Now, however, it was eternally lost to the religion for the celebration of whose rites it had been founded. The Mussulman pilgrim, attracted by the reputation of its sanctity and the fame of its unrivalled magnificence, could henceforth no more invoke the name of the Prophet within its venerable walls. The vast edifice was almost deserted as the Christian procession, headed by the greatest prelates of Spain, filed slowly through its portals. A few of the attendants peered curiously from behind the pillars at the splendid array, whose appearance was the ominous signal of the final suppression of the Mohammedan faith in the Peninsula. Amidst the prayers of the priests and the shouts of the soldiery, the cross was raised upon the cupola of the Mihrab. In accordance with the prescribed ceremonies of the Roman Catholic ritual, the edifice was cleansed of the abominations presumed to have infected it under the ministrations of another and a hostile belief. The mosque was dedicated as a cathedral, whose see was enriched with donations of some of the most valuable estates of the conquered territory. In pious retribution for the sacrilege which had appropriated them, the bells of Santiago were returned to the church from which they had been taken upon the shoulders of Moorish captives. The latter, as they painfully traversed the extensive regions that separated the plains of Andalusia from the cheerless Galician solitudes--regions which once trembled at the very mention of Moslem heroes--might well reflect upon the transitory character of religious faith and the instability of human greatness.