II BURGOS THE CAPITAL OF CASTILE

Burgos, the red and white city in the broad valley of the Arlanzon, is more mediæval than many an older town. For she was no inheritance from Celts or Romans, but was born in the Dark Ages, waxed prosperous within them, and declined with the Renaissance and the dawn of the modern era. There is nothing that is classical, little that is modern, about this old capital of Castile. All her memories are of Gothic, mediæval, romantic Spain. To her belong knights and barons, shield and helm and lance, tournaments and jousts, soaring Gothic spires, and the quiet of the cloister—all the pageant and panorama of mediævalism.

Burgos was born amid the clash of arms. This dry, desert-like province of Castile, which is now the very heart of, and whose name is almost synonymous with Spain, was a thousand years ago a very debatable ground between Moor and Christian. Leon, to the west, looked fiercely east and south towards the dusky garrisons of Medina Sarakusta (Zaragoza), and Tolaitola (Toledo). In itself the country seemed hardly worth settling in or fighting for. It was the frontier, the ‘marches,’ as we should have called it in olden England. And in the Dark Ages danger ever ran like a hedge along the border of two lands. The valley of the Arlanzon, a veritable oasis in this desert, was early peopled with shepherds and tillers of the soil. To protect these against the forays of the Beni Kasim from Zaragoza, early in the ninth century a fort or advanced post was established here by the kings of Asturias and Leon. Its defence was entrusted by Ordoño I. to a count (850-866), despite whose efforts the post was destroyed by the Moors under Abd-ur-Rahman in the year 865.

Rallying from these disasters, the new king Alfonso III. (866-910) took steps to defend the frontier, and appointed Diego Porcellos count or warden of the marches. This personage—the first whose name is particularly associated with Burgos—found the settlement on the Arlanzon reduced to six groups of houses. He threw together three or four hamlets, including, it is said, the churches of Santa Coloma, Santa Gadea, and San Juan Evangelista, and surrounded the whole with a wall. The dissensions among the Moors themselves favoured the development of the nascent town, and also permitted its governors, like those of the other frontier forts, to turn their attention to domestic politics. Don Gonzalo Fernández, who reigned as count from about 884 to 915, was a party to various conspiracies and intrigues against his sovereign, the net result of which appeared to be to confirm him in his petty sovereignty. Patriotism was an unknown virtue in those days, and the counts of Castile were bent rather upon consolidating their own authority than combining against the Infidel. They are said in fact to have flatly refused to accompany the king on one of his campaigns. Revenge for such treason could in the tenth century take but one form. Ordoño II. summoned four of the rebellious vassals—Abu-l-Mundhir (evidently a Moor), Nuño Fernández, another Diego Porcellos, and Fernando Ansúrez—into his presence, and sent them in chains to Leon, where, after a painful captivity, they were put to death. Spanish writers, who express no particular horror at the atrocities of the Inquisition in after years, appear somewhat unaccountably shocked at such rough and ready justice.

As a stroke of policy this deed of violence was a bad one. The Castilians, as it is now time to call the inhabitants of the marches, conceived a lasting aversion to the government of Leon, and the desire for independence grew stronger. An interregnum seems to have taken place at Burgos after the execution of Nuño Fernández and his colleagues. We hear at this time of two famous but nebulous personages, Nuño Nuñez Rasura and Lain Calvo, who were elected as judges to rule over the little commonwealth. Their reign as actual rulers was brief, for about the year 930 we find all authority in Castile in the strong hands of the greatest Spaniard of that age—Fernan González, the king-maker.

The fame of the good Conde Castellano, as González is lovingly called by the annalists, is overshadowed in the song and story of Spain only by that of the Cid himself. His heroic exploits against Moor and Christian are magnified and set forth in popular ballads and legends, dating mostly, it is true, from the thirteenth century. The real Fernan González is a difficult person to understand and appraise, when we have cleared away as much as possible the clouds of tradition and romance which obscure his features. Like the Cid, we find him repeatedly revolting against his sovereign, and striving very much harder for the independence of Castile than for the interests of the whole kingdom. But unlike the greater Spanish hero, he never seems to have been in the pay of the Moslems, or to have in concert with them turned his sword against his fellow Christians. Judged by the standard of that day, Fernan González was a great man. He was a good lord to his immediate vassals, a valiant and determined enemy of the Moor, a patriot in a very parochial sense, and a strong man.

Ramiro the king, jealous of Fernan González’s power and influence, dispossessed him of his countship, and released him from prison only when he had sworn fidelity and obedience anew. His daughter Urraca was given in marriage to the king’s son, Ordoño, by whom, however, she was afterwards repudiated. Till the death of Ramiro the count was not suffered to return to Burgos, which was meanwhile governed by the Infante Don Sancho. Meanwhile the Moors ravaged the country, destroying the monastery of Cardeña without the walls of Burgos, and greatly profiting by the internal disorders of Leon.

On the abdication of Ramiro in 950, González was reinstated in his fiefs, and henceforward played the part of king-maker in northern Spain, changing sides more than once, establishing every day more firmly his own authority, and warring unceasingly against the Moor. His policy often met with severe rebuffs, and he sustained not a few disastrous reverses; but his death in 970 was felt as a deadly blow to Christian Spain and to the Castilians in particular, whose national aspirations undoubtedly coincided with his own ambitions.

He had succeeded so far as to establish a dynasty; and his son Garcia Fernández became the next count of Castile as of right. The defects of the hereditary system became at once apparent, for while inheriting his father’s rank, Garcia inherited little of his ability. Unluckily for him, he was the contemporary of the terrible Al Mansûr, the greatest and most formidable of the Moorish race. Castile was ravaged from the Sierra Guadarrama to the sea. Don Sancho, supported by the Moors, revolted against his father, who died from wounds received in battle on the banks of the Douro, in May 995. The unfilial Sancho was at once acknowledged sovereign Count of Castile, but was compelled to pay an annual tribute to the Khalifa of Cordoba. But we find Al Mansûr waging war against him seven years later. It was the great Mohammedan’s last campaign, and Sancho profited by the dismay into which their leader’s mortal sickness plunged the Moslems to expel them from his dominions.

Two or three years later we find the envoys of rival Moorish monarchs soliciting the aid of the count of Castile; and in 1009 Sancho paid off old scores by taking and sacking the proud city of the Khalifas. Never had so much richness been seen in barren Castile, when her armies returned laden with booty. ‘He of the good laws,’ as Sancho was styled by his subjects, died in 1021, and was buried in the church of the monastery of San Salvador de Oña, which he had founded.

The sisters of his youthful son and successor, Garcia II., were married to the kings of Leon and Navarre; and Garcia went to Leon to seek the hand of King Bermudo’s daughter, and to demand recognition of his title as king of Castile. The poniards of the three sons of the Count de Vela left him a bleeding corpse at the door of the church of San Isidoro, on the 13th May 1029, and put an end to the male line of the house of Fernan González. His destined bride became the wife of Fernando, son of the king of Navarre, who was proclaimed count of Castile, though he enjoyed nothing more than the semblance of sovereignty till his father’s death in 1035. Bermudo of Leon died two years later, and Fernando thus became king of united Leon and Castile—the former in right of his wife, the latter in right of his mother.

The newly crowned king was immediately assailed by his elder brother, Garcia of Navarre, who invaded Castile with an army largely composed of Mussulmans, and threatened Burgos. After some days passed in fruitless negotiations between the fraternal enemies, the Navarrese king was defeated and slain. Eleven years later—in 1065—Fernando I. followed his brother to the grave. Deeming his dominions too vast to be administered by one man he divided them, allotting Castile to his first-born son Sancho, from which it may be inferred that he considered that province the fairest of his possessions. Not contented with the lion’s share of the spoils, the king of Castile wrested the kingdom of Leon from his brother Alfonso, whom he imprisoned in the castle of Burgos. Sancho next endeavoured to deprive his sister Urraca of her little principality of Zamora. Before the walls of that town he fell a victim to the sword of Bellido Dolfos, and to the kingdoms which he had by dint of violence and treachery reunited, succeeded Alfonso, but lately a guest of the kindly Moorish Amir of Toledo.

