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_Toledo_
_The Story of an Old Spanish Capital_
_The Mediæval Town Series_
*ASSISI. By LINA DUFF GORDON. [_5th Edition._
+BRUGES. By ERNEST GILLIAT-SMITH. [_3rd Edition._
+BRUSSELS. By ERNEST GILLIAT-SMITH.
+CAIRO. By STANLEY LANE-POOLE. [_2nd Edition._
+CAMBRIDGE. By the Rt. Rev. C. W. STUBBS, D.D. [_2nd
Edition._
+CHARTRES. By CECIL HEADLAM, M.A. [_2nd Edition._
*CONSTANTINOPLE. By WM. H. HUTTON. [_3rd Edition._
+DUBLIN. By D. A. CHART, M.A.
+EDINBURGH. By OLIPHANT SMEATON, M.A.
+FERRARA. By ELLA NOYES.
+FLORENCE. By EDMUND G. GARDNER. [_9th & Revised Edition._
+LONDON. By HENRY B. WHEATLEY. [_2nd Edition._
+MILAN. By ELLA NOYES.
*MOSCOW. By WIRT GERRARE. [_3rd Edition._
*NUREMBERG. By CECIL HEADLAM. M.A. [_5th Edition._
+OXFORD. By CECIL HEADLAM. M.A.
+PADUA. By CESARE FOLIGNO.
+PARIS. By THOMAS OKEY.
*PERUGIA. By M. SYMONDS AND LINA DUFF GORDON. [_6th Edition._
+PISA. By JANET ROSS.
*PRAGUE. By COUNT LÜTZOW. [_2nd Edition._
+ROME. By NORWOOD YOUNG. [_5th Edition._
+ROUEN. By THEODORE A. COOK. [_3rd Edition._
+SEVILLE. By WALTER M. GALLICHAN. [_2nd Edition_
+SIENA. By EDMUND G. GARDNER. [_2nd Edition._
*TOLEDO. By HANNAH LYNCH. [_2nd Edition._
+VENICE. By THOMAS OKEY. [_3rd & Revised Edition._
+VERONA. By ALETHEA WIEL. [_3rd Edition._
_The price of these marked (*) is 3s. 6d. net in cloth, 4s. 6d. net
in leather; +, 4s. 6d. net in cloth, 5s. 6d. net in
leather._
_All rights reserved_
_First Edition_, _August 1898_
_Second Edition_, _July 1903_.
_Third Edition_, _May 1910_.
[Illustration: _Antonio de Covarrubias._]
Toledo. _The Story
of an Old Spanish Capital
by Hannah Lynch Illustrated
by Helen M. James_
[Illustration: colophon]
_London, 1910_
_J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd._
_New York: E. P. Dutton & Co._
"_Anda el tiempo y anda
y todo se acaba._"
ROMANCERO GENERAL.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
_Earliest History of Toledo_ 1
CHAPTER II
_Under Goth Rule_ 26
CHAPTER III
_Under the Moslems_ 64
CHAPTER IV
_Her latest History_ 81
CHAPTER V
_The Old Capital, once and now_ 115
CHAPTER VI
_The Cathedral_ 150
CHAPTER VII
_Domenico Theotocopoulos, "El Greco"_ 193
CHAPTER VIII
_San Juan de los Reyes, Santa Maria la Blanca, El Transito_ 216
CHAPTER IX
_Vanished Palaces_ 243
CHAPTER X
_Minor Churches, Convents, and Hospitals_ 266
CHAPTER XI
_Bridges and Gates_ 292
APPENDIX
_Practical Information_ 305
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
_Portrait of Antonio de Covarrubias,
from the painting by El Greco_ _Frontispiece._
_Puente de Alcántara_ 4
_Puente de Alcántara_ 41
_The Cathedral_ 83
_Puente S. Martino_ 97
_Moorish Arch leading to Zocodover_ 121
_House Cervantes stayed in, Toledo_ 123
_The Zocodover_ 125
_The Tagus_ 135
_Mill on the Tagus_ 137
_Toledo from Left Bank of Tagus_ 141
_Puente S. Martino of Bano de la Cava_ 145
_A Street Corner, Toledo_ 147
_Interior of Cathedral_ 153
_North Transept Door of Cathedral_ 160
_Interior of Cathedral Coro from S. Aisle_ 163
_Detail of Reja to Capilla Mayor, Cathedral, Toledo_ 167
_Detail, Tomb of King, Gospel Side of High Altar, Cathedral, Toledo_ 170
_Tomb of Cardinal Mendoza_ 171
_Capitular Door in Toledo Cathedral_ 177
_Tombs of Count Alvaro de Luna and Wife, the Cathedral, Toledo_ 183
_The Cathedral Tower_ 191
_"The Burial of the Count of Orgaz," from the painting by El Greco_ 202
_Detail of Ornament, Interior of S. Juan de los Reyes_ 221
_Cloister, S. Juan de los Reyes_ 223
_S. Luke Angle of Cloister, S. Juan de los Reyes_ 227
_Detail of Ornament, El Transito_ 233
_Santa Maria la Blanca_ 241
_Remains of Palace, said to be that of Don Pedro el Cruel_ 251
_Casa Fuensalida_ 256
_Moorish Window in Casa de Mesa_ 259
_The Castle of San Servando_ 263
_San Tomé_ 267
_Santiago, Toledo_ 272
_Santo Pablo_ 273
_Cristo de la Luz_ 277
_Door of Santa Cruz_ 285
_Tomb of Cardinal Tavera_ 290
_Puerta Visagra (Antigua)_ 297
_Puerta del Sol_ 300
Toledo
The Story of an Old Spanish Capital
CHAPTER I
_What is Known of Toledo's earliest history_
What more stupefying contrast than that of cheap commonplace Madrid
(cheap alas! only in the artistic sense) and the legendary still visage
of Toledo? The capital you leave abustle with modern movement, glaring,
gesticulating, chattering, animated in its own empty and insignificant
fashion, with its pleasant street of Alcala, so engagingly unhistoric,
its shop-fronts full of expensive and second-rate articles from other
capitals, the vulgar vivacity of the Puerta del Sol thronged with
everlasting gossips in trousers and wide-brimmed hats; with its
swindling hotel-keepers and insolent drivers. The train sweeps you past
the wide empty bed of the Manzanares, covered here and there with a film
you understand by courtesy to represent a river, and the city behind is
a gay compact picture, slightly waving upward from its bridges, white
and flourishing above the broad yellow plain. The tones of the land are
rough and crude, red striking hotly against brown and greyish purple.
