Council of Toledo

“ In 1129 a council was held at Palencia. Here Toledo sat at the feet of Compostella. Charlemagne, himself, is said to have broken a lance in favour of Santiago which, one knows not by what right, he proclaimed the head of Spain. Beside the question of the primacy, Burgos put in her claim for the Cortes, which she held should meet within her walls, and not on the banks of the Tagus. Here the king was the stout defender of Toledo. At the great meeting convened to discuss this rivalry, the king entered the Council Chamber, and haughtily cried:{96} “Let Burgos speak, I will reply for Toledo.” ”

“ It is not improbable that the saintly sages and modest deacons, as they issued from the church into the rocky and tortuous streets of Toledo, on the September day of the council in the year 400, gazed in a fresh instinct of fearful wonder and shuddering attraction at the first skirted fiend that crossed their path. However plain or beautiful she might be, they would be greatly more preoccupied with the thought of her sex than her looks. ”

“ Imagination leaps at sight of a cheering bit of verdure, not for the beauty of it, though beauty is not altogether absent, but for the old familiar eloquence of trees and grassy spaces, the twinkling brightness of rills and flashing water and wooded fringes, with a hint of shadow along the horizon. Between the poplared banks of the river, yellow and waveless as befits a river of dead romance, the eye lingers on glimpses of emerald islets, with reedy edges against the fuller foliage of elm. Above, exposed on a rocky throne, belted by the sombre Tagus, sits Toledo. ”

“ During the hundred and ten years that elapsed between the death of Reccared (601) and the rout of the Guadelete (711) , no fewer than fifteen sovereigns sat on the throne of Spain. Toledo was the theatre of their barbaric triumphings, their violent entrances and tragic exits. Now the city would resound with the savage, exultant yells of the townsmen, as they dragged the body of the usurper Witeric up and down the steep, uneven streets—to cast the bleeding, shapeless thing that had so lately been a king, upon a dunghill. ”

“ The feet of the people through the influence of centuries, no doubt, appear to be impervious to the lacerating effect of pointed stones, and you have nothing to do but rise superior to the sensation of pain if you can; if not, to groan in private. But you are so well repaid by every step you take, that you have no claim upon sympathy.
Was ever city so strongly placed, so superbly fortressed as Toledo must have been in Roman, Gothic and Moorish days? ”

“ It is less a town, a noisy affair yielding to the commodities of life, than a significant spot for the soul. Beneath a crude illumination, which gives to each line of its ruins a vigour, a clearness by which the least energetic characters acquire backbone, at the same time it is mysterious, with its cathedral springing towards the sky, its alcázars and palaces that only take sight from their invisible patios. Thus secret and inflexible, in this harsh overheated land, Toledo appears like an image of exaltation in solitude, a cry in the desert. ”

“ Genius alone could quell her, and genius came in the handsome and valiant young monarch who would win her or die. First he sent a royal order, commanding her to surrender to him her rights as a free and independent Republic, and humbly acknowledge him as liege lord. This Toledo roughly and proudly declined to do. Her reply was couched in terms of evasive menace, for eighty-four years of freedom, under the protection of the Beni Casi of Aragon and the King of Leon, had taught her to regard herself as an enemy to be duly reckoned with. ”

“ The knights and hidalgoes could do no less than follow the lead of their courageous{100} women folk. They drew their swords, made a circle round her, and walking thus escorted the queen to the palace gates. The flag of revolt was instantly raised, and the people called the infante, Don Fadique, to come and take command. He came with 700 men, and Doña Blanca was proclaimed free and sovereign. Toledo then sent a commission to the king, bearing the town’s orders: that Maria de Padilla and her relatives should be banished, and the queen occupy her rightful place. ”

“ The Toledans applauded the proposition to entertain a prince with whom they were so satisfied in every way. They had a governor of their own nationality, they enjoyed perfect freedom, and Abderraman had personally won them. In their innocence they besought an honour now desired. Abderraman acted the part of coy visitor, delicately apprehensive of giving trouble, but finally yielded to the persuasion of such genial hospitality. He came to the fortified castle, and ordered a great feast to which all the nobles and wealthy citizens of Toledo were invited. ”

“ Later on Isabel and Fernando embellished the royal Alcázar, which was guarded by a thousand castillian hidalgoes, and Carlos V. built the great staircase, one of the most regal of the world, while a superb salon, richly wrought in{133} arabesque, was the introduction of the Constable of Castillo, Alvaro de Luna, at an earlier period. All these glories are departed, negligently burnt. The first subject to occupy the Alcázar in state was the Cid, Ruiz Diaz, whom Alfonso named first governor of Toledo after its capture from the Moors. ”

“ The very buildings, placed upon the crags beneath the great hulk of the Alcazar, repeat this impression, they rise in sharp upward and downward lines like an arrangement of swords, and make their appeal by the strange strength of their aspect. The streets are a tortuous net of steep-rising passage-ways. A city strongly itself that has suffered no change, fantastic as a city seen in a dream.{149}
Yes, to those who know Toledo, the impression of the character of the city upon El Greco will bring no surprise. ”

“ From her ports enormous quantities of grain are yearly shipped to England either direct, or via Montreal, and her people say, without expecting to be contradicted, that no city in the United States can point to such a wonderful development of commercial resources. This scarcely suggests the time when Toledo was little more than the dead carcass of speculation, the prey of the tax-gatherer, waiting the resurrection that followed the War of the Rebellion, when men remained her citizens simply because they had no money with which to get away. ”

