origin, which has not been revealed; its chronicle is a well-thumbed volume. The beginnings of Spanish history go no further back than the earliest references we have to the natural stronghold founded on the seven rocks on the banks of the Tagus, and Spanish tradition claims for the citadel an antiquity coeval with the sun and stars. Both the history and the legends have been transcribed in many languages, yet, in a series which is intended to embrace all Spain in its compendious design, the inclusion of the twice-told tale of the “city of generations” carries with it an unquestionable justification.

The ambition of the author has not been to throw fresh light on a well-worn subject, nor to{viii} supplement the work of earlier and more erudite writers with new facts or theories, but simply, as in the case of the earlier volumes in this series, to equip the illustrations with a brief, explanatory text. It would be futile to attempt to even outline the story of Toledo in some hundred and fifty pages of letterpress, but I hope it may be found that in this limited space sufficient detail has been given to convey to the reader a general idea of the changing fortunes and unchanging character of the city, which Padilla has described as “the crown of Spain, the light of the world, free from the time of the mighty Goths.”

The impression of grandeur and melancholy, of strength and silence, which the traveller receives from a visit to the one-time capital of the Peninsula, cannot be suggested by the written word, but it may be that the illustrations will recall, if they do not suggest, the feeling which the city inspires. Toledo is mediæval in its architecture and its atmosphere. The Moorish occupation has left no more than a scratch upon its Gothic character; the spirit of modernity has been defied by its virile antiquity. But the Moslem remains have been made a feature of the illustrations, and, as in the volumes devoted to Seville, Cordova, and Granada in this series, the intricacies of Arabian decoration have been extensively reproduced.

Many of the plates are included here by the{ix} courtesy of Messrs. Alguacil, Rafael Garzon, Hauser and Menet, and Moreno, and to these gentlemen I tender my sincere thanks for the permission accorded me to reproduce them. I have also to acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. E. B. d’Auvergne for the assistance rendered by him in the compilation, and to Messrs. Martin and Gamoneda for their kindness in allowing me to make use of the matter and illustrations contained in the volume on Toledo which they have published in the new series of the Monumentos Arquitectónicos de España.

I venture to hope that no apology is needed for including the chapter on El Greco, and the selection of his pictures, which appear in this volume. A separate book, devoted entirely to this subject, which will be issued in this series, cannot be ready for some time, and as so little has been written about Domeniko Theotokopouli, and so few of his pictures have been reproduced, I have decided to incorporate these brief notes concerning the Cretan painter, whose association with Toledo extended over a period of nearly forty years.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE CHILDHOOD OF THE CITY

There are spots that stand out in the ocean of time like islands unsubmerged. The flood of years has rolled onwards past and around them, and its billows have broken in vain against their shores. Such a spot is Toledo. It lifts its head above the ever-shifting waters of the ages, and looks forth unchanged, unchanging, across the sea of centuries—a last surviving beacon of the drowned mediæval world.

Very old is the city. It has outgrown decay. Nor can we conceive it as changing. It has almost become a part of the everlasting hills on which it stands. The rock has grown into Toledo and Toledo into the rock.

In a land where all is old, men marvel at the antiquity of this city. And when it was younger by centuries, the chroniclers, groping amid legends and fables the wildest and most extravagant, strove to penetrate the darkness of the ages and to discern the pale glimmerings of Toledo’s dawn. Here, surely, first trod the first man, thought the{2} ancients, and here was already a city when God first placed His sun exactly over it in the yet-dark Heavens. If this was not so, said another chronicler, then beyond doubt Toledo’s seven hills were the first to appear above the waters of the Deluge, and Tubal, the grandson of Noah, established here a kingdom. So stories and traditions multiplied, each historian inventing a fresh one. These fables of the city’s founding are quaint, curious, and ingenious. Iberia and Hispania of course suggested persons, and so we find Iberia, daughter of King Hispan, and wife of a Persian captain, Pyrrhus, resorting in search of health to the banks of the Tagus, and her husband making a bower for her on these rocky steeps. Hercules, who is credited with the foundation of Seville, added the building of Toledo to his many labours. “Dismiss these far-fetched fables,” cries the learned prelate De Rada, “and admit that our city was founded by the Consuls Tolemon and Brutus, in the reign of Ptolemy Evergetes.” But another conjecture as absolutely baseless as the others! More interesting is the legend that the town was built by Jews flying from Nebuchadnezzar, by whom it was named Toledoth, “the city of generation.” Certain it is that Jews lived in Toledo at the earliest periods of its history, and played a great part, as we shall see, in its affairs. However picturesque may be these traditions{3} and wonderings of the sages, we cannot resist the conclusion that the beginnings of this old capital of Spain were obscure and commonplace enough. Along the banks of the yellow Tagus savage tribesmen pastured their flocks and herds, and the more practical spirits among them recognised the advantages of the cliff above the river as a settlement. Doubtless mere temporary encampments succeeded each other here season after season, till some sentiment or necessity attached men permanently to the spot, and a rude cluster of huts was formed—the rough inception of our greatest towns.

The Celtiberians hereabouts were known to the Romans as Carpetani (how ill these Latin forms seem to reproduce the uncouth designations which these primitive peoples really bore!) The Carthaginians were the first civilised nation to come in contact with them, and we hear of a Punic governor, Tago. It is impossible to resist the suspicion that his personality arose, Aphrodite-like, from the river Tagus. But a Moorish writer gives a plausible account of a revolt which arose among the Carpetani consequent on Tago’s assassination by Hasdrubal, the contemporary of Hannibal. This brought that great commander himself upon the scene. Before him the tribesmen were scattered like chaff before the wind.

Did the African Phœnicians found a per{4}manent station at Toledo? It would not seem so. No vestige or fragment, no trace whatever of their domination has come down to us. Most likely this was a mere trading centre, where the black-bearded, keen-eyed Semites bartered the wares of Africa and the East against the ores and fleeces of Spain. The population remained almost purely Celtic. One wonders if a few Carthaginians settled amongst them, and if their descendants became confounded with their kinsmen in race, the Jews. It is a wild conjecture, but might not the presence of such Semitic settlers have given rise to the fantastic legend of the founding of Toledo by the Children of Israel?

Where the Carthaginian sowed, the Roman reaped. And now the Carpetanian village looms in the light not of mere tradition, but of history. Livy tells us that in the year 193 B.C. the Pro-Consul Marcus Fulvius Nobilior defeated a host of Celtiberians, Vaccei and Vectones in this region, and took prisoner a king called Hilerno. In consequence of this victory Toledo—described as urbs parva sed loco munito—fell into the power of the conquerors. The wild rebellious Celts might henceforward chafe and lash themselves into impotent fury; on their necks the yoke of the Roman was firmly riveted, never by the natives unassisted to be shaken off.

Historians have remarked on the aloofness of{5} the Toledans during the long winter of foreign domination. Between the various leaders and factions who made Spain their cock-pit, the citizens observed strict neutrality. They rendered no assistance to Viriathus in his magnanimous attempt to recover national independence. Perhaps they were not wanting in sympathy for their compatriots; but the conquerors had long recognised the military value of the town by the Tagus, and here we may suppose was always a strong garrison ready to stamp out the first efforts at revolt.

Under the wings of the Roman eagle, the material prosperity of Toledo steadily increased. From a collection of wretched huts, it had become a colonia, the capital of Carpetania. As such it would have had its arx, or citadel, prætorium, forum, temples, baths, and vici, or long suburbs straggling into the country. Of all these practically no traces remain. But in the Vega, outside the town, may be traced a semicircular enclosure, formed by masses of stones and mortar, about a metre in thickness, but of varying height. This space has been dignified with the name of Circus Maximum, and is undoubtedly a Roman work. But Señor Amador de los Rios has demonstrated almost conclusively that the Circus never advanced much beyond the foundations, which we now see before us probably in no very different state from{6} that in which they were left some two thousand years ago. But though no Celtiberian captives or Christian martyrs here were “butchered to make a Roman holiday,” the consecration of the spot to the practice of cruelty bore fruit in after years. For the fires lit by the Inquisition were kindled here, and the Christian put the incompleted amphitheatre to the use for which it had been designed by the Pagan. To-day the men of Toledo play at pelota in the enclosure, and their cheery shouts may well scare away the ghosts of torturer and victim.

This may be regarded as the most important Roman remains in the neighbourhood of the city. The famous Cave of Hercules, which figures so largely in legendary lore, was probably the crypt or substructure of a Temple of Jupiter; and on the cliff-side below the Alcazar are a few fragments of a once-important aqueduct.

It has been conjectured from the dimensions of the projected Circus that the Romans had at one time thought of elevating Toledo to the rank of chief city of Spain. The design, if it ever was formed, was never carried into execution. Of what passed in the town under Latin rule we have but the vaguest notion. Toledo, like almost every other place in Europe, has its traditions of fierce persecution productive of local martyrs. Almost as many Christians were massacred in Spain, if{7} we credit these stories, as Gibbon thinks perished in the whole Roman Empire. Among the martyrs of Toletum, it is perhaps superfluous to say, was a young and lovely virgin, in this instance called Leocadia. She was done to death by the truculent Dacian. St. Eugenius, the first bishop of Toledo, is said to have been a disciple of St. Paul. He was martyred at Paris, and his alleged remains were obtained from Charles IX. of France and presented to the city by Philip II.

In early ecclesiastical annals Toledo has less shadowy claims on remembrance as the seat of several councils, the most celebrated being those of 396, 400, 589. The minutes of the second council are preserved in the local archives. Miss Hannah Lynch makes merry over the fathers’ spirited denunciations of her sex. In truth, the irreverent reader is reminded of those other fulminations launched in the diocese of Rheims against certain persons unknown, and of the poet’s surprised comment on their want of effect. The sex fared better at the hands of the Council, however, than vegetarians and mathematicians, both of whom were excommunicated downright. Neither class is numerous in Spain at the present day, so the labours of the fathers may not have been altogether ineffectual.{8}

THE CITY UNDER THE VISIGOTH

During the fifth century the Toledans may well have listened with attention to spiritual discussions, for looking forth from their rocky perch, they beheld the kingdoms of the earth passing away, and all that had seemed stable and eternal fading like the morning mist. The final breaking-up of the great world-controlling power was evident. Nations, the very names of which the men of the south had never heard, loomed from out the darkness of the north, and swept like a cloud of locusts over the land. The whole of Spain was desolate. Toledo, ever grim and stubborn, stood prepared to die hard. The tide of Vandal invasion surged in vain round her walls; then spent its fury in the south. The Visigoths established themselves in southern France. Under Walya they had overrun Spain, but had exchanged it, willingly enough, for Aquitania. Euric the Balthing, who succeeded his brother Theodoric as king in 466, seems to have repented of the bargain. He reconquered all Spain, except Galicia, which was held by the Suevi, and took Toledo.{9} Where the Vandal had failed, the Visigoth succeeded. In the first years of the sixth century the Franks stripped Euric’s grandson, Amalaric, of practically all his possessions north of the Pyrenees, and the kingdom of the Visigoths became synonymous with Spain. Its capital was Narbonne during the troubled reigns of Theudis and Theudigisel. But in 553 Athanagild was elected king. His wife was the sister of the Bishop of Toledo, and partly on that account, perhaps, but more probably because of its central position, he made that city his capital. That rank it retained during the continuance of the Visigothic monarchy, with the brief interval of the reign of Liuba, who succeeded Athanagild in 567 and removed his Court to Narbonne.

The history of Toledo for the next century and a half becomes, in some sort, the history of Spain. Under Liuba’s brother and successor Leovigild (more correctly Liobagilths) the monarchy was consolidated. The Suevi in the north-west were subdued, and the nominal suzerainty of the Eastern Emperor was disavowed. Despite the difference in religion between the Visigoths, who were Arians, and the Romanised Iberians, who were Catholics, the two races began to intermingle, and the fusion of both into a single nation commenced. Leovigild was the first of his line to assume the insignia and appurtenances of royalty, and struck{10} coins with his own likeness and the description, “King in Toledo.” The title is significant of the increased importance of the city. The prosperity of the kingdom was temporarily interrupted by the celebrated insurrection of the monarch’s son Ermenegild. This was the outcome of the marriage of that prince with Ingunthis, the daughter of the Prankish and Catholic king Sisebert. The wedding was solemnised in Toledo with great pomp, but the city shortly after became the scene of violent quarrels between Queen Goiswintha and her daughter-in-law. Ermenegild embraced his wife’s religion, and headed a revolt against his father. He was defeated, and paid the penalty with his life at Tarragona, after refusing to accept the sacrament at the hands of an Arian bishop. Unedifying though his conduct may appear to us, he was regarded as a martyr for the faith, and is enrolled among the saints of the Catholic Church.

Nor does his example seem to have been without its effect upon his brother, Reccared, who succeeded Leovigild in 587. In the month of May 589, Toledo was thronged with Catholic bishops and priests—many lately returned from exile—and with nobles from all parts of Spain, making their way to the Basilica of Santa Maria de la Sede Real, to assist at the solemn profession of the Catholic faith by the king and his queen,{11} Baddo. Sixty-two prelates took part in this, the third Council of Toledo, the most eminent being Massona, Bishop of Merida, Leandro of Baetica, Santardus of Braga, Ugno of Barcelona, Megecias of Narbonne, and Eufemio of Toledo. It was a memorable day for Spain. The king’s example was soon followed by his subjects of his own race, and the unification of the two peoples was greatly accelerated.

During the hundred and ten years that elapsed between the death of Reccared (601) and the rout of the Guadelete (711), no fewer than fifteen sovereigns sat on the throne of Spain. Toledo was the theatre of their barbaric triumphings, their violent entrances and tragic exits. Now the city would resound with the savage, exultant yells of the townsmen, as they dragged the body of the usurper Witeric up and down the steep, uneven streets—to cast the bleeding, shapeless thing that had so lately been a king, upon a dunghill. Now, the people would be acclaiming Wamba, greatest of the Visigoths—after the strange scene at Gerticos, where the crown was forced upon him at the sword’s point; another time, a long procession of captives would file through the gates, to witness to the old king’s triumph in Narbonnese Gaul. Not a “demise of the crown” but there would be angry mutterings among the townsfolk, and whispers of murder, compulsion,{12} and fraud. And while the kings raved and the people wept, the Church grew every day stronger—so strong that usurper and legitimate sovereign alike had perforce to obtain her sanction to his election and accession. And as the years went on, the spark of religious zeal in the breast of Spain was fanned into flame, and we read of fierce onslaughts on the Jewish citizens, and of merciless edicts, condemning them to penalties painful and humiliating. Dark days were these for the Children of Israel whose home Toledo so long had been; but darker still were impending for their persecutors and for the royal line of the Visigoths.

An exact picture of society in Spain at this period has been preserved in the Etymologies of Isidore Pacense. The Visigoths were a primitive, barbarous people, who had imposed upon themselves the outward appearances of Roman, or rather of Byzantine, civilisation. The contemptuous reference of Hallam to this “obscure race” is undeserved. Even in their earlier stages of development the Goths manifested many noble qualities—notably, a clemency towards their enemies—which were not conspicuous in the more polished nations of the South. And though they never properly assimilated the culture of the Latins, they attained to a degree of refinement and civilisation which compares favourably with that{13} reached by contemporaries. “Spain,” remarks the author of “Toledo” in the “Monumentos Arquitectónicos de España,” “may then fairly and proudly claim that, while in Central Europe art had acquired no distinctive form—in the midst of the bitterness of slavery, when, before the abjuration of Reccared, the fusion of the races was not legally recognised—the Iberian Peninsula had developed a definite and evident artistic and literary individuality. That individuality must have been the result of the fortuitous conjunction and union of Latin traditions, more or less degenerate, with influences originally Byzantine and with those other transformed elements introduced by the Germanic hosts of Atawulf; but, even then, it remains an individuality, which asserts itself in the surviving examples of Visigothic culture, and which was transmitted to the generations succeeding the Moslem conquest.”

According to the standpoint of the critic, the Gothic kings’ taste for pomp and luxury may be interpreted as proof of their civilised instincts or of their native barbarism. For of the splendour of the Court of Toledo we have abundant testimony. From the writings of Isidore, we learn that the nobles used only goblets and basins of the precious metals, that their garments were of superfine silk, and their ornaments of the richest jewels. The elaborate ceremonial of the royal{14} household may be inferred from the list of functionaries—the First Count, or Chief Butler, the Escancias; the Count Chamberlain, or Cubiculario; the Master of the Horse, Estabulario; the Major Domo, or Numerario; the Steward, or Silonario; the Master of the Pages, or Espartarius; the Count of the Sagrarios, or Sacred Things; and the Treasurer, or Argentarios. These offices were only held by the highest nobles. In the Cluny Museum at Paris and the Royal Armoury at Madrid are preserved the superb Votive Crowns discovered at Guarrazar in 1858. These priceless objects proclaim the wealth and munificence of the Visigothic monarchs. They are composed of double hoops of gold, decorated on the outside by three bands in relief. The outer bands are set with pearls and sapphires, and the middle band with the same stones in a setting of a red vitreous substance. The crown is suspended by four chains from a double gold rosette, which encloses a piece of rock crystal set in facets. Each chain consists of four links, shaped like the leaf of the pear-tree, and percées à jour. In its original state the crown of King Swinthila, now in the Madrid Armoury, had, hanging from its lower rim, a cross and twenty-two letters, making up the inscription, SVINTHILANUS REX OFFERET. All and each of these letters were actual jewels, set in the red glassy paste already mentioned, to them being attached large{15} single pearls and pear-shaped sapphires. Though only twelve letters were remaining when the crown was discovered, the dedication was skilfully reconstructed by Señores de Madrazo and Amador de los Rios. The crown of Recceswinth in the Cluny Museum and the crown of the Abbot Theodosius at Madrid do not differ greatly from that of Swinthila in style and material. Though the workmanship is rude compared with modern specimens of the goldsmith’s art, these crowns still excite admiration by their beauty and richness. Inquiring into the origin of their style, Señor de Riaño arrives at the conclusion that it “must be looked for in the East; their manufacture was most probably Spanish. We cannot imagine the extraordinary magnificence of the Visigothic court, so similar to that of Constantinople and other contemporary ones, without the presence at each of a group of artists whose task was to satisfy these demands.” Not only the applied arts, but letters and learning were cultivated at Toledo. Swinthila and Recceswinth delighted in the composition of epistles and verses, in which, unfortunately, the taste, acquired from the Byzantines, for long-winded, flowery and involved phrases is painfully apparent. Recceswinth interested himself in the collection and revision of ancient manuscripts. In his reign flourished the learned and saintly Ildefonso, who{16} was publicly thanked for his work on the perpetual virginity of Mary by the martyr Saint Leocadia, who came expressly from Heaven for the purpose. One of Ildefonso’s successors in the see of Toledo, Julian, was a Jew by birth, or at least descent. He was renowned for his erudition and especially as a polemical writer. Though he narrowly escaped excommunication as a heretic, he is now venerated as a saint, and was buried beside St. Ildefonso.

As the seat of a Court which did something more than ape the culture of the Latins (pace Mr. Leonard Williams), Toledo rose from an obscure Roman colony into a city of dignity and importance. It is supposed to have reached its highest stage of development in the reign of King Wamba (672-680), whose mutilated statue confronts the traveller on approaching the town from the railway-station. Most of the buildings ascribed by the chroniclers, however, to that king were in all probability only restored by his orders, and were originally constructed by his predecessors. Isidore Pacense enumerates among the edifices existing in his time in Spain, basilicas, monasteries, oratories, and hermitages; the Aula Regia, or royal residence, “distinguished before all other buildings by the richness of the four porticos which encircled it”; the Atrii of the nobility, which were allowed only three{17} porticos; hospitals, guest-houses, and Repositaria, or treasure-houses. It is reasonable to assume that the capital of Spain would have possessed buildings of all the kinds specified during the hundred years that elapsed between the death of Athanagild and the accession of Wamba.

To the former king is attributed the foundation of the sanctuary converted later into the Hermitage of Cristo de la Luz, and the Church of Santa Justa, reconstructed in the sixteenth century. From an inscription on marble found in 1581, near the Convent of San Juan de la Penitencia, it would appear that Reccared built a church consecrated to the Virgin in the year 587. The text runs: IN NOMINE DNI CONSECRA | TA ECCLESIA SCTE MARIE | IN CATHOLICO DIE PRIMO | IDUS APRILIS ANNO FELI | CITER PRIMO REGNI D-NI | NOSTRI GLORIOSISSIMI H | RECCAREDI REGIS ERA | DCXXV. To Liuba II. is ascribed the erection of the Church of San Sebastian, where some capitals and shafts, discovered in 1899, exist to attest its Visigothic origin. The Basilica of Santa Leocadia dated from the days of Sisebut (612-621): and though the chroniclers assign no date to the dedication of the Church of San Ginés there can be no doubt that it took place in the seventh century. Wamba adorned with statuary and partially restored the city walls, but it is an error, based on a corrupt{18} text of Isidore Pacense’s, to suppose that he built them.

The site of the Aula Regia, or Palace of the Visigothic kings, has long been a matter of dispute among archæologists. The author of the article on Toledo in the “Monumentos Arquitectónicos” decides in favour of the plot of ground covered by the Convents of the Concepcion and the Comendadores de Santiago, the ruined Hospital of Santa Cruz, and the new extension of the Paseo del Miradero—close to the Zocodover, in the north-east angle of the city. Adjacent to the palace was the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, “which seems,” says Señor Menendez y Pidal, “to have been the royal pantheon, opened only for the entombment of the sovereign and the taking the oath of allegiance to his successor.” Here were suspended the votive crowns, afterwards buried at Guarrazar; here probably were interred Athanagild, Leovigild, Reccared I., Liuba II., Gundemar, Sisebut, Reccared II., Tulga, Erwig, Egica, and Witica. Their very dust has long since been scattered by the wind—who shall say where? In a hall attached to that Basilica, in similar annexes to the Basilicas of Santa Leocadia and Santa Maria de la Sede Real, were held those ecclesiastical synods which so powerfully contributed to the shaping of the destinies of Spain. Santa Leocadi{19}a’s church is now known as the Cristo de la Vega; the Basilica de Santa Maria faced the Bridge of Alcantara and was in after years known as Santa Maria de Alficem. Here Recceswinth is said to have been crowned, the temple being afterwards restored by Erwig, Wamba’s successor.

Not a single building erected by the Visigothic kings exists to-day. “Destroyed by man’s fury and by the vicissitudes of time,” regretfully observes Señor Amador de los Rios, “or altered till all trace of their original form has been lost, by the pious care which intended to preserve them, you may seek in vain in the city of Wamba for an intact monument of that age; not even the walls ascribed to that prince have remained entire. Fragments of friezes; isolated capitals, which have adorned later edifices, oddly out of place in the scheme of decorations, or cut and defaced; broken shafts, perhaps bearing some inscriptions; pieces of a hinge, a metope, a lintel, or an impost, perhaps some dedicatory tablet—this is all that has escaped at Toledo the devastating scythe of time.”

These relics, however, are fortunately numerous. For a detailed description of the more important, the reader is referred to the “Monumentos Arquitectónicos de España.” Some we shall notice more particularly in dealing with the edifices of which they now form part.{20}

Under Wamba the Visigothic monarchy reached the apex of its greatness. Under his four successors, Erwig, Egica, Witica, and Roderic, State and people are said to have become hopelessly enervated. The old Gothic vigour blazed up now and again in some individual ruler or statesman, but failed to communicate itself to the nation. The kingdom was tottering to its fall. The taste for display and the amenities of existence grew stronger in this period of decline. Never was there such wealth and splendour in Toledo as when it fell a prey to the hosts of Islam. The rapid decay of this once great and martial race is without a parallel in history. It is difficult to assign to it a cause. Luxury was the privilege only of the nobility and clergy, and could hardly have corrupted the whole people. Modern writers lamely attribute the final catastrophe to ecclesiastical influence and domination. Perhaps when all has been said, the state of Spain under Witica and Roderic was not much worse than under subsequent rulers of other dynasties; and the downfall may have been due, not so much to the effeminacy of the vanquished, as to the extraordinary military genius of the conquerors. Historians would have said little about the degeneracy of the Visigoths if the battle of the Guadalete had had a different issue.

The Hispano-Goths, as Catholics, evinced a{21} fanatical and intolerant temper which had been conspicuously lacking in them as Arians. Harsh edicts continued to be promulgated against the Jews—then, as till a much later date, a most important element in the population of Toledo. The unlucky Children of Israel may have derived in the intervals of persecution some malicious consolation from the bitter quarrels between the king and the Catholic clergy. Witica was an enemy, or what was probably regarded as the same thing, a would-be reformer of the Church. To his impiety, indeed, monkish writers are fond of ascribing the destruction of the Gothic kingdom. His predecessor, Egica, did not hesitate to condemn to excommunication, exile, and confiscation of property, Sisebert, the powerful Archbishop of Toledo. Perhaps some clerkly chronicler, by way of retaliation for this outrage upon his order, invented the following discreditable story, to be found in the pages of Lozano.

