e queen could do nothing, and finally, as a
compromise, it was decided to submit the question to the ordeal of trial
by battle. Two champions were duly appointed who fought before a most
august assembly over which the queen presided. The Knight of the Gothic
Missal, Don Juan Ruiz de Matanzas, killed the Champion of Rome, and was
not only victorious, but unscathed, much to the disgust of Constance and
her followers. The manifest disinclination to accept this result as
final made another ordeal necessary, and this time, in truly Spanish
style, a bull fight was resolved upon. The great arena at Toledo was
selected as the place where this ecclesiastical combat was to take
place, and on the appointed day the great amphitheatre was crowded with
an expectant multitude. The queen, the king, and the archbishop, backed
by black-robed monks, looked on with evident interest, hoping that this
time the scales would turn in their favor; but the people, expert in
contests of this kind, had already picked the Castilian bull as the
winner and had begun to wager their small coin as to the probable
duration of the fight. The people were right, the Roman _toro_ was
promptly slain, and once more the cause of Spain was triumphant. But the
queen was persistent, and in spite of the fact that the result of each
of these ordeals was popularly considered as a direct sign from heaven,
she refused to accept them as final, because her pet project had been
rejected. If the results had been different, there is little doubt but
that the ordeals would have been received as infallible. However, it was
not possible to cast a slight upon this time-honored procedure by any
act which might tend to throw it into disrepute, so the whole question
was dropped for the space of seven years. Queen Constance, in this
interval, carried on a quiet campaign which she hoped would lead
eventually to the adoption of the much discussed and twice rejected
liturgy, and at no time did she give up her hope. Rome, to her narrow
mind, must reign supreme in matters spiritual if the kingdom of Spain
was to have relations with the kingdom of heaven, and she did not
hesitate to ride rough-shod over the national clergy, to whom alone,
without any aid whatever from the pope, the recent Christian successes
in Spain had been due. When she considered the time ripe for some
radical action, Gregory sent his legate, the Cardinal Ricardo, to hold a
Church council at Burgos, and there it was for