So far the history of Burgos and of Castile generally has been an involved and tedious record of dynastic arrangements, civil strife, and desultory warfare with the Moor. The dullness of the panorama is now relieved by the picturesque and crudely romantic personality of the Cid—‘he that in a good hour was born’—Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar.

‘Rodrigo is Burgos, Rodrigo is Castile, Rodrigo is Spain,’ says Don Rodrigo Amador de los Rios. ‘His prowess, his glory, his trials, his renown, are the renown, the trials, the glory, and the prowess of the fatherland. His form, which touches the confines of the supernatural, and stands forth vigorous and powerful in the interesting picture of the Middle Ages, is the spontaneous creation of a people—is the people itself—whose marvellous instinct has given it from its own being, heat and life. His honour is the honour of Castile and Spain; there is nothing in his personality which does not represent and symbolise with transcendental expression the national character; he is the splendid synthesis in which a nation is resumed, the idol of the ages, the pattern of all perfection, the permanent example of all the virtues, the true mirror of the Middle Ages, with all that they had of noble and generous, rude and loyal, warrior and devotee, tradition and history, legend and fact, petty and great; the manifestation, in short, of the essential and permanent in the Spanish nationality, which does not vary, and is transmitted unimpaired from generation to generation, through the centuries; the spirit which informs and sustains the peoples, in all the epochs of history.’

I quote in extenso an eminent Spaniard’s appreciation of the national hero. But accepting even the Cid of the ballads and legends, it does not seem that a high compliment is paid to Spain by recognising in him her absolute personification and embodiment. The traditions of less cultured races have conceived purer heroes. But in Burgos, almost his native place, we must not approach the memory of the doughty Campeador in any cold or captious mood. You may visit (though you will derive neither pleasure nor profit from the journey) the miserable hamlet of Vivar, five or six miles from Burgos, where he first saw the light somewhere about the year 1040. For ancestors, tradition credits him with the famous judges, Lain Calvo and Nuño Rasura, two worthies whose existence is at least problematical. But that Rodrigo (or Ruy) Diaz was a good Burgolese, there can be no question. Here he passed his youth at the court of Fernando I., rising to the high rank of Alferez or standard-bearer in the service of King Sancho. He was among the champions selected by his sovereign to decide the fate of the two kingdoms in a personal conflict with a similar number of Leonese knights. But whatever luck may have attended Rodrigo individually on this occasion, the Castilians got the worst of the encounter; whereupon Sancho refused to stand by his bargain, and by more military and less chivalrous methods secured his brother’s realms.

When Alfonso ascended the throne of Castile, it was the Cid who exacted from him, at the gate of the church of Santa Gadea, the humiliating oath that he had had no share in his brother’s murder—an indignity which Alfonso did not quietly forget. He dissimulated his resentment, however, and gave his sister Jimena in marriage to the valiant Campeador. Soon after the threatened quarrel broke out, and the haughty vassal abandoned all his estates in Castile, and entered the service of the Moorish Amir of Zaragoza. The chronicles tell how on his visiting Burgos the knight found, by order of the king, every door shut against him. Only a little girl nine years of age ventured to address him. From their windows the citizens beheld him and wept, crying, ‘How good a vassal, if he had only a good lord!’ Very sadly the Cid passed the night with his followers without the walls. He visited his wife and daughters at the monastery of Cardeña, and turned his face from Castile. He was at shifts for money—a precedent Don Quixote appears to have forgotten—and bethought him of an ingenious expedient. Filling an enormous coffer with stones and sand, he offered it, as being laden with gold and treasure, as security to a Jew, on the understanding that it should not be opened till the money was repaid. The confiding usurer readily advanced six hundred marks of gold and silver, and the coffer remains to this day to attest the simplicity of the Jewish character and the eminently commercial aptitudes of the Castilian national hero.

With Rodrigo’s wonderful exploits in other parts of Spain we are not here concerned. When he died at Valencia at a ripe age, he was brought back to his native place, seated upright on his famous steed Babieca, and laid to rest beside his wife at Cardeña. There he was suffered to remain till the year 1842, when his ashes were transported to the town hall of Burgos. A brave soldier, but one of the sorriest of the nation’s heroes!

During the lifetime of this worthy and the reign of Alfonso VI., Toledo was captured from the Moors, and Burgos ranked henceforward only as a secondary capital of Spain. It may be remarked that till Philip II. published his decree that ‘Madrid solo es corte,’ the kingdom could not be said in the modern sense of the word ever to have had a capital. Burgos, Valladolid, Toledo, and Seville had all equal claims to be considered the seat of government. As the Moorish frontier was pushed farther and farther south, Burgos lost in military importance. But its dignity was enhanced in an ecclesiastical sense, for it was raised in 1073 to an archiepiscopal see. Then followed the stormy days of Queen Urraca, when the city came in for its fair share of turmoil and bloodshed. Order was temporarily restored under the ‘Emperor’ Alfonso VII. An important ecclesiastical council was held here in 1136. Alfonso, at his death in 1157, most unwisely divided his estates, bestowing Castile upon the eldest, Fernando. The events of 1070 were repeated. Leon and Castile waged war against each other, and when the infant, Alfonso VIII., succeeded his father on the Castilian throne in 1158, the Laras and Castros, rivals for the regency, turned their swords against each other. Burgos was once more the capital of an independent kingdom, and witnessed in 1170 the marriage of the young king to Eleanor, daughter of Henry II. of England—the first of the many happy alliances between the royal houses of the two countries.

Alfonso’s reign was prosperous and glorious. He was a tolerant monarch, and showed favour to the Moslems. There seems in his time to have been an important mosque at Burgos. To propitiate Heaven, after the terrible defeat of the Christians at Alarcos, Eleanor persuaded her husband to build the monastery of Las Huelgas, to which act of piety no doubt was attributed the ‘crowning mercy’ of las Navas de Tolosa in 1212.

During the struggle for the regency, which ensued on the death of Alfonso, Burgos sided with the boy-king’s suitor Berenguela, who soon after became queen in her own right. Without hesitation this high-minded princess abdicated in favour of her son Fernando, the issue of her marriage with Alfonso of Leon, which had been dissolved by the Pope. The new king was attacked by his own father and by the arch-rebel of Spain, Alvar Fanez, but he triumphed over his enemies, and in 1230 succeeded to his unnatural father’s dominions, thus uniting finally and for ever the kingdoms of Leon and Castile.

‘From the time of St. Ferdinand,’ remarks a recent historian of Spain (Mr. Ulick Burke), ‘Moors in Castile became as scarce as foxes in Middlesex.’ An era of prosperity seemed about to dawn for Burgos—caput Castellae camera regia, as she proudly styled herself. There were great doings within her walls when the son of the king of England (afterwards Edward I.) came here in October 1254 to espouse Leonor, sister of King Alfonso the Learned. The English prince was made a knight by his prospective brother-in-law in the church of Santa Maria, where the marriage later on took place. In 1269 Edward came again to Burgos to assist at the nuptials of the Infante Fernando and the Princess Blanche of France. Among the guests were also the king of Aragon, the sultan of Granada, the Infantes of Aragon and Castile, ‘and other great ricoshombres and knights of the kingdom of Castile and Leon, and counts and dukes of France, and other hidalgos of that country; and the Marquis of Montferrat, who was wedded to Doña Beatriz, daughter of King Alfonso.’

The learned king did much to organise and to purify the administration, and as a natural consequence a sedition was fomented by his brother Don Felipe and the chiefs of the Lara, Haro, and Castro families. The rebels appeared in force before Burgos, and the king invited the leader to the Cortes then in session (1271). This invitation was refused, but a meeting was arranged at the Hospital del Rey outside the walls. Alfonso was in a most conciliatory mood, and as the rebels wanted only a colourable pretext to continue their campaign of rapine and lawlessness, the more he granted the more they wanted. Finally the ringleaders retired in utter disgust to Granada.

