Throughout the middle ages the name of Toro is foremost among the important fortresses of Castile, and many an event--generally tragic and bloody--took place behind its walls. Here Alfonso XI. murdered his uncle in cold blood, and Don Pedro el Cruel, after besieging the town and the citadel held in opposition to him by his mother, allowed her a free exit with the gentlemen defenders of the place, but broke his word when they were on the bridge, and murdered all excepting his widowed mother! In the days of Isabel the Catholic, Toro was taken by the kings of Portugal, who upheld the claims of Enrique IV's illegitimate daughter, Juana la Beltranaja. In the vicinity of the town, the great battle of Pelea Gonzalo was fought, which gave the western part of Castile to the rightful sovereigns. This battle is famous for the many prelates and curates who, armed,--and wearing trousers and not frocks!--fought like Christians (!) in the ranks. In Toro, Cortes was assembled in 1505 to open Queen Isabel's testament, and to promulgate those laws which have gone down in Spanish history as the Leyes de Toro; this was the last spark of Toro's fame, for since then its fate has been identical with that of Zamora, forty miles away. Strictly speaking, it is doubtful if Toro ever was a city; at one time it seems to have possessed an ephemeral bishop,--at least such is the popular belief,--who must have reigned in his see but a short time, as at an early date the city was submitted to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Astorga. Later, when the see was reëstablished in Zamora, the latter's twin sister, Toro, was definitely included in the new episcopal diocese. Be that as it may, the Catholic kings raised the church at Toro to a collegiate in the sixteenth century (1500?) because they were anxious to gain the good-will of the inhabitants after the Portuguese invasion. Built either toward the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century, Santa Maria la Mayor, popularly called _la catedral_, closely resembles the cathedral church at Zamora. The style is the same (Byzantine-Romanesque), and the impression of strength and solidity produced by the warlike aspect of the building is even more pronounced than in the case of the sister church. The general plan is that of a basilica, rectangular in shape, with a three-lobed apse, the central lobe being by far the largest in size, and a transept which protrudes slightly beyond the width of the church. This transept is situated immediately in front of the apse; the _croisée_ is surmounted by the handsome _cimborio_, larger than that at Zamora, pierced by twice as many round-topped windows, but lacking a cupola, as do also the flanking towers, which are flat-topped. Above and between these latter, the cone-shaped roof of the _cimborio_, properly speaking, is sloping and triangular in its cross-section.