eligion first appeared in Spain, it is believed that
Sigueenza, or Segoncia, possessed an episcopal see; nothing is positively
known, however, of the early bishops, until Protogenes signed the third
Council of Toledo in 589.

It is believed that in the reign of Alfonso VI., he who conquered Toledo
and the region to the south of Valladolid and as far east as Aragon,
Sigueenza was repopulated, though no mention is made of the place in the
earlier chronicles of the time. All that is known is that a bishop was
immediately appointed by Alfonso VII. to the vacancy which had lasted
for over two hundred years, during which Sigueenza had been one of the
provincial capitals of the Kingdom of Toledo. The first known bishop was
Don Bernardo.

The history of the town was never of the most brilliant. In the times of
Alfonso VII. and his immediate successors it gained certain importance
as a frontier stronghold, as a check to the growing ambitions of the
royal house of Aragon. But after the union of Castile and Aragon, its
importance gradually dwindled; to-day, if it were not for the bishopric,
it would be one historic village more on the map of Spain.

In the reign of Peter the Cruel, its castle--considered with that of
Segovia to be the strongest in Castile--was used for some time as the
prison palace for that most unhappy princess, Dona Blanca, who, married
to his Catholic Majesty, had been deposed on the third day of the
wedding by the heartless and passionate lover of the Padilla. She was at
first shut up in Toledo, but the king did not consider the Alcazar
strong enough. So she was sent off to Sigueenza, where it is popularly
believed, though documents deny it, that she died, or was put to death.

The city belonged to the bishop; it was his feudal property, and passed
down to his successors in the see. Of the doings of these
prelate-warriors, the first, Don Bernardo, was doubtless the most
striking personality, lord of a thousand armed vassals and of three
hundred horse, who fought with the emperor in almost all the great
battles in Andalusia. It is even believed he died wielding the naked
sword, and that his remains were brought back to the town of which he
had been the first and undisputed lord.

The strong castle which crowns the city did not possess, as was
generally the case, an _alcalde_, or governor; it was the episcopal
palace or residence, a circumstance which proves beyond a doubt the
double significance of the bi