Here and there a solitary hill, burnt and defoliaged, with a glimpse of
ruined ramparts, a mule-path along which a file of peasants pass, the
women lost in roomy saddles, with feet dangling in the air, and red or
yellow handkerchiefs tied under their chins. Carts move slowly along the
old diligence road, guided by heavy-browed males.
The swallows' flight reveals the exquisite limpidity of the air and the
height of the unstained heaven, azure in the infinite depths of aërial
sapphire, blue beyond blue, translucent almost to the furthest reach of
vision. And the light shines broadly upon an incomparable mingling in
landscape of insensate ardour and changeless moroseness. So still, so
brilliant, so burnt and empty! revealing the national traits of mournful
hopelessness and unembittered, unregretful resignation. The rays lie in
a luminous quietude upon the red-brown land, while the breath of fresh
day just touches the leaves of the scant olives and shows them silver.
Then midway the desert swims behind, and the eye is mildly refreshed
with little signs of pastoral life, ineffectual efforts at gaiety amid
tyrannous sadness. Imagination leaps at sight of a cheering bit of
verdure, not for the beauty of it, though beauty is not altogether
absent, but for the old familiar eloquence of trees and grassy spaces,
the twinkling brightness of rills and flashing water and wooded fringes,
with a hint of shadow along the horizon. Between the poplared banks of
the river, yellow and waveless as befits a river of dead romance, the
eye lingers on glimpses of emerald islets, with reedy edges against the
fuller foliage of elm. Above, exposed on a rocky throne, belted by the
sombre Tagus, sits Toledo.
"The landscape of Toledo and the banks of the Tagus," writes M. Maurice
Barrès, with singular felicity, "are amongst the saddest and most ardent
things of this world. Whoever lives here has no need to consider the
grave youth, the _Penseroso_, of the Medicis Chapel; he may also do
without the biography and the _Pensées_ of Blaise Pascal. With the very
sentiment realised by these great solitary works, he will be filled, if
he but give himself up to the tragic fierceness of the magnificences in
ruins upon these high rocks.
"Toledo, on its hillside, with the tawny half circle of the Tagus at its
feet, has the colour, the roughness, the haughty poverty of the sierra
on which it is built, and whose strong articulations from the very first
produce an impression of energy and passion. It is less a town, a noisy
affair yielding to the commodities of life, than a significant spot for
the soul. Beneath a crude illumination, which gives to each line of its
ruins a vigour, a clearness by which the least energetic characters
acquire backbone, at the same time it is mysterious, with its cathedral
springing towards the sky, its alcázars and palaces that only take sight
from their invisible patios. Thus secret and inflexible, in this harsh
overheated land, Toledo appears like an image of exaltation in solitude,
a cry in the desert."
The train leaves you at the foot of the town before the quaint
fortressed bridge of Alcántara. In these days of unpretentious exits and
entrances, when we scarcely detect the outskirts of a city from the open
way, or the suburbs from the heart of urban movement, these two
castellated bridges, by which you enter and leave Toledo, have a strange
and insistent air of feudality that at once captures fancy, and
resembles the flourish of trumpets in martial dramas. Civilisation
instantly waves backward, and leaves imagination thrilled upon the
shores of legend. At a bound memory is at the core of troubled Spanish
history, a sad and spectral ghost, in the thrall of wonderment and
admiration. Surely never was town, with all our modern needs of
bread-winning and competition, of commerce and politics, of cheap
ambition and every-day social intercourse, so curiously, magnificently
faithful to its past. So precisely must Toledo have looked, barring the
electric light, when the last page of its intimate history was written.
Just so brown and barren, with its front of unflinching austerity, its
stern wealth of architecture, the air of romantic elegance and charmed
slumber it breathes upon sadness, with its look of legendary musing and
widowed remembrance. So, unchanged, must it have been in its great day
of hieratic glory, of Gothic rule, of Saracen triumph and of feudal
revolt.
