elona. After a
long series of intermarriages, to quote from Burke, in a double stream,
through the royal houses of Spain and of France, the blood of the Cid is
found to flow in the veins of his majesty Alfonso XIII., the reigning
King of Spain.

The religious side of Spanish life in the eleventh century, so far as
Christianity is concerned, centres about a woman, Constance of Burgundy,
the wife of King Alfonso VI. of Castile. This was the period when the
monk Hildebrand, become Pope Gregory VII., was endeavoring to unify the
power of the Roman Church and strengthen the authority of the papacy;
and as he had a devout woman, the Countess Matilda of Tuscany, to aid
him in Italy, so he had as his firm ally in Spain the pious Queen
Constance, daughter of King Robert of France. Constance was not a
Spanish woman, but the influence she exerted in Spain had such a
far-reaching effect that she cannot be overlooked in any category such
as the present. With Constance to Spain came the monk Bernard of Cluny,
a pale ascetic, who had just been leading a crusade against the
corruption existing in the Church itself, and whose whole life had been
devoted to serious things. The French court had been given over to works
of piety, the Church had great authority, and the clergy were held in
high esteem. When the French princess left this devout atmosphere to go
to sunny Spain, she had grave misgivings as to the frivolous and
irreverent character of her new subjects, and deemed it wise to take
with her as a friend and adviser the stern Bernard. The worst fears of
these two zealous Christians were more than realized. The king had
friendly intercourse with Moorish vassals, and Moslem and Christian
lived side by side in perfect harmony! That all this should be and at a
time when the same Moslem brood was defiling the place of the Holy
Sepulchre in far-off Palestine, and when the crusading spirit filled the
air, was almost beyond belief, and Constance and the monk were greatly
scandalized thereat. Totally without that toleration which comes with
experience, they could conceive of no religion as a good religion which
did not meet the rigid requirements of their own belief; and they
planned at once a Spanish crusade which was intended to improve the
general deplorable condition of public morals and at the same time to
modify, in a most radical way, the liturgy of the Spanish Church, which
was far too lax in points of discipline. Their conduct at th