, the
village inn or _fonda_ is neither excellent nor very bad, and as for the
villagers, they are happy, simple, and hospitable dawdlers along the
paths of this life.

According to a popular belief, the life of one man, a bishop named Don
Martin (1219-48), is wrapped up in Mondonedo's cathedral, so much so, in
fact, that both their lives are one and the same. He began building his
see; he saw it finished and consecrated it--_construxit, consumavit et
consacravit_; then he died, but the church and his name lived on.

Modern art critics disagree with the above belief; the older or
primitive part of the church dates from the twelfth and not from the
thirteenth century. Originally, as can easily be seen upon examining the
older part of the building, it was a pure Romanesque basilica, the nave
and the two aisles running up to the transept, where they were cut off,
and immediately to the east of the latter came the apse with three
chapels, the lady-chapel being slightly larger than the lateral ones.

In the primitive construction of the building--and excepting all
later-date additions, of which there are more than enough--early Gothic
and Romanesque elements are so closely intermingled that one is perforce
obliged to consider the monument as belonging to the period of
Transition, as being, perhaps, a unique example of this period to be met
with in Galicia or even in Spain. Of course, as in the case of the other
Galician cathedrals, the original character of the interior, which if it
had remained unaltered would be both majestic and imposing, has been
greatly deformed by the addition of posterior reforms. The form of the
apse has been completely changed by the introduction of an ambulatory or
circular apsidal aisle dating at least from the fifteenth century, as
shown by the presence of the late Gothic and Renaissance elements.

[Illustration: MONDONEDO CATHEDRAL]

The general plan is rectangular, 120 feet long by seventy-one wide, and
seen from the outside is solid rather than elegant, a fortress rather
than a temple. The height of the nave, crowned by a Gothic vaulting, is
about forty-five feet; a triforium (ogival) runs around the top. The
lateral aisles are slightly more than half as high and covered by a
Romanesque vaulting reposing on capitals and shafts of the finest
twelfth century execution.

The original basilica form of the church has, unluckily, been altered by
the additional length given to the arms of the t