Burgos was the scene of one of Alfonso’s worst deeds. Suspecting his brother Don Fadrique of intriguing with his grandchildren, the disinherited Infantes de la Cerda, he ordered him to be confined in the castle, where the unfortunate prince was put to death by his ferocious nephew, the Infante Sancho. After the marriage of the Infantes Don Pedro and Don Juan with Margaret of Narbonne and Joanna of Montferrat, at Burgos in 1281, Sancho himself revolted against his father and caused himself to be proclaimed king. He obtained possession of the city, and, strangely enough, reinterred with great ceremony in the monastery of La Trinidad the very uncle he had killed.

Señor Amador de los Rios attributes the rivalry of the two cities of Valladolid and Burgos to the preference shown the former city by the wife of Sancho IV., Doña Maria Molina. For all that, it was the old capital of Castile where Sancho caused his son Fernando to be publicly declared heir to the throne.

Burgos was now a large and populous town. It owed much of its prosperity to its considerable Jewish colony, of which Don Todros Abulafia was Nasi, and Abu-l-Hasan Aben el Harits, physician to the king, one of the elders. The Israelites contributed over one hundred thousand maravedis to the revenue in the city alone. With the important part played by the Jews in the internal policy of Spain I have dealt at greater length in my work on Toledo in the present series.

During the regency of Doña Maria Molina, Valladolid was the usual seat of the court. But Burgos continued to be the scene of great functions of state. The marriage of the Duke of Brittany and the sister of Fernando IV. was celebrated here in January 1311; and several Cortes and councils met here. From Fernando the city obtained many privileges and favours—the town and revenues of Villafranca de Montes de Oca being granted to the municipality.

We pass over the civil wars and intrigues which distracted the reign of Alfonso XI., and find Burgos ruled by one born within its walls—Pedro the Cruel. Seville is more intimately associated with this picturesque and sinister personality, but here it was that he caused the governor, Garcilaso de la Vega, to be beaten to death in his presence, and watched the bulls in the arena without trampling on and tossing the mangled body of the victim. De la Vega’s remains were then placed in a casket, which was hung from the castle walls that all might fear the king’s justice. In 1355, after a busy butchering expedition, Pedro decorated a room in the castle with the heads he had collected, the slaughtered grandees, Lope de Bandaña, Gonzalo de Melendez, and Jofre Tenorio, contributing in this way to the adornment of the chamber and the delight of their lord. It was at the old capital of Castile that he was residing when Enrique de Trastamara with Bertrand du Guesclin and the White Company crossed the border. Pedro fled, and his brother was crowned at Las Huelgas. When the tide had temporarily set in Pedro’s favour, it was in the cathedral of Burgos that he and the Black Prince swore to the terms of their alliance. But in the following year (1368) Enrique’s star was once more in the ascendant, and a king, innately almost as vicious as our Henry VIII., had gone to join his hosts of victims on the other side of the tomb.

Burgos, under the Trastamara dynasty, resumed for a time the rank of capital of Spain. Like his father, Don Juan I. was crowned here, at Las Huelgas, in 1379, amid great festivities and rejoicings. His son, afterwards Enrique III., was born here, probably in the great castle, founded by Diego Porcellos, which perhaps gave its name to the whole kingdom. Few traces exist to-day of the original building, which was the habitual residence of the sovereign. Enrique III., however, ‘decreed a stately palace dome’ at Miraflores, on the left bank of the Arlanzon, at some distance from the city, but he died before its completion. A strange monarch was this Enrique. Tired of living in poverty while his nobles wallowed in luxury, he invited them to a banquet at the castle. On their arrival they found no well-spread table, but the executioner with his axe and block. It was only by liberal disbursements and advances that they escaped this functionary’s professional attentions. Thus did the needy monarch of Castile, who it is said had to pawn his coat to get a dinner, replenish his exchequer.

During the reign of Juan II. the castle of Burgos was held by Don Pedro de Estuñiga, the implacable foe of the great Constable, Alvaro de Luna. The king on one occasion actually found the gates of his own castle closed against him by this arrogant vassal, who at last compassed de Luna’s downfall and death at Valladolid. In atonement for this brutal sacrifice of his favourite, Juan converted the palace built by his father into a Carthusian monastery—to the disgust, we are told, of the local ecclesiastical authorities.

During the reign of Enrique IV. the castle of Burgos was a focus of rebellion and conspiracy. On the king’s death the castle was held by the Estuñigas for the Princess Juana, called by her enemies la Beltraneja, while the town espoused the cause of Isabel and her Aragonese husband. The bishop, who had retired to the castle of Rabe, joined forces with the Estuñigas, and the townsfolk, thus placed between two fires, implored the assistance of the court at Valladolid. Meanwhile the Portuguese allies of Juana were implored to succour the castle. Fernando of Aragon appeared at Burgos in June 1475 and invested the Estuñigas’ stronghold. An attack on the church of Santa Maria la Blanca was beaten off with loss, but the garrison, losing heart, ultimately surrendered to the besiegers. The king of Portugal, instead of hurrying on with all speed to Burgos, went into winter quarters at Zamora, while Fernando prosecuted the siege with his accustomed vigour. The garrison held out bravely, and seem to have at last capitulated, more out of disgust at the inaction of their ally than from any inability to defend themselves further. The commandant treated with Isabel in person, and surrendered on obtaining a free and unconditional pardon for himself and all his followers.

The union of Spain, consequent on the marriage of Isabel of Castile with Fernando of Aragon, tended to diminish the importance of Burgos. Nor was its prosperity augmented by the expulsion of the Jews—after they had been decimated by repeated massacres—the act of two sovereigns whose wisdom, greatness, and virtue English writers, as well as Spanish, never tire of extolling.

The Burgolese joined the Comunidad in 1520, allying themselves with Toledo and Segovia, Zamora, Toro, Madrid, Avila, Guadalajara, Cuenca, Alcala, and Soria. The citizens seized the castle and murdered an unpopular official, Garcia Jofre, afterwards sacking the episcopal palace. They surrounded the palace of the Constable of Castile, Don Iñigo Fernandez de Velasco, and were deterred from burning it to the ground only by the intercession of the clergy, who exposed the Sacrament over the doorway. The Constable fled to Briviesca, but some months after returned in triumph to the now pacified city. Sixteen years later we find the townsfolk welcoming Charles V. with enthusiasm, and erecting in his honour the graceful arch of Santa Maria. Burgos had accepted the new monarchy and the new era. The product of another age, she found herself unfitted to play a distinguished part in this. Not without dignity she passes into the background, and history knows her no more.

The Cathedral

Built at the instance of an English bishop and, like all the cathedrals of northern Spain, on a French model, the church of Santa Maria la Mayor is conspicuously more Spanish than that of either Leon or Toledo. This more national character may be due to later additions and alterations—alterations and additions which have neither obscured nor impaired that wonderful unity and harmony of design apparent in this, the ideal Gothic church.

The cathedral occupies the site of a church built in 1075, where a summer palace of Fernan González had till then stood. The first stone was laid on July 20, 1221, by Bishop Maurice, an Englishman who had come over to Castile in the train of Henry II.’s daughter Eleanor. The saintly King Fernando took a lively interest in the great work, which progressed so rapidly that the cathedral appears to have been ready for the reception of the faithful in November 1230. The nationality of the bishop and his share in the building of the fabric are, however, matters of dispute between historical writers.

The cathedral is built on very uneven ground, a circumstance which rather enhances than detracts from its picturesqueness. O’Shea calls attention to a remarkable trait in the exterior, rarely possessed by buildings otherwise of equal merit: ‘We mean that the forms should be bold projections or reproductions in relief of the internal parts, as in embossing. Thus, in this cathedral, the eye embraces the inward distribution at one glance from the shape of the parts outside.’ From a distance the most conspicuous parts of the edifice are the steeples surmounting the west front and the lantern over the crossing. The delicacy and nobility of the spires, pinnacles, and open-work adorning the glorious fabric tempt one to rhapsody. But so much beauty can be adequately portrayed only by the brush, not by the pen.

