foisted as filled with specie on his “dear friends” Rachel and Vidas, the Jewish though trustful usurers of Burgos, in return for six hundred marks of gold and silver. Tradition says, moreover, that the chest now shown at Burgos as the “coffer of the Cid” is actually one of these. It is certain that the archives of the cathedral have been deposited in this chest for many centuries. Evidently, too, it dates from about the lifetime of the Cid, while the rings with which it is fitted show it to have been a kind of trunk intended to be carried on the backs of sumpter-mules or horses.

After the Roman domination in this country, the Latin term capsa was applied to every kind of chest; but at a later age sepulchral chests or coffins were denominated urns, in order to distinguish them from arcas and arcones, which were used for storing clothes or jewellery. Excellent examples of Spanish mediæval burial-chests are those of Doña Urraca, preserved in the Sagrario of the cathedral of Palencia, and of San Isidro, patron of Madrid. The former, mentioned by painstaking Ponz, and by Pulgar in his Secular and Ecclesiastical Annals of Palencia, is of a plain design, and really constitutes a coffin. The sepulchral chest of San Isidro, dating from the end of the thirteenth century, or the early part of the fourteenth, and kept at Madrid in a niche of the camarín of the parish church of San Andrés, is in the Romanic style, and measures seven feet six inches in length. It has a gable top, and is painted in brilliant colours on plaster-coated parchment, with miracles effected by the saint, and other scenes related with his life; but much of the painting is effaced.

Another interesting sepulchral chest would probably have been the one presented in 1052 by Ferdinand the First, together with his royal robe and crown,[10] to the basilica of Saint John the Baptist at León, to guard the remains of Saint Isidore. This chest was covered with thick gold plates studded with precious stones, and bore, in enamel and relief, the figures of the apostles gathered round the Saviour, and medallions containing figures of the Virgin, saints, and martyrs. According to Ambrosio de Morales, the gold plates were torn off by Alfonso the First of Aragon, who replaced them by others of silver-gilt. The same monarch, regardless of the church's fierce anathema pronounced on all who dared to touch her property,[11] is accused by his chronicler of having appropriated a box of pure gold studded with gems, enshrining a crucifix made of the true Cross, and which was kept in some town or village of the kingdom of León. Doubtless as a chastisement for Alfonso's impiety, this precious box was captured from him by the Moors at the battle of Fraga.

Among the reliquary chests, the oldest specimen extant in Spain is the arca santa of Oviedo cathedral. This object, which is purely Byzantine in its style, is believed to have been made at Constantinople. It was improved by Alfonso the Sixth, who added repoussé plates to it, with Arabic ornamentation in the form of meaningless inscriptions of a merely decorative character, but which are interesting as showing the kinship existing at this time between the Spanish Christians and the Spanish Moors.

Equally important is the coffer which was made by order of Don Sancho el Mayor to enshrine the wonder-working bones of San Millan, and which is now at San Millan de la Cogulla, in the province of La Rioja. The author of this chest, which dates from a.d. 1033, is vaguely spoken of as “Master Aparicio.” The chest itself consists of a wooden body beneath a covering of ivory and gold, further enriched with statuettes and studded with real and imitation stones. It is divided into twenty-two compartments carved in ivory with passages from the life and miracles of the saint, and figures of “princes, monks, and benefactors,” who had contributed in one way or another to the execution of the reliquary.

I have said that the “coffer of the Cid” was made for carrying baggage. A very interesting Spanish baggage-chest, although more modern than the Cid's by several centuries, is now the property of Señor Moreno Carbonero (Plate iii.). This very competent authority believes it to have belonged to Isabella the Catholic, and says that it was formerly the usage of the sovereigns of this country to mark their baggage-boxes with the first quartering of the royal arms and also with their monogram. Such is the decoration, consisting of repeated castles and the letter Y (for Ysabel), upon this trunk. The space between is painted red upon a surface thinly spread with wax. Strips of iron, twisted to imitate the girdle of Saint Francis, are carried over all the frame, surrounding the castles and the letters. This box was found at Ronda.[12]