[Illustration: PUENTE DE ALCANTARA]
From the bridges, the road winds up the steep rock, upon whose summit
this unique old city is built. The views at every turn of the winding
path are entrancing. There is every strange effect to gratify the eager
eye in search of the picturesque: an unsurpassed boldness of site, from
the wide zone of the Tagus to the point of the Cathedral tower pinnacled
against the upper arch of heaven. Project high rocks upon which odd and
delightful passages, neither street nor lane, full of colour and curve
and varied line, are cut like sharp upward and downward strokes, over
frowning ravines, and swelling by swift ascent from the yellow band of
water below, that imprisons the town like a moat, and along with the
martial bridges, give the impression of being cut off from the big
lively world, a prisoner in a city of dreamland. At once you yield
yourself to the gracious grip of your enchanter and gaoler. The eye
rests in ineffable contentment upon the violent line of empty hills,
yellow and brown and rose, turned violet by the sun's retreat, and you
feel no longing for the vulgar and bustling present you have left
behind. Here to sit awhile and dream, not days but unending months, in
the shadow of a mighty cathedral, in what a Spanish writer with Iberian
imagery, has called "a case of mediæval jewels." It is a fitting note of
environment that the landscape should be stamped by an ardent and
ineffaceable desolation, incessantly exposed to devastating winds, swept
by fierce rains and blinding dust and remorseless sunfire. Nature is
neither instigated by contrast, nor softened by charm. Unsmiling in its
arid austerity, it is grand by the magic of its simplicity. The audacity
with which it reveals its nakedness in the glare of unshaded light that
has burnt its flanks a peculiar reddish-brown hue, sinks all impression
of crudity, and becomes the supreme effect of natural art. It makes no
pretence to shield the peril of its broken precipices with the
beguilement of verdure, but lets them hack their murderous way to the
river-brim without shrub or any vigorous sign of vegetation. Heavy and
still, like the glittering light that fatigues the eye, it has
nevertheless its secret, matchless captivation, such as Venice, its
sister-town in strangeness (though of softer and more alluring beauty,
feminine to its stern masculine), and casts the mind, conquered, into
the mazes of reverie. You may have come by a train into this mausoleum
of petrified memories, you may sit at the usual table d'hôte, but you
cannot feel modern: the present slips away, and forgotten is the march
of centuries.
* * * * *
Of the town's earliest history knowledge is merely the wildest
assumption, and we have no reason to believe any of the legends handed
down to us by historians as tradition. For instance, that obscure if
venerable voice, asserts, that when God made the sun he placed it over
Toledo (previously made, of course) and planted the foot of Adam, first
King, beneath it at that particular spot of the globe. This is at least
a fine testimony of the Spaniard's lofty faith in the antiquity of
Toledo. A less sweeping assertion connects the first light of the town
with Tubal, the grandson of Noah, who is supposed to have come hither
after the deluge, and this view is naïvely supported by the verses of
Gracia Dei, the chronicler of King Pedro:
"Tubal, nieto de Noé,[1]
Alphonsus the Learned, in his _Cronica General_, maintains and is
supported in his no less extravagant opinion by Diego Mossem Valera,
Isabel the Catholic's historian, that Toledo was founded by Pyrrhus,
captain of the army of Cyrus, and son-in-law of King Hispan, father of
Iberia. It is imagined that Iberia, Pyrrhus's wife, was in need of the
freshness and verdure of the leafy banks of the Tagus, and that her
husband brought her hither to taste the air and delights of the gardens
around. But we are not told how there came to be gardens and foliaged
places along the silent Tagus, nor who fashioned them, nor how Pyrrhus
heard of them. The wife, Iberia, and the father-in-law appear as
adequate explanations of the subsequent history of Spain, since both
furnish the names of the land that Europe is familiar with. Once upon
the banks of the Tagus, the gardens did not content Pyrrhus, so he began
to enlarge the spot he had chosen. He discovered two towers, one at San
Roman, and the other at the Alcázar, called _Los Dos Hermanos_, (The Two
Brothers), built, tradition then told him, by the two sons of King Rocas
in defence against the enemies of Rocas and his father Tartus. But
whence came Rocas and Tartus and the two brothers? Why should Alphonso
the Learned choose Pyrrhus and his wife, those remote tourists, as the
founders of Toledo, rather than Rocas and Tartus?
Rufo Festo Avieno regards Hercules as the founder of the Carpetanian
city, and celebrates the achievement in verse:
"Et Carpetanos inter proverbe sub Auras
Toletum labor Alcide præclareque gentes
Metropolis in gente Tajo ses undique iactat
In qua tardi gradus conspectat parte Trionis
Haud Pater Alcides (ut dicunt) condidit urbem,
Mor ubi ter gemina victor gerione perempto,
In latium meditatus iter Dionysii quondam,
Prium dicta fuit de fundatoris honesto
Nomine; Toletum alii dixere coloni."
This version explains the name of Toledo as Ptoliethron, signifying
important race, bestowed by Hercules. Honour is also awarded to a
certain Greek astrologer, Ferecio, who came to Galicia with Teucer,
Ulysses and Diomedes, after the siege of Troy, and having killed one of
his companions, flew from the anger of the others into the heart of the
Peninsula, until the security of the high rocks on which Toledo is
built, tempted him to seek shelter amid these altitudes, which he at
once consecrated to Hercules. As the natives gathered round him, and the
town spread, he initiated them in the mysteries of magic and astrology,
arts until then unknown in Spain, and for this reason called _arta
Toledana_.