The lowest stage of the western or main front is pierced by the three doors corresponding to the nave and aisles within. Formerly rich in sculpture, this part of the façade was rebuilt in the latter part of the eighteenth century, in accordance with the pseudo-classical ideas of the time, and robbed of nearly all its statuary. The ‘restorers’ spared the statues of Alfonso VI., San Fernando, and the Bishops Maurice and Astorio at the side of the Puerta Real (Central Door), and the sculptures of the Coronation and Immaculate Conception of the Virgin over the lateral entrances. This lowest stage of the west front in its extreme plainness and severity presents an incomplete appearance when contrasted with the much more elaborate and ancient work above. Over the middle door, within a noble and gracefully moulded ogival arch, is a large, finely traceried rose-window, lighting the nave. Above this again are two windows, each of four lights, and their upper parts filled with beautiful tracery. Before each light stands the statue of a youth crowned. Over this highest stage of the middle division of the west front is the inscription Pulchra est et decora carved in stone, and forming a balustrade, which is adorned by statues of the Redeemer, the Madonna, and the Baptist.

Over the side doors rise the towers, surmounted with steeples, built for Bishop Alfonso de Cartagena (1435-1456) by the artist, probably a German, called Juan de Colonia, or John of Cologne. These steeples rise to a height of three hundred feet, and, except at the lowest story, are detached from the rest of the edifice. They are adorned with tall pointed windows, the space for two of these on the second stage of the north tower being covered, however, by the seventeenth-century clock. The pinnacles themselves are wonderful examples of delicate fretted stone-work. Street saw little beauty, however, in Juan de Colonia’s work, adding that the bells in the spires were the most misshapen he had ever seen.

The entrance to the north transept was known in the time of Alfonso X. as the Gate of the Twelve Apostles. It stands on a higher level than the floor of the church and is hence called Puerta Alta, or more often the Puerta de la Coroneria. The lower portion certainly, the whole probably, belongs to the thirteenth century. There is a great profusion of sculpture. On either side of the door are seen the figures of the twelve Apostles. The portal is enclosed within an ogival arch, on the archivolt of which are shown, successively, seraphim, cherubim, and the souls of the just rising from their graves. The upper part of the tympanum is adorned with the figures of Christ seated and attended by the Virgin and St. John. Below this is a composition of doubtful interpretation, the figures on one side seeming to illustrate the judgment of the wicked, those on the other side the establishment of the Dominicans and Franciscans in Castile. Higher up, the façade is pierced with two high pointed windows, and above these again by windows of several lights, with statues in niches.

Ingress to the north transept is now obtained by a side entrance called the Puerta de la Pellejeria, a plateresque structure facing east, dating from the year 1516. Somewhat of the Gothic spirit may be detected in this sumptuous but not over-decorated portal. The detail is excellent, and the execution vigorous. With the figures of the Virgin, the Apostles, Saints, and Bishops are associated genii, amorini, and heraldic achievements in the true Renaissance style. Above the doorway is a group representing the martyrdom of the two Saints John; and over this a prelate, probably Rodriguez de Fonseca, is kneeling at the feet of the Madonna. The composition is flanked by the fine statues of Saints Peter and Paul; and on the sides of this façade are placed in niches the statues of St. John the Baptist and St. James, and St. John the Divine and St. Andrew.

The Puerta del Sarmental gives access to the south transept. It has the finest of the cathedral fronts. It is approached by a broad flight of steps, flanked by the walls of the episcopal palace and cloisters, and by some interesting fourteenth-century tombs of bishops. The architecture of the portal is on the same plan as that of the Puerta Alta. In the tympanum Christ is shown with the Evangelists and the beasts symbolical of them; below are the seated figures of the twelve Apostles. The three orders of the archivolt are adorned with angels and with crowned figures playing various instruments. Above all this is a magnificent rose-window filled with beautiful glass of the fourteenth century. The third stage of the front shows three Gothic windows, elaborately traceried, and each divided into four lights by mullions, supported by large figures of angels. ‘The angles of the transepts,’ says Street, ‘are flanked by crocketed pinnacles, the crockets here, as elsewhere throughout the early work, being simple in form and design, but as perfect in effect as it is possible for crockets to be.’

The eastern front of the cathedral is formed by the Capilla del Condestable and its adjoining chapels. The exterior of the famous octagonal chapel mentioned is very fine. On the uppermost stage on one of the sides two lions, standing upright, are seen supporting laurel crowns—one containing the cross, the other the monogram of Christ. On a lower stage the escutcheon of the Velascos and Mendozas is displayed between two knights armed cap-à-pie. The stages are flanked by effigies under canopies. The angles of the façade are surmounted by elegant spires and pinnacles.

The plan of the cathedral—a Latin cross, with nave, aisles, and transept—has been obscured by the chapels built on the north, south, and east sides, as may be seen by a glance at the plan included among the illustrations. The nave is of six bays, and fifty-eight metres long. Though the view is spoilt, as in all Spanish churches, by the choir, it remains picturesque, pure, and devotional in the highest degree. The dim religious light of our northern churches, it is true, is lacking, for the interior is white throughout, and the stained glass, which in earlier times would have mellowed the strong sunlight, was unhappily shattered during the war of Independence. The aisles are lower than the nave, from which they are separated by twenty columns, each with eight engaged shafts. The triforium is somewhat in the nature of an architectural curiosity, and certainly has been altered since the thirteenth century; it consists of wide bays of five or six lights each, with trefoil and quatrefoil traceries above, enclosed within a semicircular arch or ‘label,’ which is decorated with sculptured heads. Street declares that he has seen nothing like this elsewhere, and supposes it to be the work of a native artist. Above the triforium is the original clerestory—‘Simple, but good and vigorous in style.’

The High Altar, or Altar Mayor, occupying the centre of the apse, is approached by a flight of steps of white, red, and black marble. It is railed off from the ambulatory by rejas or bronze screens fixed on pedestals of jasper between the pillars of the nave; the backs of these latter are adorned with life-size statues. Behind the altar rises the Renaissance retablo, an elaborate and gorgeous work of walnut wood, heavily gilded and each of its stages in a different order of architecture. The symmetrical division of these altar-pieces into compartments, each filled with its own statue, does not strike the layman as artistic or pleasing. Indeed, there is something faintly suggestive of pigeon-holes about it. Street, quoting Ponz, states that the sculptures were the work of Rodrigo and Martin de la Aya (1577), who were paid forty thousand ducats; and that for the painting and gilding Juan de Urbino of Madrid and Martinez of Valladolid received, in 1573, eleven thousand ducats. At the back of the sanctuary, between the arches, may be seen the spirited reliefs of the celebrated Juan Vigarni or ‘Borgoña,’ executed in 1540, and representing the Agony in the Garden, Christ bearing the Cross, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension. The first and last are stated by Ford to have been executed by one Alonso de los Rios in 1679. To the Renaissance period also belong the handsome silver lamp and candlesticks. To an earlier age belong the tombs on the north side of the sanctuary—two concealed by the retablo; they contain the remains of Don Juan, the rebellious son of Alfonso X., Don Sancho, brother of Enrique II. of Trastamara, and his wife, Doña Beatriz. Over the altar is the copy of the banner borne before Alfonso VIII. at the Navas de Tolosa, made by the De la Aya brothers and others about 1570.

Over the crossing or intersection of nave and transept rises the gorgeous lantern or octagonal dome, which Philip II. said seemed like the work of angels rather than of men. It replaced the earlier dome which collapsed in March 1537, and was completed in December 1567. Felipe Vigarni (de Borgoña) and Juan de Vallejo are mentioned as the architects. The Gothic and Renaissance styles are curiously but not inharmoniously blended in this beautiful lantern, which rises to a height of one hundred and seventy-three feet, and is profusely adorned with sculpture.

