peador. This Rodrigo Diaz was born near
Burgos. The lady Zimena whom he married was daughter of a Count Diego
Rodriguez of Oviedo, probably a descendant of the founder of the city.
In the presence of the knights and nobles of Burgos, the Cid forced
Alfonso VI to swear that he had no part in the murder of King Sancho,
and in the royal city he was then elected King of Castile by the Commons
(1071). Alfonso never forgave the Cid this humiliation, and later exiled
him. To the Burgalese of to-day, he seems as living and real as he was
to mediaeval Castilians. Spanish histories and children will tell you of
two things that make Burgos immortal--her Cathedral, and her motherhood
to Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar.[4]

The importance of the city as a Christian centre becomes evident at the
end of the eleventh century (1074), when it receives its own bishop, and
shortly afterwards, fully equipped, convokes a church council to protest
against the supplanting by the Latin of the earlier Mozarabic rite, so
dear to the hearts of the people. The same Alfonso transferred his
capital to the newly conquered Toledo and, contemporaneous with the
great prosperity of Burgos during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
there was endless jealousy as to precedence, first between Burgos and
Toledo and afterwards between these and Valladolid. Burgos reaches the
zenith of her power in the reign of Saint Ferdinand and the first half
of the thirteenth century, though as late as 1349, Alfonso XI, in the
assembled Cortes, still recognizes Burgos's claim as "first city" by
calling on her to give her voice first,--"prima voce et fide," saying
_he_ would then speak for Toledo. Not long after, Valladolid overshadows
them both.

The greatness of Burgos is that of the old Castilian kingdom; with its
extinction came hers. Her flowering and expansion were contemporaneous
with the most splendid period of Gothic art. Her day was a glorious one,
before bigotry had laid its withering hand upon the arts, and while the
rich imagination and skilled hands of Moorish and Jewish citizens still
ennobled and embellished their capital city.

II

The present Cathedral is singularly picturesque and by far the most
interesting of the three great Gothic Cathedrals of Spain,--Leon,
Toledo, and Burgos. The interest is mainly due to her vigorous organism,
an outcome of more essentially Spanish predilections (as well as a
natural interpretation of the French importations) than we fi