King Egica had conceived an ardent passion for the beautiful Doña Luz, who is described as the grand-daughter of Kindaswinth, and the sister of Roderic, afterwards king. Her love, however, was given to her uncle, Don Favila, Duke or Governor of Cantabria. The lovers, wearied at last by the king’s opposition to their union, went through a secret and simplified form of marriage in the lady’s bedchamber before a statue of the{22} Virgin. In the course of time. Doña Luz became a mother. Egica’s suspicions had already been enkindled, and fearing his wrath, she placed the new-born infant in a little ark and set it afloat on the bosom of the Tagus. As her maids pushed out the tiny craft from the foot of the steep path that leads down from Toledo, a radiance diffused itself around the sleeping child and for long marked his passage down the broad stream. The irate monarch, divining that Doña Luz must in some way have disposed of her child, caused a census to be taken of all the children born in and around the city within the past three months with the names of the respective fathers. The number of births was recorded at 35,428—a very surprising total for Toledo! And, which is still more remarkable and highly creditable to the city, the parentage of these numerous infants was in every case authenticated. What then had become of Doña Luz’s baby? Baffled in his quest, the king suborned one of his minions, Melias by name, to accuse the unfortunate lady of incontinency. The penalty for this offence, we are told, was nothing less than death by fire; and for that fate Egica bade Doña Luz prepare, unless she could secure a defender or otherwise clear her reputation. At the eleventh hour, the valorous champion appeared in the person of Don Favila, who disproved the charge made against his lady-love to{23} the satisfaction of mediæval intelligences, by the simple method of running her accuser through the body. This, however, did not satisfy the sceptical monarch, who insisted on a further ordeal by combat. A knight named Bristes, cousin of the recreant Melias, was challenger and accuser on this occasion, and was quickly despatched by the doughty Favila.

In the meantime the ark containing Pelayo, the infant child of Doña Luz and her champion, had reached Alcantara, where the little passenger almost miraculously fell into the hands of his mother’s other uncle, Grafeses. This benevolent prince took every care of the child, unsuspicious, of course, of his origin. Attracted to Court by the noise of these scandals and combats, he found a handkerchief in his niece’s room, the counterpart of one which he had discovered in the little ark. Doña Luz soon confessed to him the whole story, and he endeavoured to intercede for her with the king. Egica, probably more exasperated than ever, insisted on a third duel between Favila and a knight called Longaris. Both combatants had been wounded when a holy hermit appeared on the scene, and admonished the king as to his wickedness and hardness of heart. Egica repented and consented to the public celebration of the marriage of Favila and Doña Luz. Here we have a fine romantic account of the origin of the{24} heroic Pelayo, the restorer of the monarchy and the saviour of the Spanish nation.

Wilder, more romantic still, and better known are the legends clustering round the last king of the Goths. The scene of most of these is laid in Toledo. Here was held that wonderful tournament, to which resorted all the crowned heads of Europe—aye, even such potentates as the Emperor of Constantinople and the King of Poland. A new city of palaces was reared in the Vega by the hospitable Roderic to accommodate his fifty thousand noble guests. This splendid function may have taken place before or after the king’s strange marriage with the bewitching Moorish princess Elyata (re-baptized Exilona), who had been washed ashore by the sea on the coast of Valencia. Lovely as was his consort, Roderic did not, as we all know, remain faithful to her. Here enters the mournful and very shadowy figure of Florinda, otherwise known as La Cava. This peerless damsel was confided to the care of the king by her father, the trusty Julian (or Illán), governor of Ceuta. Alas for the maiden! while bathing in the Tagus, her charms were only too well revealed to Roderic, gazing from his palace windows on the cliff above. A glimpse of a shapely leg scarce concealed by a diaphanous mantle decided the fate of Florinda—and of Spain. What he could not effect by persuasion,{25} the king effected by violence. Perhaps he hoped that the proud Julian’s daughter would keep silence as to her own dishonour. He was mistaken. A trusty page, spurring night and day, quickly bore the fatal tidings to the father at distant Ceuta, and the missive in which the wronged Florinda implored vengeance on her betrayer.

To the no doubt conscience-stricken Roderic, seated in good old kingly fashion upon his throne, appeared two venerable strangers with a message of mysterious import. When Hercules had founded (as some men say) Toledo, not far from the city, among the mountains, he had reared a tower, of which these uncouth brethren were the guardians, as their ancestors, in an unbroken line, had been before them. On this tower and on its unknown and fearful contents, the demigod had laid a necromantic spell. It had been the custom of each of the Kings of Spain to affix to the massive doors a new lock, and now Roderic was summoned to fulfil this duty, for failing this and if any rash mortal should discover the secret of the tower, ruin, absolute and immediate, must overtake his kingdom. Agog with curiosity, with a brilliant cavalcade, the king clattered through the streets of his capital, and found the wondrous tower in the recesses of the hills. The aged custodians{26} besought him to hasten and to affix his seal to the enchanted doors. In vain! it was with another intention the impetuous sovereign had come hither. He burst open the doors and rushed in, where never man since Hercules had dared to tread. Before him stood a gigantic statue in bronze, which dealt blows with a great mace unceasingly to right and left. On its breast were inscribed the words, I do my duty. Roderic sternly adjured the creature of enchantment to let him pass. It obeyed. In the interior of the tower the King found a casket of rich workmanship. A legend thereon warned him of the doom that would overtake him who should open it. Roderic forced open the lid. He beheld a fold of linen on which were painted the figures of Moorish warriors in battle-array. As he gazed the figures seemed to move, to grow larger, to assume the proportions of men. He beheld a battlefield where Goths and Moors contended for the mastery. Breathless, he awaited the issue. The Goths were flying, and he saw his own white steed, Orelia, galloping through the fray—riderless. Affrighted, the king and his attendants rushed to the door. There lay the two ancient custodians, dead. Thunder rolled, a storm burst over the land, and Roderic and his cavaliers drew not rein till they reached the palace of Toledo. Next day the stout-hearted Goths reascended to{27} the hills. But as they approached, behold a great eagle swooped down from the sky holding in its talons a flaming brand! The tower blazed up like matchwood. Then arose a great wind which carried the ashes to every part of Spain; and every man on whom a portion of the ashes fell was afterwards slain in battle by the Moors.

These direful portents must surely have prepared Roderic for treachery, conspiracies, and unpleasantness of all kinds. But when Count Julian arrived, smiling and deferential, to take his daughter home to Ceuta, he seems to have suspected nothing, feared nothing. The rest of the story—Julian’s invitation to the Moors, the rout of Guadalete, the disappearance of Roderic—relates to the history of Spain generally, not to that of Toledo. Dozy believes that Julian actually existed, but he seems to have been a Byzantine governor of Ceuta, not a Spaniard. It is hardly necessary to say that Florinda is as much a figment of the imagination as the enchanted tower. Yet near the Puente de San Martin (above which never king’s palace stood) some fragments of masonry are pointed out as the Baños de la Cava (Florinda’s Bath). They are, in reality, but the remains of a Moorish tomb.

In July 711, King Roderic set out from Toledo, never to return. Upon the news of the rout of Guadalete, all the magnates and prelates aban{28}doned the city. Its surrender to the Moorish host of the one-eyed Tarik was the work of the Jews, who had not forgotten the persecutions of Sisebert and Egica. There were Jews in the invading army under the command of Kaula-al-Yahudi. When Tarik appeared before the walls, a venerable Israelite was let down in a basket, and, approaching him, offered to admit him to the city if liberty and the free exercise of their religion were guaranteed to his race. The Berber joyfully accepted these terms, and on the following day proud Toledo—deserted by its Christian inhabitants—was annexed to the Saracen Khalifate.{29}

TOLEDO UNDER THE MOOR

Never again was Toledo to attain to the wealth and splendour it possessed under Wamba and his successors. The invaders, fresh from the conquest of the richest provinces of Africa, were dazzled by the magnificence of the spoils that fell to them in the dark-browed city above the Tagus. The Arabian historians have need of all their powers of hyperbole to over-estimate the richness of the treasure. There was enough and to spare, Al Leyth Ibn Saïd tells us, for every soldier in the army. The humblest troopers might have been seen staggering under the weight of priceless silks and garments, chains of gold, and strings of precious stones. The rude Berbers, fresh from their mountains, but ill appreciated the value of the loot, and cut the costliest fabrics in two or more pieces to adjust their shares. A magnificent carpet, composed of superb embroidery, interwoven with gold and ornamented with filigree work, and profusely set with gems, is said to have been treated in this way by the troopers into whose greedy hands it fell. It would be interesting to learn the place of manufacture of{30} this carpet, for from the silence of St. Isidore upon the subject of textile fabrics, it would seem that they were not made in his time in Spain.

But, to credit the Moorish chroniclers, the rarest of exotic treasures had been accumulated in the Visigothic capital. Here were found the Psalms of David, written upon gold leaf in a fluid made from dissolved rubies! and most wonderful of all, the Table of Solomon made out of a single emerald! It was brought to Toledo—so runs one version—after the taking of Jerusalem, and was valued in Damascus at one hundred thousand dinars—equal to about £50,000. We are not surprised to hear that this unique piece of furniture “possessed talismanic powers”; for tradition affirms it was the work of genii, and had been wrought by them for King Solomon the Wise, the son of David. This marvellous relic was carefully preserved by Tarik as the most precious of all his spoils, being intended by him as a present to the Khalifa; and, in commemoration of it, the city was called by the Arabs, Medina Almyda, that is to say, “The City of the Table.”

Thus far Washington Irving. With characteristic credulity, Ibn Hayyan, the historian, gives in the translation of Gayangos a substantially different account of the treasure: “The celebrated table which Tarik found at Toledo, although attributed to Solomon and named after him, never{31} belonged to the poet-king. According to the barbarian authors, it was customary for the nobles and men in estimation of the Gothic Court, to bequeath a portion of their property to the church. From the money so amassed the priests caused tables to be made of pure gold and silver, gorgeous thrones and stands on which to carry the Gospels in public processions, or to ornament the altars on great festivals. The so-called Solomon’s table was originally wrought with money derived from this source, and was subsequently emulously enlarged and embellished by successive kings of Toledo, the latest always anxious to surpass his predecessor in magnificence, until it became the most splendid and costly gem ever made for such a purpose. The fabric was of pure gold, set with the most precious pearls, emeralds and rubies. Its circumference was encrusted with three rows of these valuable stones, and the whole table displayed jewels so large and refulgent that never did human eye behold anything comparable with it.... When the Muslims entered Toledo it was discovered on the altar of the Christian Church, and the fact of such a treasure having been found soon became public and notorious.”

Gibbon accounts for the presence of the Table of Solomon at Toledo—assuming that there ever was such a thing, and that it ever was there at all—by supposing it to have been carried off by{32} Titus to Rome, whence it may have been taken by Alaric when the Goths sacked the city. Whichever version of the table’s origin be accepted, it seems strange that it was not carried away by the clergy in their flight from Toledo. Of its ultimate fate nothing is known, unless we can accept the little that is revealed in the following history.

Upon Musa approaching the city to supersede Tarik, the latter broke off and concealed one of the legs of the table. Musa was already incensed against his lieutenant for having deprived him of the glory of the conquest of Spain, and emphasised his reprimands with strokes of a whip. When he found that the leg of the table was missing, his anger was very great. Tarik assured him he had found it in that mutilated condition, and Musa caused the missing leg to be replaced by one of gold. His subordinate, however, he cast into prison, where the One-Eyed One remained till released by orders from the Khalifa himself. He was amply revenged on Musa, when upon the latter presenting the table to his sovereign as his own discovery, he was able triumphantly to give him the lie by producing the missing leg of emerald. And so the wonderful Table of Solomon, of emerald, or of gold, or of both, passes out of the ken of history.

We hear of Musa’s son, Abd-ul-Aziz (or “Bel{33}asis,” as he is quaintly termed by old Spanish writers) marrying King Roderic’s widow, Exilona, at Toledo. Abd-ul-Aziz, however, was Governor of Seville, where he met his death, and it is not unlikely, if he married the queen at all, that he did so in that southern city, where she may have been left by her first consort to await the result of the battle of the Guadalete. If there be any truth in the legend that Exilona was of Moorish origin herself, the story of this second and apparently cold-blooded union seems less improbable. Tradition has it that the widow of the Goth only consented to the match on Abd-ul-Aziz promising to observe towards her all the deference due to a Christian queen. He kept his promise only too faithfully, and his forcing his officers to bend the knee to a woman and an infidel, is said to have contributed to bring about his assassination in the mosque at Seville.

The conquerors here, as in other parts of the kingdom, acted generously towards the conquered. A moderate tribute was levied on the Christians, who were allowed to practise their religion and be governed by their own laws and customs. Seven churches were allotted to their use, the names of these being Santa Eulalia, Santa Maria de Alficem, Santa Justa, San Sebastian, San Marcos, San Torcuato, and San Lucas. But these privileges must have hardly consoled the citizens for the loss of{34} the town’s rank as capital of Spain. It became, as it had been under the Romans, “a strong place,” of which the dominant race valued the advantages, but, in consequence of the rise of Cordoba and Seville it sank to the condition of a provincial town.

As such its career was throughout stormy and turbulent. The spirit of rebellion seemed instinct in the grim fortress-like city, and infused itself into Mohammedan and Christian, Arab and Castilian alike. The two races fraternised well enough. They had a common interest: resistance to any external authority. This impatience of control was characteristic of the Toledans for centuries. Its annals during the period of Mohammedan occupation are a tedious record of sieges, riots, usurpations and massacres. Such events are only of interest when studied in the minutest detail. A brief résumé of them is, however, indispensable to a proper knowledge of the town.

The citizens’ first appearance in the troubled arena of Muslim politics was as loyalists—an uncongenial rôle! In the civil wars that distracted the reign of Abd-ul-Malik, Toledo was held by his son Omeya, and vainly besieged for a month by the rebels. On the approach of Abd-ul-Malik, the garrison, wishful of glory, made a vigorous sortie and completely routed the investing force. The townsmen had tasted{35} blood. It took much to quench their thirst. Knowing their character, in the troubles fomented by the pretender Yusaf ben Debri, his partisan, Mohammed Abu-l-Aswad took refuge among them in the year of the Hegira 142. The place was immediately invested by the Wizir, Al Kama, and as usual offered a stout resistance. Wearied of their ruler, however, the people played him false and betrayed the town to the Wizir. Abu-l-Aswad was taken prisoner and sent to Cordoba.

A year or two later the Toledans repented of their submission. While the Amir, Abd-ur-Rahman, was engaged in preparations for a war in the east of Spain, some powerful families, led by one Hixem ben Adra al Fehri, rose, seized the Alcazar, and put the Wizir to flight. They released the notorious rebel, Kasim ben Yusuf, from prison, and raised an army of about ten thousand men—mostly freebooters and masterless men who seemed to have regarded Toledo as the best market for their peculiar talents. The Amir’s appearance before the walls, with a powerful army, caused moderate counsels to prevail among the insurgents. The citizens were anxious to be rid of the undesirables they had invited into their midst, and persuaded Hixem to visit the royal camp to solicit terms. Abd-ur-Rahman generously pardoned him, and once more incarcerating Kasim, left the town to itself.{36}

He soon had good reason to repent his forbearance. In 763 Kasim escaped from confinement, rallied the citizens round him, and declared the town subject only to the Khalifa of Damascus. The siege that followed was languidly conducted. The people, we read, were suffered to cultivate their fields, and to carry produce into the city unmolested. At this rate the siege might have lasted as long as that of Candia. Kasim, meanwhile lulled into a sense of security, abused his power, and alienated his unruly subjects. On the arrival of the Amir, he was given notice to quit. Having seen him successfully elude the royal forces, Toledo opened its gates to Abd-ur-Rahman. The Amir, despairing of the townsmen’s temper, exacted from them but a nominal obedience, but his successor, Hakam, thought to coerce them by a bitter lesson. As Governor, he sent them one Amru of Huesca, a renegade Christian, “by a condescension,” he wrote, “which proves our extreme solicitude for your interests.” The renegade’s policy was thorough. He ingratiated himself with the people, and posed as the champion of their liberties. It was at their own suggestion that he raised a fortress in their very midst. The place being strongly garrisoned and all being ready, the approach of a large army, commanded by the Amir’s son, Abd-ur-Rahman, was announced. At the suggestion of the Governor,{37} the prince was invited by the nobility into the city; and he, in return, as if to mark his sense of the honour conferred upon him, ordered a great feast to be made ready at the Castle. To this all the chief men were bidden. What followed is known as the Day of the Fosse. The guests were allowed to enter only one by one. Behind the gate stood a man with bared arm and uplifted axe. As each guest entered there was a sweep of the arm, a flash of steel, and a head rolled into the ditch already prepared. Without, nothing was heard, nothing was seen, nothing suspected. The episode reminds one of the famous Blood Bath of Stockholm. The butchery is said at last to have been revealed to those waiting outside the wall by the thick vapour issuing from the gate. A physician, who had been watching for hours, and who had noticed that none of the numerous guests who had entered, had issued forth, was the first to raise the alarm. “Men of Toledo,” he shouted, “I vow that yonder vapour is not the smoke of a feast, but rises from the blood of our butchered brethren!”

This ghastly tragedy occurred in 807, and has given rise to a proverbial expression current in Spanish—una noche Toledana, applied to a night disagreeably passed in sleeplessness or pain.

The blow struck by the ferocious Amru was of the kind that alone met with the approval of{38} Macchiavelli: it not only intimidated, but it crushed. For a quarter of a century we hear no more of tumults or dissensions in the City by the Tagus. Meantime it prospered. Arts and letters flourished. In the year 827 we have to record the death “of the very learned alfaqui, Isa ben Dinar el Ghafeki, a native of that city and a disciple of Malik ben Anas. He was a man beloved by all—friendly in manner, admirable in conversation, and upright of life: such as were taught by Isa ben Dinar acquired their learning with delight. He was in the habit of practising some few observances that were considered extraordinary: he made, for example, the prayer of the dawn with the preparation and ablutions proper to that of the evening twilight.”

The opulence of the Jews and Christians decided the Wali, Aben Mafût ben Ibrahim, to increase their tribute. This led to the outbreak of 832. A wealthy young citizen, named Hakam el Atiki, otherwise known as El Durrete, or “the striker of blows,” had been insulted by the Wali, and used the discontent of the people as a means of avenging his injuries. He distributed money freely among the more inflammable sections of the populace, and collected about him a body of lawless followers. One of these was seized in the Soko, or market-place (the Zocodover) by one of the Wali’s officers, and a tumult at once uprose.{39} In the end the Alcazar fell into the hands of the rebels, and the Wali barely escaped with his life. Hakam, however, was shortly afterwards obliged to abandon his conquest, and spread abroad the report that he had left the country. The vigilance of the garrison becoming in consequence relaxed, he seized the city by a coup de main, and held it for some years. He was wounded, taken prisoner, and beheaded in 837, by Abd-el-Raf, his head being suspended from the gate of Bisagra.

So far the risings at Toledo had been mainly political, and the townsmen had sunk their religious and racial differences to make common cause against the stranger. The cause of the insurrection of 854 was, by exception, an outburst of fanaticism on the part of the Muzarabes or Christians, who practised the ritual of the Spanish Goths. It was at this time that the Catholics of Cordoba and Seville, subject to some extraordinary aberration, had in great numbers earned the doubtful honour of martyrdom by blaspheming Mohammed. To Toledo, as the most likely spot at which to create a disturbance, came Eulogius and stirred the Christians to avenge the “wrongs” of their co-religionists. Under the leadership of Sindola, they dispossessed their Moorish governors, and carrying the war into the enemy’s own country, defeated the Amir’s forces at Andujar. Ordoño{40} King of Leon, now came to the assistance of the citizens, who, hitherto, had shown no eagerness to call in the help of the Christians of the north. Mohammed, the Amir, presently appeared before Toledo, and drew the allied forces into an ambush. The Christians were totally defeated—almost annihilated. Nothing daunted, the Toledans, later on, insulted their sovereign by electing Eulogius to the vacant archiepiscopal see. Mohammed, by way of reprisal, inveigled a large force of Christians on to a bridge which he had undermined. It was the Day of the Fosse over again.

In the year 873, we find the independence of Toledo, subject to his suzerainty, nominally acknowledged by the Amir, who was probably glad to make any terms that promised peace with vassals so turbulent. In the reign of the Amir Al Mundhir even this faint shadow of outside authority was shaken off by the city, which again asserted its complete independence, in 886, under Ibn Hafsûn. The town was besieged by the royal forces under the Wizir Haksim. The wily Ibn Hafsûn, seeing that the stronghold must fall, proposed to the opposing general that he should allow him to evacuate the place and transport his army to the frontier of Valencia, on a train of beasts of burden to be provided by the besiegers. Haksim joyfully assented to this capitulation, and on the day appointed, what was supposed to be{41} the entire army of the rebel chief issued from the gates of the city and wended their way, with the train of packhorses, eastwards. Leaving what he considered a sufficient garrison in Toledo, Haksim drew off the greater part of his forces and went to Cordoba. Meanwhile the crafty Hafsûn swiftly retraced his steps, and with the aid of the considerable detachment he had left concealed in the town, put the garrison to the sword, and once more hurled defiance at the Amir. Great was Al Mundhir’s wrath on the receipt of this intelligence, and before nightfall, the head of Haksim lay severed from his body.

Ibn Hafsûn proved a formidable antagonist. The Amir lead an army against him in 888 and was defeated and killed. Twenty years later Hafsûn died, bequeathing what was practically an independent sovereignty to his son. The great Khalifa, Abd-ur-Rahman III., now sat on the throne of Cordoba. He determined to put an end to the arrogant pretensions of the unruly, untameable city. His summons to capitulate being contemptuously rejected, he took the field in 930. For eight years the siege went on, varied by exploits and incidents, which might prove matter for a Moorish Iliad. Famine stalked abroad in the obstinate city, but the Hafsûns would not hear of surrender. When at last it became plain that the people would yield, the{42} leaders and their partisans, to the number of four thousand, made a last desperate sortie. Two thousand cavaliers, with a foot-soldier clutching firmly hold of each horse’s girth, they broke through Abd-ur-Rahman’s camp, and got clean away. Almost joyfully the townsmen opened their gates to the great Amir—to be firmly bitted and bridled during the remainder of his reign.

That the town was still subject to the central authority in the year 979, we gather from this incident. The Governor, Abd-ul-Malik Ibn Merwân having some difference with the Wali of Medina Selim (Medinaceli), challenged him to single combat and slew him. For this, without more ado, he was removed from office by orders from Cordoba.

In the first quarter of the eleventh century, Toledo recovered her freedom, on the break-up of the Umeyyah empire. Under her sultan, Ismail, in 1023, she was able to boast that she knew no other lord or ruler under the blue heavens. After Ismail came Abu-l-Hasan Yahya al Ramân who reigned till 1075, and was then succeeded by Yahya Kadir, who lost his throne in 1085.

Before relating the incidents of the reconquest of Toledo by the Christians and its incorporation in the steadily expanding kingdom of Leon, we will take a glance at the city as it was under its{43} Mohammedan rulers. Of its affluence, importance, and strength, the foregoing cursory sketch of its history has afforded us some idea. It ranked as the metropolis of the Christian element in the Amir’s dominions, and its prelates early obtained recognition from their Paynim sovereigns as dignitaries of the highest standing. Among them were such notable men as Wistremir and Eulogius. One of the archbishops of Toledo, Elipando, embraced the heresy of Nestorius, and went the length of excommunicating his fellow bishops. Upon his death, however, an orthodox successor was chosen. The Christians were wealthy and arrogant. They were classed in congregations, dependent on their various churches, each division including certain families irrespective of their domiciles. Toledo, during the three and a half centuries of Mohammedan dominion, never seems to have lost the outward character of a Christian town. Moorish influence she felt, and it served to soften and chasten her rough features, but Moorish she never became as did Seville and Cordoba. Yet in every corner of the old city the guides are prone to point out the buildings and remains that they fondly believe to be of Arabic workmanship. In reality, very few monuments of the Mohammedan period have survived. It is not by what we see but by what we read{44} that we can form an idea of the city as it was in those days.

It was renowned for its clepsydras or water-clocks, invented by Abu-l-Kasim. These are described as follows in an Arabic document: “But what is marvellous and surprising in Toledo, and what we believe no other town in all the world has anything to equal, are its water-clocks. It is said that Az-Zagral [Abu-l-Kasim] hearing of a certain talisman which is in the city of Arin, of Eastern India, and which shows the hours by means of aspas or hands, from the time the sun rises till it sets, determined to fabricate an artifice by means of which the people could know the hour of day or night, and calculate the day of the moon. He made two great ponds in a house on the bank of the Tagus, near the Gate of the Tanners, making them so that they should be filled with water or emptied according to the rise and fall of the moon.” The water began to flow into the ponds as soon as the moon became visible, and at dawn they were four-sevenths full. The water rose by one-seventh every twenty-four hours, and were full at full moon. As the luminary waned, the water fell in exact proportion. The exact working of these contrivances was lost when an astronomer, deputed by Alfonso el Sabio to examine them, broke parts of the intricate machinery.{45}

The chroniclers relate wonders of the palace of An Naôra, so called from its celebrated noria or hydraulic apparatus. The apartments were so splendid as to rival those of the palace of the Amir himself, and “were resplendent as the sun at noonday, and the moon at the full.” In the luxurious gardens was the lake or albuhera, in the centre of which rose a pavilion of glass, where Al Ramân-bil-Lah, the last sovereign of Toledo, used to pass the night. “The clever architects”—we quote from the “Monumentos Arquitectónicos”—who made the lake, not only raised the waters from the river in order to fill it, but raised them above the cupola of the pavilion, over and around which they flowed incessantly, forming around it a diaphanous and crystalline mantle. Not a drop could penetrate the structure or touch the persons within. With the sonorous murmur of these waters mingled that produced by the fountains that gushed forth from the mouths of the lions in metal guarding this wonderful pavilion. Illumined inside with lamps of various colours, without it presented a fantastic appearance, which was reflected back from the waters of the lake, and which the people of Toledo contemplated with admiration through the dense foliage.”