Crossing the wide transept we reach the choir, which occupies three bays of the nave. Under the eastern lectern lies the effigy—of wood cased in bronze—of the English Bishop Maurice, a fine work believed to date from 1260. The stalls, one hundred and three in number, were executed between 1497 and 1512 by Felipe Vigarni, and bestowed on the cathedral by Bishop Pascual de Fuensanta. They are of walnut wood, and in two tiers—all most richly carved in fine Renaissance style, the pillars between being moulded in similar fashion. The lower seats are, on the whole, the finer work, and are inlaid in boxwood. The subjects of the reliefs are taken from the acts of the saints and life of the Virgin. Scenes from Genesis form the subject of the reliefs on the fronts of the upper stalls, the backs illustrating the New Testament. The trascoro, or screen at the west end of the choir, cost ten thousand ducats. The reja displays the arms of Cardinal Zapata, whose gift it was; the pillars which support it rise from pedestals of jasper, and on brackets are placed two white marble statues of Saints Peter and Paul. These statues, columns, reliefs, etc., were executed at the expense of Archbishop Manso de Zuñiga, in the first half of the seventeenth century, by Fray Juan de Rici of the Order of St. Benedict.

The grand chapel of the Constable (Capilla del Condestable), behind the high altar at the east end of the church, was built about 1487 by Don Pedro Fernandez de Velasco, Conde de Haro, and Lord High Constable of Castile, the property of whose descendant, the Duque de Frias, it remains to-day. The architect was Juan de Colonia (John of Cologne) or, as some will have it, his son Simon. Street sees much that is German in the style of the chapel, but also features which may be fairly attributed to the Spaniards who worked under the architect’s orders, or to his own efforts to consult native tastes. While the chapel may be described as florid Gothic, the splendid entrance arch, with its marvellous lacelike tracery, tapering pinnacles, and railing, the masterpiece of Andino, belongs to the Renaissance. The chapel is lighted by fourteen stained-glass windows, displaying the arms of the Velascos, which are repeated on four large stone escutcheons on the walls. The retablo of the high altar, believed to be by Juan de Borgoña, has, in its lower stage, a spirited sculpture of the Purification. Before the altar are the noble tombs of the Constable and his wife, Doña Mencia de Mendoza, Condesa de Haro. The effigies are of Carrara marble, the tombs of jasper. The Constable is shown in complete armour, the details of which are admirably rendered and merit close study. At the feet of the Countess is crouched a dog, the emblem of fidelity. This great seigneur of old Spain and his consort are interred in the vault beneath their monuments. Close to the monument is a huge oblong slab of polished jasper from the quarries of Atapuerca, weighing thirty-three tons, and intended presumably to cover a tomb. The chapel contains many other objects of interest. The side altars display some good sculpture, the one in the Gothic, the other in the Renaissance style. There is a fine Flemish triptych, and a good statue of St. Jerome by Becerra. In the sacristy is shown the little portable ivory altar which the Constable carried about with him, and a ‘Magdalene,’ attributed by some to Da Vinci, by others to Luini. The plate, of the same age as the chapel, includes a chalice of silver-gilt, enamelled in red and white and richly jewelled; a pax in ivory and enamel, a thurible shaped like a ship; a splendid silver-gilt cross; an oval alabaster relief of the Madonna; and other treasures, some of which are not readily shown.

The two chapels next to that of the Constable on the north side of the apse are earlier than the others and are of good middle-pointed style. The chapel of San Gregorio seems to be the only one belonging to the thirteenth-century church. It contains the tomb of Bishop Fontecha. The adjoining chapel of San Nicolás was built in 1268 by Bishop Villahoz, whose tomb and effigy are placed upright against the wall. Close by is one of the finest sepulchres in the cathedral—that of the Archdeacon Fernando Villegas, an early translator of Dante. Opposite the door of the Nacimiento chapel is a notable picture of San Juan de Ortega by Cuadra.

At the northern end of the transept is the grand staircase of thirty-eight steps, leading to the Puerta Alta. It is one of the finest examples of the art of Diego de Siloe, who was at his best when handling such intricate and profuse decoration as this. The splendid iron balustrade was the work of Cristobal Andino.

Opening on to the north aisle are the large chapels of Santa Ana and Santa Tecla. The former was founded in 1474 by Bishop Luis Osorio Acuña, whose tomb is here. A much finer altar and monument in the Gothic style is that of the Archdeacon Fernando Diez de Fuente Pelayo, who died in the memorable year 1492; it is in white marble and adorned with sculpture with New Testament subjects, a good deal damaged. There are a few good pictures in this chapel, one attributed to Andrea del Sarto, and a sculptured genealogy of the Virgin. Of the chapel of Santa Tecla, perhaps not much else need be said than that it is in the Churrigueresque style and was founded in 1734. Its best feature is its ‘half-orange’ dome. O’Shea says that there formerly existed on the side of the baptistry a small chapel dedicated to Santiago, wherein Alfonso XI. instituted the order of knighthood of La Vanda or the Badge, of which the kings of Castile were members.

Opening on to the southern aisle, opposite the Capilla de Santa Tecla, is the cruciform chapel of the Santisimo Cristo de la Agonia, containing a very ancient, curious, and (it is alleged) miraculous image of Christ. It is supposed to have been carved by the fearful Nicodemus, and to have been afterwards found floating in a boat on the sea. It is a grotesque and yet a weird and impressive object, dressed up after the ridiculous custom in Spain.

The chapel of the Presentation was founded in 1519 by the Canon Gonzalo de Lerma, whose noble tomb in the centre of the chapel was executed during his lifetime by Vigarni. Another fine tomb is here—that of Canon Jacubo de Bilbao. This chapel possesses a beautiful Virgin and Child painted on a panel, probably by Sebastiano del Piombo, and sculptures by Berruguete. The railing is another example of Andino’s craftsmanship.

In the chapel of San Juan de Sahagun are preserved the relics of the saint, who was a canon of Burgos. Here are also numerous other relics, chiefly fragments of the bodies of sainted personages, among them two local martyrs, Centola and Helena. The image of the Virgin of Oca is fabled to have testified by a nod to the promise of marriage made by a faithless Don Juan to a damsel—a silly story also told of the Cristo de la Vega at Toledo. Simon, the last Bishop of Oca, is buried in this chapel, and also the Blessed Lesmes, who is invoked by sufferers from nephritic disorders. More interesting than any of these things is the Cristo de la Agonia, a painting signed by El Greco.

In the chapel of the Visitation is the handsome tomb of the founder, the Bishop de Cartagena; and in the seventeenth-century chapel of San Enrique repose the remains of the bishops of Oca, and those of the founder, Bishop Peralta—contained in a beautiful tomb of alabaster, beneath a superb kneeling effigy in bronze. Of alabaster is also the beautiful flooring of the chapel; and of bronze, the fine eagle lectern.

We now reach the sacristy, a great part of which is in the bad style of the eighteenth century. There is some good carving, which, indeed, is not rare in Spain; but the pictures ascribed to Murillo and other masters are all very doubtful. A jasper table is among the most interesting objects. We complete the circuit of the church by a visit to the large chapel of Santiago, designed in the sixteenth century by Juan de Vallejo. It is considered to be the parish church of Burgos. The Apostle of Spain is shown on horseback on the high altar, and again on the beautiful reja. Here lies the Abbot of San Quirce, one of the Velasco family, beneath a tomb worthy of his illustrious ancestry. Not far off is the sarcophagus of the Astudillos, one of whom was the founder of the chapel of the Three Kings at Cologne. There are other interesting tombs in this chapel, among the oldest being that of Bishop de Villacreces, who died in 1463.

On the south-east side of the cathedral are the cloisters, among the most beautiful buildings of their kind. Street believes them to date from between the years 1280 and 1350. They form a quadrangle, the dimensions of each gallery being 90 feet by 22 feet. The cloisters are entered through a fine pointed arch, near the chapel of the Visitation, adorned with statues and heraldic devices. The head of St. Francis of Assisi is said to be an actual portrait. Other statues are those of the Blessed Virgin, St. Gabriel, David, and Isaiah. The tympanum is sculptured with the Baptism of Christ—the rite being administered to Christ seated. The reliefs on the doors, which are of later date, and were the gift of Bishop Acuña, are worthy of their splendid setting.