Less wild and improbable is the last legend, that the Jews came hither
when Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem, and created the town they called
Toledoth, "city of generations." From this period is supposed to date
the synagogue Santa Maria la Blanca. The explanation of the fact that
under Christian rule the Jews of Toledo were permitted to have their
synagogues and worship unmolested according to their rites, is based on
the tradition that the Jews of Jerusalem consulted them before
condemning Christ to death. They withheld their consent, and pronounced
the sentence both heedless and imprudent, but their letter arrived too
late for consideration. The mere belief that this letter had been sent,
however, secured them for some centuries from insult or persecution.[2]
The famous archbishop, Don Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada, rejects all these
theories, and goes to Rome in search of founders, which he discovers in
two consuls, Tolemon and Brutus, 108 years before Cæsar's time, when
Ptolemy Evergetes was reigning. But this seems no nearer truth, since
there exists no vestige of any domination anterior to the Roman
Conquest, and there are no data on which to found a definite statement.
The most convenient way of disposing of the question, up to the day of
Livy's emphatic description of Toledo as "parva urbs, sed loco munita,"
is to say with the old-fashioned writers that its beginning is "lost in
the night of ages." For lost it most certainly is, and the ancient
Spanish historians are not to be trusted. It is probable that the first
start of the race was a Celtic group of shepherds, wild and rude, whose
wanderings led them to the leafy and verdant banks of the Tagus, and
here, finding abundance of water, and rich and fertile land between
Aranjuez and Toledo, they agreed to settle. Gradually the little town,
pitched high above the river upon its unattackable rocky seat, spread
itself; the number of huts grew into streets and lanes, the vague and
wandering groups became more dense, and attracted others within their
dominating influence, until the capital of Carpetania was formed. The
shepherds left their flocks to build themselves walls and strong places,
and thus bring upon their little city the imperious and conquering eye
of Rome. Here again we have nothing but untrustworthy generalities to
guide us, and no prehistoric remains on which to base conclusions about
this vanished race. Alcocer, the old historian of Toledo, asserts that
the very mystery and obscurity of the city's earliest days is proof of
its antiquity and nobility, "since a race is all the more ancient by the
less that is known of its origin and beginning." In a pleasing
concession to this naïve statement, we need feel no shame in allowing to
Toledo all the nobility and antiquity our unenlightened ignorance
permits it to claim.
The first dim figure in its history that shows out upon a vague and
discutable background is that of Tago, a governor of the town in the
days of Carthagenian domination. Before the second punic war, the
Carthagenians sought to strengthen their forces by alliance with the
Carpetanians, whom they had already partially subjugated. According to
Rasis, the Moorish writer, there were then eleven governors in
Carpetania, one of whom was Tago, at Toledo. Hasdrubal had succeeded
Hamilcar, and reversing his mild policy, entertained his fancy with
every kind of ferocious injustice and cruelty. The Carpetanians were
handy, half allies, half conquered subjects, and the account of Tago's
assassination, for Hasdrubal's mere pleasure, is one of unmitigable
barbarity, one of those incidents that leave us stunned and stupefied by
the revelation of an inexplicable instinct of cruelty in uncivilised
man. Not content with repeatedly stabbing the unfortunate governor with
his own hand, Hasdrubal ordered the body to be crucified, then drew his
sword across the throat, severing the head, exposed the headless trunk,
and forbade it decent burial. One of Tago's slaves revenged his master
by assassinating Hasdrubal, and the infuriated Carpetanians rose up in
revolt against Carthagenian oppression. They joined neighbouring tribes,
and determined to resist Hannibal. Hannibal marched against them, and
met them near ancient Oresia, eight leagues from Toledo, and here a long
and fierce battle was fought, equal on both sides in losses, endurance,
courage and fury. Night fell before either side had obtained the
slightest advantage, and when day came, the confederates had the wild
joy of forcing the world's greatest general to retreat. This obscure and
miserable little people, a handful of raw Celtiberians, had no means of
measuring the extent of their forgotten glory. Hannibal to them was no
more than Hasdrubal, and they little suspected the kind of hero they had
to do with. So they feasted and shouted and sang in their rash triumph,
while Hannibal, who had folded his tent before their impetuous charge,
grimly looked on, and planned to take advantage of their unbuckled hour.
In the midst of their feasting and pleasuring, he bore down unexpectedly
upon the victors, and all the confederates, struck at their brightest
moment in the full flush of pride, were broken on the remorseless wheel
of Carthagenian rule.
From this onward, light begins to gather over Toledan history, dimly, of
course, and by the very necessity of its vicissitudes, intermittent and
dubious. After the fall of Carthage, we find, 191 years B.C., Marcus
Fulvius Nobilior directing the Roman forces against the capital of
Carpetania, and as besieger occupying the opposite bank of the Tagus.
The reigning king of the Celtiberians was Hilermo. Fulvius defeated him
in the plain, and then laid siege to the town and took it with ease. But
though now subject to Rome, the Romans never appear to have dominated
this stolid and sturdy Celtic race. Under whatever sway, Toledo ever
wears its unwearying face of sullen independence. Rome itself could
stamp no permanent impression on such a wilful and indomitable subject.
Her armies might sweep it off the field of rebellion, but could neither
chain it nor secure its sympathy. It remained obstinately neutral in all
the successive Roman strifes; took no notice whatever of Viriate's
imperious call from the foot of its walls to join him on the bank of the
Tagus below, and wage war with him against the Praetor, Caius Plancius.
