uare edifice is an architectural page
differing from its companions. Studying first the western, then the
southern, and lastly the two remaining sides, the student can obtain an
idea of how Romanesque principles struggled with Gothic before dying
completely out, and how the latter, having reached its apogee,
deteriorated into the most lamentable superdecoration before fading away
into the naked, straight-lined features of the Renaissance so little
compatible with Christian ideals.

VI

CORIA

To the west of Toledo and to the south of the Sierra de Gata, which,
with the mountains of Gredo and the Guaderrama, formed in the middle
ages a natural frontier between Christians and Moors, lies, in a
picturesque and fertile vale about twenty miles distant from the nearest
railway station, the little known cathedral town of Coria. It is
situated on the northern shores of the Alagon, a river flowing about ten
miles farther west into the Tago, near where the latter leaves Spanish
territory and enters that of Portugal.

Caurium, or Curia Vetona, was its name when the Romans held Extremadura,
and it was in this town, or in its vicinity, that Viriato, the Spanish
hero, destroyed four Roman armies sent to conquer his wild hordes. He
never lost a single battle or skirmish, and might possibly have dealt a
death-blow to Roman plans of domination in the peninsula, had not the
traitor's knife ended his noble career.

Their enemy dead, the Romans entered the city of Coria, which they
immediately surrounded by a circular wall half a mile in length, and
twenty-six feet thick (!). This Roman wall, considered by many to be the
most perfectly preserved in Europe, is severely simple in structure, and
flanked by square towers; it constitutes the city's one great
attraction.

The episcopal see was erected in 338. The names of the first bishops
have long been forgotten, the first mentioned being one Laquinto, who
signed the third Toledo Council in 589.

Two centuries later the Moors raised Al-Karica to one of their capitals;
in 854 Zeth, an ambitious Saracen warrior, freed it from the yoke of
Cordoba, and reigned in the city as an independent sovereign.

Like Zamora and Toro, Coria was continually being lost and won by
Christians and Moors, with this difference, that whereas the first two
can be looked upon as the last Christian outposts to the north of the
Duero, Coria was the last Arab stronghold to the north of the Tago.

Towar