Of this exquisite pleasaunce, no trace remains. Nor is anything left of the other palace of Al{46} Hizem, built by Ismaîl, the first admittedly independent Sultan of Toledo—afterwards inhabited by the Christian kings. The principal building in Moorish times was, of course, the Aljama, or Chief Mosque. This seems to have been erected at the same time as the great Mezquita at Cordoba, in the reign of Abd-ur-Rahman II., and to have been richly embellished and enlarged under the third and greatest Khalifa of that name. We read that in the fourth century of the Hegira, the architect Fatho ben Ibrahim el Caxevi built two sumptuous mosques, called, the one, Adabejin, the other Gebel Berida; but where these were situated, or what was the real Arabic spelling of the names, we have no means of knowing.

Happily a few specimens of the local architecture of that epoch remain. Of these one of the learned compilers of the “Monumentos Arquitectónicos” writes: “In spite of their varying degrees of integrity, and although greatly damaged and changed by later restorations, these works possess an extreme importance, and suffice to manifest the peculiar physiognomy of the secondary religious edifices of this part of the Peninsula at the most glorious epoch of the Khalifate—a physiognomy strikingly different from that of the principal religious structures, or Aljamas, equivalent to our cathedrals, and different also from that of the same buildings in the south. They show, furthermore, decora{47}tive processes believed to have been unknown in Spain at that epoch.”

The most complete and remarkable of these buildings is the Mosque of Bib-el-Mardom, now known as the Cristo de la Luz. It is situated to the north of the city, between the Puerta del Sol and the Puerta Bisagra. Here Alfonso VI., on entering Toledo on May 25, 1085, halted and caused Mass to be celebrated, leaving his shield behind him as a memento of the incident.

The exterior of this most interesting building is unpromising. It is thus described by Mr. Street: “The exterior face of the walls is built of brick and rough stone. The lower part of the side wall is arcaded with three round arches, within the centre of which is a round horseshoe arch for a doorway; above is a continuous sunk arcade of cusped arches, within which are window openings with round horse-shoe heads. The lower part of the walls is cut with single courses of brick, alternating with rough stonework; the piers and arches of brick, with projecting labels and strings also of unmoulded brick. The arches of the upper windows are built with red and green bricks alternated.” Restorations carried out in 1899 brought to light a most interesting pierced frieze running round the north-eastern façade, and serving as a sort of ventilator. Above was deciphered the following{48} inscription in Arabic characters: “In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. This mosque was rebuilt ... the renewal of its upper part, proposing to render it more beautiful, and [the restoration] was finished, with the help of God, under the direction of Musa Ibn Ali, the architect, and of Saada. It was completed in the Muharram of the year 370” [July 17, 979, to August 15, 980 A.D.] The whole façade of the edifice has been much disfigured by successive reconstructions, coatings of plaster, &c., and has undergone much more serious transformation than the interior.

Entering when the eyes have become accustomed to the obscurity, we make out the details of a very small and curious structure. Again to quote Mr. Street, the nave is only “21 ft. 7¼ in. by 20 ft. 2 in., and this space is subdivided into nine compartments by four very low circular columns, which are about a foot in diameter. Their capitals are all different. The arches, of which four spring from each capital, are all of the round horseshoe form; above them is a string-course, and all the intermediate walls are carried up to the same height as the main walls. They are all pierced above the arches with arcades of varied design, generally cusped in very Moorish fashion, and supported on shafts; and above these each of the nine divisions is crowned with{49} a little vault, formed by intersecting cusped ribs, thrown in the most fantastic way across each other, and varied in each compartment. The scale of the whole work is so diminutive that it is difficult, no doubt, to understand how so much is done in so small a space; but looking to the early date of the work it is impossible not to feel very great respect for the workmen who built it, and for the ingenious intricacy which has made their work look so much larger and important than it really is.” After the Reconquest, the loftier portion of the temple, consisting of apse and transept, and containing the altar, was added. Looking closer into the details of the Moorish portion, one is struck by the contrast presented by rude shafts and capitals, evidently of Visigothic workmanship, with the general elegance and delicacy of the whole. On making a careful study of these features, it is difficult to resist the conclusion (supported, indeed, by tradition) that they formed part of an earlier and less skilfully constructed mosque, itself merely a restoration or adaptation of a Visigothic church. Señor Amador de los Rios is of opinion that the existing structure constituted only the inner portion or maksurah of the temple, and believes that the southern wall is the only part of the outer or enclosing enceinte remaining. In this he finds traces of the kiblah or sanctuary, membar, and other features peculiar{50} to Mohammedan worship. The mosque consisted originally, in all probability, in addition to the fabric we now see, of naves extending on each side of those still standing, from north-east to south-west. Even thus the mosque must have been very small. The exact configuration and plan of the original building is still a matter of great perplexity to archæologists, and a great many more discoveries remain to be made before anything can be positively stated under this head.

The newer, or Christian, portion of the mosque contains some remarkable mural paintings, discovered in 1871. They date from about the close of the twelfth century, and exhibit pronounced Byzantine influence. It seems satisfactorily established that two of the four female figures represent Saints Eulalia and Martiana; and the other two, in all probability, the martyrs Leocadia and Obdulia. The fifth figure—that of a man—represents a prelate. It may be, as Mr. Leonard Williams thinks, the Archbishop Bernardo, who figures largely in the annals of the Reconquest; or the prelate’s patron saint. It is not to that archbishop, however, but to one of his successors—possibly Don Gonzalo Perez (1182-1193)—that the remodelling of the building into a Christian place of worship should be ascribed.

This intensely interesting monument is the{51} subject of several curious and entertaining legends. In the days of Athanagild (and it is not impossible, as we know, that the church may have existed at that time) a crucifix, greatly venerated by the citizens, hung over the door. Two evil-minded Jews, Sacao and Abishai by name, to express their hatred for Christianity, drove a lance into the side of the figure. Instantly blood gushed forth. The terrified Israelites hid the miraculous object in their own home, but were traced by the stains of blood, and (it is hardly necessary to add) torn to pieces. This irritated their co-religionists, who, to avenge them, poisoned the feet of the statue. This resulted in a second miracle, for when a devout woman was about to kiss the feet, they were withdrawn—to the discovery and undoing, once more, of the villainous Jews. The right foot of the image remains withdrawn to the present day, that all men may know the truth of the story.

Now we come to the explanation of the name “Cristo de la Luz.” When the Moors were about to take the city, the Christians walled up the miraculous crucifix, with a lamp burning before it. Three hundred and seventy years passed; and on the glorious May 25, 1085, Alfonso VI. and his Christian chivalry came riding into reconquered Toledo. Among the cavaliers was the Cid, Ruy Diaz de Bivar. The warrior’s horse,{52} on passing the mosque, stumbled, or, as others have it, knelt. With preternatural acuteness, the Cid suspected some unusual circumstance, and had the adjacent wall broken down. Then was discovered the crucifix with the lamp still burning brightly, as when placed there nearly four centuries before. The mosque was reconsecrated on the spot; and the King left his shield as a memento. There it hangs to-day, above the central arch, bearing a white cross on a crimson ground. Whether it is authentic or not, we cannot say, but below it one may read: Esto es el escudo que dejo en esta ermita el Rey Don Alfonso VI., cuando ganó á Toledo y se dijo aqui la primera misa.

The Cristo de la Luz is no longer a church, and is now classed among the national monuments of Spain.

Hardly less interesting, but very far from being as well known, is the ancient mosque in the Calle de las Tornerias. It is contained in the upper part of the private houses numbered 27, 29, and 31. The mosque having been built against a steep incline, it was raised on a substructure of galleries, which now form the ground floor of the modern houses. The mosque was never converted to Christian uses, and retains its original physiognomy almost unimpaired. In the opinion of Spanish archæologists, it belongs to the same period as the Cristo de la Luz; but{53} Street does not share this view, and thinks it a later work. Like the other mosque, it is built more or less in the form of a square, and has likewise Visigothic columns and capitals, pointing to the existence of a previous structure. Here, also, we find the horseshoe arch and the cupola, and evidences of the position of the kiblah. Recent restorations have shown that the walls are composed of the finest brickwork, unsurpassed for smoothness and regularity. But so far no trace has been revealed of any texts from the Koran, or inscription commemorating the architect’s name, such as were usual in the Mohammedan temples of Spain.

The Puerta Antigua de Bisagra, or ancient gate of Bisagra—not to be confounded with the new gate of the same name built by Charles V.—is dilapidated and falling to pieces. In Moorish times it was the principal entrance to the city. The name was probably originally Bib-Sahla. It dates from about the beginning of the tenth century, but to the primitive structure only the foundations of the gate belong. A reconstruction seems to have been carried out at the time of the Reconquest, and to that epoch the arch, or gate, properly speaking, may be assigned. The upper portion of the time-worn fabric belongs to a still later period. This is the only one remaining of the fifteen gates with which the walls of Toledo{54} appear to have been furnished during the Mohammedan occupation.

The celebrated Puente de Alcantara, as it exists to-day, must be regarded as the work of the Christians. It took the place of a structure, built or restored by the Musulmans, and regarded by the writers of their time and nation as one of the wonders of Spain. According to an inscription on the bridge tower, the work dated from the year 997 A.D., and was built by “Alif, son of Mohammed Al Ameri, Governor of Toledo, under the great Wizir, Al Mansûr.” With it, no doubt, were incorporated the remains of previous Gothic and Roman constructions. It was almost entirely swept away in a great flood in the year 1258, after having already undergone extensive repairs and restorations since the Reconquest. Thus we may conclude that there can be few if any traces of the Moorish bridge in the actual Puente de Alcantara. On the other side of the town there was probably a wooden bridge or bridge of boats, where the Puente de San Martin now spans the river. A little below it is a brick tower, with open arches, the horseshoe curve of which, and other features, bespeak its Moorish origin. Legend places here the incident of the Bath of Florinda. In later times the work was believed to be the remains of a bridge. But an Arabic inscription, recently redeciphered and{55} translated, goes to prove that the tower formed part of a very different monument: “In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate! Oh, men, believe that the promises of God are certain and let not yourselves be seduced by the flattery of the world, nor be lured away from God by the deceits of the Evil One! This is the tomb of Hosàm (?)-ben-Abd ... [He confessed that there is no other God but] God. He died [may God have mercy on him] ... the year eight ... and four hundred.” The Baños de la Cava may now be safely regarded as a Musulman sepulchral monument of the fifth century after the Hegira.

We have now briefly considered the only monuments of interest to any but the most ardent archæologists that can be ascribed, so far as their general structure is concerned, to the Moslem lords of Toledo. Admitting that the most important buildings of that time have long since disappeared, it remains clear that the city could never have presented the Oriental aspect of the Andalusian seats of Islam.

The history of the city as an independent State is soon told. Under Ismail and his son Al Mamûn, Toledo became the most powerful Musulman State in Spain. The lesser principalities having been disposed of, a fierce struggle for supremacy was waged between Al Mamûn and the Amir of{56} Seville. A desperate battle before the walls of Murcia decided the issue in favour of the Toledan, and gave Valencia into his hands. But, as is often the case with men of all ranks, Al Mamûn’s strength and wisdom were undone and rendered unavailing by his fatal trait of magnanimity.

Alfonso of Leon, dispossessed of his kingdom by his brother, threw himself upon the protection of the Amir of Tolaitola. The noble Muslim bestowed upon the fugitive prince a palace near his own, an oratory, and a garden “wherein to recreate himself”; and allowed him to establish a miniature Court for himself and his followers at Brihuega. Lands were assigned to him as a source of revenue, and he became the most intimate and honoured friend of the Amir. It is said that in return an oath was exacted of Alfonso that he would assist his host against all men, and never war upon him or his son. That some such pledge should have been asked for in return for such magnificent hospitality seems very probable. The Archbishop Don Rodrigo relates that one day Al Mamûn found himself with his most trusty counsellors in a wood from which a full view of the city could be obtained. The Moorish sovereign fell to discoursing upon the defences of the place and the best means of attacking it. These words were overheard by Alfonso, who chanced to be by, and who at once feigned sleep beneath{57} a tree. Here he was presently discovered by the Moors, to their great dismay. Some among them asked leave of Al Mamûn to slay him. On this permission being indignantly refused, they dropped hot lead on the Leonese prince’s hand to see if he were really asleep. Alfonso did not stir, which would have convinced most people that he was feigning sleep. The Muslims, on the contrary, retired, satisfied that he had heard nothing and seen nothing.

Before returning to his kingdom, the Christian prince renewed his vows of loyalty and friendship to Al Mamûn, with whom personally, indeed, he never broke faith. The Moor’s son, Yahya, reaped the reward of the father’s generosity. A weak and incapable sovereign, addicted to luxury and despised for his devotion to superstitious practices, he was detested by his own subjects, who on one occasion drove him out of the city, to take refuge at Cuenca. His authority was restored only with the help of his natural foes, the Castilians. Alfonso, unmindful of his vow, forgetful of the dead Al Mamûn’s princely generosity, could not resist this opportunity of adding to his dominions the old capital of the Kings of Spain. For six years he laid waste the frontiers of the Amirate, and in the seventh year—carefully availing himself, no doubt, of the information unwittingly communicated by his old benefactor—invested Toledo itself.{58} Famine accomplished what arms could not, Yahya asked for terms. They were onerous enough. They involved the cession of all the Moorish King’s dominions, except Valencia, the Muslims who elected to remain in Toledo being guaranteed the free exercise of their religion, their property, and liberty. They were to be subject to their own laws and tribunals and to retain their mosques. The terms, as remarks Quadrado, were, in fact, almost the same as those granted to the Christians by the Arabs three hundred and seventy years before. Only the Alcazar, the bridges, gates, and the garden called the Huerta del Rey, were reserved to Alfonso himself. The capitulation completed, Yahya and his court took the road to Valencia, and Alfonso VI. entered Toledo by the Bib-el-Mardom on Sunday, May 25, 1085.

“May God renew her past splendour, and inscribe once more the name of Toledo on the list of the cities of Islâm!” This was the devout aspiration of a Muslim chronicler, but in neither particular has it ever been fulfilled.{59}

TOLEDO THE CAPITAL OF CASTILE

The incorporation of the haughty city of the Visigoths with the kingdom of Castile was, when the first wave of enthusiasm had subsided, regarded with coldness and misgiving by its people. The Toledans were as tenacious as ever of their peculiar customs and privileges which they had hoped to maintain intact. Even with the powerful assistance of the Cid, whom he appointed Alcalde, Alfonso found the ordering of the affairs of his new capital a difficult and dangerous task. The population included (remarks Don Jose Quadrado) “the conquered and resigned Musulman, the Israelite ever submissive and industrious, the Mozarabe ennobled by his ancient lineage and constancy in his faith, the Castilian, proud of his conquests, the foreigner rewarded for his prowess, or attracted from remote countries by signal privileges; and this multiplicity of races and diversity of creeds demanded as many separate systems of law and administrations.” The Jews, Musulmans and foreigners continued subject to their own codes and tribunals; but while the{60} Mozarabe or native of Toledo clung to the old Fuero Juzgo or Visigothic law, inherited from his fathers, the Castilians and Leonese expected to be ruled according to the ruder, rougher code of their warrior counts and kings. Alfonso dealt with these two peoples of common race and language as with the other more widely distinct races. Each had an Alcalde of its own, subject, however, to the Alcalde Mayor named by the king. A compromise, too, was arrived at, the Castilians being subject to their own law in civil cases, and to the Mozarabe in criminal matters. On the whole, the tendency of these measures was to conciliate the Toledans. But we find evidence of jealousies between them and their conquerors or deliverers from the North for many years afterwards.

Alfonso’s honour had not gone unstained in regard to his taking the city of his old friend and benefactor, and the Moors must have been sanguine indeed if they looked forward to a scrupulous fulfilment of the pledges given them by the conqueror while he was outside the walls. The clause that entitled the Muslims to the free and exclusive use of their mosques was particularly obnoxious to the rabid ecclesiastics and crusaders who accompanied the king. With increasing irritation they compared the noble proportions of the Mohammedan mezquita with those of the{61} humble provisional Catholic Cathedral of Santa Maria de Alficem. While Alfonso was absent in Leon, he left the city in charge of his queen, Constancia, a Frenchwoman, and of her countryman, Bernard, now bishop, and formerly a monk of Cluny. This prelate took advantage of his sovereign’s absence to burst one night into the coveted mosque with an armed party, and having “purified” it, suspended bells in the minarets, which announced at dawn the celebration of the Christian rite. When word was brought to the King of this infamous violation of the treaty, he set out for Toledo, announcing his intention of burning the bishop alive. Moved either by that magnanimity which in the person of Al Mamûn had contributed to their downfall, or, as Spanish writers say, by a far-seeing prudence, the Moors went out in a body to meet the monarch, and besought him to forgive the highly placed thieves. Alfonso, with a show of reluctance, acquiesced in their prayer, and the Christians were most undeservedly confirmed in the possession of a church they had no hand in creating. The Alfaqui, or headman of the Muslims, was munificently rewarded for his generosity, his statue being placed in the Capilla Mayor of the new cathedral, which was solemnly consecrated in 1087. No nation has shown a very nice sense of honesty in respect of church property, yet it needs no subtle intelligence{62} to perceive that a church is as much the property of the particular sect for whose special use it was designed by members of that sect, as any private house is of its private owner.

The sturdy Toledans were attached, not only to their laws and customs, but (which was of more importance in those days) to their own Gothic or Mozarabic ritual. This differs in what are considered important particulars from the Roman. The host is divided into nine parts, representing the Incarnation, Epiphany, Circumcision, Passion, Death, Resurrection, Ascension, and Eternal Kingdom of Christ. Of these fragments, seven are arranged to form a cross. Because it is not Roman, English writers are fond of extolling the beauty and simplicity of this liturgy. It was a stumbling-block to Queen Constance and the zealous French bishop, who were anxious to reduce all things in Spain to Catholic uniformity. The King ordered the question to be decided by ordeal of single combat. The Mozarabic champion remained the victor. The bishop then demanded the ordeal of fire. The two missals were accordingly thrown into a great blazing pile, and the local favourite, having probably been saturated with some incombustible preparation, remained unconsumed. Another version has it that neither book was injured by the flames. Alfonso, after his fashion, clinched{63} the controversy by ordering the Mozarabic ritual to be confined to the two parish churches allotted to the Christians by their Moorish rulers, whilst everywhere else Mass was to be celebrated according to the Roman office.

Alfonso VI. had to fight hard to keep possession of Toledo. The Almoravide invasion had burst like a tidal wave over Southern Spain. Everywhere the Musulmans were recovering their spirits and their strength. The Castilian king fled, wounded, from the bloody field of Zalaca, with only five hundred followers, leaving behind him twenty thousand slain. Toledo could have had no pleasant associations for its latest conqueror. Here died three of his six wives—Constancia of Burgundy, Isabel of France, and Zayda of Seville. At Ucles was slain his only son, while yet a mere child. “Where is your prince?” asked the unhappy father of the warriors escaped from the rout. “Where is the light of my eyes and the staff of my age?” All were silent. “He is dead and you live!” bitterly exclaimed the king. “Yes,” replied Alvar Fañez sternly, “we live to save the throne, the country, and the lands acquired with our blood and sweat.” But the Alcazar re-echoed to the mournful plaint, “Sancho! Sancho, my son!” till Alfonso VI. passed away in July 1109. The stones of which the church altars were built had{64} miraculously distilled tears in token of his approaching death. Before a year had passed the Vega was blackened by the advancing hordes of Islam. The Castle of Azeca, the monastery of San Servando, fell into their hands; but the City of the Goths, thanks to the leadership of Archbishop Bernard and of Alvar Fañez, hurled back the hosts of Ali and was held fast for Spain.

The accession of Alfonso VII. el Batallador brought brighter days to his capital, but it was assailed during the twelfth century with a succession of calamities that might have broken down the patience of Job. The year 1113 was marked by an earthquake and disastrous overflowing of the Tagus; 1116, by a fire on a large scale; in 1117, the price of wheat rose, to fourteen soldos the bushel; in 1168, the Tagus was again in flood; again in 1181 and 1200; between 1187 and 1200, all the grocery stores were burnt (how or why, we are not told), the Tagus was frozen over in 1191, and there was a famine the following year. Eclipses of the sun were of the commonest occurrence: we hear of them in 1114, 1162, 1177, 1191, and 1207. We can easily imagine the Mohammedan denizens shaking their heads and ascribing these phenomena, especially the last, to the change of government, and extolling the good old times of Al Mamûn when earth, river, and sun kept their places and behaved according to rule.{65}

Yet Toledo flourished, and her citizens were never more in their element than in the spring of the year 1212, when their town became the rallying-point and base of the great crusading army, destined to achieve the crowning mercy of the Navas de Tolosa. The dominant personality of that time was the Archbishop Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada. A writer of history, a valiant soldier, a sagacious statesman, princely in his magnificence, and angelic in his charity, he was a tower of strength in Spain, and especially for Toledo, in the dreadful years of famine and brigandage that followed the victory over the Moor. His name will be for ever remembered as practically the founder of the great cathedral which is the city’s crowning glory and title to fame.

The century of floods, earthquakes, and eclipses passed away, and found Toledo a hotbed of civil strife and internecine discord. As in Italian cities at the same time, rival families and factions fought in the streets, turned their houses into fortresses, and set the civic authorities at defiance. The hidalgos of Toledo would hurry home from warring with the infidel to plunge their swords into the bosoms of their fellow townsmen. Laras and Castros waged pitched battles for the possession of the capital of Castile. At last the royal power asserted itself, and with terrible effect. We read that “the King Ferdinand came to Toledo, and{66} hanged many men and boiled others alive in cauldrons. Era MCCLXII. (1224).” This boiler of his fellow men is known as Saint Ferdinand. His father, Alfonso IX. of Leon, is also mentioned as having broiled his rebellious subjects, and flayed others alive. But such performances are not considered by a certain class of writers even now to argue any real depravity of character.

The sainted king’s severity on another occasion is more creditable to him. On his entry into the town, two young women threw themselves at his feet and implored vengeance on their betrayer, Fernandez Gonzalo—the Alcalde himself. The high rank of the offender did not save him from instant decapitation, and his head was within an hour gazing down on the scene of his amours from the Puerta del Sol. Whether the betrayed damsels or any one else were benefited by these drastic measures, the panegyrists of the righteous king forgot to tell us.

Still it was an age when strong measures were called for; and recognising this, the citizens themselves instituted the famous Santa Hermandad or Holy Brotherhood for the maintenance of public order and suppression of brigandage. The organisation received the royal sanction, and was endowed with many privileges. It supplied the place of a regular police force for all Castile for at least three centuries, and readers will remember{67} the frequent references to it in the pages of “Don Quixote.”

Toledo had not yet become a capital in the sense of being the permanent residence of the sovereign. Saint Ferdinand and his immediate predecessors and successors were essentially soldiers. Their Court was the camp, and in the unremitting war of reconquest it was necessarily transferred from place to place, from one confine of the ever-expanding kingdom to the other. When at Toledo the king resided at the Alcazar—which in Moorish days had been a fortress constructed of tapia (a species of concrete), and which was fortified with masonry by Alfonso VI. The building was enlarged and embellished, and made more suitable for a royal residence by Sancho el Bravo (1284-1295). But the state of affairs in what may be termed the Epoch of the Reconquest (1085-1252), was obviously not favourable to the development of the building arts. Toledo possesses few memorials of these days, for such edifices as may have been founded at or before that time have undergone such transformations as to render them practically the products of later ages. Such supplies and energies as were not absorbed by the all-important business of war were naturally diverted to the building of the cathedral, which was not, as we shall see, completed for another two centuries.{68}

Mediæval history concerns itself almost exclusively with kings and princes, battles and treaties. Of the life of the people in Spain, as elsewhere, we hear very little. From stray references in the records we glean the information that the streets of Toledo were filthy and unpaved, and frequently encumbered with the carcases of beasts. Over the gates the heads of malefactors were ever rotting, poisoning the already vitiated air. We have concise details, too, of no particular interest, as to the municipal constitution of the city. Beyond this meagre information, we know something of the history of Toledo only so far as it was also the history of Spain.

Pedro I., the Cruel (1350-1368), had no liking for the gloomy, turbulent town, and during his reign Seville might have been called the seat of government. However much he may have endeared himself to the Andalusians, the ferocious king was no favourite with the Toledans. When the ill-used queen, Blanche of Bourbon, escaped from her prison in the Alcazar and claimed the right of sanctuary in the cathedral, the city rose in her behalf, and a thousand native blades sprung from their scabbards to protect her. An alliance was concluded with Talavera and Cuenca, and the gates opened to Don Enrique of Trastamara, the king’s half-brother. It is said that Pedro’s faction held the bridge of San Martin, expecting{69} the rebel prince to enter that way, while his supporters introduced his troops into the town by the opposite bridge of Alcantara. The Trastamara partisans attacked the Jewish quarter, the Israelites being especial favourites of Don Pedro, and a frightful massacre ensued. Soon the king’s party gained the upper hand, and the unfortunate Blanche was removed from the city, wherein she had found such staunch friends, to the castle of Sigüenza.

This is not the first time we read of a massacre of Jews at Toledo. Yet the town was for many centuries one of the strongholds of Jewry in Europe, and a centre of Hebrew culture and activity. The story of the Jews of Toledo is, in fact, one of the most interesting chapters in the history of the city and of Spain.