The cloisters are in two stages, the lower being plain, the upper very ornate. The windows are ogival, of four lights, and freely decorated with traceries and foliage. The angles and niches are adorned with good statues. Among these are the effigies of St. Fernando and his wife, Doña Beatriz, each holding a ring in commemoration of their marriage at Burgos. The statues of Santiago and Abraham date from the thirteenth century. There are numerous tombs and doorways, all well sculptured. Of this cloister Street remarks, ‘I know none altogether more interesting and more varied, or more redolent of those illustrations of and links with the past, which are of the very essence of all one’s interest in such works.’

In a chapel leading from the cloisters is attached to the wall one of the celebrated trunks filled with sand which the Cid palmed off as security for a loan upon an unusually simple-minded son of Israel. It is antique and solid enough to date from those days at all events. Close by is the recumbent effigy and tomb of Juan Cuchiller, the faithful servant of Enrique III. In adjacent chapels may be seen the splendid tombs of Canon Santander, a sixteenth-century work, with an exquisite relief of the Virgin and Child; of Canon Aguilar, who died in 1482; and the monuments of other canons, chaplains, and knights.

Adjoining the cloisters is the Chapter House, or Sala Capitular, with a fine artesonado ceiling, and a cornice of blue and white majolica, around which run verses from the Proverbs. The room contains a Crucifixion signed Greco, and a St. John the Divine doubtfully attributed to Murillo. There remains to be seen the old sacristy, a spacious room over forty feet square, and with corbels quaintly carved with scenes from a lion hunt. The treasury of Burgos is not as rich as that of Toledo or Seville; but it contains some magnificent and seemingly ancient vestments, beautifully carved presses, and a long series of portraits of the occupants of the episcopal see. Below the cloister a lower story was built; but the arches are now blocked up and it is neglected, though abounding in interesting tombs and monuments of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

The south-west side of this grand cathedral is shut in by the archbishop’s palace.

Las Huelgas

The other great ecclesiastical building of Burgos belongs nearly to the same period as the cathedral. The Cistercian convent of Santa Maria la Real de las Huelgas was founded in 1180 by Alfonso VIII. and his Queen Eleanor, daughter of our Henry II.—to propitiate the Heavenly Powers after the rout of Alarcos, it is asserted by some. The architect appears to have been a countryman of his royal mistress—an Angevin—and his work was certainly copied in those churches which were built by Spaniards.

This historic pile stands about a mile from the city, on the road to Valladolid. The name is derived from the verb holgar (to rest), the site having been formerly occupied by pleasure in grounds. Many of the most striking events in Castilian history were enacted here. Here Edward I. was knighted by Alfonso el Sabio; here, in after years, the Black Prince lodged, fresh from his much-to-be-regretted victory at Navarrete. Many royal personages were wedded here, and not a few were buried here besides. Great was the dignity of the abbess, who exercised ‘the high, the low, and the middle justice,’ or, in other words, could hang offenders on her own gallows; whose authority extended over half a hundred towns and villages, and who was exempt from all episcopal jurisdiction or control. Though shorn of her proudest prerogatives and much of her wealth, the abbess of Las Huelgas is still one of the greatest ladies of Spain. The rule, too, of St. Bernard is observed with primitive strictness, and the high-born nuns refuse to permit even the most sober of archæologists to examine their cloisters.

A thirteenth-century postern leads into the compás or square formed by the convent, a graceful fourteenth-century tower, and the ancient palace of the Castilian monarchs, now a school. The church, built by St. Ferdinand in 1279, is of the usual cruciform plan. It is stern, simple, very pure Gothic, despite the restorations and alterations effected in successive ages. The nave is inaccessible to strangers, and is reserved exclusively to the nuns, who may be seen, through the screen, assisting at the offices in their grandly carved stalls. We loiter in the transept, and notice the lofty lantern over the crossing, and the revolving pulpit from which St. Vincent Ferrer is said to have preached, though the date of its construction (1560) may be discerned carved upon it. The chancel, with its green tapestries woven with gold—the gift of Philip the Handsome—is flanked on either side by two chapels, but our interest centres in the nave, of which we can only obtain a glimpse through the grille. The tombs facing us are those of the founders, Alfonso VIII. and Eleanor Plantagenet. The conqueror of Las Navas is shown on a relief, enthroned, handing the charter of the abbey to the first abbess. To the right of these tombs lies Queen Berenguela, mother of St. Ferdinand; and farther back in the aisles are the sarcophagi of thirty-six members of the royal house of Spain, among them the ‘Emperor’ Alfonso VII., Sancho I., Enrique I., and Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Savoy. Anne of Austria, daughter of the great Don John, was the last princess entombed within these venerable precincts. Unapproachable by visitors is the chapel of Santiago, wherein is preserved an effigy of St. James, which by means of some hidden mechanism could place the crown on the royal brow and confer the accolade of knighthood.

The remarkable Moorish fabric, generally believed to have been a trophy of the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, is hung in the nun’s choir, but a replica may be seen hanging in the chancel. A detailed description of this interesting relic is contained in Riaño’s Spanish Arts. Amador de los Rios rejects the tradition that this was the Almohade standard, and thinks it was the curtain or flap of the Amir’s tent, taken in the battle. Riaño goes farther, and opines that it was an offering made, not by Alfonso VIII., but by the eleventh monarch of that name. Adopting this theory, it remains probable that the fabric was one of the spoils of war, for the character of the texts from the Koran woven upon it are a sufficient proof that it could not have been worked by Moorish weavers under Christian direction.

Not far from Las Huelgas is the Hospital del Key, built by Alfonso VIII. as a hospice for pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela. There is little about this building now to suggest a twelfth-century origin. Rebuilt in the sixteenth century and restored by Carlos III., it has been styled one of the finest specimens of the plateresque in Castile. The Puerta de Romeros exhibits a bewildering wealth of ornament, against which stands out, as the most interesting features, the vigorous figure of the apostle, and the crowned busts of Alfonso and Eleanor. The court is bordered on two sides by cloisters, the symmetry of which is marred by the excess of arches. The cornice, with its heraldic achievement and busts, is, on the whole, in good taste. One side of the court is formed by the façade of the church, restored in the plateresque style by Carlos III. in 1771. The original structure may be recognised in some dilapidated and deserted chambers with Mudejar ceilings, adjacent to the Magdalena arcade. There are some graceful Mudejar capitals and Arabic inscriptions of the thirteenth century likewise to be seen in the stables of the Hospice.

Far more interesting and substantially more ancient, though of a later foundation, is the Cartuja de Miraflores in an arid spot some two and a half miles from the city. Here once stood the hunting palace of Enrique III.—placed like so many abodes of Spanish royalty in a naturally uninviting site, and converted by that king’s son and successor, Juan II., into a Carthusian monastery in 1442. In consequence of a fire, all had to be rebuilt, a few years later, under the direction of Juan de Colonia. The edifice was not actually completed till the time of Isabel the Catholic. The monastery is now inhabited by only a few monks, each having his own house or cell, according to the rule of St. Bruno. Grass grows in the courtyard, and everything wears an aspect of desolation and neglect. The church recalls San Juan de los Reyes at Toledo. It rises high above the adjacent buildings, simple in plan and rather spoilt by plateresque additions. The interior, consisting of a single nave and apse, is divided by rejas or grilles into three parts, reserved respectively to the laity, the lay brothers, and the clergy. The two last have their own choirs. The stalls of the lay brothers are beautifully carved in walnut, and display the figures of the apostles. They were carved in 1558 by Simon de Bueras for the sum of 810 ducats. The priests’ stalls, also in walnut, show the fine workmanship of Martin Sanchez (1489), a Spaniard whose style was very Flemish. The quadrangular altar, designed by Gil de Siloe, was adorned with gold brought from America in the second expedition of Columbus. The altar-piece, by the same artist and Diego de la Cruz, is a triumph of design and colouring. It is impossible to describe in detail the almost innumerable subjects and sculptures which make up this marvellous work. To be easily distinguished among the religious compositions are the figures of Juan II. and his Queen Isabel, kneeling on faldstools and attended by their guardian angels. Above the tabernacle a superb cluster of angels encircles a crucifix, over which is seen the symbolical figure of the pelican. Very fine, also, is the seat occupied by the celebrating priest during the sermon. It is the work of Martin Sanchez, and is an exquisite specimen of Gothic carving, described by one authority as ‘one of the most beautiful and sumptuous pieces of ecclesiastical furniture of its kind and period in Spain or elsewhere.’

