_El Transito_ was seized by Isabel the Catholic, on her expulsion of the Jews from her kingdom, and handed over to the Knights of Calatrava, whose arms are stamped on every corner of the temple. The Knights did what every other religious body in all ages and lands has done on taking possession of the temple of the dethroned gods. They marred the harmony of Eastern architecture by the erection of Christian altars, less flagrantly, of course, than the great Mosque of Cordova was marred. But still the false note is there: it greets us with singular bad taste in the fifteenth century retablo, in a _plateresca_ altar, in mediocre sixteenth century paintings that represent scenes from the New Testament, oddly unsuitable to the walls of a synagogue, and out of keeping with the long Hebrew inscriptions in relief above the frieze. Some of these meritless canvases are attributed to John of Burgundy. There is a choir neither decorative nor impressive, and a plateresca door, a tolerable specimen of that Spanish architecture. These are mere blots upon a graceful whole. The Jews under Moorish influence, built this lovely little temple, and its spirit, its essence, its genius, remain Jewish after more than four centuries of dispossession. The origin of the name _Santa Maria la Blanca_ dates from the fourth century, when Our Lady, in a miraculous vision, is said to have chosen the spot for the erection of a church in her honour, which was covered with snow. Pope Liberius then ordered the church to be built and consecrated to the White Lady--_Nuestra Señora la Blanca_. Later, the church became the property of the Jews, who rebuilt above its ruins the imposing synagogue we see to-day, in the Moorish ninth century style. Unhappily for them St Vicente Ferrer, a mediaeval fanatic who to-day would be called a demagogue, came to Toledo in 1405, on his famous crusade against the unfortunate race. You may see the highly sculptured pulpit half Moorish, half Gothic, he preached his frantic sermons from to the inflammatory Toledans in the little church of Santiago below the Puerta del Sol, now closed up with a wooden statue of the saint in the middle, holding in one hand a wooden crucifix, and flourishing the other in exhortation to the populace to destruction and cruelty. The Man of Sorrow, who preached peace and goodwill to all men, love of enemies, forgiveness of injuries, himself a Jew, son of a Jewess, is held up to excite the furious passions of the mob, to urge them to crime and infamous injustice. How much fatal misery humanity in all ages, even in our own, might have been spared by the prevalence of so small a quality as a sense of humour! The Valencian saint himself died in bleak far-off Vannes, in Brittany.