A nobility, as quarrelsome as it was powerful, must have answered Count Raymond's call for new citizens, for during centuries to come, the streets, like those of mediæval Siena and Florence, constantly ran with the blood of opposing factions. Warring families dared walk only certain streets after nightfall, and battles were carried on between the different castles and in the streets as between cities and on battlefields. In the quarrels between royal brothers and cousins, Avila played a very prominent part. The nurse and protectress of their tender years, and the guardian of their childhood through successive reigns of Castilian kings, she became a very vital factor in the fortunes of kings, prelates, and nobles. In feuds like those of Don Pedro and his brother Enrique II, she was a turbulent centre. Great figures in Spanish history ruled from her episcopal throne, especially during the thirteenth century. There was Pedro, a militant bishop and one of the most valiant on the glorious battlefield of Las Navas; Benilo, lover of and beloved by Saint Ferdinand; and Aymar, the loyal champion of Alfonso the Wise through dark as well as sunny hours. The Jews and the Moriscoes here, as wherever else their industrious fingers and ingenious minds were at work, did much more than their share towards the prosperity and development of the city. The Jews especially became firmly established in their useful vocations, filling the king's coffers so abundantly that the third of their tribute, which he granted to the Bishop, was not appreciably felt, except in times of armament and war. With the fanatical expulsion of first one, and then the other, race, the city's prosperity departed. Their place was filled by the bloodhounds of the Inquisition, who held their very first, terrible tribunal in the Convent of Saint Thomas, blighting the city and surrounding country with a new and terrible curse. The great rebellion under the Emperor Charles burst from the smouldering wrath of Avila's indignant citizens, and in 1520 she became, for a short time, the seat of the "Junta Santa" of the Comuneros. It is still easy to discern what a tremendous amount of building must have gone on within the narrow city limits during the early part of its second erection. The streets are still full of bits of Romanesque architecture, palaces, arcades, houses, balconies, towers and windows and one of the finest groups of Romanesque churches in Spain. Of lesser sinew and greater age than San Salvador, they are now breathing their last. San Vicente is almost doomed, while San Pedro and San Segundo are fast falling.