There used to be a controversy as to the age of this cathedral, which must, however, one would think, long since have been settled. It was asserted that it was the very church built at the end of the ninth century during the reign of Ordoño II.; and the only proof of this was the inscription upon the fine fourteenth-century monument of the King which still stands in the aisle of the chevet behind the high altar:-- “Omnibus exemplum sit, quod venerabile templum Rex dedit Ordonius, quo jacet ipse pius. Hunc fecit sedem, quam primo fecerat ædem Virginis hortatu, quæ fulget Pontificatu. Pavit eam donis, per eam nitet urbs Legionis Quesumus ergo Dei gratia parcat ei. Amen.” Fortunately, however, in addition to the indubitable evidence of the building itself, there is sufficient documentary evidence to give with tolerable exactness the dates of the commencement and completion of the existing church, and I did not see, and believe there is not, a relic of the church which preceded it still remaining. One or two facts of interest in regard to the first cathedral may, however, well be mentioned here. The architect is said by Sandoval to have been an Abbat; and in Ordoño II.’s absence he is said to have converted the old Roman baths in the palace into a church, the plan being similar to that of churches with three naves.[112] It is interesting to find this plan so popular in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, already described as existing in the ninth.[113]