In the Sala Capitula we saw many interesting parchments with curious seals, dating from the eleventh and twelfth centuries; these were only discovered by accident in February 1907 by the _Archivero_ José Martinez Novas; many of these were the deeds by which the various kings conferred their donations upon the Cathedral, and most of them had seals of lead or wax. Here we were shown a number of Papal Bulls--one of Paul II., others of Eugenius IV., Leo X., Julius VI., and Benedict XIV. respectively. Many of the parchments shown us were of the second half of the tenth century. These newly discovered trophies must have been hidden away by the priests at the time of the French invasion. The lower part of the old tower is now covered by fifteenth-century work, but the Romanesque arch of one of its upper doorways is still visible in the wall. This Cathedral is the only church of any importance in the whole of Galicia which has a rectangular apse, the usual forms being semicircular or polygonal. In England the practice of making the east end of churches square began early in the Norman period; we have them, for instance, in Winchester and Salisbury, but they were rare in France and Spain until towards the close of the Gothic period. The only example I know of in Galicia is that of the _Colegiata_ at Bayona. In its general form and structure of the naves and transept the Cathedral of Tuy bears rather a close resemblance to that of Santiago de Compostela. But the cylindrical vaulting of the nave and transept is quite Latino-Romanesque, without any indication of Byzantine influence. The ribbed ornamentation of the vaulting is somewhat after the style of the German Gothic, in the opinion of Señor Casanova, and the triforium as seen from the pavement of the central nave is not unlike those of the churches of Southern France. The Cathedral cloister has some very old arcades with sculptured capitals, but the upper storey is modern and in bad taste. Behind the Cathedral is the _Capilla de la Misericordia_, one of the oldest in Tuy; it is built upon the solid rock. Close by is a little modern chapel dedicated to San Telmo, the patron saint of Spanish fishermen, whose birthplace was Tuy. The great naval school at Seville is dedicated to this saint, who, according to tradition, has been known to appear to sailors in distress in the form of a bright light and lead them safely to a haven.[272] One of the Cathedral chapels is also dedicated to San Telmo, and was built in 1577 by Bishop Diego de Torquemada.