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