But the supreme objects of interest in this Castilian Charterhouse are the superb tombs of Juan II., his queen, and their son, the Infante Alfonso. These were designed and in great measure executed by Gil de Siloe, by order of Isabel the Catholic. The effigies of the king and queen recline on an alabaster tomb, the ground plan of which is a star of eight points formed by two squares placed diagonally. On the angles of the lower slab are placed figures of children supporting the royal escutcheon, and accompanied by lions. Each of the sixteen spaces between the points of the star is occupied by the statue of an apostle or a cardinal virtue placed in a niche. The tracery of this part of the tomb is indescribably rich. The angles of the upper slab are rounded off and marked by pinnacles, statuettes, and the statues of the Four Evangelists. Here and there the charming figures of cherubim, all in different postures, seem about to detach themselves from the marble. In the intervals between the points of the substructure are disposed lions in various attitudes: on some amorini are mounted, while others are about to devour nude children. Such fantastic conceptions—monsters, genii, etc.—are displayed in marvellous profusion all over the surface of the monument. All this detail, which, in Street’s opinion, is for beauty of execution, vigour, and animation of design, finer than any other work of the age, serves but as a setting for the recumbent figures of Juan II. and Queen Isabel of Portugal—the parents of that other and more famous Isabel. The king is shown in his crown and robes; the face is weak, but beautiful, boyish almost, smooth-shaven, and framed by long curling locks; on the breast falls a magnificent collar of state. The right hand, which held the sceptre, has been broken off, the left, with a natural gesture, gathers up the folds of the robe. On the feet are pattens, which seem to have been in use by both sexes in Spain in the fifteenth century. The robe is of the most magnificent description, encrusted with embroidery and precious stones. The statue of the queen remains intact. Her gloved hands hold an open book, from which she seems to have raised her eyes to regard the spectator between half-closed lids. Her mantle is as splendid as her husband’s. Siloe’s embroidery in marble, his moulding of the draperies, are as delicate as the work of the weaver of the robes itself could ever have been. The lace-work is so fine that one expects a breath of wind to ruffle it. Assuredly, the price paid to the architect (442,667 maravedis) was not an exorbitant one.

The same skill is apparent in the kneeling effigy of the Infante Alfonso, who died while in rebellion against his half-brother Enrique III., at the age of fifteen years. Also by Siloe, this monument is contained within a recessed arch in the north wall of the sanctuary, festooned with a vine to which children cling. Men-at-arms support the tomb, over which is seen a vigorous figure of St. George and the Dragon. The monument is hardly less significant than that of the young prince’s parents. All three tombs were a labour of love with Isabel the Catholic, who looked upon this church as in quite a peculiar sense the property of her family. It is said that on seeing the escutcheon of the family of Soria painted on one of the stained-glass windows, she at once broke it with one of her attendants’ swords, admonishing the community that they must accept no other patronage than hers. And to-day, in truth, what glory there is at this forlorn monastery is of her creation. A statue, in painted wood, of St. Bruno, founder of the Carthusian Order, in one of the chapels, deserves notice if only as one of the rare specimens of Portuguese art—it was the work of one Manoel Pereira.

It is difficult to treat of the minor churches of Burgos in chronological order, for here, as in so many other cities, the existing fabric of the earliest-founded church may be of recent date, and far surpassed in antiquity by the actual masonry of some less historic fane. Street assigns the date of San Estéban to somewhere between the years 1280 and 1350. It stands on the castle hill, and exhibits some features of architectural interest. The portico is good Gothic work of the late thirteenth century, the reliefs representing the martyrdom of the patron saint. An early instance of realism is the stones adhering to the folds of the saint’s robe in one of the statues. Above is a fine wheel-window of the middle fourteenth century. The church consists of three parallel naves, all terminating in apses. At the west end is a raised gallery for the choir, with a fine late Gothic balustrade. Some beautiful arabesque work may be seen in the last chapel in the south aisle; the retablos and pulpit are comparatively modern. This church, which belonged by the way to the Knights Templars, is entered through an early fourteenth-century cloister—one of the smallest to be met with.

Next in order of interest, and probably of date, comes San Gil, a cruciform structure in the north of the city, founded, or at any rate rebuilt, in the fourteenth century. Its chief treasure is a wrought-iron pulpit, with very beautiful tracery, in part gilded. Very curious are the effigies in the floor of the church, with bodies of black marble and heads and hands of white. Another feature of the building worthy of notice is the mixture of painting and sculpture and carving in the decoration of the chapels on each side of the choir. The retablos are gorgeous, and some of the tombs interesting and apparently very ancient.

Only the very patient or enthusiastic sightseer will trouble to visit the other churches of Burgos, which, as it seems to me, contain little to reward one’s curiosity. San Nicolás, a sixteenth-century parish church, being close to the cathedral, should not be neglected. The life of the saint—the patron of youth—is illustrated in some ancient paintings in the north aisle and on the admirably carved stone retablo of the high altar. This fine work, as an inscription declares, was the gift of Gonsalvo Solanco and his wife Leonor de Miranda, both of whom are buried here. The tombs in these old forgotten churches are generally interesting. St. Lesmes contains the sepulchre of the patron, a devout French monk, who lived in the reign of Alfonso VI., but whose cult never seems to have spread beyond Castile.

The old convent of San Pablo, now appropriated to military uses, is hardly worth a visit, but the story of its founder, Bishop Pablo de Santa Maria, is, as Street remarks, worth telling. Originally a Jew, he was baptized a Christian in 1390. Of his four sons one at least followed his example, and afterwards became Bishop of Siguenza; but his wife, Juana, remained deaf to all his persuasions and refused to abandon the faith of her fathers. Accordingly he had the marriage legally dissolved, and was ordained priest. In 1415, being then at Valladolid, he was raised to the episcopal see of his native city, and among those who met him upon his induction were ‘his venerable mother, Doña Maria, and his well-loved wife, Juana.’ His well-loved wife, despite their religious differences, she seems to have remained, for she was buried near her husband in this church of San Pablo, unconverted to the last. The bishop survived her fifteen years. It is strange that these tombs should have been spared in the days of Torquemada, when many bishops of Jewish ancestry were compelled to disinter the bones of their remote ancestors to save them from the fury of the new school of Christians.

Of that tutelary divinity of Burgos, the Cid, there are several shrines, mostly, alas! spurious. You may visit the church variously called Santa Agueda and Santa Gadea, a fourteenth-century building, which succeeded the historic church where the champion constrained Alfonso VI. to take the oath. That event is recorded by the stone cross near the entrance, and the iron lock over the door. But the real lock on which the oath was taken was stolen by the French, who showed themselves particularly greedy for relics of Spain’s national hero. Of the church of San Martin, where he was baptized, no trace remains. The site of the Casa solar del Cid is hardly worth visiting. The house, as might be expected, has long since disappeared, and the present uninteresting monument was erected by Carlos III. in the eighteenth century. The very monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña, which the hero chose for his last resting-place, and to which he was brought across Spain seated, dead, but still dreadful, on his war-horse, has been modernised, and contains little to assist the imagination. Its memories are stirring enough. The foundation dates from Visigothic times, and here, in the ninth century, two hundred monks were massacred by the Moors. Somewhere here is buried Babieca, the horse of the Cid, one of those four-footed heroes who have attained to world-wide fame. ‘Bury him deep,’ was his master’s last injunction, ‘for it is not meet that he should be eaten by dogs who has trampled under foot so many dogs of Moors.’ The honourable interment of animals who have endeared themselves to their masters is far from being a modern craze and a proof of the degeneracy of a people, as some pseudo-moralists of to-day appear in their ignorance to believe.

