ad architecture is only too
evident. The tower is perhaps the most elegant part, and yet the second
body, which was to give it a gradually sloping elegance, was omitted,
and the third placed directly upon the first. This is no improvement.

Perhaps the real reason for these architectural mishaps is not so much
the fault of the architects and artists as that of the chapter, and of
the flock which could not help satisfactorily toward the erection of a
worthy cathedral. Luckily, however, there are other cathedrals in Spain,
where, in spite of reduced funds, a decent and homogeneous building was
erected.

The cloister, bare on the inner side, is nevertheless a modest Gothic
structure with acceptable lobulated ogival windows.

_PART IV_

_Western Castile_

I

PALENCIA

The history of Palencia can be divided into two distinct parts,
separated from each other by a lapse of about five hundred years, during
which the city was entirely blotted out from the map of Spain.

The first period reaches from before the Roman Conquest to the
Visigothic domination.

Originally inhabited by the Vacceos, a Celtiberian tribe, it was one of
the last fortresses to succumb to Roman arms, having joined Numantia in
the terrible war waged by Spaniards and which has become both legendary
and universal.

Under Roman rule the broad belt of land, of which Palencia, a military
town on the road from Astorga to Tarragon, was the capital, flourished
as it had never done before. Consequently it is but natural that one of
the first sees should have been established there as soon as
Christianity invaded the peninsula. No records are, however, at hand as
regards the names of the first bishops and of the martyr saints, as
thick here as elsewhere and as numerous in Spain as in Rome itself. At
any rate, contemporary documents mention a Bishop Toribio, not the first
to occupy the see nor the same prelate who worked miracles in Orense and
Astorga. The Palencian Toribio fought also against the Priscilian
heresy, and was one of the impediments which stopped its spread further
southward. Of this man it is said that, disgusted with the heresy
practised at large in his Pallantia, he mounted on a hill, and,
stretching his arms heavenwards, caused the waters of the river to leave
their bed and inundate the city, a most efficacious means of bringing
loitering sheep to the fold.

Nowhere did the Visigoths wreak greater vengeance or harm on the