What was Viriate to the aloof and self-centred Toledans more than a man
of another country fighting a personal battle with which they had no
concern? Toledo willingly opened its gates to Sylla's victim, Sertorius,
and allowed him to shelter and nourish his hate and burning sense of
injury behind its walls, but it flatly declined to help him in his plan
of vengeance. He might stay there and win, as he did, the people's
esteem and a kind of grudging affection, but war was his own affair, and
if he stayed it should be as one of themselves, content with an inactive
recognition of wrongs. To these wild and independent Celtiberians it
mattered nothing whether Rome ran herself to ruin in her fierce quarrels
and dissensions. So Sertorius stayed on in protected exile, almost as a
ruler adopted by those who sheltered him, who yielded him admiration and
sympathy, while sturdily declining to grant him troops or subsidies, and
would not hear of marching under his leadership against the great
Republic. This same haughty indifference Toledo maintained throughout
the civil wars between Cæsar and Pompey, and showed the same coldness in
the fortunes of Augustus. Her voice was not heard in the chorus of
enthusiasm when the Temple of Janus was closed, and the Augustan peace
affected her as little as had the previous disorders and rivalries and
battles. Silent and sullen vassals Rome ever found these Toledans,
holding themselves persistently aloof from all her interests. The single
Roman ruler they appear to have favoured with some measure of homage was
Marcus Julius Philippicus, who, to win his way with them probably
granted them unrecorded favours or some special privilege. This rare
mood of gratitude to Rome was expressed on a marble slab which Maestro
Alvar Gomez, the chronicler of Cisneros, the great Cardinal, found in
the porch of a door where it served as an ordinary seat:
Imp. Caes.
M. Julio Philippo
Pio Fel. Aug.
Pont. Max. Trib.
Pot. P. P. Consul.
Toletam Devotes
Sini Nuninis
Maestati
Que Eius D. D.
The gratitude was apparently of modified value if we may judge by the
unceremonious treatment of its monument.
Though Toledo must have had a distinct existence under the Romans, since
Pliny calls it the Metropolis of Carpetania, there is not to be found
definite evidence of the precise nature of that existence. The few coins
that have come down to us in various collections, said to belong to that
period, are of dubious origin; the inscriptions are not a whit more
authentic. So little is clear or authentic that Alcover may continue to
delight in the mystery and obscurity of its history as proof, according
to his cherished phrase, of the town's antiquity and nobility. We are
hardly justified in supposing anything, and imagination is barely
assisted in its effort to penetrate its inhospitable walls. For we know
that there were walls in those days, since Viriate is depicted standing
under them, and calling on the citizens to join his forces below and
march behind the standard of civil war. It is pretty certain that the
town was extensive and populous, or Viriate would not have troubled to
clamour for its assistance; and assuredly of some importance, else would
Pliny have described it as the Capital of Carpetania? But what was the
measure and nature of its civilisation, of its customs, dress? Did it
adopt any of the Roman ways? We may assume from its rude and central
position that in progress it was far behind the Mediterranean towns. But
it undoubtedly had its place along the great Roman roads, and was
connected with Tarragona and Carthagena, of which superior and more
notable centres it was a dependency. While Tarragona has remained to
this day pre-eminently an old Roman town, the very physiognomy of the
race a kind of diminished Roman, and Cordova and Granada are as
romantically and faithfully Moorish, Toledo has swept from off its face
nearly every vestige of Roman domination but a few miserable stones, and
is as insistently Gothic. So obscure and unrevealed is this period of
transition that beyond the indication of the _Circo Romano_ and portion
of the Puente de Alcántara outside the town, there are no remains to
prove the passage of the world's conquerors and civilisers, nothing to
suggest their imperishable influence. Of its position under Roman rule
it is difficult to form an exact opinion. Its rank at first was probably
that of a stipendary town, left to the despotic will of centurions
without a responsible governor. It was merely regarded as an
insignificant source of tribute. In this period of partial servitude it
would have contracted the habit of idleness, the most prominent curse of
slavery. Later on it was raised to municipal rank, had its own coin and
commerce, and developed a racial preference for the arts of war rather
than for those of peace. Finally, when Augustus came to reign, he raised
Toledo to the rank of a colony, and transmitted to the town the
privileges of Merida, making the Carpetanian capital the centre for the
collection of tribute. But whatever difference these honours may have
made in the town's private history, whatever amount of added prosperity
they may have brought it, we are not permitted by the historians to
obtain a clearer or more striking figure of Toledo as a colony of Rome
than we had of Toledo in its first stage of stipendary town. Here and
there an inscription exists as testimony of her advanced rank, such as.
L. Terentius
Gn. pomp. F. P. P.
Bassino
Totelano Quaestori
Q. Q. Redidili
Primo Flamini perpetuo Toleti
Et Totius Hispanae
Quod hic Termas et viam.
