She is very old,--tradition says, founded by Count Diego Rodriguez of Alava with the assistance of an Alfonso who ruled in Christian Oviedo towards the end of the ninth century. For many years his descendants, as well as the lords of the many castles strewn along the lonely hills north of the Sierra de Guadarrama, owed allegiance to Leon and the kingdom of the Asturias. Burgos finally threw off the yoke, and chose judges for rulers, until one of them, Ferdinand Gonzalez, assumed for himself and his successors the proud title of "Conde of Castile." Under his great-grandson, Ferdinand I, Castile and Leon were united in 1037, thus laying the foundations of the later monarchy. Burgos became a capital city. Against the dark background of mediæval history and interwoven with many romantic legends, there stands out that greatest of Spanish heroes, the Cid Campeador. This Rodrigo Diaz was born near Burgos. The lady Zimena whom he married was daughter of a Count Diego Rodriguez of Oviedo, probably a descendant of the founder of the city. In the presence of the knights and nobles of Burgos, the Cid forced Alfonso VI to swear that he had no part in the murder of King Sancho, and in the royal city he was then elected King of Castile by the Commons (1071). Alfonso never forgave the Cid this humiliation, and later exiled him. To the Burgalese of to-day, he seems as living and real as he was to mediæval Castilians. Spanish histories and children will tell you of two things that make Burgos immortal--her Cathedral, and her motherhood to Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar.[4] The importance of the city as a Christian centre becomes evident at the end of the eleventh century (1074), when it receives its own bishop, and shortly afterwards, fully equipped, convokes a church council to protest against the supplanting by the Latin of the earlier Mozarabic rite, so dear to the hearts of the people. The same Alfonso transferred his capital to the newly conquered Toledo and, contemporaneous with the great prosperity of Burgos during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, there was endless jealousy as to precedence, first between Burgos and Toledo and afterwards between these and Valladolid. Burgos reaches the zenith of her power in the reign of Saint Ferdinand and the first half of the thirteenth century, though as late as 1349, Alfonso XI, in the assembled Cortes, still recognizes Burgos's claim as "first city" by calling on her to give her voice first,--"prima voce et fide," saying _he_ would then speak for Toledo. Not long after, Valladolid overshadows them both. The greatness of Burgos is that of the old Castilian kingdom; with its extinction came hers. Her flowering and expansion were contemporaneous with the most splendid period of Gothic art. Her day was a glorious one, before bigotry had laid its withering hand upon the arts, and while the rich imagination and skilled hands of Moorish and Jewish citizens still ennobled and embellished their capital city. II