h his naked sword, the cross having
been left at home), at the head of his soldiers, and drove the already
triumphant Moors back until they broke their ranks and fled. The same
bishop carried the Christian sword to the very heart of the Moorish
dominions, to Granada, and conquered neighbouring Loja. The next
prelate, Don Adan, was one of the leaders of the army that conquered
Cordoba in 1236, and, entering the celebrated _mezquita_, sanctified its
use as a Christian church.

The history of the cathedral church is no less interesting. The
primitive see was temporarily placed in a church on a hill near the
fortress; this building was pulled down in the fifteenth century, and
replaced by a Jesuit college.

Toward the beginning of the fourteenth century a cathedral church was
inaugurated. Its life was short, however, for in 1498 it was partially
pulled down to make way for a newer and larger edifice, which is to-day
the unfinished Renaissance cathedral visited by the tourist.

Parts of the old cathedral are, however, still standing. Between the
tower of the new temple and the episcopal palace, but unluckily
weighted down by modern superstructures, stands the old facade, almost
intact. The grossness of the structural work, the timid use of the
ogival arch, the primitive rose window, and the general heaviness of the
structure, show it to belong to the decadent period of the Romanesque
style, when the artists were attempting something new and forgetting the
lessons of the past.

The new cathedral is a complicated Gothic-Renaissance building of a nave
and two aisles, with an ambulatory behind the high altar. Not a square
inch but what has been hollowed out into a niche or covered over with
sculptural designs; the Gothic plan is anything but pure Gothic, and the
Renaissance style has been so overwrought that it is anything but
Italian Renaissance.

The facade of the building is imposing, if not artistic; it is composed
of four bodies, each supported laterally by pillars and columns of
different shapes and orders, and possessing a _hueco_ or hollow in the
centre, the lowest being the door, the highest a stained glass window,
and the two central ones blind windows, which spoil the whole. The
floral and Byzantine (Arab?) decoration of pillars and friezes is of
a great wealth of varied designs; statuettes are missing in the niches,
proving the unfinished state of the church.

[Illustration: FACADE OF PLASENCIA CATHEDRAL]

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