Jews were settled in the Peninsula at a remote period. The author of “The Moorish Empire in Europe” (S. P. Scott) thinks their arrival in that country “antedated the Christian Era by at least a thousand years.” As we know, legend actually ascribes the foundation of Toledo to the race. This may, we think, be due to a confusion of the Israelites with Phœnician settlers. At the time of Christ, the Jews of Spain were very numerous and opulent. Another legend tells how their chief men addressed a letter to the Sanhedrim at Jerusalem, protesting against the{70} Crucifixion. A document—altogether spurious, it need hardly be said—has been produced in support of this story. After the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, there seems to have been a large influx of Hebrew refugees into Spain. So long as the Visigoths remained Arians, they remained tolerant; but Reccared, soon after his conversion to Catholicism, levelled the severest enactments against the Israelites. He set a bad precedent. With Sisebut began the long era of persecution. His harsh edicts, forcing the Jews to choose between baptism and banishment, are still to be found in the Fuero Juzgo. Swinthila, Kindila, Recceswinth, Erwig, and Egica followed the same policy. Among the tyrannical enactments of this time is the grotesque command that the Jews of Toledo should eat pork! Under these circumstances it is not to be wondered that the Spanish Jews beheld with dawning hope the successful progress of the Mohammedans in Northern Africa. A secret intelligence was established with these Semitic conquerors of a newer faith, and thanks to the constant intercourse between the Jews of Africa and those of Spain, Musa and Tarik were fully supplied with the most minute particulars of the Visigothic State.

The period of the Khalifate was the Golden Age of Spanish Jewry. The numbers of the race,{71} depleted by persecution, were increased by the advent of upwards of twelve thousand Yemenite Jews, invited by the Moorish conquerors. Never since the days of Solomon had the Children of Israel known such peace and prosperity. Possessed already of a remarkably high degree of culture, they communicated their knowledge to the Arabs, who showed themselves generous patrons and protectors. Nor were the new rulers of Spain slow to perceive the advantages to be derived from the subject race’s commercial enterprise and talent for affairs. Though the versatility of the Jew at this time was one of his most remarkable characteristics, it was above all as a physician that he was esteemed by Muslims and Christians alike. In this capacity he became the indispensable and most trusted companion of sovereigns and prelates, and penetrated into the very arcana of power. From Court physician to Minister the transition in those days of personal government was easy, and we find Hasdai ben Isaac Ibn Shaprut occupying both positions under Abd-ur-Rahman I.

As far as was consistent with their religious beliefs, the Jews of Toledo assimilated themselves with the conquerors. The minutes of the congregation were kept in Arabic down to the end of the thirteenth century, and that language was sedulously cultivated and almost exclusively{72} employed by the brilliant succession of Jewish theologians and humanists who made the city a centre of literary and scholastic activity.

We have it on the authority of Mr. S. P. Scott that, under the Muslim dominion, the Jews were allowed to elect a king, always a prince of the House of Judah, “who, while not openly invested with the insignia of royalty, received the homage and tribute of his subjects.” It is illustrative of the respect of the race for learning that the erudite Rabbi Moses, when recognised exposed as a slave at Cordoba, was immediately elected to this dubious royalty.

The Jews of Toledo must have viewed with unpleasant apprehensions the re-establishment of the Catholic monarchy. Yet at first it seemed they had no cause for alarm. Alfonso VI., as we know, granted to them the liberal privileges by which the Muslims also benefited. But in the charter confirming the customs of the Mozarabes (1091) it was made plain that no penalty would be exacted of a Christian for the murder of a Jew or Muslim. The result might have been foreseen. Seventeen years after, the people rose in savage fury, broke into the synagogues and butchered the rabbis in their pulpits, burnt and pillaged every Jewish house, and slaughtered the luckless objects of their animosity without mercy. But it was the people, rather than the governing classes,{73} who manifested this violent racial prejudice. As in every other land, in spite of persecution, the Chosen People grew in wealth and abated not their industry and commercial activity. It was they who brought to the grim Gothic city the choicest products of the East; they alone who could combat the ravages of disease; they alone who could supply the needy king and nobles with the coin for which in Italy men paid as much as one hundred and twenty per cent. interest. Spain hated the Jew, but could not as yet do without him.

The rule of Alfonso VI.’s successors could not have been excessively harsh, for many Jewish families, hounded out of Southern Spain by an unusual manifestation of Mohammedan bigotry, took refuge within the walls of Toledo. Thanks to the influence of Fermosa, the Jewish mistress of Alfonso VIII., many of her race exercised important functions at the Court. But the fanatical temper of the populace attributed to the favour shown these unbelievers the disaster of Alarcos, and the beautiful favourite and her friends were murdered in the very presence of the king.

“At the beginning of the thirteenth century,” says Mr. Joseph Jacobs, B.A., in the “Jewish Encyclopædia,” “the Shushans, the Al-Fakhkhars, and the Alnaquas, were among the chief Jewish families of Toledo, Samuel Ibn Shushan being nasi [the chief of Sanhedrim] about 1204. His{74} son built a synagogue which attracted the attention of Abraham ben Nathan of Lunel, who settled in Toledo before 1205. During the troubles brought upon Castile by the men of ‘Ultrapuertos’ in 1211-12, Toledo suffered a riot; and this appears to have brought the position of the Jews more closely to the attention of the authorities. In 1219 the Jewish inhabitants became more strictly subject to the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Toledo, who imposed upon every Jew over twenty years old an annual poll-tax of one-sixth of a gold mark; and any dispute about age was to be settled by a jury of six elders, who were probably supervised by the nasi, at that time Solomon ben Joseph Ibn Shushan. In the same year papal authority also interfered with the affairs of the Toledo Jews, ordering them to pay tithes on houses bought by them from Christians, ‘as otherwise the Church would be a considerable loser.’”

A significant phrase! But not only houses and land all over the country were mortgaged to the Jews, but also church plate and even the sacred vessels. Jewish usurers were said to drink out of the chalices used for the Precious Elements. The exasperation of the Christians was disregarded by Alfonso X. the Learned, who entertained a profound respect for the erudition and traditions of the Jews. A Hebrew, Don Zag Ibn Said, directed{75} the compilation of the famous Alfonsine Tables; and under the patronage of the monarch, Toledo became famous for its translations from the Arabic into Hebrew, Latin, and Spanish. The rabbis distinguished themselves in medicine and astronomy. While doing his utmost to draw the oppressed race within the fold of the Catholic church, the Learned King granted permission to the Jews of Toledo to erect that beautiful synagogue which, under the name of Santa Maria la Blanca, ranks to-day among the national monuments of Spain.

“The Spanish Jews,” says Mr. Scott, “by reason of the peculiarities of their situation, the hostility of their rulers—which their pecuniary resources and natural acuteness often baffled, but never entirely overcame—and their successive domination by races of different origin, faith, and language, were impressed with mental peculiarities and characteristics not to be met with in their brethren of other countries. Their religious formalism was proverbial, and the Hebrew of Toledo observed more conscientiously the precepts of the Pentateuch and Talmud than the Hebrew of Damascus or Jerusalem.” Thus we find the Jews of Toledo siding against the rationalising theories of the great Maimonides, himself a native of Cordoba, and whose tomb is a conspicuous landmark on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee.{76}

Don Amador de los Rios reproduces an ancient record for the year 1290, stating the amount of tribute payable by the various Jewish communities of Castile. Out of a total of 2,801,345 maravedis the Israelites of the city of Toledo contributed 216,500, and those in the entire archdiocese 1,062,902 maravedis. The pomp of Catholic public worship and the wealth of the clergy are partially accounted for by these figures.

Up till then, always the most valuable (from a European point of view) and the most prosperous element of the population of Toledo, the Jews assumed yet greater prominence in the reign of Pedro I. That prince was declared by his numerous enemies to be the substituted child of a Jewess, and his Court was reviled as a Jewish Court. He showed favour to the race in many ways. His treasurer and confidential adviser was the famous Don Samuel Ha Levi. Whether or not the Jewish statesman’s administration was in the interests of Castile, it is too late in the day to say; but there can be no doubt that he was a loyal servant of his king and a devoted friend of his own people. He it was who caused to be erected Toledo’s other great synagogue, now called the Transito. He was a warm ally of the beautiful Maria de Padilla, Pedro’s gentle mistress, and for years, with consummate astuteness, defended himself against the insidious and violent attacks{77} of his innumerable enemies. His enormous wealth—honestly or dishonestly acquired—brought about his downfall. In the very year (1360) the synagogue was completed, Samuel was seized at Seville, and, by order of the king, placed upon the rack. The haughty Hebrew is said to have died of sheer indignation. Pedro shed crocodile tears over his ill-starred Minister’s fate, and greedily confiscated his property. His fortune was found to consist of 70,000 doubloons, 4000 silver marks, twenty chests filled with treasure, and eighty Moorish slaves. The property of all Levi’s relatives was also forfeited to the Crown, and was valued at 300,000 doubloons. Pedro did not, however, withdraw his favour from the Jews as a race. It had been well for them if he had. Their loyalty to the Bluebeard King earned for them the detestation of the partisans of Enrique de Trastamara, and brought about, as we have seen, the massacre of 1355, in which 1200 Jews perished.

The new king, Enrique, took advantage of a riot said to have been excited by the arrogance of the converted Jews in 1367, and in which 1600 houses were burnt to the ground, to impose a tribute of no less than twenty thousand gold doubloons on the afflicted people.

It was possibly due to the presence of a large Israelite population that Toledo, very much against{78} its will, had been held for King Pedro in 1369. It was, in consequence, fiercely assailed by its own archbishop, Don Gomez Manrique, while Pedro sent an army largely composed of Saracens to its relief. The city was a prey to famine, internecine warfare, pestilence, and to every description of calamity. The killing of Pedro and the accession of Enrique were hailed as an ineffable boon by the wretched citizens. But from that hour the position of the Jews grew more and more pitiable. Their prosperity waned, and with it the prosperity of the old city in which they had so long been unwelcome guests.

Their final ruin as a community was effected mainly at the instance of St. Vicente Ferrer, the Dominican. Visiting the city in 1391 he so inflamed the devout populace with apostolic zeal that they burst into the larger of the two Juderias or Ghettos, put practically the whole of its inhabitants—including the venerable rabbis, Judah ben Asher and Israel Alnaqua—to the sword, sacked the quarter from end to end, and demolished most of the synagogues. The saintly Ferrer reappeared at Toledo twenty years later, but there were nominally no Jews left to massacre. The Hebrews that remained had been “converted.” The good friar did what he could, and induced the Toledans to confiscate the synagogue built in Alfonso X.’s reign and convert it into the{79} Christian Church of Santa Maria la Blanca. We suggest that it should have been renamed San Vicente del Sangre.

The work of destruction was done thoroughly, and henceforward we hear little in the story of Toledo of the Children of Israel. But their names have not been altogether forgotten. Mr. Jacobs gives a long list of members of that luckless congregation, famous for their learning and science. He enumerates theologians, physicians, astronomers, grammarians, satirists, poets and astrologers. Toledo, thanks to these latter, achieved an unenviable reputation as a centre of the magic art. Indeed, this was known at one time as the Arte Toledana. “It is said” (we quote Mr. Jacobs) “that Michael Scott learned his magic from a Toledo Jew named Andreas, who translated works on magic from the Arabic.” The same writer elsewhere says: “The Spanish Jews differed but little from the Christian population with regard to customs and education. They were fond of luxury, and the women wore costly garments with long trains, also valuable jewellery; this tended to increase the hatred of the population towards them. They were quarrelsome and inclined to robbery, and often attacked and insulted one another even in their synagogues and prayer-houses, frequently inflicting wounds with the rapier or sword they were accustomed to carry.{80}” With royal permission a Jew might have two wives.

Deprived of the more legitimate pastime of Jew-baiting, the Toledans began to turn their swords against each other and their sovereign. “Never,” remarks Gamero, “had the nobility shown itself so arrogant and rebellious as during the reign of Juan II.” Envy of that great man and powerful Minister, Don Alvaro de Luna, was mainly the cause of this. The leading families took different sides, and the streets frequently were slippery with the blood of the citizens. The Alcalde, Pero Lopez de Ayala, declared against the great Constable and held the town as an independent seigneurie against the king’s forces for five years. King Juan had deserved better things of his lieges of Toledo, for in 1431 he had entertained them on his return from his campaign in Andalusia with festivities and pageants of the gayest character. The people took part in bull fights and games in the Zocodover, while the knights and ricoshombres jousted and feasted in the Vega. The Alcazar re-echoed to the music of lute and lyre, and the songs of the minstrels. But Toledo was not to be subdued with kindness. The artisan class presently revolted on the imposition of a new tax, the tumult being the occasion of the saying, Soplara il odrero, y alborozarse la Toledo (Let the ironmonger blow and Toledo will rise).{81} Next, the cruel and miserly governor, Pedro Sarmiento, followed Ayala’s example, and demanded of the king the dismissal of the noble Constable. The royal forces were set at defiance, and a pitched battle was fought below the walls. The fortune of the day remained with the rebels, and Sarmiento was able for a time to dictate to his sovereign. He was at last crushed, but was able to carry off an enormous amount of treasure loaded on two hundred mules.

These events had produced a permanent feud between the families of Ayala and Silva, only terminated by the marriage of the heir and heiress of the respective houses. Toledo, during the first three-quarters of the fifteenth century, was a prey to incessant warfare. Sometimes the whole town would be contending against external foes for or against the king, sometimes it would be the nobles contending with the people, or the church with the nobles. Toledo, as a whole, supported its archbishop, Carrillo, when in 1465 he pronounced sentence of dethronement on Enrique IV. Three years later that unlucky monarch managed, by winning over the Ayalas to his side, to make his entry into the city. The proud chief of the family was himself obliged to flee from the town in 1471. The king was besieged in the Alcazar; the balance inclined sometimes to this party, sometimes to that. The old animosities between the{82} Ayalas and the Silvas blazed up again from time to time; and under its weak sovereign Toledo had its fill of fighting. But those brave days were drawing to a close, and in 1474, came one before whom even Toledans had to bend the knee and whom, recognising in her a stronger spirit, they afterwards delighted to honour. The accession of Isabel the Catholic on the death of Enrique IV., and to the exclusion of the rightful heiress, Juana, calumniously nicknamed La Beltraneja, marks the beginning of a new era in the history of Spain, and therefore of Toledo.{83}

BUILDINGS OF THE CASTILIAN PERIOD

The earliest specimens of post-Moorish architecture in Toledo partake more or less of the character of fortifications. For many years, as we have seen, after the Reconquest the Christians’ hold upon the city was precarious, and the first efforts of the Castilian kings was naturally towards strengthening its defences. The history of the walls of Toledo is obscure and confused; but it seems certain that a wall has always extended within historic times across the northern side of the loop formed by the river. The Conqueror Alfonso VI. strengthened and added to this defence by the erection of the newer or outer wall, inclosing the suburb or Arrabal del Antequeruela. He also appears to have restored the inner or Moorish wall, and has left traces on the magnificent Puerta del Sol, a Moorish work which must have been quite new in his day. Indeed, it may possibly have been built by Moorish masons after the Reconquest. It is a noble and impressive portal to the grand old city, and most powerfully impresses the beholder. Quadrado will{84} have it that so dignified a monument can have been the work only of a ruling race, in the days of its liberty and glory; it could not have been the mere afterglow of the ascendency and taste of a nation now subjugated. We may, however, be permitted to doubt whether the political decadence of a people becomes instantly manifested in its artistic life. The gateway forms a high tower with two flanking turrets, one square and abutting on the wall, the other rounded and finishing off the enceinte. The portal is composed of a succession of four arches, all being of the horseshoe shape, though the outer arches are more pointed than the inner ones. Above the outermost arch is a double row of arcades of brickwork, the arches intersecting. Over the second arch is a circular medallion in relief, representing the Virgin offering the chasuble to St. Ildefonsus. Another relief in marble is supposed to represent the summary punishment of Fernan Gonzalez by St. Ferdinand, for the seduction of two young women. The battlements are of a type common enough in Spanish Christian architecture, but which Mr. Street thinks was derived originally from the Moors. Another writer, Mr. O’Shea, remarks: “This gate with its warm orange tints, that contrast so admirably with the lapis-lazuli azure of the cloudless sky, its battlement fringing the top, and opening vistas{85} of most novel aspect, is a treasure for an artist.” The exceeding quaintness and majesty of this gateway have moved many writers to express themselves almost too rapturously. Toledo’s other gates—the Puerta Nueva de Visagra and the Puerta del Cambrón—date from a much later period.

The rude, dismantled pile of the Castle of San Servando, which crowns the height opposite to the Bridge of Alcantara, marks the site of a monastery, erected by Alfonso VI. in gratitude for his escape from the rout of Sacralias (1086). It was peopled by Benedictines from Sahagun and Cluny. These holy men soon found by the defensive works with which their new home was provided that their duties would not be entirely of a clerical description. Yusuf-ben-Tashfin, the Almoravide leader, almost destroyed the building during his abortive siege of Toledo, and Alfonso subsequently gave the establishment the aspect and features of a fortress. As such it bore the brunt of the repeated Saracen onslaughts in the first half of the twelfth century. It was abandoned in consequence by the monks, and was bestowed by Alfonso VIII. on the Knights Templars. It continued in their possession till the suppression of the Order in 1312. It seems to have fallen into ruins soon after, and was rebuilt about 1386, on the initiative of the great archbishop, Tenorio.{86} It is not a very interesting monument. It is built of masonry, with facings of red brick here and there. Three of its four sides are standing, and the same number of towers. These bear a resemblance to the outer or circular tower of the Puerta del Sol. The windows and arches exhibit Moorish, or rather Mudejar, influence. The castle in its day must have been a fine specimen of the mediæval stronghold. To-day its ruin is complete. It serves as a home to the owl and the bat, and the very ghosts of monks and templars seem to have deserted it as uninhabitable.

The castle is referred to by Calderon and other writers, and seems at one time to have been a favourite spot for duels.

The increased importance of Toledo as the capital of Castile necessitated the improvement of its communications with the outside world. The Bridge of Alcantara was, at the time of the Reconquest, the only permanent traject across the Tagus, and the bridge of boats on the western side of the town having been swept away, Alfonso X. (1252-1289) decreed the construction of a stone bridge now known as the Puente de San Martin. It was built of five arches and lasted till the reign of Pedro I., when it was blown up by that king’s partisans to obstruct the entry of Enrique de Trastamara. It continued in a practically demolished condition for twenty years,{87} when the great archbishop, Pedro Tenorio, determined to restore the missing arches at his own expense. It is said that the architect entrusted with the work found, to his dismay, the night before the day fixed for the opening, that, owing to some oversight in his calculations, the whole fabric would collapse on the removal of the scaffolding. He made known the cause of his anxiety to his wife; and she rose at dead of night, and setting fire to the whole structure preserved her husband’s reputation and, not impossibly, his life. The reconstructed bridge was, of course, without fault or flaw. A final reconstruction took place in 1690. On the town side, the Puente de San Martin is defended by two square towers. Above the archway are two inscriptions relating to the works executed by order of Charles II. The further extremity of the bridge is defended by another square battlemented tower with a horseshoe arch. Its two bridges are among the most picturesque features of Toledo.

With the obvious exception of the cathedral, the most interesting monuments of what we may term the middle age of Toledo are the two synagogues, now styled Santa Maria la Blanca and El Transito. The Jews, as we have seen, everywhere loom large in the annals of Toledo.

The first-named of these temples derives its{88} actual name from a tradition that a Christian church occupied the site in Visigothic times, to account for the dedication of which a legend is repeated similar to that of Santa Maria ad Nives at Rome. It is situated on what was once the Jewry or Ghetto, on the western side of the city, not far from the Puente de San Martin. Its foundation—as a synagogue—is variously ascribed to the period of the Reconquest, to the last days of the Moorish dominion, and to the latter period of the Khalifate. The first date seems the most probable. It continued to be used for the Jewish worship till 1405, when, as has been already told, it was seized and converted into a Catholic church. It has long since become a merely secular monument. The exterior, approached through the most miserable and sordid neighbourhood, is very far from reflecting the splendour the Jews enjoyed at its foundation. The façade, mean and dilapidated like the rest of the exterior, is probably of much more recent construction also. Within, a strange, fantastic impression is created. The phrase, “How are the mighty fallen!” involuntarily rises to the lips as one contemplates the traces of grandeur and elegance subsisting amid ruin and decay. The temple is symbolical of the race: exotic, reminiscent of a lost glory, depressed, oppressed. There is, however, no trace or suggestion of the primitive Hebrew architectural style{89} about the building. The traditions of Jerusalem were either unknown to, or had been forgotten by, those who reared these walls—likely enough Moors, whose skill was always at the disposal of Christian and Jew. In fact, the synagogue may be taken as a fine example of late Saracenic work. The plan consists of a nave with two aisles on each side. The nave was prolonged in the seventeenth century so as to form a chancel. The building is 81 feet long by 63 feet wide. The nave reaches to a height of 60 feet, and is 15 feet broad, while the aisles measure only 12 feet and rise from 40 to 50 feet high. The nave and aisles are separated by four rows of octagonal columns, from which spring bold horseshoe arches of the true Moorish type. The capitals are of stucco and elaborately designed with floral devices, in which the fir-cone is conspicuous; there is a vague suggestion of Byzantine influence. Mr. Street imagines them to be much later than the original capitals which they overlay. “All the Moorish decorative work seems to have been executed in the same way in plaster. This was of very fine quality, and was evidently cut and carved as if it had been stone, and seldom, if ever, I think, stamped or moulded, according to the mistaken practice of the present day. The consequence is that there is endless variety of design everywhere and—wherever it was desired—any amount of{90} undercutting. The spandrels above the arches are filled in with arabesque patterns, and there is a cusped wall arcade below the roof.” All this stucco work appears to date from about the time of Alfonso X., or perhaps from a later restoration. Above the nave is an exquisite frieze in low relief, formed of lines interlacing and crossing each other. The roof is of pine-wood, and not of Lebanon cedar, as at one time alleged. Mr. Street thinks “the pavement is very good, but must be about the date of the conversion of the synagogue into a church. It is divided into compartments by border tiles laid down the length of the church on either side of the columns. The spaces between them are filled in with a rich diaper of encaustic and plain red tiles, whilst the general area between these richer bands is paved with large red, relieved by an occasional encaustic, tiles. The latter have patterns in white, dark blue, and yellow, and in all cases they are remarkable for the beautiful inequality of the colours of the surface of the design. Both colour and material are in themselves better than the work of our tile manufacturers of the present day and illustrate very well the difference between hand-work and machinework.” The Catholics added three altars in the plateresque style, which, it is unnecessary to say, do not harmonise with the rest of the edifice. One of the retablos is attributed to Berruguete.{91}

Comparing this old Jewish meeting-place with the other and later synagogue, Miss Hannah Lynch remarks: “As a religious temple, as the expression of solemn worship rooted in the strange and mysterious East, the former is by far the more imposing, the more earnest and harmonious. Prayer in the Transito seems a matter of graceful and artistic dilettanteism; here it appears a great racial cry of the soul.”

The later vicissitudes of this synagogue are curious. About the middle of the sixteenth century it was converted by Cardinal Siliceo into an asylum for the professional frail ones of Toledo; but about half a century later the establishment ceased to exist—whether because there was no more frailty in Toledo or no more repentance, we are not told. Subsequently it was turned into a barracks, and then (O’Shea says) into a dancing-hall.

The Transito (so called after the Transit of the Blessed Virgin, i.e., the Assumption) is situated in the same quarter. We have already told the story of its foundation by Samuel Ha Levi, the powerful treasurer of Pedro I. Upon the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, it was handed over to the Order of Calatrava, who dedicated it to St. Benedict (San Benito). This synagogue is also purely Moorish in style, but of the later or Granadan period. Its plan differs radically from that of Santa Maria la Blanca. It constitutes a{92} parallelogram, undivided into naves and aisles, 76 feet by 31 feet, and 44 feet high. The effect is simple and graceful. The side walls are quite plain up to the height of about twenty feet, where a broad frieze of stucco runs round the building, with floral and star pattern designs, and bordered by inscriptions in Hebrew. Above this is an arcade with double shafts, and extremely rich capitals. The arches are of the horseshoe form, cusped into seven points. Eight of the arches contain lattice-work of the most beautiful design. Indeed, the whole of the arcading is rich and graceful beyond all praise. The western wall, where was formerly the Rabbinical chair, and is now the altar, is profusely decorated with patterns, inscriptions, and coats of arms, down to within seven feet of the floor. In the opposite wall windows have been pierced, breaking into the frieze. The roof is of cedar, and a fine specimen of artesonado work. Across it run tie-beams, superfluous in this case, but of which the Moorish builders were fond. The rafters slope down equally to a deep cornice, which is carried right across the angles, “so as to give polygonal ends to the roof.”

On either side of the altar are long Hebrew inscriptions now illegible, and the precise meaning of which has been a subject of fierce and perpetual controversy. The text on the Epistle{93} side may be translated: “The mercies which God hath shown us, raising up amongst us judges and princes to deliver us from our enemies and oppressors.... And we of this land have built this house with a strong and mighty arm. The day that it was built was great and delightful for the Jews, who, attracted by the fame of these things, came from the ends of the earth to see ... if a ruler should be given us who should be as a tower of strength ... to govern our commonwealth.... And there was raised up to help us, Samuel [Levi,] and God was with him and with us, and who found for us grace and mercy. He was a man of peace, powerful among all the people, and a great builder. These things were accomplished in the reign of the King Don Pedro; may God be his helper, enlarge his dominions, prosper him and succour him, and place his seat over all princes. May God be with him and all his house, and may every man be humbled before him ... and let those who hear his name rejoice to hear it in all the Kingdoms, and let it be manifest that he has been unto Israel a defender and a shield.” The inscription on the Gospel side proclaims the Rabbi Myir Abdali as the architect and extols his pre-eminent virtues, and pathetically celebrates the return of good and prosperous times—times not destined to last for the luckless race!{94}

In the neighbourhood of the synagogue exists the skeleton of the palace built by the great Jewish treasurer. It afterwards passed into the hands of the Marquises of Villena, and is associated with Don Enrique de Aragon, uncle of Juan II., a very interesting personality. He was a man of vast learning, and was, probably in consequence, reputed to be a magician and in league with the Evil One. Indeed, his magnificent library, including his own writings, was, in after years, burnt by order of the Inquisition. Beneath the mansion are still to be found various subterranean chambers, which popular superstition declares to have been the scene of Don Enrique’s conferences with Satan and his satellites. This necromancer was indeed Marquis of Villena, but it is by no means certain that he inhabited this house, which afterwards became the property of another family (the Pachecos), on whom the title was conferred by Enrique IV. The palace was deliberately burnt by its owner, the Duque de Escalona, in the reign of Charles V., it having been contaminated, as he thought, by the temporary residence within its walls of the Constable de Bourbon, then in arms against his own country. The Castilian grandee’s sense of honour was not a mere pose. The building is now the property of the Marquis de la Vega, who has tastefully restored it. It receives additional interest from{95} its having been, as is now believed, the home of El Greco.

