According to the Marquis of Monistrol, the larger boxes or _arcones_ constitute by far the commonest article of Spanish furniture all through the earlier portion of this lengthy period. The same authority divides them broadly into seven classes, thus:-- (1) Burial-chests. (2) Chests for storing chasubles, chalices, candelabra, and other objects connected with the ceremonies of the church. (3) Archive-chests, for storing documents. (4) Chests for storing treasure (_huches_). (5) Brides' chests. (6) Chests for storing arms. (7) _Arcones-trojes_, or chests of common make, employed for storing grain in country dwellings or _posadas_. The decorative richness of these quaint _arcones_ varies according to their date of manufacture, or the purpose they were meant to serve. Commonly, in the earliest of them, dating from the sixth or seventh century, the iron clamps or fastenings form the principal or only ornament. Such are reported to have been the two chests which the Cid Campeador loaded with sand and foisted as filled with specie on his "dear friends" Rachel and Vidas, the Jewish though trustful usurers of Burgos, in return for six hundred marks of gold and silver. Tradition says, moreover, that the chest now shown at Burgos as the "coffer of the Cid" is actually one of these. It is certain that the archives of the cathedral have been deposited in this chest for many centuries. Evidently, too, it dates from about the lifetime of the Cid, while the rings with which it is fitted show it to have been a kind of trunk intended to be carried on the backs of sumpter-mules or horses. After the Roman domination in this country, the Latin term _capsa_ was applied to every kind of chest; but at a later age sepulchral chests or coffins were denominated _urns_, in order to distinguish them from _arcas_ and _arcones_, which were used for storing clothes or jewellery. Excellent examples of Spanish mediæval burial-chests are those of Doña Urraca, preserved in the Sagrario of the cathedral of Palencia, and of San Isidro, patron of Madrid. The former, mentioned by painstaking Ponz, and by Pulgar in his _Secular and Ecclesiastical Annals of Palencia_, is of a plain design, and really constitutes a coffin. The sepulchral chest of San Isidro, dating from the end of the thirteenth century, or the early part of the fourteenth, and kept at Madrid in a niche of the _camarín_ of the parish church of San Andrés, is in the Romanic style, and measures seven feet six inches in length. It has a gable top, and is painted in brilliant colours on plaster-coated parchment, with miracles effected by the saint, and other scenes related with his life; but much of the painting is effaced.