The foundation of the first of these two cathedrals may be fixed, I think, with a fair approach to certainty, as being some time in the twelfth century. It was at this time, soon after the city had been regained from the Moors, in A.D. 1095, that Bernard, Archbishop of Toledo, himself a Frenchman, brought many other Frenchmen into Spain, and through his great influence procured their appointment to various sees--a fact which I may say, in passing, suggests much in regard to the origin of the churches which they built. Among the French ecclesiastics so promoted was Gerónimo Visquio,[89] a native of Périgord, who was for a long time the great friend and close companion of the Cid Rodrigo Diaz, and confessor to him and Doña Ximena his wife. On the Cid’s death he brought his body from Valencia to the monastery of Cardeña, near Burgos, and there dwelt till Count Ramon and Doña Urraca made him Bishop of Salamanca. Gil Gonzalez Dávila[90] says that at this time the church was founded, and Cean Bermudez adds some documentary evidence as to privileges conceded to its chapter for the works about this time by Count Ramon.[91] In A.D. 1178 a priest--Don Miguel of San Juan, Medina del Campo--made a bequest to the Chapter of his property for the work of the cloister, and we may fairly assume, therefore, that before this date the church itself was completed. The new cathedral was not commenced until A.D. 1513, and of this I need not now speak; but in an inscription on it, which records its consecration in A.D. 1560, the first mass is related to have been said in the old cathedral four hundred and sixty years before, _i.e._ in A.D. 1100.[92] This probably was only a tradition; but it may fairly be taken to point to the twelfth century as that in which the cathedral was built. This early church is, it will be seen,[93] cruciform, with three eastern apses, a nave and aisles of five bays, and a dome or lantern over the crossing. There is a deep western porch, and I think it probable that there were originally towers on either side of this. The church has been wonderfully little altered, save that its north wall has been taken down in order to allow of the erection of the new cathedral, and at the same time the arch under the northern part of the central lantern or dome was also underbuilt. In other respects the church is almost untouched, and bears every mark of having been in progress during the greater part of the twelfth century.