n the ring should have
been given back into his hands; should this happen, it would prove that
the Almighty had pardoned his sins.

For two years he roamed about visiting shrines and succouring the poor;
at last one day he dreamed that his Master ordered him to repair
immediately to his see, where he was sorely needed. Returning to Zamora,
he passed the night in a neighbouring hermitage, and while supping--it
must have been Friday!--in the belly of the fish he was eating he
discovered his pastoral ring.

The following day the church-bells were rung by an invisible hand, and
the pilgrim, entering the city, was hailed as a saint by the
inhabitants; the same invisible hands took off his pilgrim's clothes and
dressed him in rich episcopal garments. He took possession of his see,
dying in the seventh year of his second reign.

Almanzor _el terrible_, on the last powerful raid the Moors were to
make, buried the Christian see beneath the ruins of the cathedral, and
erected a mezquita to glorify Allah; fifteen years later the city fell
into the hands of the Christians again, and saw no more an Arab army
beneath its walls.

It was not, however, until 125 years later that the ruined episcopal see
was reestablished _de modernis_, the first bishop being Bernardo (1124).

But previous to the above date, an event took place in and around Zamora
that has given national fame to the city, and has made it the centre of
a Spanish Iliad hardly less poetic or dramatic than the Homerian legend,
and therefore well worth narrating as perhaps unique in the peninsula,
not to say in the history of the middle ages.

When Fernando I. of Castile died in 1065, he left his vast territories
to his five children, bequeathing Castile to his eldest son Sancho,
Galicia to Garcia, Leon to Alfonso, Toro to Elvira, and Zamora to
Urraca, who was the eldest daughter, and, with Sancho, the bravest and
most intrepid of the five children.

According to the romance of Zamora, she, Dona Urraca, worried her
father's last moments by trying to wheedle more than Zamora out of him;
but the king was firm, adding only the following curse:

_"'Quien os la tomara, hija,_
_iLa mi maldicion le caiga!'--_
_Todos dicen amen, amen,_
_Sino Don Sancho que calla."_

Which in other words means: "Let my curse fall on whomsoever endeavours
to take Zamora from you.... Those who were present agreed by saying
amen; only the eldest son, Don Sancho, remain