Of the baths and the Roman way nothing now remains. Cristobal Lozano, in
his _Reyes Nueves de Toledo_, devotes a chapter to the Roman glories of
the town, speaks of the Circo Maximo, the temple of Hercules, the
Naumachia and amphitheatre, and tells us that the bullfights of Spain
date from this period. The temple he describes as being 300 feet in
length and 200 feet in width; it was situated in the Vega, and was an
object of devotion to the entire province of Carpetania. The celebrated
cave of Hercules into which Rodrigo, the last of the Gothic kings, is
supposed to have penetrated before the fatal battle of Guadalete, Lozano
describes at greater length. The cave is as legendary as Rodrigo's
sombre experience therein. It covered the prodigious extent of three
leagues, and was composed of thousands of arches, pillars and columns.
It was said to have been used as a secret treasury, but was built by
Hercules as a royal subterranean palace, and here in prehistoric days
the arts of magic were studied. The Romans enlarged it, and during the
persecutions it served the Christians as church and oratory and
cemetery. Part of it lay under the spell of enchantment by the order of
Hercules, and when Spain was flooded with barbarians, and the Goths
swept the classic Romans out of Toledo, Hercules hermetically sealed the
doors, and tradition asserted that whoever should succeed in bursting
open these doors would learn his doom and wed calamity. No Gothic king,
until Rodrigo, was strong-minded enough to risk such dreadful peril, and
the doors remained sealed. But the unfortunate Rodrigo was as brave as
he was curious. He burst through the magic doorway, on which was written
in Greek letters: _The King who opens this cave and discovers the
wonders it holds, will discover good and evil_. Those who preceded him
into the mysterious palace speedily fell back in a state of shuddering
alarm and fear, shouting that they had seen an awful vision. Instead of
staying to learn the nature of the vision, Rodrigo, angry and impatient,
pushed his way in before his cowardly followers. He encountered an
immense bronze statue in a beautiful frame work, highly sculptured. It
held a wooden hammer, and struck fierce blows with it against the earth,
thus moving the air and causing a terrible noise which bewildered and
frightened Rodrigo's courtiers. It stopped its movements as Rodrigo
approached, and on the wall of a closed arch beside it was written:
_Whoever opens this arch will find wonders_. The King ordered his men to
break open a passage, and instead of the treasures he expected to find,
there was a picture of Arabian troops, some afoot, some on horseback,
turbaned and armed, and underneath written: _Whoever reaches this spot
and opens this arch, will lose Spain, and will be beaten by this race_.
"The King," writes Lozano, "with sorrow in his heart and such sadness as
we can understand, though carefully hiding it, ordered the door to be
closed again." All those present also dissimulated their feelings, not
to increase the affliction of the King. And while they went about
seeking if among so many misfortunes they might find some consolation,
lifting their eyes, they saw on the wall, on the left hand of the
statue, other lines of writing: _Sorry King for thy doom hast thou
entered here_. And on the right lines saying: _For foreign nations wilt
thou be dispossessed, and thy people will be heavily punished_. Behind
the statue they read: _I call upon the Moors_, and on its breast was
written: _I fulfil my task_. That same night in the roar of many voices
and loud battle cries, the earth opened and swallowed up in a clap of
thunder the enchanted palace and every vestige of it. The legend is an
excellent one, and has well served the poets, but unhappily it is only a
legend of no historic value whatever. Rodrigo no more penetrated this
mythical cave than he kissed Florinda, who never existed. Cardinal
Siliceo is said to have explored what remained of the part without the
vanished enchanted part of the palace, and after penetrating half a
league inward, found bronze statues on the altar; and while examining
one of them, the statue fixed him with a grave and austere glance, while
a loud noise was heard, which filled the explorers with terror, and
Lozano naïvely suggests that nothing of the sort possibly happened, for
fear is a great inventor, and "they were filled with fear to the eyes."
They fled without King Rodrigo's courage to go further. Though it was
summer time, most of them died immediately afterwards from cold and
fright, and the "good" archbishop, who had caused this devastation among
his flock, ordered the mouth of the cave to be built up and covered with
mud, 1543. Antonio Ponz, commenting on this prodigious and serious
account given by Lozano of a fabulous cave and an impossible tale, makes
merry over the naïve Spaniard's accuracy of description and facts. "One
would really believe he had seen it all," writes the unenthusiastic
Ponz, "the statue, the bronze, the _admirable_ sculpture, and had
measured the extent of the cave." The same may be said of Lozano's
grandiose description of the Roman buildings of which hardly a vestige
remained in his time, 1666. The Circo Maximo, Gamero asserts, was built
to hold a hundred thousand persons, from which we might infer that
Toledo under the Romans had an important population.
Approaching less apocryphal days, we learn that Toledo was one of the
earliest towns of Spain to embrace Christianity. It is even said that St
Peter and St James passed here, and some add St Paul, preaching the
Gospel and creating bishops. St Eugenius, of Greek or Roman origin, was
the first. The Spanish historians decline to accept the tradition that
St Denis of Paris sent Eugenius to Spain, preferring to keep him in
company with the Apostles. But it allows that he went to Paris to see St
Denis, and here was martyred near the city by the prefect, Fescenino
Sicino, his headless body being flung into a filthy lagoon so that his
disciples and admirers should never be able to find it. Two hundred
years later the lake gave up its dead, uncorrupted. One Ercoldo, being
ill, saw St Denis in sleep, who told him to rise cured, and go to the
lake, where he would find the body of the illustrious martyr awaiting
burial. At the same time he promised for the sake of Eugenius, great
health to the neighbourhood and the honour of many miracles. Pisa
records this tale at some length with unction and faith. Several
centuries later the emperor, Alfonso VII., grandson of the victor of
Toledo, obtained from his son-in-law, Louis of France, the right arm of
Eugenius as a relic, and the arm was brought to Spain in all pomp by the
Abbot of St Denis in person. Later, Philip II. obtained the entire body
from Charles IX., with the consent of the Cardinal, Duke of Lorrain,
Abbot of St Denis. The town prepared a magnificent reception for the
remains of the founder of its cathedral. Antonio de Rivera, the
choir-master, gives a detailed description of the triumphal arches, the
Latin and Castillian poems, the dances and other diversions of the hour.
