The religious side of Spanish life in the eleventh century, so far as Christianity is concerned, centres about a woman, Constance of Burgundy, the wife of King Alfonso VI. of Castile. This was the period when the monk Hildebrand, become Pope Gregory VII., was endeavoring to unify the power of the Roman Church and strengthen the authority of the papacy; and as he had a devout woman, the Countess Matilda of Tuscany, to aid him in Italy, so he had as his firm ally in Spain the pious Queen Constance, daughter of King Robert of France. Constance was not a Spanish woman, but the influence she exerted in Spain had such a far-reaching effect that she cannot be overlooked in any category such as the present. With Constance to Spain came the monk Bernard of Cluny, a pale ascetic, who had just been leading a crusade against the corruption existing in the Church itself, and whose whole life had been devoted to serious things. The French court had been given over to works of piety, the Church had great authority, and the clergy were held in high esteem. When the French princess left this devout atmosphere to go to sunny Spain, she had grave misgivings as to the frivolous and irreverent character of her new subjects, and deemed it wise to take with her as a friend and adviser the stern Bernard. The worst fears of these two zealous Christians were more than realized. The king had friendly intercourse with Moorish vassals, and Moslem and Christian lived side by side in perfect harmony! That all this should be and at a time when the same Moslem brood was defiling the place of the Holy Sepulchre in far-off Palestine, and when the crusading spirit filled the air, was almost beyond belief, and Constance and the monk were greatly scandalized thereat. Totally without that toleration which comes with experience, they could conceive of no religion as a good religion which did not meet the rigid requirements of their own belief; and they planned at once a Spanish crusade which was intended to improve the general deplorable condition of public morals and at the same time to modify, in a most radical way, the liturgy of the Spanish Church, which was far too lax in points of discipline. Their conduct at the time of the surrender of Toledo, in 1074, is a most excellent example of the eager, yet thoughtless, way in which they went about their new work. When King Alfonso, after an interval of more than three hundred years, regained possession of the ancient capital of the Goths, the city from which the luckless Rodrigo, the last of the Goths, was driven, Toledo was surrendered on the express condition that the Moors should not be disturbed in their religious beliefs and that they were to retain the use of their mosques. Such terms with such an enemy appeared monstrous to the queen. Especially did it seem a sin before God that the principal mosque, the Alfaqui, the noblest building in all that fair city which lay stretched out with many a gilded dome and minaret upon