King Alfonso VI, were the
Moors driven south of Leon, and Salamanca could at last claim to be body
and soul Christian. The safety of the city was finally assured by
Alfonso's conquest of Toledo.

The university, destined to become so famous, was founded by Alfonso IX
about 1230. Among the Arab rulers in Spain, there were not a few as
eager as their co-believers in eastern Islam to learn all that the
civilized world could teach in art and science. The Caliphate of Cordova
had from the tenth century drawn to its schools and academies
proficients in astronomy, mathematics, and jurisprudence, as well as in
the more graceful arts of music, rhetoric, and poetry. The monks of
Cluny, belonging to the Order of Saint Benedict, then the most
influential in Europe, now became domiciled in Salamanca under the
protection of King Alfonso. They contributed the arts of France,
preeminently architecture, and the training of their order as
instructors and veracious compilers of historical annals to the learning
and skill already established by the followers of Mahomet in several
cities of the Spanish Peninsula. Thus the science and arts of the Orient
joined forces with those of the Occident within the strong walls of
Salamanca and founded there an illustrious seat of learning. Only three
universities, Oxford,[1] Paris, and Bologna, could boast a greater age,
but Salamanca soon attained such eminence as to rank with these by papal
decree among the "four lamps of the world." In the sixteenth century,
she numbered over seven thousand scholars. Among those destined to
become famous in the world's history were Saint Dominic, Ignatius
Loyola, Fray Luis of Leon, and Calderon.

To-day solitude and intellectual stagnation reign in the halls and
courts of this once renowned university. In a few half-empty
lecture-rooms the rustic now receives an elementary education, as he
listens to the cathedral chimes across the sunlit courtyard.

Within the crumbling crenelations of the ancient battlements twenty-four
once large parishes are more or less abandoned or laid waste with their
convents, monasteries, and palaces.

[Illustration: KEY OF PLANS OF NEW AND OLD CATHEDRALS OF SALAMANCA

A. Old Cathedral.
B. New Cathedral.
C, C. Crossing.
D. Cloisters.
E. Choir.
F. Apse.
G, G. Apsidal Chapels.
H. Altar.]

The history of Salamanca's ecclesiastical architecture is connected with
the campaigns which were carried on i