The King was present as well as his unfortunate son, Don Carlos, the
princes of Hungary and Bohemia, Rodolpho and Hernesto, sons of
Maximilian, the bishops of Cordova, Siguenza, Segovia, Palencia, Cuenca,
Osuna, Lugo and Gerona. Francisco Bayeu painted a fine fresco of the
scene for the cathedral cloisters, representing the entrance of the
remains under the Puerta de Visagra.
The next saint connected with the Christian history of the town, and its
real patron, is St Leocadia. She was of noble birth, beautiful, young
and gifted. She is depicted a kind of Spanish St Elisabeth of Hungary,
succouring the poor and sick, speaking words of wisdom to the weak, of
sympathy to the suffering. Her father, Leocadio, was governor under
Dacian, and her uncle was Melancius the archbishop. While yet a child
she vowed herself to maidenhood and the service of the needy and those
in trouble, and her doors like her compassionate heart were open to all.
On his arrival at Toledo, Dacian heard of the wonderful maid, and
learnt that her influence spread far and wide. He ordered her to appear
before him, and she came surrounded by friends and admirers. The Roman
in the interview is painted as brutal and inexorable, the girl-saint as
mild but firm. She would change neither her faith nor her ways, and
valiantly announced herself as ready for death. We hear of
flagellations, of chains, of torture, of every form of explosion of
Roman fury, till finally unable to invent further atrocities, Dacian
flung her into a dark dungeon, where she died a natural death, some
assert, others preferring the more ghastly version of Dacian in person
ordering her to be flung down a steep rock into the Tagus. But this, I
imagine, has been tacked on to the legend as a more picturesque
conclusion for a martyr than a natural death in a prison. Gamero does
not endorse it, and his history is admitted to be the most accurate of
any that deals with Toledo.
This is how Pisa writes of Dacian:--"Dacian, haughty, famished for
blood, drunk with the blood of French martyrs, came to accomplish a like
butchery in Spain. He inflicted terrible tortures on St Folia and St
Cucufato and St Eulalia at Barcelona, and went like a mad lion through
Zaragoza, with the blood of martyrs ever flowing behind him. This
minister of Satan came to the town of Alcala, where he shed the blood of
the children, Justo and Pastor, so young that their blood was yet partly
milk. Then he came to this famous city of Toledo, where the people
received him with honour. He sat on the tribune to receive recognizance
and vassalage to the Emperor's published edict, and commanded the public
to adore the idols of his gods. He ordered an inquisition among the
Toledan Christians to torture them and then destroy their bodies." Good
Dr Pisa had not humour enough to perceive the irony of Spanish history,
since these are the very proceedings of the Castellian monarchs to
heretics in later centuries. One wonders at the censorious use of the
ominous word "inquisition" from a Spanish pen. "Tell me, young lady,"
Dacian suavely enough addresses Leocadia summoned before him, "for such
is the exceeding beauty of thy face that nobody born has ever beheld one
more fair, and being well-born and of pure and noble lineage, how is it
thou canst so lightly be deceived by such vanities, despising thus the
ancient ceremonies and worship of our gods and preferring to follow the
new sect of the Crucified." Methinks, so might some urbane cardinal have
addressed a pretty heretic some centuries later as much a martyr, albeit
uncanonised, as Leocadia. And such a desperate wrath would the maiden's
answer have provoked as that which sent Leocadia to imprisonment and
death. Certainly the early Christians were not courteous to the Pagans
they defied. The gods Leocadia contemptuously called "miserable," and
the polite and flattering Dacian came in for a share of her impassioned
vituperation with the consequences she naturally desired.
At so early a period dawns the celebrated hieratic fame of Toledo, which
for centuries made it less subject to the sovereign than to the
archbishop. Melancius was raised to the bishopric in the year 283, and
after him, under the domination of Rome, may be said to have reigned
over the Celtic citizens, ten important bishops, whose portraits can be
studied in the Sala Capitular of the Cathedral. Gothic rule in Toledo is
little else but the story and development of Gothic Christianity. More
than on kings and their battles and doings does the town's early fame
rest upon those councils of the church in its midst. They send the name
of Toledo as far as Rome in a warning note of independence and power.
This primitive church had its own rite, its own customs, its
emphatically racial way of viewing matters, and for centuries no
high-handed effort of Rome could smooth the angles of its stubborn
individuality, or Latinise the tone of its worship and faith. It
remained for France and French influence to accomplish what Rome had
vainly striven to achieve, and it is to be deplored that France should
have succeeded in the defacing task.