The Cid’s own tomb at Cardeña is now empty. Some of his bones were carried off by the French during the Peninsular War, and were ultimately discovered at Sigmaringen, when they were restored to the Spanish Government. Meanwhile the rest of the skeleton and that of the Cid’s wife, Doña Ximena, had been removed from their insecure place of sepulture, and are now contained in a walnut case, to be seen in a modern chapel at the Ayuntamiento, or town hall. In the same building—an eighteenth century structure—is shown the bench from which those early judges of the nation, Lain Calvo and Nuño Rasura, are affirmed by tradition to have administered justice. The archives are said to merit exhaustive examination, and are rich in rare autographs and manuscripts.

Burgos, like many other provincial capitals in Spain, is rich in old mansions of the nobility. Our English country towns have lost much historic and monumental interest from the immemorial practice of our aristocracy living on their estates, remote from towns. Quite small towns in France and in western Europe generally, usually contain two or three residences of the local nobility which do something to redeem the place from utter provincialism. It is the absence of such buildings perhaps that gives even our large country towns the aspect of mere agricultural centres or overgrown villages. The finest example of civil architecture in Burgos is the Casa del Cordon, now the residence of the Captain-General. This was the palace of that family whose tombs we have seen in the Capilla del Condestable. It was in all probability built by the same workmen in the middle of the fifteenth century, under the direction of the famous Mudejar architect of Segovia, Mohammed, and by order of the illustrious High Constable, Don Pedro Fernandez de Velasco, and his consort, Doña Mencia de Mendoza de la Vega. Here Ferdinand the Catholic and Charles V. held their courts, and here the first Duchess of Frias presided over a little coterie composed of the most brilliant men of letters and artists in Spain. This lady was the natural daughter of Ferdinand, her mother having been a Catalan girl who accompanied her royal lover in all his campaigns disguised as an esquire. The accomplished duchess was the firm friend of her half-sister, the hapless Queen Juana, and took the latter’s husband, Philip the Handsome, to task so severely, that he caused her to be ejected from her own house. Within these walls the Burgundian prince expired, his body being jealously watched by the queen and the duchess to save it, tradition avers, from a lady by whom he had been passionately loved and who had sworn to possess him in death. The Casa del Cordon has nobler memories, too, of Columbus who, on his return from his second voyage to America, here presented himself to the Catholic Sovereigns with offerings of the choicest products of the New World. Here was signed, on June 11, 1515, the act of the incorporation of the kingdom of Navarre with Castile, the unity of the whole of Spain being thus achieved. A copy of the document is preserved in the city archives. And in this house, in 1526, Francis I. was entertained on his way back to France by the High Constable of Castile.

The mansion, which has thus loomed so large in the history of Spain, occupies one side of the Plaza de la Libertad. It belongs to the last period of Gothic, and is not wanting in dignity and grace. The walls are surmounted by a parapet or balustrade of pinnacles and crestwork, in which is repeated the Cross of St. Andrew, in remembrance of a victory gained by a Velasco on that saint’s day. The façade is flanked by two square towers, rising one story above the ordinary roof level. The windows and arcades are later additions, and in bad style. The rope carved in stone over the entrance, from which the house derives its modern name, is held by some to be part of the insignia of the Teutonic Order, by others, with more probability, to be the cord of St. Francis of Assisi, a saint who was the object of a special veneration by the Velasco family. Within it are contained the escutcheons of the allied houses of Velasco, Mendoza de la Vega, and Figueroa, the first displaying the castles and lions of Castile and the device Un buen morir honra toda la vida. The halls and courts, now devoted to the military administration of the province, reveal some interesting traces of the former magnificence of this old home of one of the most powerful and illustrious of the great families of Spain.

On the south side of the river, in the Calle de la Calera, are two interesting houses which give the neighbourhood a thoroughly sixteenth-century aspect. The portal of the fortress-like Casa de los Angulos or of Iñigo de Angulo is adorned by two lions placed on the pillars flanking the archway, above which is a shield with seven quarterings. A few doors farther on is the more interesting Casa de Miranda, considered the best example of the Renaissance style in Burgos. It now serves the prosaic purposes of a candle factory. It is entered through a noble doorway decorated with heraldic achievements. Between the capitals of the inner court may be deciphered the inscription: Franciscus de Miranda salon abbas de salas et canonicus burgen protonotarius et scriptor aplicus patrie restitutus faciendum curavit anno De MDXLV. The escutcheon of the Mirandas is displayed on the friezes, which are in the usual Renaissance style, relieved with the figures of genii, medallions, etc. The architecture of the staircase exhibits a harmonious blending of late Gothic and early plateresque. Fine workmanship is to be seen in the decoration of the façade of the old Colegio de San Nicolás (1570), where the Provincial Institute has its quarters.

Two more conspicuous monuments of the sixteenth century are the fine arches of Santa Maria and Fernan González. The former occupies the site of the old tower of Santa Maria, where the town council at one time held its sittings, and whence the body of Garcilaso de la Vega was hurled by Pedro the Cruel; it was erected between 1536 and 1540 by the municipality to conciliate Charles V., it is said, for the events of the Comunidad. The arch is of three stories, and flanked by two rounded towers. Over the arch are shown in niches six statues: those of Charles V. and the Castilian worthies, the Cid, Fernan González, Nuño Rasura, Lain Calvo, and Diego Porcellos. The upper part of the structure is battlemented and adorned with statues of the Virgin, of the guardian angel of the city, and of kings-at-arms supporting escutcheons. The probability is that the entrance arch, and indeed the whole lower story, is older by a century than the sculptured parts.

The arch of Fernan González was erected in 1592 to mark the site of the castle of the redoubtable count. It is in the severe and imposing Doric style of Herrera, and was evidently intended to receive a statue of the hero, which an impoverished city is not likely to provide now. Burgos has, however, done its best to keep green the memory of its illustrious sons—an example set by so many continental towns, which we, in England, seem loth to follow.

Of the castle, whose history was so long the history of Castile, little that is ancient, nothing of the earliest structure, remains. The oldest masonry is probably the gate, called the Puerta San Estéban, a brick structure pierced with a horse-shoe arch. Popularly ascribed to the period of the Moorish domination (which practically was never asserted over Burgos), there can be little doubt that it dates from the fourteenth century, and was the work of Mudejar masons, like so many other Spanish buildings of that time. The old citadel of Castile is now a heap of ruins, but it was strong enough as late as a century ago to resist the assaults of Wellington. The next year, however (1813), the French completely dismantled the fortifications and evacuated the city.

The provincial museums of Spain are, as a rule, disappointing, but the Burgos collection, housed in the Puerta Santa Maria, is enriched by the spoils of numerous ancient churches and suppressed convents. The alabaster effigy of Don Juan de Padilla, believed to be by Gil de Siloe, is one of the noblest sepulchral monuments in the kingdom. It was brought here from the ruined monastery of Fres del Val, where the knight was interred in 1491, having met his death at the age of twenty years, before the walls of Granada. He is shown kneeling in an attitude of prayer, beside a prie-Dieu. The face is beautiful and expressive, and probably a portrait. An ample robe of extraordinary richness reveals the shirt of mail, the cuirass, and the plate armour worn by the young warrior. The style reminds one of the statues of Don Juan II. and Prince Alfonso in the Cartuja, and reflects the greatest credit on Spanish sculpture. Hardly less beautiful is the tomb itself, decorated with shields upheld by angels, and an inscription recording the age of the deceased. In the museum is also a very curious and interesting altar-front from the convent of Santo Domingo de Silos, dating from the eleventh century. It is of bronze, with figures of saints in coloured enamels, in a bastard Byzantine style. The Moorish ivory casket from the same monastery and of the same century is profoundly interesting, as exhibiting in relief the Persian theory of the origin of good and evil, like the basin from Medina Az Zahara, preserved in the National Museum of Archæology. The Byzantine reliefs of saints on one side of the casket were evidently carved by the Christians when they became the possessors. Few small provincial collections contain more important antiquities than the Museum of Burgos.