How Important Were The
Industries Of The Earlier Days We Can Guess From The Single Fact That
John Of Padilla, When He Rose In Defence Of Municipal Liberty In The
Time Of Charles V., Drew In One Day From The Teeming Workshops Twenty
Thousand Fighting Men.
He met the usual fate of all Spanish patriots,
shameful and cruel death.
His palace was razed to the ground. Successive
governments, in shifting fever-fits of liberalism and absolutism, have
set up and pulled down his statue. But his memory is loved and honored,
and the example of this noblest of the comuneros impresses powerfully
to-day the ardent young minds of the new Spain.
Your first walk is of course to the Cathedral, the Primate Church of the
kingdom. Besides its ecclesiastical importance, it is well worthy of
notice in itself. It is one of the purest specimens of Gothic
architecture in existence, and is kept in an admirable state of
preservation. Its situation is not the most favorable. It is approached
by a network of descending streets, all narrow and winding, as streets
were always built under the intelligent rule of the Moors. They
preferred to be cool in summer and sheltered in winter, rather than to
lay out great deserts of boulevards, the haunts of sunstroke and
pneumonia. The site of the Cathedral was chosen from strategic reasons
by St. Eugene, who built there his first Episcopal Church. The Moors
made a mosque of it when they conquered Castile, and the fastidious
piety of St. Ferdinand would not permit him to worship in a shrine thus
profaned.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 167 of 254
Words from 44618 to 44884
of 67759
