this, that if he were living there is none who could drive away the
spoils of Castille, he being so near. For the love of God therefore,
and of my forefather the Cid, I give it to him, and to you, who have
known so well how to ask it at my hands. When the Abbot heard this he
was as joyful as he could be, and would have kissed the hand of King
Don Sancho, but the King would not suffer this because he was a priest
of the mass. Then the King ordered the spoil to be driven to the
Monastery, and went himself with it, and saw the banner hung up again
in its place, and abode there three weeks, till all that booty had been
restored to the persons from whom it was taken. And when this was done
he offered to the Monastery two hundred pieces of gold for the soul of
his forefather the Cid, and returned into his kingdom of Navarre, and
did no more evil at that time in the realm of Castille. This good
service the Cid Ruydiez did to Castille after his death.
XXI. Moreover when the Miramamolin brought over from Africa against
King Don Alfonso, the eighth of that name, the mightiest power of the
misbelievers that had ever been brought against Spain since the
destruction of the Kings of the Goths, the Cid Campeador remembered his
country in that great danger. For the night before the battle was
fought at the Navas de Tolosa, in the dead of the night, a mighty sound
was heard in the whole city of Leon, as if it were the tramp of a great
army passing through. And it passed on to the Royal Monastery of St.
Isidro, and there was a great knocking at the gate thereof, and they
called to a priest who was keeping vigils in the Church, and told him,
that the Captains of the army whom he heard were the Cid Ruydiez, and
Count Ferran Gonzalez, and that they came there to call up King Don
Ferrando the Great, who lay buried in that Church, that he might go
with them to deliver Spain. And on the morrow that great battle of the
Navas de Tolosa was fought, wherein sixty thousand of the misbelievers
were slain, which was one of the greatest and noblest battles ever won
over the Moors.
XXII. The body of the Cid remained in the vault wherein it had been
placed as ye have heard, till the year of the Incarnation 1272, when
King Don Alfonso the Wise, for the great reverence which he bore the
memory of the Cid his forefather, ordered a coffin to be made for him,
which was hewn out of two great stones; and in this the body of the Cid
was laid, and they placed it on that side where the Epistle is read;
and before it, in, a wooden coffin, they laid the body of Doña Ximena.
And round about the stone coffin these verses were graven, in the Latin
tongue, being, according as it is said, composed by King Don Alfonso
himself.
BELLIGER, INVICTOS, FAMOSUS MARTE TRIUMPHIS,
CLAUDITUR HOC TUMULO MAGNUS DIDACI RODERICUS.
And upon his tomb he ordered these verses to be graven also:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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