Two ruinous structures are pointed out as the palaces of Don Pedro and of Enrique de Trastamara respectively. The latter probably belonged to one of the Counts of Trastamara, not to the king who bore that title. It is in the Moorish style, with horseshoe arches, friezes, and ajimeces. The so-called palace of Don Pedro is of the same class of architecture, but has much less to show—a horseshoe arch, a dado, and an almost illegible Arabic inscription which reads, “Lasting glory and perpetual prosperity to the master of this house.”

Better examples of the Mudejar (or late Moorish) style are the Casa del Mesa and the Taller del Moro. The former is situated close to the church of San Román, and was built soon after the Reconquest by that prominent Toledan, Esteban Illán. The saloon is one of the very best examples of this style of architecture. It is 60 feet long by 22 feet wide, and 36 feet high. The artesonado ceiling is thus described by Street: “The patterns are formed by ribs (square in section) of dark wood with a white line along the centre of the soffit of each. The sides of the ribs are painted red, and the recessed panels have lines of white beads painted at their edges, and in the centre an arabesque on a dark blue ground. The{96} colours are so arranged as to mark out as distinctly as possible the squares and patterns into which it is divided, and the sinking of some panels below the others allows the same pattern to be used for borders and grounds with very varied effect. The reds are rather crimson in tone, and the blues very dark.” The entrance—of a slightly horseshoe pattern—is framed in exquisite and luxuriant traceries. So also is the opposite ajimez window, but here the designs show Gothic influence. A high dado of azulejos and a very deep cornice and frieze of delicate workmanship complete the decoration of this very beautiful hall.

The Taller del Moro is (quite without foundation) said to occupy the site of the massacre of the Noche Toledana. It was so called because it was used as a workshop during the building of the cathedral. There is a conflict of opinion as to its age, but it probably dates from about the time of the Reconquest. The Arabic inscriptions, however, imply that it was intended for the habitation of a Moor, the Latin texts being doubtlessly added by later owners. The Taller consists of a large hall, 54 feet long by 23 feet wide, and of two adjacent smaller apartments. It exhibits the artesonado ceiling, the delicate stucco-work and friezes with star-like and floral designs we are led to expect in specimens of Mudejar architecture. Street doubts if the stucco-{97}work dates further back than 1350. The portal is in good Gothic style, and was added by Cardinal Mendoza.

As in all other Spanish cities, after their reacquisition by the Christians, in Toledo, for many, many years, Moorish architects and masons continued to be employed even in the construction of sacred edifices. This accounts for the mixed Christian and Saracenic style of several of the churches, even where these had not originally been mosques. The interesting church of San Román had been a Mohammedan temple remodelled to the requirements of Christian worship, while the tower or steeple is a Mudejar work added by Esteban Illán, and (to quote Mr. Street), “the finest example of its class to be seen here.” The steeple is of rough stone and brick, of a warm brown tone, and quite plain for more than half its height. The upper stages are pierced with windows which exhibit a very ungraceful trefoiled variation of the horseshoe arch—then fast dying out. Notwithstanding, the steeple has a noble and rugged appearance, like most things Toledan. The church itself has been so often restored, that it is hard to assign it to any one epoch. The Capilla Mayor is of the sixteenth century, and of the plateresque style. One of the altars has a front of black stone, carved at the edges in imitation of an altar-cloth with embroidery and lace.{98} Here and there traces may be detected of the original mosque. The steeples of the churches of Santa Magdalena, Santo Tomé, San Pedro Martir, San Miguel, Santa Leocadia, and La Concepcion, resemble that of San Román, but differ greatly in size.

The minor churches of Toledo are not specially interesting. Without the walls, however, is one with noteworthy characteristics. The little “basilica” of the Cristo de la Vega occupies the site of the famous church of St. Leocadia, built by the Visigothic King, Sisebuth, in the seventh century, to mark the place of the virgin saint’s martyrdom. Several of the great councils were held here. The story is told that the saint appeared in person here to St. Ildefonso, in the presence of King Recceswinth, and having expressed her satisfaction at the theologian’s masterly defence of the virginity of the Blessed Virgin, allowed him, with the royal dagger, to cut off a piece of her veil as a souvenir of her visit. This event naturally raised the “basilica” in the estimation of the devout. It was demolished by the Moors, and restored in 1162. It underwent many restorations and was finally ruined by the French during the War of Independence. The present edifice represents little more than the apse of the chapel of the Cristo de la Vega. There was a miraculous crucifix, attached to which{99} is a particularly silly legend. Two lovers had plighted their troth before the image, and the man afterwards denied the promise. The girl adjured the Christ to bear witness to the truth of her statement, and the figure obligingly extended a wooden arm while a voice from on high proclaimed, “I testify.” Another version has it that the figure testified in favour of a Christian who (mirabile dictu) had lent money to a Jew; and yet another, that it expressed approbation of the magnanimity of a cavalier who had pardoned his enemy under extraordinary circumstances. Whatever it may have done, the crucifix has long since disappeared. An Arabic inscription deduces that Mohammed ben Rahman, first King of Toledo, was buried here, A.D. 743. As there was no king in the city of that year, and as the first independent sovereign was otherwise named, the inscription must be apocryphal or else the word “king” must signify in the original merely Vali or governor.

A legend, better known and rather less silly than that of the Cristo de la Vega, deals with the love affairs of an imaginary Moorish princess, called Galiana “la mora mas celebrada de toda la moreria,” the daughter of an equally mythical king, called Galafre. He is linked up with history by some writers alleging him to have been the nephew of the wicked Count Julian, Galiana was{100} the apple of her parent’s eye, and for her delectation he built a palace abounding in all conceivable delights. The young lady had, in some way, compromised herself with a gigantic Moor, Bradamante by name; and to rid her of this truculent wooer, no less a personage than Charlemagne appeared on the scene. All, of course, ended happily (except for Bradamante) by the conversion of the lovely princess and her marriage to the gallant Frank. In the Puerta del Rey, outside the town, may still be seen a building dilapidated, let out in tenements, which is pointed out as the Palace of Galiana. The place was a mansion of the great Guzman family and exhibits traces of fine Moorish work—horseshoe arches, twin-windows, a defaced inscription or two, some tiling, and arabesques—enough, in short, to conjure up a splendid Moorish palace, which, however, need not have antedated the Reconquest.

The building is the property of H.I.M. the Empress Eugénie, and it is somewhat to be regretted that her attention has not been directed to its present condition and to the chance here presented of retarding the decay of a valuable monument of antiquity.{101}

THE CATHEDRAL

Transcending in importance all the other monuments of Toledo and, indeed, of Castile, is the Cathedral—one of the noblest specimens of Gothic architecture the world affords. The metropolitan church of Spain, it is sumptuous without gaudiness, austere without gloominess, admirably interpreting the spirit of Spanish Catholicism before it withered under the chilling influence of Philip II. and the Inquisition. The Cathedral of Toledo does not impress the foreigner as typically national. Indeed it corresponds no longer to the temper of the nation. And it was raised as a protest against those Moorish influences which have passed into the life and art of Spain, and without which nothing can be taken as representatively Spanish.

The Cathedral of Toledo, then, is Gothic, and may be said to embody the ideals of old Spain—of the young fighting nation that looked forward, not backward. Splendid as the Mosque seized by Archbishop Bernard and converted to Christian uses may have been, it was the work of the infidel. In 1227 King Ferdinand III. and the{102} Archbishop Don Rodrigo de Rada were able at last to give effect to a determination arrived at some years before; and on August 14 the first stone of a new temple, which should never have been contaminated by Muslim rites, was laid with solemn ceremony. The name of the architect continues to be a matter of controversy. An epitaph in the sacristy of the Capilla de los Doctores affords some clue to his identity. It runs as follows:

“Petrus Petri” is interpreted by Spanish writers “Pedro Perez,” but we incline to Mr. Street’s view that the correct rendering is probably Pierre le Pierre, the architect having been, as the name implies, a Frenchman. “This, at any rate,” continues Mr. Street, “is certain: the first architect of Toledo, whether he were French or Spanish, was thoroughly well acquainted with the best French churches, and{103} could not otherwise have done what he did. In Spain, there was nothing to lead gradually to the full development of the Pointed style. We find, on the contrary, buildings, planned evidently by foreign hands, rising suddenly without any connection with other buildings in their own district, and yet with most obvious features of similarity to works in other countries erected just before them. Such is the case with the cathedrals at Burgos, at Leon, and at Santiago, and such even more decidedly is the case here. Moreover, in Toledo, if anywhere, was such a circumstance to be expected. In this part of Spain there was in the thirteenth century no trained school of native artists. Even after the conquest the Moors continued to act as architects for Christian buildings whether secular or ecclesiastical, and, indeed, to monopolise all the art and science of the country which they no longer ruled. In such a state of things I can imagine nothing more natural than that, though the Toledans may have been well content to employ Mohammedan art in their ordinary works, yet, when it came to be a question of rebuilding their cathedral on a scale vaster than anything which had as yet been attempted, they would be anxious to adopt some distinctly Christian form of art; and lacking entirely any school of their own, would be more likely to secure the services of a Frenchman than{104} one of any other nation.... But however this may have been, the church is thoroughly French in its ground-plan and equally French in all its details for some height from the ground; and it is not until we reach the triforium of the Choir that any other influence is visible; but even here the work is French work, only slightly modified by some acquaintance with Moorish art....”

The stupendous fabric, once begun, whether by French or Spanish hands, took two hundred and sixty-six years to finish. From the death of the first architect in 1270 to the year 1425 the names of the architects have been lost. During this period, the successive styles of architecture naturally influenced the original scheme and found expression in the building. It was in January 1493 that the roof was finished and the main structure completed. Certain chapels, such as the Reyes Nuevos, Sagrario, &c., were later additions. Among the later architects we find Rodrigo Alfonso, Alvar Gomez, Martin Sanchez, and Juan Guas. The stone employed inside (according to O’Shea) was quarried at Oliguelas, some nine miles from the city. It becomes harder with age. “The external portion is all of Berroqueña stone, save the ornamentation of the portals, which is also of Oliguelas white stone.”

The Cathedral forms an oblong, semicircular at the eastern end, and lying east and west. In{105} width it is exceeded only by the Cathedrals of Milan and Seville, measuring 178 feet broad by 395 feet long. On the north side are the cloisters and additional chapels and sacristies. From the eastern side project the chapels of the Reyes Nuevos, San Ildefonso, and Santiago, and the Winter Chapter-room. The plan of the interior is easy of comprehension. The nave extends from the western entrance to the Capilla Mayor: on either side of it are two aisles which are continued round and behind this chapel in a semicircular sweep. Street extols the skill with which this arrangement has been carried out. Between the Choir and the Capilla Mayor a transept extends across the church, not projecting, however, beyond the outer walls of the farther aisles. The eighty-eight pillars which support the fabric and mark off these divisions are composed each of from eight to sixteen light columns, standing on the same base. The capitals are moulded in plain foliage. The arches resting on these pillars make up the seventy-two vaults of which the roof is composed. The aisles rise gradually in towards the central nave, which is 116 feet high. The crypt or substructure corresponds in its divisions and the number of its piers to the edifice above. The pavement is of bluish white marble arranged in chequers.

In the original plan no side-chapels appear to{106} have been contemplated. But the chapel of Santa Lucia was added by Archbishop de Rada in memory of Alfonso VI. And, in addition to chapels built since the rest of the church, the spaces between the buttresses in the outer aisles have been railed off so as to form twenty-three chapels of various styles and periods. The interior is lit by 750 stained-glass windows of rich hues that delight the spectator. They depict episodes from the Scriptures, and are said to have been as carefully designed as if intended for close inspection. Among the artists were Dolfin (1418), De Vergara, Albert of Holland, Maese Cristobal, Juan de Campos, Vasco Troya, and Pedro Francés. The effect of the light falling in rays of richest colour on the pavement and columns is magical. The walls are denuded of colour and rudely whitewashed.

The centre of the Cathedral is occupied by the choir (Coro), to the east of which, separated by the transept, is the Capilla Mayor. The choir is enclosed by walls and cloisters, except on the side facing the Capilla Mayor, where it is railed in by the magnificent reja, designed by Domingo de Cespedes and Hernando Bravo (1548). Like the corresponding railing of the High Chapel opposite, this work was formerly heavily silver-plated and gilded, but at the time of the French invasion it was recoated with iron to secure it{107} from spoliation. Unfortunately, no means have yet been discovered of restoring the reja to its original state. Among the elaborate ornamentation may be noticed the arms of Cardinal Siliceo and of the Ayala family, with the interwoven inscriptions Procul esto prophani and Psale et psile. The Choir is paved with white marble inlaid with dark. The vaulting above the Choir itself rises to the height of a hundred feet, the aisle round it to ninety feet, and the outer aisle to thirty-five feet. In the outer aisle are small chapels placed between the buttresses. Mr. Street describes this part of the building in great detail and considers that the original scheme of the Cathedral is only to be seen here. The triforium, formed of an arcade of cusped arches, in the outer wall of the inner aisle exhibits Moorish influence. “It would be impossible,” writes the authority just mentioned, “to imagine any circumstance which could afford better evidence of the foreign origin of the first design than this slight concession to the customs of the place in a slightly later portion of the works. An architect who came from France, bent on designing nothing but a French church, would be very likely, after a few years’ residence in Toledo, somewhat to change in his views, and to attempt something in which the Moorish work, which he was in the habit of seeing, would have its influence. The detail{108} of this triforium is, notwithstanding, all pure and good....”

The Choir is enriched by a magnificent screen, lecterns, and stalls. The screen, or respaldo, which at one time seems to have been continued right across the transept, encloses the Choir on three sides, and consists of an arcade carried on fifty-two columns of jasper and marble, and supporting and enclosing admirable statuary and sculpture. Above the capitals of the columns is a series of fifty-six medallions in high relief, dating from 1380, and representing scenes from the Old Testament. These reliefs are worthy of close study, and are beautiful examples of simple and faithful mediæval treatment. The series is supplemented by a medallion with a bust by Berruguete and the statues of Innocence and Sin, by Nicolas de Vergara—works on which Street outpours the vials of his wrath.

Of the wonderful Choir Stalls of Toledo everyone has heard. They are unsurpassed triumphs of the carver’s art. The lower tier, including fifty seats, is the work of Maese Rodrigo, and dates from 1495. The stalls are of walnut wood, and the carving portrays the campaign against Granada by the Catholic Sovereigns. The carving being almost contemporary with the events illustrated has given these reliefs an historical as well as an artistic value. The names of the{109} fortresses are here and there indicated by labels, and the designs are somewhat marred by the introduction of fanciful monsters. The whole breathes very much of the mediæval spirit, and we can, therefore, hardly complain of a certain stiffness and lack of variety. They form an admirable contrast to the finer, more finished work of the upper tier of stalls, executed fifty years later by Berruguete and Philip of Burgundy, surnamed Vigarni. Thirty-five seats, including the Primate’s, are the work of the Spaniard, the thirty-six opposite exhibiting the skill of the Burgundian. “They were wrought,” says O’Shea, “in rivalry of each other, and finished in 1543; and as Cardinal Tavera’s inscription runs: ‘Certaverunt turn artificum ingenia; certabunt semper spectatorum judicia.’” The stalls are placed in recesses of alabaster, and separated by fine red jasper columns, with capitals in white marble. Over the recesses is a series of alabaster figures in low relief of the prophets and patriarchs. The carvings on the stalls themselves depict episodes from both the New and Old Testaments. The work breathes the spirit of the Renaissance, interpreted by Berruguete and his colleague with a skill, it has been truly observed, worthy of Benvenuto Cellini himself. Berruguete was a pupil of Michelangelo. His work is more vigorous than that of Vigarni,{110} who excels in elegance and softness of outline. Street’s denunciations of these triumphs of the carver’s art are a curious instance of the length to which an artistic bias may lead a clever writer and critic. The reliefs representing the visits of the Blessed Virgin to Purgatory and to St. Ildefonso are not by Philip of Burgundy, but by his brother Gregorio.

Very fine are the reading-desks, with friezes of gilded bronze, executed by the two Vergaras in the middle of the sixteenth century. Those on the Epistle side are carved in low relief with the stories of David and Saul, the Blessed Virgin and St. Ildefonso, and the Apocalypse; those on the Gospel side, the stories of St. Ildefonso, the Ark of the Covenant, and the Passage of the Red Sea. In the centre of the Choir is a magnificent brass lectern upheld by a great eagle with wings outspread; its eyes are of red stones and it crushes with its talons a struggling dragon. It was executed in 1646 by Salinas. The pedestal on which it stands is older by two hundred years, and is thoroughly Gothic in character, with buttresses, pinnacles, and statuary. The work is said to be German. The pedestal is borne by six lions, finely sculptured.

The northern entrance to the transept, which separates the Choir from the Capilla Mayor, affords the best and least interrupted view of the{111} Cathedral. That view impressed the writer with its calm majesty and sanctity, but by way of contrast it is worth while recording the impressions of a traveller only lately returned (Mr. Stewart Dick): “My first feeling was one of disappointment—a feeling that even now has hardly worn away.

“It is vast and cold. A white expanse. Huge pillars towering up to a great height. A blaze of harsh daylight. In the middle, blocking up the view down the nave, the tawdry gilt of the Coro. Doors opening and banging all round, people promenading, sitting on the bases of the pillars and talking with undropped voices. You ask yourself with amazement, Is this a church? The form is here, but where is the spirit?

“In fact, it is only in the evening that Toledo Cathedral comes into its own. It is quiet and peaceful then. The promenaders have all gone away, the blaring of the organ has ceased, and through the open door you hear the twittering of birds in the cloisters. The shadows darken among the pillars, the beautiful windows begin to glow, and a soft light fills the upper part of the church. It is like the opening of a flower.

“Then at last you begin to feel the impressiveness and the dignity of those avenues of mighty pillars. The trivialities that annoyed you are lost, the effects are broad, grand, and majestic, and at{112} last the building is a temple; it seems as if the Holy Spirit had entered with the fall of the twilight.”

The Capilla Mayor, or High Chapel, occupies the eastern end of the nave, the aisles sweeping round behind it. The hinder portion was originally the Capilla de los Reyes Viejos, the chapel in which were entombed Sancho el Bravo, Sancho el Deseado, Alfonso VII., and others. In the year 1498 the two chapels were thrown into one by Cardinal Cisneros, who left the royal tombs for a time undisturbed. The High Chapel, according to O’Shea, measures 56 feet in length, 50 feet in breadth, and 116 feet in height. The piers are sculptured with the effigies of kings, prelates, and saints, and with “a multitude of angels playing on different instruments, and with outspread wings, that want but incense to raise them again from the spot where they have alighted.” The walls of the chapel are pierced or of open-work, the stone in parts being almost transparent, and thus adding to the brightness of the effect. Two rows of statuary enhance the beauty of the stonework, which is among the earliest portions of the fabric. But these walls, for all their magnificence, are put in the shade by the superb reja or railing, facing that of the Choir, and contemporary with it. This work is thus described by Señor Riaño: ‘The reja is 42 feet wide by 19 inches high; it{113} rests on a pediment of marble ornamented with masks and bronze work upon which rises the reja, which is divided horizontally by means of a frieze of ornamentation, and this again vertically into five compartments. In each vertical division there is a pilaster of four sides formed of repoussé plates, carved with a fine ornamentation in the Renaissance style; this is again terminated with life-size figures in high relief of bronze. The second compartment rises upon the band which divides it in a horizontal sense; it follows the same decoration in its pilasters, and is terminated by a series of coats of arms, torches, angels, and a variety of foliage which finishes the upper part. Upon the centre, hanging from a thick chain, supported from the roof, is suspended a life-size Rood of admirable effect, which completes the decoration. In several spots there are labels with mottoes in Latin; in one of them appears the following inscription, and the date of 1548, when the splendid work was finished: ‘Anno MDXLVIII. Paul III. P.M. Carol. V. Imper. Rege. Joannes Martinez Siliccus Archiepiscopus Tolet. Hispaniae Primat.’ The railings of the reja are silvered, and the reliefs and salient points gilt. The artist who made it was Francisco Villalpando, a native of Valladolid; this model was chosen in preference to those of several artists, who presented their plans in competition before the ecclesiastical{114} authorities; it is calculated that ten years elapsed before it was finally finished, Villalpando was greatly distinguished likewise as a sculptor and architect.” By him are the gilt pulpits in the plateresque style, made from the bronze tomb that the Great Constable, De Luna, had caused to be designed for himself. On a pier at the extremity of the chapel is the statue of the celebrated shepherd, Martin Alhaga, who is said to have, semi-miraculously, guided Alfonso VIII. and his army to the rear of the Moorish forces at Las Navas de Tolosa—thus securing the victory to the Christians. The king, who alone saw his features, is said to have designed the statue. Opposite is the figure of the Moorish Alfaqui, Abu Walid, whose intercession secured the old mosque to the Catholics, in the manner already narrated.

The splendour of the High Altar, with its jasper and bronzes, renders a detailed description impossible and inadequate. Its magnificent retablo, rising to the very roof, is the richest gem of the Cathedral. Designed by Philip Vigarni (Borgoña), and painted and gilded by his brother Juan, numerous other masters contributed to its excellences. We may name Maître Petit Jean (of France or Aragon), Almonacid (a converted Moor), Copin (a Dutchman), Francesco of Antwerp, Fernando del Rincon, Egas, and Pedro Gumiel. The retablo is of wood and{115} divided into five compartments by gorgeous columns. The subjects are from the New Testament, and are worked out with immense and ornate elaboration. The whole is crowned with a colossal Calvary. Behind the High Altar is placed that extraordinary example of eighteenth-century bad taste, the too famous Transparente. The whole architecture, painting, statues, carving and bronze is the work of the same person, Narciso Thomé who completed it in 1734. Much as we may denounce the taste (or rather the lack of it) of this triumph of the Churrigueresque style, we are obliged to admire the wonderful execution of this misdirected genius.

The royal tombs lie around the High Altar. They were placed in recesses, sculptured in the Gothic style by Diego Copin of Holland, by order of Cardinal Cisneros in 1507. The arches are peculiarly graceful and light. The tombs themselves date from much earlier times. Here sleep their last sleep Alfonso VII., Sancho el Bravo, Sancho el Deseado, and several Infantes. To the left of the altar is the sepulchre, more glorious than any king’s, of the great Cardinal Mendoza, erected by order of Isabel the Catholic, who owed so much to him. It was the work of Covarrubias, and is all of precious marbles. One side is formed by the sarcophagus with its recumbent effigy, the other by an altar. Above this{116} last is a medallion representing the Archbishop Adoring the Cross. Part of the wall was demolished to make room for this stately mausoleum. Beneath the Capilla Mayor is a subterranean chapel, not of special interest. It contains a Burial of Christ by Copin, deserving of an inspection that in the dim light is well-nigh impossible, and some pictures by Ricci.

At the eastern extremity of the Cathedral, behind the Capilla Mayor and projecting beyond the general outline, is the chapel of San Ildefonso. Erected by Archbishop de Rada, it remains the last important middle-pointed feature of the building, though considerably modified by Cardinal Albornoz in the latter part of the fourteenth century. It is eight-sided, and has beautiful traceried windows, and arches richly moulded and decorated. In arched recesses, beneath gabled and pinnacled canopies, are the tombs of Cardinal Albornoz, and several members of his family. There is much beautiful detail on the tomb of Don Iñigo de Mendoza, who fell at Granada in 1491; and the sepulchre of the Bishop of Avila by Tejada is a noble temple of the plateresque. The altar is modern. St. Ildefonso was the prelate who distinguished himself by his advocacy of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. In return he is said to have received signal marks of favour from the Blessed Virgin, who invested{117} him with a cassock, came down to attend Matins in his company, and so forth.

To the north of this chapel is the larger Capilla de Santiago, likewise projecting beyond the original ground plan, and dating from 1435. It was built by order of the Great Constable, Alvaro de Luna, to be the place of sepulchre of himself and wife, on the site of an earlier chapel dedicated to St. Thomas à Becket. The plan is similar to that of the last chapel described. Outside, the flat-pitched tile roof is finished with a battlement and circular turrets at the angles. The most conspicuous features of the chapel are the tombs, in Carrara marble, of the Constable Alvaro de Luna and his wife Doña Juana Pimentel. The Constable is shown in full armour, and at each corner of his tomb kneels a knight of Santiago, of which order he was Grand Master. Four Franciscan monks attend on his lady. In niches in the wall repose kinsmen of the ill-fated Constable, the tombs all having been executed by permission of Isabel the Catholic, by Pablo Ortiz in 1488, thirty-five years after De Luna’s death on the scaffold at Valladolid. The tombs designed for the Constable in his lifetime were to have been furnished with life-size figures in bronze, which, by mechanical contrivance, were to have risen each time Mass was celebrated, and to have remained during the service in a{118} kneeling posture. These figures were destroyed by the Infante Don Enrique, and the bronze was used by Villalpando for the pulpits in the Capilla Mayor. The retablo of the High Altar reveals the portraits of the founder and his wife by Juan de Segovia. “The chapel,” says Mr. Street, “bears evidence in the ‘perpendicular’ character of its panelling, arcading and crocketing, of the poverty of the age in the matter of design. At this period, indeed, the designers were sculptors rather than architects, and thought of little but the display of their own manual dexterity.”