The first of these councils took place in the year 396, and the second
in 400, to consider the election of Dictinius to the bishopric of
Astorga, one of the sect of Priscilianists. This deliberate battle waged
by Toledo against the Priscilianists took place in September, and its
minutes are preserved intact in the Toledan Collection. Nineteen bishops
assisted at it, and the Bishop of Merida, Patriuno, presided over it, as
the oldest present. The meeting took place in the church of Toledo, the
bishops seated, and the deacons and congregation admitted, standing. In
a long address the president exposed the scandals and vicissitudes of
the times, and then discussed in ten different points various details
connected with the church. Woman seems to have been the victim of
austere episcopal reprobation. She must not presume to chaunt antiphones
whether nun or widow, in the absence of the bishop, neither with her
confessor nor his attendant. Such communion of the sexes under the
banner of religion the Council held as pernicious and a snare. It
fulminated against the _frail_ sex, but for whose existence man were a
sage and a saint. What a pity the Almighty did not consult the Fathers
before casting this fatal and corrupting instrument of misfortune upon
the world! However, woman must not complain. To quote one of the
delightful and ironical sayings of Renan, the Fathers of the Church
increased her power by making her a sin. As a mere woman she is only a
human being, like her feeble and fugitive mate. But as a combustible
engine requiring the reunion of hoary Fathers from time to time to drown
and extinguish her beneath the founts of holy water set to play upon her
wickedness and peril, she really becomes something diabolical and
magnificent, a creature to inspire alarm and excite curiosity. It is not
improbable that the saintly sages and modest deacons, as they issued
from the church into the rocky and tortuous streets of Toledo, on the
September day of the council in the year 400, gazed in a fresh instinct
of fearful wonder and shuddering attraction at the first skirted fiend
that crossed their path. However plain or beautiful she might be, they
would be greatly more preoccupied with the thought of her sex than her
looks. Yet the clergy still might marry, and they had full rights over
their wife except death. They could beat her, tie and lock her up, give
her all "salutary" punishment that was not mortal, deprive her of food,
and forbid her to sit at table. Never mind, she had her revenge. She
felt her power be sure, and was conscious that she was a _sin_.
Before the Council of Nice, Toledo adopted the belief that the Holy
Ghost proceeds from the Father and Son, which doctrine only became
universal several centuries later. This is the Toledan Credo of the
fifth century: "We believe in one sole and true God, Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost, maker of all things visible and invisible, by whom were
created all things in heaven and on earth; that this sole God and this
sole Trinity are of divine substance; that the Father is not the same as
the Son, but has a Son who is not the Father; that, the Son is not the
Father, but is the Son of God from the nature of the Father; that the
Spirit is the Paraclete, and is neither the Father nor the Son, but
proceeds from both. The Father was not engendered but the Son, but not
the Paraclete which proceeds from the Father and Son. The Father is He
who was heard from the heavens, crying: _This is My Son in whom I am
well pleased. Hearken to Him._ The Son is He who said: _I left the
Father and came from God to this world_; and the Paraclete it is of whom
the Son said: _If I went not to the Father, the Paraclete would not come
to you._ That this Trinity is distinct in three persons, and is a
substance united by virtue and indivisible by power and majesty, beyond
this we do not believe there is any divine nature, nor of angel, nor of
spirit, nor of any virtue that believes itself God. This Son of God,
born of God the Father, before all beginning, sanctified the womb of the
Virgin Mary, and became real man in her, _sine virili generatum semine_;
uniting both natures, that is divine and fleshly, in one sole person,
who is our Lord, Jesus Christ; neither was His body imaginary or any
phantasm, but solid and real; He ate, was thirsty, endured pain, wept
and suffered the injuries of the body; ultimately was crucified by the
Jews, and buried, rose again the third day; spoke afterwards with His
disciples, and the day of quadragesimo, after the resurrection ascended
to heaven. This Son of Man also called Himself Son of God, and the Son
of God also called Himself God, Son of Man. We believe in the future
resurrection of human flesh, and maintain that the soul of man is not a
divine substance, or part of God, but a creature formed by divine will."
Among the singular subjects of excommunication of this Toledan Council
are three worthy of notice: Vegetarians are excommunicated, it being
decided by the Fathers that birds and beasts were intended to be eaten
by man. Mathematicians are excommunicated, unfortunately we are not told
why. Those who execrate marriage are excommunicated. Surely this last
sentence is inconsistent with the Fathers' professed execration of the
"frail sex"!
But the triumphs and severities of the Fathers were soon interrupted by
the invasion of the terrible north barbarians. The Goths were pouring
across the Pyrenees, soon to make Toledo their capital and "Royal city."
Fire, ruin, pillage, and death, Lafuente describes as the traces of
their path. Fields, orchards, cities, and woods were swept by their
ferocity. The horrors of famine and pest succeeded, calamity stalked the
earth, and the Toledan sages sat and talked in the desert. The Vandals
were already in the beautiful southern province of Betica, which they
called Vandalusia. Rome had fallen, and the conquering Visigoth,
unsettled in the north since Ataulfo's assassination at Barcelona,
turned his eyes upon the strong-walled city perched up above on its
seven rocks. Toledo had successfully resisted the Vandals; it succumbed
to the Goths, and Euric took it by force. She was momentarily
extinguished after her first little hour of sacerdotal pride and power.
Euric died at Arles, and the Gothic Court for a time drifted to Sevilla.
But a brighter day dawned when Atanagildo was elected king. Married to
Gosuinda, the bishop of Toledo's sister, he had formed a liking for the
place, and brought hither the Court, making Toledo the capital of his
kingdom.