rdent and vehement,
had defended her Immaculate Honour before a body of skeptics.

The Moors tore down or modified the cathedral, and erected their
principal mosque in its stead. When, three hundred years later, they
surrendered their Tolaitola to Alfonso VI. (1085), they stipulated for
the retention of their _mezquita_, a clause the king, who had but little
time to lose squabbling, was only too glad to allow.

The following year, however, King Alfonso went off on a campaign,
leaving his wife Dona Constanza and the Archbishop Don Bernardo to look
after the city in his absence. No sooner was his back turned, when, one
fine morning, Don Bernardo arrived with a motley crowd of goodly
Christians in front of the mosque. He knocked in the principal door,
and, entering, threw out into the street the sacred objects of the Islam
cult. Then the Christians proceeded to set up an altar, a crucifix, and
an image of the Virgin; the archbishop hallowed his work, and in an hour
was the smiling possessor of his see. Strange to say, Don Bernardo was
no Spaniard, but a worthy Frenchman.

The news of this outrage upon his honour brought Alfonso rushing back to
Toledo, vowing to revenge himself upon those who had seemingly made him
break his royal word; on the way he was met by a committee of the Arab
inhabitants, who, clever enough to understand that the sovereign would
reinstate the mosque, but would ever after look upon them as the cause
of his rupture with his wife and his friend the prelate, asked the king
to pardon the evil-doers, stating that they renounced voluntarily their
mosque, knowing as they did that the other conditions of the surrender
would be sacredly adhered to by his Majesty.

Thanks to this noble (cunning) attitude on the part of the outraged
Moors, the latter were able to live at peace within the walls of Toledo
well into the seventeenth century.

Toward the beginning of the thirteenth century Fernando el Santo was
King of Castile, and his capital was the city on the Tago. The growing
nation was strong and full of ambition, while the coming of the Cluny
monks and Flemish and German artisans had brought Northern Gothic
across the frontiers. So it occurred to the sovereign and his people to
erect a primate cathedral of Christian Spain worthy of its name. In 1227
the first stone was laid by the pious warrior-king. The cathedral's
outline was traced: a Roman cruciform Gothic structure of five aisles
and a bold transep