Passing down a corridor between this chapel and that of Santa Leocadia we reach the Capilla de los Reyes Nuevos, lying quite outside the original plan of the Cathedral. It was founded by Enrique II. of Trastamara, and contains his tomb, his wife’s, and the sepulchres of Enrique III., his Queen, Katharine of Lancaster, Juan I. and Queen Leonor, and the effigy of Juan II., who is buried near Burgos. The chapel is a fine specimen of the Renaissance style, reconstructed by Alfonso de Covarrubias in 1534. The portal is fine, and is guarded by two kings armed and bearing escutcheons. During Mass, a gorgeously apparelled functionary holds upright a mace, crowned and jewelled, and with the arms of Spain.

The side-chapels of the Cathedral are not, on{119} the whole, as interesting as one would expect in a building of such antiquity and associations. To the south of the Capilla de San Ildefonso is the Capilla de la Trinidad; next comes the entrance to the Chapter House or Sala Capitular, an early sixteenth-century work with an artesonado ceiling in red, blue, and gold, excelling anything of the kind in Andalusia. The thirteen frescoes adorning the walls of the Chapter House are by Juan de Borgoña, who was also responsible for the earlier series of portraits of the archbishops. Copin’s work is to be recognised in the archiepiscopal throne, the other stalls being by Francisco de Lara. Returning to the church through a portal in the Moorish style, we find on the left the chapel of San Nicolas, followed by the chapels of San Gil, San Juan Bautista, Santa Ana, and the Reyes Viejos, founded in 1290 as the Capilla del Espritu Santo, with a fine reja by Céspedes. The chapel of Santa Lucia, founded by Archbishop de Rada, is, of course, in the best Gothic style, and has “an extremely rich recessed arch in stucco, of late Moorish work—a curious contrast to the fine pointed work of the chapel.”

The Capilla de San Eugenio contains the alabaster effigy of Bishop del Castillo (1521), and the tomb in the Mudejar style of the Alguacil Fernan Gudiel (1278). The statue of the saint is by Copin,{120} the paintings on the retablo by Juan de Borgoña. Adjacent to the chapel is the colossal figure of Saint Christopher, usually seen in Spanish churches. This figure is probably coeval with the fabric, but was restored in 1638. A primitive style of art is also to be seen in the altar-piece of the Capilla de San Martin. The next two chapels—de la Epifania and de la Concepcion—do not present any features of special interest.

In the south-west angle of the church is the interesting Mozárabic Chapel, built in 1504 by Enrique de Egas, under the orders of the famous Cardinal Ximenes de Cisneros. It is devoted to the celebration of Mass and the offices of the church according to the Mozárabic ritual, which till the middle of the last century was followed in six of the parish churches. The Cupola dates from 1626, and was the work of Jorge Manuel Theotocopuli. The porch is Gothic, and the reja in good Renaissance style, executed by Juan Frances in 1524. The frescoes, of no great value, painted by Juan de Borgoña, represent the expedition against Oran, in which the great Cardinal took part. Miss Hannah Lynch gives a vigorously worded account of a service in this chapel according to its peculiar rite: “The quaint old ritual may be heard every morning at 9 A.M., and will be found extremely puzzling to follow. The canons, in a sombre, flat{121} monotone, chant responses to the officiating priest at the altar. The sound combines the enervating effect of the hum of wings, whirr of looms, wooden thud of pedals, the boom and rush of immense wings circling round and round. After the first stupefaction, I have never heard anything more calculated to produce headache, nervous irritation, or the contrary soporific effect. In summer, it must be terrible.”

At the opposite, or north-west, angle of the church is the Chapel of San Juan or of the Canons, so called because Mass can be celebrated here only by those dignitaries. It was built in 1537 by Covarrubias in the Renaissance style, and occupies the site of the old tower chapel, called the Quo Vadis. The ceiling is of artesonado, in gold and black, with carved flowers and figures. Since 1870 this chapel has been the repository of the Cathedral Treasure, styled Las Alhajas, or the Jewels. Here is kept the gorgeous custodia, or portable tabernacle, made by order of Cardinal Cisneros by Juan de Arfe, who began it in 1517 and completed it without assistance in 1524. This triumph of the silversmith’s craft is in the form of a Gothic temple, eight feet high, with all the architectural details, such as columns, arches, and vaultings, the whole resembling delicate lacework. Scenes from the life of our Saviour are illustrated in reliefs. There are no fewer than{122} two hundred and sixty statues of various sizes, all exhibiting the same skill. The tabernacle was gilded over in 1595 by Valdivieso and Morino. The viril inside, in which the Host is exposed, was made of the first gold brought from America, is completely covered with precious stones, and weighs twenty-nine pounds. In the Treasure is also included the mantle of the Virgen del Sagrario, considered by Señor de Riaño the most remarkable specimen of embroidery that exists in Spain. It is described in the following manner: “It is made of twelve yards of cloth of silver, entirely covered with gold and precious stones. In the centre is an ornament of amethysts and diamonds. Eight other jewels appear on each side of enamelled gold, emeralds, and large rubies; a variety of other jewels are placed at intervals round the mantle, and at the lower part are the arms of Cardinal Sandoval [seventeenth century] enamelled on gold and studded with sapphires and rubies. The centre of this mantle is covered with flowers and pomegranates embroidered in seed-pearls of different sizes. Round the borders are rows of large pearls. Besides the gems which are employed in this superb work of art, no less than 257 ounces of pearls of different sizes, 300 ounces of gold thread, 160 ounces of small pieces of enamelled gold, and eight ounces of emeralds were used.” The beautiful dish,{123} repoussé in silver, the designs on which represent the Rape of the Sabines and the Death of Darius, was believed to be the work of Benvenuto Cellini, but is now ascribed to the Flemish artist, Mathias Méline. Among the Alhajas are also four geographical globes, with large silver figures, gleaming with gems—eighteenth-century work. Of historical interest is the sword, said to have been worn by Alfonso VI. on his entry into Toledo, and the original letter written by St. Louis of France to the Chapter, bestowing sacred relics obtained from the Great Emperor: “Given at Etampes, the year of our Lord, 1248, month of May.” Other objects of value are the Cope of Cardinal Albornoz and the Cruz de la Manga, made in the sixteenth century by Gregorio de Varona, a native of the city. Here, also, are the archiepiscopal cross, planted by Cardinal Mendoza on the summit of the Alhambra in 1492, and the Golden Bible in three volumes, dating from the twelfth century. It is to be doubted if the accumulation of these splendid objects, intended for diverse practical uses, in one collection, serves to show any of them to the best advantage.

On the north aisle are the chapels of Teresa de Haro, Nuestra Señora de la Antigua—where the Spanish colours used in the Moorish campaigns were blessed—of the Pila Bautismál, with a{124} beautiful bronze font, and a reja by Céspedes; and the large Capilla de San Pedro, built in 1442 in the Gothic style by Archbishop de Rojas. The founder’s fine monument was placed here in the eighteenth century. On the other side of the Puerta del Reloj is the Capilla de la Virgen del Sagrario, noted for a statue of the Blessed Virgin, which she is said to have kissed on her visit to St. Ildefonso. The statue is of dark-coloured wood, and was formerly clothed in a mantle embroidered by Felipe Corral; and composed of gold, rubies, emeralds, and pearls, now kept in the Treasury. In this chapel the degree of doctor is conferred on licentiates. The two small chapels of the Cristo and of Santa Leocadia are adjacent to the entrance to the Capilla de los Reyes Nuevos.

Adjoining the Chapel of the Virgen del Sagrario are a set of apartments, built with it upon the site of an old hospital, by Nicolas de Vergara, junior, at the close of the sixteenth century. These rooms are the Sacristia, Vestuario, Cuarto de la Custódia, and Ochavo. The Sacristia, entered through a portal 26 feet high, contains paintings by El Greco, to be noticed in the chapter on that master; the ‘Betrayal of Christ,’ by Goya; and a ceiling fresco by Luca Giordano, representing the Miracle of San Ildefonso. The Vestuario contains pictures by several Italian masters, among them ‘Paul III.’ by Titian; a{125} replica of the portrait at Naples; a ‘Madonna’ by Rubens; and a ‘St. Francis’ by El Greco. The Custodia was till lately the Cathedral Treasury. The Ochavo, at the back of the Capilla de la Virgen, is richly adorned and contains the collection of relics, among them massive silver caskets, wonderfully wrought, for the bones of the saints Leocadia and Eugenius.

The vestments preserved here, to the number of forty sets, belong mostly to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and are of the most splendid description. “Each set [says Riaño] generally includes a chasuble, dalmatic, cope, altar frontal, covers for the gospel stands, and other smaller pieces. The embroideries on the orphreys, which are formed of figures of saints, are as perfect as the miniatures on illuminated MSS.”

The Cloisters to the north-west of the church were built by Cardinal Tenorio in 1389. They are not, as Miss Lynch observes, to be compared with those of Burgos, of Santiago, or of Oviedo. The garden they enclose lends a brighter, gayer note to the columned and arched galleries than is found in those other cathedrals. The frescoes in the lower cloister were painted by Francisco Bayeu, and illustrate the lives of St. Eugenius and the legend of the Niño perdido.

We should, perhaps, have described the exterior of the Cathedral first, but from the sight{126}seer’s point of view the interior is, of course, more important. It is a general subject of complaint that it is extremely difficult to obtain a good view of any considerable part of the fabric from the outside, nor does it stand out as conspicuously from a distance as its imposing dimensions would lead one to suppose. The best view is to be obtained from the church of Nuestra Señora de la Valle, above the Puente de San Martin. The exterior, with its flying buttresses, finials, and rose-windows, reflects the Gothic spirit of the interior. The west façade is flanked by two towers, that above the Chapel of the Canons alone being complete. It is 295 feet high, and was begun by order of Archbishop Tenorio, in 1380, by Rodrigo Alfons, and completed under Archbishop Contreras in 1440 by Alvar Gomez. On the summit is a small spire, surmounted by a cross, a vane, and an arrow. Here are hung the bells, among them the famous Campana Gorda, weighing nearly two tons, and whose note reaches to Madrid. The tower also contains a peal called the Matraca, worked continuously by mechanism from Maundy Thursday till Easter Saturday. The view from the summit is far-reaching and inspiring.

Among the finest features of this noble church are its eight principal entrances. In the western façade are three portals—the Puerto del Perdon{127} in the centre, flanked by the Puertas de los Escribános and de la Torre. All date from the first half of the fifteenth century and are in the Gothic style. The Puerta del Perdon forms a noble arch, richly ornamented, and divided into two smaller arches by a column surmounted by the figure of Christ, above which are the Twelve Apostles. Above these again is a relief in the Renaissance style representing the gift of the Chasuble to San Ildefonso. The smaller doors are in single arches, and are sculptured with statues of angels and patriarchs. The Puerta de los Escribános is so called because through it the notaries enter the church to take their oaths. It is also called the Puerta del Juicio. Above it is a long inscription commemorating the taking of Granada and the expulsion of the Jews. Above the portals the façade is adorned with a colossal sculpture of the Last Supper, the Saviour and the Apostles being seated each in a niche, and the table reaching from buttress to buttress. The façade is pierced with a beautiful rose-window thirty feet across with a glazed arcade beneath.

On the south side are the Puertas Llana and de los Leones. The former in the classic style, was made by Ignacio Haám in 1800. The Puerta de los Leones gives access to the transept, and is a magnificent Gothic work, erected in 1460 by the Fleming, de Egas, and ornamented by Juan{128} Alemán. The sculpture of the portal is perfect. The six columns of the atrium are surmounted by six lions holding shields. Here are the famous bronze doors, wrought by Villalpando and Ruy Diaz del Corral in 1545. The wood-carving and decoration employed a great many masters, among whom may be mentioned Velasco, Troyas, and the two Copins. Between them was divided the sum of 68,672 maravedis. At the opposite or northern end of the transept is the Puerta del Reloj, dating from the beginning of the fifteenth century, and so named from the clock above it. The door is of bronze and above it is a fine rose-window of about the same period. It is considered by Street the best example of stained glass now remaining in the Cathedral. West of this, the Puerta de Santa Catalina leads into the eastern cloister. The decoration is profuse. St. Catharine, and the instruments of her martyrdom, are shown, with the arms of Spain and the Tenorio family. The Puerta de la Presentacion, also leading into the cloister, is in the Renaissance style, and dates from 1565. Pedro Castañeda, Juan Vasquez, Torribio Rodriguez, Juan Manzano, and Andrés Hernandez are named as the designers of this very fine portal. The cloisters are entered from the west side next to the tower, by the Puerta del Mollete, so called because molletes or rolls were or are distributed to the poor here.{129}

The chapel and cloister of San Bias on the north side of the cloisters are the most important additions made to the structure in the fifteenth century. The chapel contains the monument of the founder, Cardinal Tenorio, and “in the cloister walls,” says Street, “a door which, in the capricious cusping and crocketing of its traceried work, illustrates the extremes into which Spanish architects of this age ran in their elaboration of detail and affectation of novelty.{130}”

THE DECLINE OF THE CITY

Toledo, up till then hardly distinguished for its loyalty to the Crown, loved Isabel the Catholic, and on her account, perhaps, rendered obedience to her Aragonese husband. The Catholic sovereigns liked the city, and generally held their Court there. The magnificent Cardinal Mendoza was the prime mover in the expedition against Granada, and planted the Cross on the summit of the Alhambra. The power of the primacy was in no way diminished by the consolidation of the monarchy, and Toledo still looked rather to its archbishop than to its king for guidance and governance. Under Ferdinand and Isabel it prospered exceedingly. The arts of peace were studied, industries flourished, and the more adventurous and restless spirits found an outlet for their energies in colonial enterprises beyond the seas instead of cutting each other’s throats in the byways of the city. Toledo became courtly and urbane. The luckless princess, Juana, was born at the Alcazar in 1479; and here the Infanta Isabel was married on April 29, 1498, to the King of Portugal. Only a few months later her corpse{131} was brought hither from Zaragoza, to be laid in the convent of Santa Isabel.

The death of Queen Isabel, and the proclamation of Juana and Felipe I. on May 22, 1502, put an end to the long spell of peace. Toledo sided at first with Ferdinand against his son-in-law, and was held by the Silvas against the latter’s forces under the Marquis de Villena. In the following year (1506) the Ayalas, supported by the townsmen generally, took possession of the town, and resolved to maintain its liberties against the Flemish favourites and centralising tendencies of the new régime. The Silvas, as a matter of course, ranged themselves on the opposite side, and the streets ran red with blood. Toledo was herself again.

The accession of the Flemish prince, Charles, afterwards emperor, determined the Castilians to make a stand for national independence. What city had so good a claim to be the headquarters of the movement, the focus of anti-foreign agitation, as Toledo the turbulent? In 1520 occurred the outbreak of the Comuneros movement. At its head were four gentlemen of Toledo: Hernando Dávalos, Gonzalo Gaytan, Pedro de Ayala, and (greatest of all) Juan de Padilla. Twenty thousand citizens rallied to the cry of “Padilla y Comunidad!” and the movement spread from the Tagus to Salamanca and west{132}wards to the frontiers of Portugal. To Juana, imprisoned at Tordesillas, herself a Toledan, protestations of loyalty and devotion were addressed. But denounce her son’s fraudulently obtained sovereignty she would not. Meanwhile Charles’s forces were not idle. The Alcaide, Clemente de Aguayo, held the tower of San Martin, and Don Juan de Silva, the Alcazar, against the insurgents. But the townsmen were victorious. Padilla, however, was defeated at Villalar, and executed, with his brave lieutenants, Juan Bravo and Maldonado.

In the Comunero leader’s dauntless wife, Maria de Pacheco, liberty found a new champion and Spain a new heroine. “She was found praying at the foot of the Cross,” says Miss Lynch, “when her servants brought her the news of Padilla’s defeat and death. She rose, robed herself in black, and walked to the Alcazar between her husband’s lieutenants, Dávalos and Acuña, who bore a standard representing Padilla’s execution. They named her captain of the insurgents, and found her implacable and violent, but still a sovereign commander.” For sixteen months under this Castilian Joan of Arc the old city of the Visigoths held out against the armies of Charles V. Routed in a bloody sortie on October 16, 1521, by Zuñiga, prior of San Juan, the Comuneros were obliged, ten days later, to{133} abandon the gates to the besiegers. A truce was agreed to, while the demands of the citizens should be presented to the Emperor. Maria remained in her own house, as in a fortress, guarded by her faithful troops. But on February 3 the murder of a citizen brought on a renewal of the conflict. Desperate battle waged in every street and lane. Maria, assailed and valiantly defended in her stronghold, at last cut her way through, and retired to Portugal, dying at Oporto years afterwards. The townsmen were worsted, and sullenly submitted. Toledo had fought her last fight.

Her day was over. Charles V. forgave her, and would come at times to live in the Alcazar. She was still the capital of Spain. But her haughty temper and the arrogance of her clergy matched ill with the policy of Philip II. In 1560 Madrid—upstart, provincial Madrid—was proclaimed the única corte. Less important than under the Khalifate, Toledo became a mere provincial town. But the Church did not desert her. She is still the metropolitan see of Spain.

Let us see what the monarchs of United Spain did for the old city, and what monuments remain of the days when it was Court and capital.

The church of San Juan de los Reyes, near the Puente de San Martin, was built in 1476 by Ferdinand and Isabel, in thanksgiving for the victory of Toro gained over the Portuguese allies of Juana,{134} nicknamed “la Beltraneja.” The first architect was a Fleming, Juan Guas, one of the builders of the cathedral. The church was intended to receive the ashes of the royal founders, but after the capture of Granada it was decided to establish the mausoleum in that city, and the completion of San Juan de los Reyes was delayed till the seventeenth century. In consequence, the architecture exhibits the transition from the Late Gothic to the Late Renaissance style. “Nothing,” remarks Street, “can be more elaborate than much of the detail of this church, yet I have seen few buildings less pleasing or harmonious.” The exterior is unpromising, and is decorated, if we can use the word in such a connection, with festoons of rusty chains which fettered the limbs of the Christians in Moorish prisons. The chief entrance, to the north, was completed by Covarrubias in 1610, and is in the decadent style of architecture. It is adorned with inferior statuary, and the arms and initials of the Catholic sovereigns.

The interior is composed of a single nave, two hundred feet long and from forty-three to seventy feet wide. There are four chapels on one side and three on the other. At the east end of the church is a shallow five-sided apse, forming the Capilla Mayor. Over the junction of the nave and transept is an octagonal cupola, resting on four fine pillars, with a pointed dome and a window in each{135} face. At the west end of the church is a deep gallery, containing the choir. The altar dates from the Renaissance period, and is brought well forward into the nave. It came from the suppressed church of Santa Cruz. Above it is a blue velvet canopy, embroidered with the eagle, the symbol of St. John. The whole fabric is enriched with statuary, tracery, carving, and heraldic devices in almost reckless profusion. The yoke and the arrows—the devices of the Catholic sovereigns—and their coats of arms are repeated again and again. Among the inscriptions is one commemorating the foundation of the church. It runs: “Este monasterio é églesia mandaron hacer los muy esclarecidos Principes é señores D. Hernando é Doña Isabel, Rey y Reina de Castilla, de Leon, de Aragon, de Sicilia, los cuales señores por bienaventurado matrimonio y uñaron los dichos Reinos, seyendo el dicho rey y señor natural de los reinos de Aragon y Sicilia, y seyendo la dicha señora Reina y señora natural de los Reinos de Castilla y Leon; el cual fundaron á gloria de nuestro señor Dios, y de la bienaventurada Madre suya, nuestra Señora la Virgén Maria, y por especial devocion que le ovieron.”

Admirable as is the church in its general structure, and in the detail and execution of its ornamentation, it is garish and ostentatious. There is a superabundance of light and luxury. Here{136} there is no dim religious light, no suggestion of mystery or devotion. Prayer would seem incompatible with the whole character of the edifice. More favourable was the opinion of Théophile Gautier, who declared that “Gothic art never produced anything more suave, more elegant, or more fine.”

Attached to the church is the convent, bestowed on the Franciscans, and pillaged by the French in 1808. It has been converted into a museum, which does not contain much of great interest. The most important exhibits are fragments of Visigothic inscriptions and Moorish tile-work.

The cloister of San Juan de los Reyes is a gem of florid Gothic, and the finest part of the whole fabric. There are two galleries, one above the other, the lower with traceried openings, the upper with large open arches. As in the church, there is here an excess of decoration, hardly a square inch on pillar, arch, and vaulting being free from sculptured ornamentation. There is a bewildering profusion of statues of angels, men, and animals, of scroll-work and foliage, heraldic devices and inscriptions. The whole is dazzlingly white—more like a temple of the Sun than a shrine of “the pale Galilean.” The original effect, perhaps, was less crude, for the church and cloisters have been recently restored, and, it must be confessed, not too skilfully.{137}

A most beautiful specimen of azulejo work has been built into the north-west wall. It comes from the suppressed monastery of the Calced Augustines, and is said to have been a part of the ornamentation of the ancient palace of Don Rodrigo—wherever that may have been situated.

Before the finishing touches had been put to San Juan de los Reyes, the last important Gothic work of Toledo, the erection of one of the two earliest examples of the Renaissance style in Spain had been begun. The hospital of Santa Cruz was built between the years 1494 and 1514 by Enrique de Egas, of Brussels, some ten years after he had completed the college of the same name at Valladolid. The hospital was designed by the founder, the mighty Cardinal Mendoza, as an asylum for foundlings. He died in 1495, and left 75,000 ducats to the queen for the completion of the work. Isabel it was who chose the site overlooking the bridge of Alcantara, where formerly the palace of the legendary King Galafre is fabled to have stood. Among other stories connected with the spot is that of a Leonese princess wedded against her will to a Moorish prince, her union with whom was prevented by the intervention of an angel. As in all the early specimens of Spanish Renaissance architecture, the groundwork of the building approximates to the Gothic, the new ideas manifesting themselves in the deco{138}ration and carving. The portal is superb. The reliefs represent the Adoration of the Cross by St. Helena, St. Peter, St. Paul, and the founder, Cardinal Mendoza, two pages also appearing, bearing mitre and helmet. Other reliefs, exquisitely chiselled, have for subjects the espousals of St. Joachim and St. Anne, and Charity. The four cardinal virtues are shown, and everywhere, amidst a maze of ornamentation, occur Mendoza’s arms and device. The plateresque windows, with their rejas in the local style, are deserving of admiration. Entering, we find a vast patio, enclosed by a double arcaded gallery of marble, and, crossing it, ascend a grand staircase with a fine ceiling of the artesonado kind. The chapel, in the form of a Maltese cross, has also a fine ceiling, and Gothic pillars, beautifully carved, that attest the splendid appearance once presented by this dismantled building. Some of the columns adorning Santa Cruz were brought from the Visigothic church of Santa Leocadia.

To the same period belongs the Franciscan convent and church of San Juan de la Penitencia, begun by order of Cisneros in 1514, and finished by his secretary, Fray Francisco Ruiz, Bishop of Avila. The semi-Moorish palace of the Pantojas was utilised in its construction, and the whole building bears traces of Arabic, or rather Mudejar, workmanship. Entering the chapel by a porch{139} adorned with the great Cardinal’s arms and foliations in the Gothic style, we find ourselves in a sombre edifice of a single nave, revealing a curious medley of styles. The roof is a fine example of the artesonado. Over the transept, which is divided from the nave by a plateresque reja, is a cupola with a stalactite roof of the Moorish pattern. The principal retablo is early Renaissance, and several of the altars may be classed as Baroque. The most interesting feature of the church is the tomb of the Bishop of Avila, who died in 1528. It is in the Renaissance style, and was the work of a Lombard artist. It is wrought in Sicilian marble, and is thus described by Ponz: “Above a large stone divided by three pilasters to form three pedestals there are an equal number of statues seated, representing Faith, Hope, and Charity. Between the pilasters are the arms of the Bishop—five castles. In a framed recess are the urn, couch, and recumbent figure. In front of the urn are seen two weeping children, and within the recess four angels draw aside the curtains. On either side are two Doric pillars supporting the frieze, which is inscribed, ‘Beati mortui qui in Domino moriantur.’ On the edge are two antique columns admirably executed. Between these columns and pilasters are statues, St. James and St. Andrew, and above, the figures of children. Over all is a bas-relief of the{140} Annunciation, with the statues of St. John the Divine and St. John Baptist, one-half the size of the Virtues below.”

The Emperor-King Charles V. had, as we have seen, small reason to love Toledo, but he did something for the permanent embellishment of the city, and the last architectural monuments reared on its craggy peninsula belong to his era.

