Medina del Campo is the dullest and saddest of towns now, though three hundred years ago it seems to have been one of the most important places in the district. Nor is there much to detain the ecclesiologist or architect. The principal church--S. Antholin--seems to have been founded in the sixteenth century. An inscription round the chancel gives the date of its erection as A.D. 1503,[167] and the church was probably built at the same time. The plan consists of nave and aisles of three bays in length, and a chancel of one bay. The nave and aisles cover an area of about ninety feet each way, the dimensions being, as they usually are here, very considerable. The columns are really clusters of groining-ribs banded together with a very small cap at the springing, and then branching out into complicated vaulting-bays, most of which are varied in pattern. The Coro is near the west end of the nave, and about equal in length to one of its bays, nearly two bays between its Reja and the Capilla mayor being left for the people; its fittings are all of Renaissance character, and there is a very picturesque organ above it, on the south, bristling with projecting trumpet-pipes, and altogether very well designed. The columns are lofty, and the church is lighted by small round-headed windows of one or two lights placed as high as possible from the floor; there is one light in each southern bay, and two in each on the north side; evidently therefore the whole work is carefully devised for a hot country; and it is an undoubted success in spite of the extremely late character of all its detail. Twenty years only after the foundation of the chancel, and just about the time that Segovia Cathedral was being commenced, a chapel was added on the north side of the altar, covered with a dome, and thoroughly Pagan in almost all its details. There are three pulpits in this church--one on each side of the chancel, and one in the nave; and low rails keep the passageway from the Coro to the Capilla mayor. There is a good painting of the Deposition in the sacristy of S. Antholin; and a still more interesting work is the Retablo of a small altar against the eastern column of the nave. This has the Mass of St. Gregory carved and painted, with other paintings of much merit. That of the Pietà recalls Francia, and the figure of the Blessed Virgin in an Annunciation is full of tender grace and sweetness. It is strange how completely the Inquisition altered the whole character of Spanish art, and deprived it at once and for ever apparently of all power of regarding religion from its bright and tender side!