It Is Famed As The Resting-Place Of Saints
Ildefonso And Leocadia, Whom We Have Met Before.
The statue of the
latter stands over the door graceful and pensive enough for a heathen
muse.
The little cloisters leading to the church are burial vaults. On
one side lie the canonical dead and on the other the laity, with bright
marble tablets and gilt inscriptions. In the court outside I noticed a
flat stone marked Ossuarium. The sacristan told me this covered the
pit where the nameless dead reposed, and when the genteel people in the
gilt marble vaults neglected to pay their annual rent, they were taken
out and tumbled in to moulder with the common clay.
This San Cristo de la Vega, St. Christ of the Plain, stands on the wide
flat below the town, where you find the greater portion of the Roman
remains. Heaps of crumbling composite stretched in an oval form over the
meadow mark the site of the great circus. Green turf and fields of
waving grain occupy the ground where once a Latin city stood. The Romans
built on the plain. The Goths, following their instinct of isolation,
fixed their dwelling on the steep and rugged rock. The rapid Tagus
girdling the city like a horseshoe left only the declivity to the west
to be defended, and the ruins of King Wamba's wall show with what
jealous care that work was done. But the Moors, after they captured the
city, apparently did little for its defence. A great suburb grew up in
the course of ages outside the wall, and when the Christians recaptured
Toledo in 1085, the first care of Alonso VI. was to build another wall,
this time nearer the foot of the hill, taking inside all the accretion
of these years. From that day to this that wall has held Toledo. The
city has never reached, perhaps will never reach, the base of the steep
rock on which it stands.
When King Alonso stormed the city, his first thought, in the busy half
hour that follows victory, was to find some convenient place to say his
prayers. Chance led him to a beautiful little Moorish mosque or oratory
near the superb Puerta del Sol. He entered, gave thanks, and hung up his
shield as a votive offering. This is the Church of San Cristo de la Luz.
The shield of Alonso hangs there defying time for eight centuries, - a
golden cross on a red field, - and the exquisite oratory, not much larger
than a child's toy-house, is to-day one of the most charming specimens
of Moorish art in Spain. Four square pillars support the roof, which is
divided into five equal "half-orange" domes, each different from the
others and each equally fascinating in its unexpected simplicity and
grace. You cannot avoid a feeling of personal kindliness and respect for
the refined and genial spirit who left this elegant legacy to an alien
race and a hostile creed.
The Military College of Santa Cruz is one of the most precious specimens
extant of those somewhat confused but beautiful results of the
transition from florid Gothic to the Renaissance.
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