It is difficult to ascribe the Alcazar, to which reference has so often been made, to any one epoch. It has undergone so many vicissitudes, so many reconstructions, that the name, as we have employed it, must be understood to represent a site rather than the actual palace. A stronghold of some sort has always been here—possibly, in Roman times, the Arx, where tradition avers the martyr Leocadia suffered death. The Arabian geographer, Jerif al Edris, writing in 1154, describes Toledo as “a town great in extent and population, extremely strong, with fine ramparts, and an Alcazaba, fortified and impregnable.” This citadel was doubtless the Alcazar, which was strengthened and rebuilt by successive Castilian kings, and is said to have been the residence of the Cid, the first Christian Alcaide. Added to, reconstructed, partially demolished and repeatedly restored, it must have presented an aspect rude and heterogeneous enough when, in 1538, Charles V. ordered Alonso de Covarrubias{141} and Luis de Vega to rebuild the palace entirely on the lines of the new Alcazar of Granada. The Flemish Emperor may, then, fairly be considered the founder of the present fortress-palace, though it has since his time undergone radical transformations. It was burnt down during the War of Succession in 1710, restored sixty years later, destroyed again by the French in 1810, and devastated by a third conflagration as late as 1887. Since 1882 it has been the seat of the Royal Military Academy.

The northern façade was constructed after the designs of Covarrubias, and looks on the square created by Ferdinand and Isabel in 1502. The reconstruction was so complete that probably no stone of the older façade was left in its place. The façade is severe and majestic, revealing classical influence, though not without important traces of the plateresque. It is flanked by towers, and adorned with a handsome portal—the work of Enrique de Egas, brother-in-law of Covarrubias. Over the door are the Imperial arms, supported by the figures of two heralds or mace-bearers. The fortress-like eastern façade is believed to be a part of the original Alcazar as restored by Alfonso X.; the western side of the building dates from the reign of the Catholic sovereigns, and the southern, with massive Doric pillars and square turrets, was built after designs by Juan de Herrera.{142}

The inner court, or patio, is described by a Spanish writer as “solemn, grandiose, full of majesty ... constructed for the dwelling-place of the August Cæsar.” It forms a spacious parallelogram and is enclosed by an arcade in two storeys with columns of the Corinthian order. Above the capitals are displayed the escutcheons of the various kingdoms ruled over by Charles. The modern restorers of the palace have adorned the court with a statue of the Emperor in the Roman costume in which he was so fond of being represented.

The finest feature of the palace must have been the staircase, designed by Villalpando and Herrera, which has been to some extent restored after its destruction by Stahremberg in 1710. One of the widest staircases in the world, “it ends,” says Miss Hannah Lynch “in the void!” In truth, the Alcazar is not to-day a very interesting building. It is, in reality, quite impossible to identify the scenes of the romantic and historical episodes which we know occurred in one or other of the successive Alcazars. But the room in which Alfonso VI. died and the window at which the hapless Blanche de Bourbon wept, pace the local guides, must have disappeared to the last stone and fragment ages ago. All that can be said of the palace to-day is that it forms an imposing landmark, and affords from its northern terrace one of the finest views of Toledo.{143}

To the age of Charles V. (or Carlos I. as in Spain he would properly be called) belongs the Hospital de San Juan Bautista, styled the Hospital de Afuera (outside) in the suburb of Covachuelas. The building was begun in 1541 by order of Archbishop Juan de Tavera, who died on his return from the baptism of Prince Carlos at Valladolid. The building was carried on after Bustamente’s death by the two Vergaras, and completed about 1600. The façade dates from the eighteenth century and is still unfinished. The courtyard, spacious and imposing, is divided into two and enclosed by colonnades. A fine Renaissance portal by Berruguete leads into the large chapel, which is in the form of a cross and surmounted by a dome. The pavement is of black and white marble. Before the altar is the tomb of Archbishop Tavera by Berruguete. This is one of the finest monuments in Spain. It was finished by Berruguete when he was over eighty years old, in 1561, his death taking place the same year in one of the rooms under the great clock. His sons received nearly a million maravedis for the work. “The Cardinal,” says Théophile Gautier, “is stretched out upon his tomb in his pontifical habit. Death has pinched his nose with its strong fingers, and the last contraction of the muscles, in their endeavour to retain the soul about to leave the body for ever, puckers up the corners of the mouth and lengthens the chin;{144} never was there a cast taken after death more horribly true; and yet the beauty of the work is such, that you forget any amount of repulsiveness that the subject may possess. Little children in attitudes of grief support the plinth and the Cardinal’s coat of arms. The most supple and softest clay could not be more easy or more pliant; it is not carved, it is kneaded!”

The hospital contains some of El Greco’s most notable work, which will be noticed in the chapter on that master.

To Charles V. Toledo also owes the grand New Gate of Visagra, built in 1550, and restored in 1575. It consists of two separate structures, or gateways, enclosing a patio. On the exterior of the north gate is shown the double eagle with the Spanish arms and a Latin inscription—all in sculptured granite. On the inside is a fine statue of St. Eugenio, variously attributed to Berruguete and Monegro. The statues of Gothic kings, a life-sized angel with unsheathed sword, elegant capitals and balconies, combine to make this gateway one of the finest approaches possessed by any city in the world.

The Ayuntamiento, or town hall, of Toledo was erected in the time of Ferdinand and Isabel by the corregidor Gomez Manrique, and enlarged and restored between 1576 and 1618 by the corregidor Juan Tello, under the supervision of El Greco. The façade is composed of two storeys,{145} the first consisting of nine arches with Doric columns which spring from massive pillars, the second of as many arches with Ionic columns. The edifice is surmounted by two towers, crowned with steeples and weather-vanes. On the fine staircase may be read in letters of gold on a blue ground this admonition to the civic dignitaries of Toledo:

The Summer Council Chamber is handsomely decorated with azulejos, and contains some battle pictures. The portraits of Carlos II. and his wife are the work of Carreño.

The celebrated Bridge of Alcantara, of which mention has so often been made in these pages, belongs indifferently to all the epochs of Toledo’s history, so no apology is needed for mentioning it here. “It constitutes to-day as in the past,” writes Amador de los Rios, “the principal entrance to the city, and, constructed very wisely on one of the narrowest parts of the river, it is formed of a great central arch of more than twenty-eight metres in{146} breadth, resting on the right on a solid pile, often demolished, behind which is a smaller semicircular arch, which is, in turn, sustained by the bridge head, founded on the rock and pierced by a still smaller arch or passage, where several Visigothic remains have been discovered.” At the outer or country end of the historic bridge formerly stood a fortified tower, which was in 1787 replaced by the existing structure. This is in a pretentious style, and is decorated with various inscriptions, among them one commemorating the building by order of Philip V. The majestic hexagonal tower on the town side, with its picturesque turrets, dates probably from 1259. Above it is a statue of St. Ildefonso, by Berruguete. Over the archway are sculptured the badges of Ferdinand and Isabel (the yoke and bundle of arrows), commemorating the restoration of the tower, in 1489, by Gomez Manrique. A noble bridge is this of Alcantara; old—old as the city—the work of all Toledo’s rulers, and like Toledo, grim, stern, rude, destined, it would seem, to endure for ever. Romans, Visigoths, Moors and Castilians have lingered on it, triumphed on it, fled across it, fought upon it, and across it to-day must walk every traveller entering with reverence this great temple of the mediæval and bygone.{147}

EL GRECO

Domeniko Theotokopuli,[A] known to us to-day as El Greco, was the first great painter of Spain, and in his strange and fascinating art, the Spanish School compels for the first time the attention of the world. And El Greco was not Spanish. He was born in Crete, it would seem about the year 1548, and died at Toledo in 1614. Learning his art in Venice, in his early manner he is a pure Venetian, owing much to the work of the Bassani, and more to the inspiration of Tintoretto, but in Toledo he became Spanish and himself, developing there a manner in which the special temper of the race finds an expression passionate enough, not equalled again, indeed, until the advent of Goya.

There will always be some men imaginative, entirely personal, who, like El Greco, seek to express themselves, and in so doing, quite unwittingly probably, express the life of their age. Having{148} the interpretative—creative would perhaps be the truer word—genius, their work becomes, as it were, a mirror, which reflects not the man alone, but the circumstances that have formed his life. For, after all, what the artist does is to use up what he has seen.

This is why El Greco seems to chronicle for us our impressions of Toledo, and of Spain.

Surely no other painter has lived in a city in such strong agreement with his spirit. Think of the place—wind-swept, heat-dried, extraordinarily austere, yet flushed with colour, ochre-red shading to unusual greens; heaped upon its rocky throne above the yellow flowing Tagus, its rugged silhouette straight cut against a sky hard and clear as enamel; and, beyond, the sierra like a great brown sea in which it all stands as an island starting from the waves. A suggestion of strenuousness seems to linger everywhere, a spirit, personal and keen, cruel almost as the sword-blades the city fashions. The very buildings, placed upon the crags beneath the great hulk of the Alcazar, repeat this impression, they rise in sharp upward and downward lines like an arrangement of swords, and make their appeal by the strange strength of their aspect. The streets are a tortuous net of steep-rising passage-ways. A city strongly itself that has suffered no change, fantastic as a city seen in a dream.{149}

Yes, to those who know Toledo, the impression of the character of the city upon El Greco will bring no surprise. His art corresponds perfectly with its setting. Everywhere his work is around you, for El Greco is one of those painters who has but a single home. He built churches and other buildings—the classic façade of the Ayuntamiento, for instance, was modelled on his design; he carved statues, he painted pictures, there are canvases of his in the museum, in the cathedral, and in many of the churches. And in all this mass of work, it is the living force behind it that is the first impression that you gain; a kind of driving power that fascinates you, just as Toledo fascinates you, by reason of its power. El Greco was a painter able to create—that is the secret of it all. And, be it remembered, the artist does not find his matter straight from the springs of his brain, what he is able to see he sets down, and that is all. His art is great in exact measure as it is able to transfer this vision from him to us. In this way El Greco, to whom vision seems to have been the whole of life, does in his pictures transfer to us the entire impression of Toledo, so that it is difficult to speak of his art without making Toledo the refrain.

And as we wait with his pictures and note, after the first surprise has left us, the qualities of the work, throughout they confirm this. The very{150} form of his composition is moulded upon Toledo. Just as its buildings cluster around the Alcazar, almost as bees swarming about their queen, so he groups everything around a central figure. Never, after he came to Toledo, did El Greco use Italian backgrounds. And in his long, lithe figures, so fantastic in their hard outlines, sometimes we catch that suggestion of the sword that haunts Toledo. Then when we come to more tangible things, we find to-day El Greco’s models in the dark peasants of Toledo. Nowhere else can we quite believe in the reality of those coldly fervent, self-absorbed, ecstatic men, who greet us with such fascination from his canvases, their lean, long profiles suggesting again that aspect of a sword.

Then, El Greco’s colour was drawn from the landscape around him. And colour, if we may credit the truth of the conversation recounted by Pacheco, was to him the one quality in painting, form, drawing, all else, being of secondary significance. This, too, was learnt in Toledo, where colour has an allurement—illusive and insistent. Toledo it was showed him the existence of cold tones, and the fascination of its greys and livid greens led him to anticipate modern colour, at a time when every one else was painting warm tonalities. In the Convent of San Juan de los Reyes, now the Museo Provincial, is that ‘Bird’s-Eye View{151} of Toledo,’ the picture in which we have a portrait of George Manuel Theotokopuli, El Greco’s son. At first you will be astonished, it is the strangest landscape in the world. But wait with the picture—always the danger with El Greco is that you will not linger enough. The painter who sees for himself must be studied, not dismissed as he who but sets down the common vision of things. And El Greco does give us the real Toledo in this fantastic landscape. Do you doubt this? Then go when night falls upon the city to some such vantage-point as the Puerta del Cambón, where beneath the dome of the evening sky you will see Toledo, heaped roof against roof, tower against tower. You will forget the strangeness of the picture’s statement, as you come to see that it is just this effect that El Greco has caught. Now you will recognise the reality of those bluish whites, those tones of green that surprised you, and, in gladness, you will yield to the truth, the beauty—are not the two the same?—of the painter’s vision, and avow how much he has taught you to see.

Always El Greco’s pictures leave an impression of their own upon the spectator; and this is the test of vital work. It is personality that counts in art. Whether he paints the visible truth of outward things, as in his portraits—that wonderful series in the Prado, for instance, in{152} which he startles us with his revelation of his model—or pure fancies of the mind, as ‘The Vision of Philip II.,’ in the Escorial, a picture that would seem to have no conscious reference to things seen, one feels that he had something definite to express. And although his style at first may have been formed largely on that of the great Venetian painters, of Tintoretto especially—a “sort of shorthand of the Venetian,” Mr. Ricketts calls it—in all his pictures there is but one personality—that of himself. At the back of his art was a force of passionate character—unbalanced? Yes! capricious and arbitrary; a tyrannical need that compelled expression. But in spite of his singular conventions and, from a theorist’s point of view, the strangeness and exaggeration of his qualities, he does convey his meaning, splendidly effective, if not the best. And because of this intensity of vision we have those pictures of exaggerated statement that give credit to the fable of the painter’s madness, such as the ‘St. John the Baptist,’ in the Hospital San Juan Bautista, a picture which many have found ugly, while the few see in its new conception a striving for personal utterance, and find many things in its suggestion.

El Greco stumbled in his methods maybe, never in his purpose, which was, it would seem to us, the significance of movement. All his strange{153} skill, the power of his imagination, his new knowledge of colour and light, are used in this service, to bring home to us the vision of movement that everywhere he saw. Even in his portraits it is this that holds us. There is something more in them than the outward likeness; there is a power of reaching to and showing us the unquiet spirit within. He makes his portraits live and speak. This quality is present in all his work. Every picture is built up by its effect; and this effect is movement—life. By concentrating on a particular passage, by a contempt for detail and peddling accuracy, he directs our minds to this principal thing. His interest, as it were, compels ours; he realises his vision and makes us share in his imagination.

But it may be said that in many of these pictures the effect is forced; in the ‘St. Maurice,’ the rejected altar-piece of the Escorial, for instance, in the ‘Baptism of Christ’ and the ‘Descent of the Holy Spirit,’ in the Prado, and in many pictures in Toledo, easily recognised, in which realities are replaced by a series of conventions. It is not necessary to wait to particularise examples. Certainly one does not see in the pictures of other painters those greens, those ashen whites and crimsons, those livid blacks; El Greco’s use of colour is unusual and his own. Light is not used as he uses it, as a quantity{154} for emotional appeal; those faces, so elongated or contracted, and with such extravagant expressions, those figures with hard anatomical outlines, do not correspond with life as we see it. Yes, this is true. But look longer at these pictures.... Well, would it be possible to gain their effects without the defects? If things are forced out of harmony it is for the sake of “telling strongly.” All this search for expression is done quite consciously. El Greco throughout was strong enough to be true to himself and to his imagination. He knew that no system of art is final, that the achievements of artists are, in truth, the stones wherewith the Temple of Art is built. Imagination does not see commonplaces. And we recall the statement of Blake—he, too, a painter of visions of the mind: “He who does not imagine in stronger and better lineaments, and in stronger and better light, than his perishing mortal eye can see, does not imagine at all.”

And the man? There is a portrait Domeniko Theotokopuli has left of himself now in the Museum of Seville. In it we see the long, striking profile, with its large, strong nose, restless eyes and straight mouth, cruel slightly, framed by the great white ruff that forms such fitting setting to the fine head. The forehead is high, the dark hair scant upon the temples. We may read in{155} the face, and still more in the perfectly shaped hands—the left holds a square palette upon which are the five primary colours, white, black, yellow-ochre, vermilion, and lake, the colours he used most frequently—the fastidiousness of the artist, the instinct for beauty; we may read a peculiar suggestion of mysticism and ardour; self-assertion, too, and impatience—both wait in those long, nervous fingers. It is a face of genius, but of a kind restless, unbalanced, decadent perhaps. And we understand the driving energy that burned to fever, so that at times the balance was lost between the painter’s aim and the result, and we realise that the work of such a man must be introspective, experimental, neurotic.

We know nothing almost of El Greco’s life, and if external happenings were all, the most original painter of Spain would remain an unexplained personality. His very name is uncertain, and contemporary writers, disregarding the Theotokopuli, speak of him as Domeniko Greco. We do not know the year in which he was born, for the information given by Palomino in “El Museo” must certainly be questioned, no register of his birth as yet having been found among the Cretan archives, or in the parochial books of the Greek colony in Venice, the city in which it seems certain that he lived—a pupil, we may well think, of Tintoretto, rather than of Titian; and this in{156} spite of the letter of his friend and compatriot the miniature-painter, Clovio,[B] in which Clovio speaks of the young Greek painter’s skill, tells of his coming to Rome, and, after commending him to the patronage of the Cardinal Nepote Farnese, refers to his having learnt his art from the greatest Venetian. But the testimony of his work gives more truth than this statement; his early pictures, their authorship so long unknown, again and again have been attributed to Tintoretto, to Bassano, to Veronese even, never to Titian.

That El Greco was a Cretan we know by his signature, always in Greek, on many pictures, Λομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος Κρήσεποίει—the ‘San{157} Maurice,’ in the Escorial, is one. And again, when called, in 1582, by the Tribunal of the Inquisition to act as interpreter in the case of a Cretan accused of being a Morisco, he describes himself as “Domeniko Theotokopuli, native of Candia, painter, resident in Toledo,” as we learn from a document discovered by Señor Cossio, to whose research, and to that of Señor Foradada and of Señor de Beruete, we owe the few discovered facts of El Greco’s life.

We know that Domeniko Greco came to Toledo some time before 1577, and in that year he was at work in the convent of Santo Domingo el Antigua, where the Church was built and its statues carved by him, and where he painted the screens of the fine retablo; that further, he would seem never to have left Toledo; that he married there, and had a son, George Manuel, who was architect and sculptor to the cathedral from 1628 to his death in 1631, and also a daughter, whose portrait figures in several pictures—in ‘Christ Despoiled of his Vestments,’ in the cathedral, for one; that he died in Toledo, and was buried in Santo Domingo el Antigua on April 7, 1614 [C] {158} —and that is about all. We have record of much work—Toledo still has more than fifty Grecos—and there were pictures painted for the small town of Illescas, and also for Madrid. We read of two lawsuits, one undertaken to compel the Cathedral Chapter to pay in full for the ‘Expolio,’[D] the second to vindicate the painter’s right to sell his pictures without paying the tax levied upon merchandise. These lawsuits, his pictures, with their dates and signatures, certain contracts and receipts, are the few facts to be reported.

It would seem that this strange, self-contained life wished to be silent; for it is perhaps not too fanciful to read this meaning into that answer given by El Greco when asked, in connection{159} with the writ served on him for the ‘Expolio,’ whether he had been brought to Toledo to paint the retablo of Santo Domingo: “I am neither bound to say why I came to this city nor to answer the other questions put to me.” Here we gain hints of certain very real traits of character.

And, if the facts of his life are meagre enough, we can find suggestions of this same temper, silent, yet passionate, in that visit of Pacheco to the Toledan painter when he was old, in 1611, of which we have spoken before. Pacheco tells us that El Greco was a student of many things, a writer on art, a great philosopher given to witty sayings, a sculptor and architect as well as a painter. He writes of much work that{160} he saw, and speaks in particular of a cupboard in which were models in clay of each picture El Greco had finished. The two painters talked on many subjects, of colour and its supreme quality in painting, of Michael Angelo and his failure as a colourist. But in all the account of Pacheco, always so minutely laborious, it is significant to note in one sentence the impression he formed of Domeniko Greco: “He was in all things as singular as in his painting.”

Nor will it do to overlook the testimony of Giuseppe Martinez, whose “Practical Letters on the Art of Painting,” though not printed until 1866, were written a century before. He too speaks of Domeniko Greco as of extravagant disposition, and in proof recounts that he engaged musicians to play to him that he might “enjoy an additional luxury during meals.” The prudent Aragonese condemns this “too much ostentation,” but we capture again some fresh clues and hints of this strangely effective personality—a fanatic of life, a fanatic of painting.

But we have not settled the account of genius when we have called it unusual, fanatic, or decadent. It is the solution of the dull that genius is extravagant consciously. El Greco can have had no desire, no power, to repeat the easy, the commonplace. If strange, exaggerated even, his art is without a trace of affectation. When he{161} painted a vision he felt it natural to symbolise his idea in the way that he did. In colour, in form, he painted only what his imagination saw, gaining in colour fresh harmonies for himself, and a new suggestion of movement in his imaginative compositions, to which our imagination must find answer.

El Greco understood all nature as a Living Presence; his art was a series of experiments to express this. And every one must be struck with the peculiar development of this special personality in his art from stage to stage—stages that with sufficient accuracy may be divided into three periods.

The first is the pupil’s search for truth; the Venetian stage, in which we find a consciousness of tradition, showing itself in the still-fettered design, in the attitudes of the figures, in the use of warm colour, in a flowing quality in the paint, and, especially perhaps, in the landscape backgrounds, so Venetian with palaces and marble-paved piazzas; yet mingled with all this tradition is an emphatic personality, an ardour of expression, very difficult to define, seen in such early pictures as ‘The Blind Man,’ in the Parma Gallery, or ‘The Cardinal,’ in the National Gallery, both painted before 1577. Over the whole Venetian period the influence of Tintoretto is obvious; while the portraits of these years{162} recall in their method the work of the Bassani; and of the pre-Spanish pictures, as, for instance, the ‘Cleansing of the Temple,’[E] now in the possession of the Countess of Yarborough, and the replica of the same subject on a small scale, in the Cook collection at Richmond, Surrey, a picture of real beauty that testifies to El Greco’s skill in miniature—these, and many other works, were thought until quite recently to be the work of the Venetians, the first being attributed to Paul Veronese, the latter to Tintoretto, and this in spite of their marked character.

And the Venetian influence remained in the first years in Toledo. It is seen in the beautiful Virgin in the early ‘Assumption,’ painted for the central altar-screen of Santo Domingo el Antigua, but now in the Prado.[F] But the chief work of this period is the ‘Christ Despoiled of His Vestments,’ still in the sacristy of the cathedral in Toledo, for which it was painted in 1577. Here, perhaps, in the fine simplicity of the grouping, in the dignity of the inspired head of the Saviour, in the rich and strong colour and in the vivid light and shade,{163} we have the best results of all El Greco learnt in Venice. But even in this beautiful picture we see the development, or rather the co-existence, of his two styles: on the one hand carefully and thoroughly worked-out qualities, a balanced art remembered from Venice, but with it all a power that was his own, that seized the elements in the picture and gave them life—his life. And again, we have in the excessive height of the Christ, in the hands of many of the figures in this picture and in the ‘Assumption,’ first hints of the special conventions with which the name of El Greco is certainly most associated.

We come to the second stage, in which the painter, forgetting tradition, seeks to set down his vision in his own way; it is the period of experiment, as we see it first in the ‘St. Maurice,’[G] painted in 1581, that strange picture, rejected, as we may so well believe, by Philip II., who, misunderstanding, as many have done since, the intensity of feeling that animates the work, attributed its exaggerated expression to madness. Here, and in other pictures of this time, in the seizing ‘Vision of Philip II.’ and in the ‘St. John the Baptist’ in particular, we have splendid{164} examples of imaginative work. Maybe the details are impossible, perhaps absurd—many have found them so—but for others the inspiration of the painter triumphs, and the longer they gaze at these visions the more they are impelled. For, be it remembered, the idea should be the starting-point in all imaginative pictures, and should control both the design and its treatment, and these Greco’s are splendid in this respect. Whether the imagination is exaggerated and perverted in wilful experiment, whether from an uncertain technical equipment, or whether it is, as we would think, the natural and true expression of intense dramatic vision, it is not easy to say. Who shall decide whether to call these mad pictures or visions that breathe the sublime? That is a question hard to answer in much of El Greco’s characteristic work. Perhaps the truth is that we dislike too readily what we do not easily understand. El Greco goes back to first principles and speaks in symbols with which we are not familiar. Those spectres of human kind that surprise us in so many of his pictures in Toledo, in those in the Prado, as well as in these two in the Escorial, do not suggest life as we see it; but they are inspired—they do convey his meaning. This painter’s method is a real enigma; he essayed surprising effects by separating colour into its original values; he used light as a means of emotional appeal, giving us some{165}times most delicate harmonies, sometimes discordant contrasts. Domeniko Greco had to teach his world to see what he saw, and in this way he came, it may seem to some, to over-emphasise what to him was truth.

And his third stage was a fevered expression of his imaginative vision. We have entered a new world of extraordinary restlessness, the restlessness that must exist when spirit struggles from the bonds of the flesh. Toledo, the ardent arid city, burnt fiercely in El Greco’s blood, and, more and more, he seems to have felt that it was not enough to record facts; to have cared less to give æsthetic pleasure; but that the object of his art should be to clothe abstract ideas with life. It is something of all this that we find in his later pictures. In each there is emphasis—or, if you like, exaggeration—of statement; in the ‘Coronation of the Virgin’ in San José, for instance, a picture that in a strange, left-handed way carries us forward to the picture by Velazquez [H] on the same subject. The exaggeration is equally visible in the ‘Assumption’ in San Vicente, more beautiful, and the most interesting of these rare visions, a picture in which we have movement—the very sensation of a figure{166} passing through the air as we have, perhaps, in no other picture. It is even stronger in the group of pictures in Madrid, the ‘Baptism,’ the ‘Descent of the Holy Spirit,’ the ‘Resurrection,’ and the ‘Christ Dead in the Arms of God’; it meets us again in the ‘St. Joseph with the Child Jesus,’ and in the ‘Virgin and Child with Saints Justa and Gertrude,’[I] both in San José, the church that is the museum of so much of the master’s work—pictures all similar in their intense sentiment; while emphasis burns to a white flame of ardent expression in the famed ‘St. John the Baptist,’ the wonderful picture of which we have spoken already. It is there, too, in the ‘Christ Crucified,’ one in the Prado, one in San Nicolas, surely the most terrible realisation possible of that scene of sacrifice, in which the agony of spirit so outweighs the agony of the flesh, and sky and earth seem to take their share in the struggle.