“ It has undergone so many vicissitudes, so many reconstructions, that the name, as we have employed it, must be understood to represent a site rather than the actual palace. A stronghold of some sort has always been here—possibly, in Roman times, the Arx, where tradition avers the martyr Leocadia suffered death. The Arabian geographer, Jerif al Edris, writing in 1154, describes Toledo as “a town great in extent and population, extremely strong, with fine ramparts, and an Alcazaba, fortified and impregnable.” ”

“ Cisneros filled the town with militia, and the ramparts glittered with steel. Now Toledo’s pet aversion was a uniform. She liked to fight, but in her own rough, free-lance style. So she rose up against the cardinals, and after a futile rebellion, in which neighbouring towns engaged, was speedily quelled. But the insurgents within her gates kept muttering of treachery on Charles’ side and of his unhappy mother. So Toledo, “the crown of Spain and light of the whole world, ever free since the high reign of the Goths,” decided to fight for the queen, and depose the tyrannical young Charles. ”

“ Where will you match such a corner as that of the old palace of the Cardinal D. Pascual de Aragon, now a convent? Words are useless to convey an idea of its quaintness, the effect of pink and green, of iron balcony, of wrought stone, of broken façade and charming variety of line. These are things that even a painter can hardly hope to reproduce. And such corners abound in Toledo. The foot treads the very pavement of romance and legend, where everything is a gratification for the eye, and the dream of the mourner of departed centuries is remorselessly realised. ”

“ Fear lent me wings to escape from the governors of the foundling hospital, whither I was absolutely resolved never to return, having formed principles of taste diametrically opposite to their method of teaching the classics. I went into Toledo with as light a heart as if I had known where to get my daily bread. To be sure, it is a town of ways and means, where a man who can live by his wits need never die of hunger. ”

“ The aspect of the city is hardly beautiful. It is too stern, too sombre, even in sunlight, and it lacks the colour and gaiety of the Andalusian towns. And yet Toledo is one of the most fascinating cities in Europe, holding you with a strong spell, a grim, irresistible invitation to remain within its gates. There is so much to behold, so much to think upon, in this old Moorish place. The cathedral alone claims long days of your sojourn, for it is a great monument, haunted with memories, and richly stored with treasures of art. ”

“ Here the master of empires, the great Charles V., reigned in grandeur, and gave laws to the world. It is a fitting place for such a history as it has; and no other city has a more romantic life. Indeed, romance has done so much to embellish the story of Toledo, it is difficult to be in it, and study it here on its own rocks, without asking for its enchanted towers, and haunted caves, and knights, with magic swords and spectre horses, and its 200,000 mighty men and beautiful women, that once made this castle-crowned crag the glory of Spain, and as famous in the earth as Babylon or Damascus. ”

“ In beauty, alas, we have not progressed.{116} That remains behind along with many other divine things, the portion of this sadly-used old world’s bright morning. Such vast centres as London and Paris are mean enough compared with what such a town as Toledo must have been when her semi-royal archbishops flourished and kings were proud and delighted if she but smiled upon them, more used as they were to her frowns and her visage of haughty revolt ”

“ I have never found its wonderful charm diminished by familiarity; on the contrary, the coloured rays of light from above, striking upon the brown shade of stone, seem ever more and more witching; the delicate tones of shadow more and more mysterious, and the unrivalled grandeur of long forested perspectives of aisles and of spacious naves, with the multiplicity of arches and windows, ever a greater testimony of Toledo’s departed glory.
Space forbids anything like a detailed account of the chapels and cloisters of the Cathedral. ”

“ The bishops, who, in each revolution, were prepared to flatter the victorious, and to insult the prostrate labored, with diligence and success, to kindle the flames of persecution, and to exalt the mitre above the crown. Yet the national councils of Toledo, in which the free spirit of the Barbarians was tempered and guided by episcopal policy, have established some prudent laws for the common benefit of the king and people. ”

“ You seem to look down upon the earth from Alpine heights. Below, through incredible depths of space, flows the Tagus, with its broad horse-shoe curve that makes almost an island of the town, and with charming little breaks in joyous verdure and soft little dashes of blue shade and white mist, the sombre and austere hills of Toledo make an upper and{190} more violent rampart against the world beyond. Such is the sense of imprisonment here, that the eye instinctively seeks, as a chance of escape, the long white way of Madrid. ”

“ The chronicler tells how, having given peace to his people, he, first of the Visigothic sovereigns, assumed the attire of a king and made Toledo his capital. He strengthened the position of his family and provided for the security of his kingdom by associating his two sons, Recared and Hermenegild, with himself in the kingly office and placing parts of the land under their rule. ”

“ The city points upward like a grey sword; and whether seen in shafts and foils of orange light against a stormy sunset, or fainting and crumbling greyly beneath a relentless sun and sky of cloudless blue, it has the austere intensity{258} that we find in El Greco’s work. Yet, as in the greyest pictures of El Greco occurs some relieving touch of colour, so Toledo is not merely a monotonous symmetry of brown or grey. A procession, white and gold and red and purple, passes through the narrow streets under a shower of roses from the balconies of houses gaily hung in white and red, red and yellow ”

“ The rock has grown into Toledo and Toledo into the rock.
In a land where all is old, men marvel at the antiquity of this city. And when it was younger by centuries, the chroniclers, groping amid legends and fables the wildest and most extravagant, strove to penetrate the darkness of the ages and to discern the pale glimmerings of Toledo’s dawn. ”

“ The shepherd-boys are usually attended by shepherd-dogs so enormous in size that the traveller often mistakes them for donkeys. They are sagacious, and do most of the herding, their masters devoting themselves to the guitar, the siesta, the cigarette, and the garlic pudding.
Toledo, more than any other Spanish city, abounds with interesting bits and noble examples of the old Moorish architecture, for the reason that it has not been rebuilt at all, and that few of its ruins have been restored, or even retouched. Color alone has changed. ”