It is impossible to translate the effect of these animated religious pictures into words. El Greco was not content to embody the old myths in fresh forms, but he gave fresh forms to the ideas that are, as it were, the soul of each myth—that which lives when the form of the stories change. Even in his pictures with few figures, such for instance, as the ‘Mary and Jesus,’ in San Vicente, the{167} ‘St. Francis,’ of which there are four replicas in Toledo, or that earlier picture, a beautiful rendering of a difficult theme, ‘La Veronica,’ one of the series painted for the Santo Domingo el Antigua in 1575-76, we have this exaggeration. Then, sometimes, exaggeration, which in each picture, after all, only emphasises the idea, disappears altogether, and we are given figures of singular beauty, as the ‘San Martin,’ in San José, or the really fine Madonnas—dark, oval-faced angels that surprise us at times with a beauty of type we hardly expect from El Greco. But, as a rule, in the pictures of this period, roughly marked by the painting of that experimental picture the ‘St. Maurice,’ there is this intensity of expression; and especially we find a new, and often strange, use of colour; colour, as well as form, being used as a means of dramatic statement, with a result that to many is exaggeration. For El Greco learnt first, perhaps, from the Venetians, and afterwards certainly in Toledo, many new possibilities of colour—that it has a quality that speaks, and further that the appeal of a picture depends first of all on the tone of its colour. It is for this reason he used colour as a means of emotional appeal; it was another quality by which to convey his idea to the world. For El Greco held truly that the province of art is to interpret, not to imitate. Every development of his art{168} seems to have come from his own mind, hardly at all from the work of other painters; from the first he was true to his ideals. And always his pictures seem to be more the work of his soul than of his hand; which, in other words, is to say that he was greater as an artist than as a painter.

Domeniko Greco, like so many of the painters of Spain, was great in portraiture; and some of his portraits, such as those of Antonio Covarrubias and of Juan de Alava, in the Museo de San Juan de Los Reyes, that of Cardinal Tavera, in the Hospital de Afuera, the whole series in the Prado, and many others not possible to name, are as fine portraits as have ever been done in the world. In his earliest portraits even, in that of Julio Clovio, in the Museum of Naples, or that of ‘A Student,’ a portrait, it well may be, of the young painter himself, we have the qualities of his later work; always it is the spirit of his model that he seeks.

And this inward interpretation of life is seen, too, in that picture which is accounted rightly the most interesting, though not perhaps the most typical, of his work, ‘The Burial of Gonzalo Ruiz, Count of Orgaz,’ still in the Church of Santo Tomé, where it was painted in 1584. Look at this gallery of living portraits, all the life of Toledo—the life of Spain—is reflected back from those ardent faces. In St. Augustine, splendid in ecclesiastical robes, is the magnificent{169} opulence of the Catholic Church; in the livid face of the dead count, in the cowled monk and two priests is the fervid piety of a people who have felt themselves in mystical communion with God; in the young, warm beauty of St. Stephen and the lovely acolyte is the full joy and rich colour of Spain; and lastly, in the long line of mourners who stand behind the group of the principal figures, and where the painter’s own nervous face is the sixth portrait counting from the right side, you have types unchanged in Castile to-day. And how individual is the rendering of the upper section of the picture in which Christ awaits in the heavens the spirit of the dead saint. Yes, this picture is one of the greatest pictures in Spain; it is always interesting.

A new and important series of volumes, dealing with Spain in its various aspects, its history, its cities and monuments. Each volume will be complete in itself in a uniform binding, and the number and excellence of the reproductions from pictures will justify the claim that these books comprise the most copiously illustrated series that has yet been issued, some volumes having over 300 pages of reproductions of pictures, etc.

A BIOGRAPHY AND APPRECIATION. ILLUSTRATED BY OVER 165 REPRODUCTIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS OF HIS MOST CELEBRATED PICTURES

While the names of Murillo and Velazquez are inseparably linked in the history of Art as Spain’s immortal contribution to the small band of world-painters, the great Court-Painter to Philip IV. has ever received the lion’s share of public attention. Many learned and critical works have been written about Murillo, but whereas Velazquez has been familiarised to the general reader by the aid of small, popular biographies, the niche is still empty which it is hoped that this book will fill.

In this volume the attempt has been made to show the painter’s art in its relation to the religious feeling of the age in which he lived, and his own feeling towards his art. Murillo was the product of his religious era, and of his native province, Andalusia. To Europe in his lifetime he signified little or nothing. He painted to the order of the religious houses in his immediate vicinity; his works were immured in local monasteries and cathedrals, and, passing immediately out of circulation, were forgotten or never known.

A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF THE ROYAL ARMOURY AT MADRID. ILLUSTRATED WITH 386 REPRODUCTIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS. DEDICATED BY SPECIAL PERMISSION TO H.M. QUEEN MARIA CRISTINA OF SPAIN

Although several valuable and voluminous catalogues of the Spanish Royal Armoury have, from time to time, been compiled, this “finest collection of armour in the world” has been subjected so often to the disturbing influences of fire, removal, and re-arrangement, that no hand catalogue of the Museum is available, and this book has been designed to serve both as a historical souvenir of the institution and a record of its treasures.

The various exhibits with which the writer illustrates his narrative are reproduced to the number of nearly 400 on art paper, and the selection of weapons and armour has been made with a view not only to render the series interesting to the general reader, but to present a useful text book for the guidance of artists, sculptors, antiquaries, costumiers, and all who are engaged in the reproduction or representation of European armoury.{685}

A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF THE SPANISH ROYAL PALACE, MONASTERY AND MAUSOLEUM. ILLUSTRATED WITH PLANS AND 278 REPRODUCTIONS FROM PICTURES AND PHOTOGRAPHS

The Royal Palace, Monastery, and Mausoleum of El Escorial, which rears its gaunt, grey walls in one of the bleakest but most imposing districts in the whole of Spain, was erected to commemorate a victory over the French in 1557. It was occupied and pillaged by the French two and a-half centuries later, and twice it has been greatly diminished by fire; but it remains to-day, not only the incarnate expression of the fanatic religious character and political genius of Philip II., but the greatest mass of wrought granite which exists on earth, the leviathan of architecture, the eighth wonder of the world.

In the text of this book the author has endeavoured to reconstitute the glories and tragedies of the living past of the Escorial, and to represent the wonders of the stupendous edifice by reproductions of over two hundred and seventy of the finest photographs and pictures obtainable. Both as a review and a pictorial record it is hoped that the work will make a wide appeal among all who are interested in the history, the architecture, and the art of Spain.

A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF THE “CITY OF GENERATIONS,” WITH 510 ILLUSTRATIONS

The origin of Imperial Toledo, “the crown of Spain, the light of the world, free from the time of the mighty Goths,” is lost in the impenetrable mists of antiquity. Mighty, unchangeable, invincible, the city has been described by Wörmann as “a gigantic open-air museum of the architectural history of early Spain, arranged upon a lofty and conspicuous table of rock.”

But while some writers have declared that Toledo is a theatre with the actors gone and only the scenery left, the author does not share the opinion. He believes that the power and virility upon which Spain built up her greatness is reasserting itself. The machinery of the theatre of Toledo is rusty, the pulleys are jammed from long disuse, but the curtain is rising steadily if slowly, and already can be heard the tuning-up of fiddles in its ancient orchestra.

In this belief the author of this volume has not only set forth the story of Toledo’s former greatness, but has endeavoured to place before his readers a panorama of the city as it appears to-day, and to show cause for his faith in the greatness of the Toledo of the future.{686}

Seville, which has its place in mythology as the creation of Hercules, and was more probably founded by the Phœnicians, which became magnificent under the Roman rule, was made the capital of the Goths, became the centre of Moslem power and splendour, and fell before the military prowess of St. Ferdinand, is still the Queen of Andalusia, the foster-mother of Velazquez and Murillo, the city of poets and pageantry and love.

Seville is always gay, and responsive and fascinating to the receptive visitor, and all sorts of people go there with all sorts of motives. The artist repairs to the Andalusian city to fill his portfolio; the lover of art makes the pilgrimage to study Murillo in all his glory. The seasons of the Church attract thousands from reasons of devotion or curiosity. And of all these myriad visitors, who go with their minds full of preconceived notions, not one has yet confessed to being disappointed in Seville.

The author has here attempted to convey in the illustrations an impression of this laughing city where all is gaiety and mirth and ever-blossoming roses, where the people pursue pleasure as the serious business of life in an atmosphere of exhilarating enjoyment.

A GUIDE AND HANDBOOK TO THE ROYAL PICTURE GALLERY OF MADRID. ILLUSTRATED WITH 221 REPRODUCTIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS OF OLD MASTERS. DEDICATED BY SPECIAL PERMISSION TO H.R.H. PRINCESS HENRY OF BATTENBERG

This volume is an attempt to supplement the accurate but formal notes contained in the official catalogue of a picture gallery which is considered the finest in the world. It has been said that the day one enters the Prado for the first time is an important event like marriage, the birth of a child, or the coming into an inheritance; an experience of which one feels the effects to the day of one’s death.

The excellence of the Madrid gallery is the excellence of exclusion; it is a collection of magnificent gems. Here one becomes conscious of a fresh power in Murillo, and is amazed anew by the astonishing apparition of Velazquez; here is, in truth, a rivalry of miracles of art.

The task of selecting pictures for reproduction from what is perhaps the most splendid gallery of old masters in existence, was one of no little difficulty, but it is believed that the collection is representative, and that the letterpress will form a serviceable companion to the visitor to The Prado.{687}

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE MOSLEM RULE IN SPAIN, TOGETHER WITH A PARTICULAR ACCOUNT OF THE CONSTRUCTION, THE ARCHITECTURE, AND THE DECORATION OF THE MOORISH PALACE, WITH 460 ILLUSTRATIONS. DEDICATED BY SPECIAL PERMISSION TO H.I.M. THE EMPRESS EUGÉNIE

This volume is the third and abridged edition of a work which the author was inspired to undertake by the surpassing loveliness of the Alhambra, and by his disappointment in the discovery that no such thing as an even moderately adequate illustrated souvenir of “this glorious sanctuary of Spain” was obtainable. Keenly conscious of the want himself, he essayed to supply it, and the result is a volume that has been acclaimed with enthusiasm alike by critics, artists, architects, and archæologists.

In his preface to the first edition, Mr. Calvert wrote: “The Alhambra may be likened to an exquisite opera which can only be appreciated to the full when one is under the spell of its magic influence. But as the witchery of an inspired score can be recalled by the sound of an air whistled in the street, so—it is my hope—the pale ghost of the Moorish fairy-land may live again in the memories of travellers through the medium of this pictorial epitome.”

A BIOGRAPHY AND APPRECIATION. ILLUSTRATED BY REPRODUCTIONS OF OVER 140 OF HIS PICTURES

In a Series such as this, which aims at presenting every aspect of Spain’s eminence in art and in her artists, the work of Domenico Theotocópuli must be allotted a volume to itself. “El Greco,” as he is called, who reflects the impulse, and has been said to constitute the supreme glory of the Venetian era, was a Greek by repute, a Venetian by training, and a Toledan by adoption. His pictures in the Prado are still catalogued among those of the Italian School, but foreigner as he was, in his heart he was more Spanish than the Spaniards.

El Greco is typically, passionately, extravagantly Spanish, and with his advent, Spanish painting laid aside every trace of Provincialism, and stepped forth to compel the interest of the world. Neglected for many centuries, and still often misjudged, his place in art is an assured one. It is impossible to present him as a colourist in a work of this nature, but the author has got together reproductions of no fewer than 140 of his pictures—a greater number than has ever before been published of El Greco’s works.{688}

A BIOGRAPHY AND APPRECIATION. ILLUSTRATED WITH 142 REPRODUCTIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS OF HIS MOST CELEBRATED PICTURES

Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez—“our Velazquez,” as Palomino proudly styles him—has been made the subject of innumerable books in every European language, yet the Editor of this Spanish Series feels that it would not be complete without the inclusion of yet another contribution to the broad gallery of Velazquez literature.

The great Velazquez, the eagle in art—subtle, simple, incomparable—the supreme painter, is still a guiding influence of the art of to-day. This greatest of Spanish artists, a master not only in portrait painting, but in character and animal studies, in landscapes and historical subjects, impressed the grandeur of his superb personality upon all his work. Spain, it has been said, the country whose art was largely borrowed, produced Velazquez, and through him Spanish art became the light of a new artistic life.

The author cannot boast that he has new data to offer, but he has put forward his conclusions with modesty; he has reproduced a great deal that is most representative of the artist’s work; and he has endeavoured to keep always in view his object to present a concise, accurate, and readable life of Velazquez.

A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF THE SEVEN PRINCIPAL PALACES OF THE SPANISH KINGS. PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED

Spain is beyond question the richest country in the world in the number of its Royal Residences, and while few are without artistic importance, all are rich in historical memories. Thus, from the Alcazar at Seville, which is principally associated with Pedro the Cruel, to the Retiro, built to divert the attention of Philip IV. from his country’s decay; from the Escorial, in which the gloomy mind of Philip II. is perpetuated in stone, to La Granja, which speaks of the anguish and humiliation of Christina before Sergeant Garcia and his rude soldiery; from Aranjuéz to Rio Frio, and from El Pardo, darkened by the agony of a good king, to Miramar, to which a widowed Queen retired to mourn: all the history of Spain, from the splendid days of Charles V. to the present time, is crystallised in the Palaces that constitute the patrimony of the Crown.

The Royal Palaces of Spain are open to visitors at stated times, and it is hoped that this volume, with its wealth of illustrations, will serve the visitor both as a guide and a souvenir.{689}

The glory of Valladolid has departed, but the skeleton remains, and attached to its ancient stones are the memories that Philip II. was born here, that here Cervantes lived, and Christopher Columbus died. In this one-time capital of Spain, in the Plaza Mayor, the fires of the Great Inquisition were first lighted, and here Charles V. laid the foundation of the Royal Armoury, which was afterwards transferred to Madrid.

More than seven hundred years have passed since Oviedo was the proud capital of the Kingdoms of Las Asturias, Leon, and Castile. Segovia, though no longer great, has still all the appurtenances of greatness, and with her granite massiveness and austerity, she remains an aristocrat even among the aristocracy of Spanish cities. Zamora, which has a history dating from time almost without date, was the key of Leon and the centre of the endless wars between the Moors and the Christians, which raged round it from the eighth to the eleventh centuries.

In this volume the author has striven to re-create the ancient greatness of these six cities, and has preserved their memories in a wealth of excellent and interesting illustrations.

In Leon, once the capital of the second kingdom in Spain; in Burgos, which boasts one of the most magnificent cathedrals in Spain, and the custodianship of the bones of the Cid; and in Salamanca, with its university, which is one of the oldest in Europe, the author has selected three of the most interesting relics of ancient grandeur in this country of departed greatness.

Leon to-day is nothing but a large agricultural village, torpid, silent, dilapidated; Burgos, which still retains traces of the Gotho-Castilian character, is a gloomy and depleting capital: and Salamanca is a city of magnificent buildings, a broken hulk, spent by the storms that from time to time have devastated her.

Yet apart from the historical interest possessed by these cities, they still make an irresistible appeal to the artist and the antiquary. They are content with their stories of old-time greatness and their cathedrals, and these ancient architectural splendours, undisturbed by the touch of a modernising and renovating spirit, continue to attract the visitor.{690}

A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF THE SPANISH CAPITAL, WITH 450 ILLUSTRATIONS

Madrid is at once one of the most interesting and most maligned cities in Europe. It stands at an elevation of 2,500 feet above the sea level, in the centre of an arid, treeless, waterless, and wind-blown plain; but whatever may be thought of the wisdom of selecting a capital in such a situation, one cannot but admire the uniqueness of its position, and the magnificence of its buildings, and one is forced to admit that, having fairly entered the path of progress, Madrid bids fair to become one of the handsomest and most prosperous of European cities.

The splendid promenades, the handsome buildings, and the spacious theatres combine to make Madrid one of the first cities of the world, and the author has endeavoured with the aid of the camera, to place every feature and aspect of the Spanish metropolis before the reader. Some of the illustrations reproduced here have been made familiar to the English public by reason of the interesting and stirring events connected with the Spanish Royal Marriage, but the greater number were either taken by the author, or are the work of photographers specially employed to obtain new views for the purpose of this volume.

A BIOGRAPHY AND APPRECIATION. ILLUSTRATED BY REPRODUCTIONS OF 600 OF HIS PICTURES

The last of the old masters and the first of the moderns, as he has been called, Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes is not so familiarised to English readers as his genius deserves. He was born at a time when the tradition of Velazquez was fading, and the condition of Spanish painting was debased almost beyond hope of salvation; he broke through the academic tradition of imitation; “he, next to Velazquez, is to be accounted as the man whom the Impressionists of our time have to thank for their most definite stimulus, their most immediate inspiration.”

The genius of Goya was a robust, imperious, and fulminating genius; his iron temperament was passionate, dramatic, and revolutionary; he painted a picture as he would have fought a battle. He was an athletic, warlike, and indefatigable painter; a naturalist like Velazquez; fantastic like Hogarth; eccentric like Rembrandt; the last flame-coloured flash of Spanish genius.

It is impossible to reproduce his colouring; but in the reproductions of his works the author has endeavoured to convey to the reader some idea of Goya’s boldness of style, his mastery of frightful shadows and mysterious lights, and his genius for expressing all terrible emotions.{691}

A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF THE ANCIENT CITY WHICH THE CARTHAGINIANS STYLED THE “GEM OF THE SOUTH,” WITH 160 ILLUSTRATIONS

Gay-looking, vivacious in its beauty, silent, ill-provided, depopulated, Cordova was once the pearl of the West, the city of cities, Cordova of the thirty suburbs and three thousand mosques; to-day she is no more than an overgrown village, but she still remains the most Oriental town in Spain.

Cordova, once the centre of European civilisation, under the Moors the Athens of the West, the successful rival of Baghdad and Damascus, the seat of learning and the repository of the arts, has shrunk to the proportions of a third-rate provincial town; but the artist, the antiquary and the lover of the beautiful, will still find in its streets and squares and patios a mysterious spell that cannot be resisted.

A NEW LIFE OF THE GREAT SPANISH AUTHOR TO COMMEMORATE THE TERCENTENARY OF THE PUBLICATION OF “DON QUIXOTE,” WITH NUMEROUS PORTRAITS AND REPRODUCTIONS FROM EARLY EDITIONS OF “DON QUIXOTE”

“A popular and accessible account of the career of Cervantes.”—Daily Chronicle.

“A very readable and pleasant account of one of the great writers of all time.”—Morning Leader.

“Mr. Calvert is entitled to the gratitude of book-lovers for his industrious devotion at one of our greatest literary shrines.”—Birmingham Post.

“It is made trebly interesting by the very complete set of Cervantes’ portraits it contains, and by the inclusion of a valuable bibliography.”—Black and White.

“We recommend the book to all those to whom Cervantes is more than a mere name.”—Westminster Gazette.

“A most interesting résumé of all facts up to the present time known.”—El Nervion de Bilbao, Spain.

“The most notable work dedicated to the immortal author of Don Quixote that has been published in England.”—El Graduador, Spain.

“Although the book is written in English no Spaniard could have written it with more conscientiousness and enthusiasm.”—El Defensor de Granada, Spain.{692}

OF GRANADA, BEING A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE MOSLEM RULE IN SPAIN FROM THE REIGN OF MOHAMMED THE FIRST TO THE FINAL EXPULSION OF THE MOORS, TOGETHER WITH A PARTICULAR ACCOUNT OF THE CONSTRUCTION, THE ARCHITECTURE AND THE DECORATION OF THE MOORISH PALACE, WITH 80 COLOURED PLATES AND NEARLY 300 BLACK AND WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS (NEW EDITION). DEDICATED BY PERMISSION TO H.M. KING ALFONSO XIII.

“It is hardly too much to say that this is one of the most magnificent books ever issued from the English Press.”—Building World.

“One is really puzzled where to begin and when to stop in praising the illustrations.”—Bookseller.

“The most complete record of this wonder of architecture which has ever been contemplated, much less attempted.”—British Architect.

“It is the last word on the subject, no praise is too high.”—Nottingham Express.

“May be counted among the more important art books which have been published during recent years.”—The Globe.

“Has a pride of place that is all its own among the books of the month.”—Review of Reviews.

“Has in many respects surpassed any books on the Alhambra which up to the present have appeared in our own country or abroad.”—El Graduador, Spain.

“One of the most artistic productions of the year.”—Publishers’ Circular.

“A standard work, the compilation of which would credit a life’s labour.”—Hull Daily Mail.{693}

BEING A BRIEF RECORD OF THE ARABIAN CONQUEST AND OCCUPATION OF THE PENINSULA, WITH A PARTICULAR ACCOUNT OF THE MOHAMMEDAN ARCHITECTURE AND DECORATION IN THE CITIES OF CORDOVA, SEVILLE AND TOLEDO, WITH MANY COLOURED PLATES, AND OVER 400 BLACK AND WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS, DIAGRAMS, ETC., DEDICATED BY PERMISSION TO H.M. KING ALFONSO XIII.

“The making of this book must surely have been a veritable labour of love; and love’s labour has certainly not been lost.”—Pall Mall Gazette.

“The best age of Moorish architecture in Spain is shown with remarkable vividness and vitality.”—The Scotsman.

“A most gorgeous book.... We cheerfully admit Mr. Calvert into the ranks of those whom posterity will applaud for delightful yet unprofitable work.”—Outlook.

“The illustrations are simply marvels of reproduction.”—Dundee Advertiser.

“One of the books to which a simple literary review cannot pretend to do justice.”—Spectator.

“A special feature of a work of peculiar interest and value are the illustrations.”—Newcastle Chronicle.

“The illustrations are given with a minuteness and faithfulness of detail, and colour, which will be particularly appreciated and acknowledged by those who are most acquainted with the subject themselves.”—Liverpool Post.

“It is impossible to praise too highly the care with which the illustrations have been prepared.”—Birmingham Daily Post.

“It is illustrated with so lavish a richness of colour that to turn its pages gives one at first almost the same impression of splendour as one receives in wandering from hall to hall of the Alcazar of Seville; and this is probably the highest compliment we could pay to the book or its author.”—Academy.

“The occasional delicacy of design and harmony of colour can scarcely be surpassed ... a valuable and profusely illustrated volume.”—Guardian.

“Mr. Calvert has given a very complete account of the evolution of Moresco art.”—The Connoisseur.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] This spelling of his name resembles most that used by himself.

[B] The exact contents are as follows:

“Al Card. Farnese—Viterbo.

“A’ di 16 di Nouembre, 1570.

“E’ capitato in Roma un giouane Candiotto discepolo di Titiano, che á mio giuditio parmi raro nella pittura; e fra l’altre cose egli ha fatto un ritratto da se stesso, che fa stupire tutti questi Pittori di Roma. Io vorrei tratenerlo sotto l’ombra de V.S. Illma. et Revma. senza spesa altra del vivere, ma solo de una stanza nell Palazzo Farnese per qualche poco di tempo, cioé per fin che egli si venghi ad accomodare meglio. Pero La prego et supplico sia contenta di scrivere al Conte Lodovico suo Maiordomo, che lo provegghi nel detto Palazzo di qualche stanza ad alto; che V.S. Illma. fará un’ opera virtuosa degna di Lei, e io gliene terro obligo. Et le bascio con reverenza le mani.

“Di V.S. Illma. et Revma. humilissimo servitore.

“Julio Clovio.”

[C] The record of his burial, discovered by Señor de Beruete in the register of the parish church of Santo Tomé, is brief: “Libro de entierros de Santo Tomé de 1601-1614, en siete del Abril del 1614 falescio Domeniko Greco. No hizo testamento, recibo los sacramentos, en teroso en Santo Domingo el Antigua.”

[D] Two judges were appointed to settle the dispute, which arose from the introduction of the three Marys into the picture. The Chapter objected to their presence. El Greco’s defence was characteristic enough—What did it matter? and, besides, the women were a long way off. The judges disagreed; whereupon the dispute was settled by Alezo de Montoyo as follows:

“Having seen the said painting which has been executed by the said Domeniko, and the appraisements of the judge appointed by both parties, and other persons who understand the said painting, its execution and admirable finish; and the reasons which the said judges have given; and seeing that the said painting is one of the best that I have seen; and that, if it were to be estimated for all its valuable qualities, it would be valued at a much higher sum, which but few would care to pay for it; but, in view of the nature of the times and the price paid generally for the paintings of great artists in Castile; and in view of, and taking into consideration all the above and all other points that were necessary, I find that I must order, and I do order, that for the said painting the said Garcia de Loaysa, in the name of the said Holy Church, shall give and pay to the said Domeniko Theotokopuli three thousand and five hundred reals: and above this sum the said Domeniko Theotokopuli cannot ask, nor must he ask, for anything more for the said painting; and as regards the judges for the said workers, they say that it is improper for the Marys to be introduced into the story; as regards this I am sending the declaration of it to some theologians versed in such matters, that they may decide upon it.”

[E] This is another rendering of the same picture; and still another is in the collection of Señor de Beruete, Madrid.

[F] This picture passed into the collection of the Infanta Doña Isabel Farnese, and is now in the Museo del Prado. The ‘Assumption’ in the Church of Santo Domingo el Antigua is a poor copy of the original picture.

[G] The picture was painted for the altar of St. Maurice, but it was rejected by Philip II., and the commission given to a third-rate Italian. To-day the picture hangs in the Sala Capitulare.

[H] This likeness is more striking even in another ‘Coronation of the Virgin,’ by El Greco, in the collection of Colonel P. Bosch, Madrid.

[I] Some authorities name these saints Sta. Inez and Sta. Feda.

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Toledo: an historical and descriptive account of the "City of generations"

TOLEDO