I have already alluded to the mighty influence of the Cid on the political history of Spain,--his decision of the great question of Christian or Mohammedan superiority. After his death the impulse which he had given to the Spanish power was kept alive; the Moors never recovered themselves from the prowess of his knighthood, and, finally, they were driven from the Peninsula. It was only when the general Christian cause was the weakest, that the Spanish government, and people, who were occasionally conquerors, extended the humanities of chivalry to the Moors. But when the Crescent waned, this mild aspect was changed; for revenge and all the baleful passions of victory swept away the gentle graces of the cavalier, and intolerance and cruelty rose with the increasing power of the Christians. Concessions of liberty of conscience were made to the Moors, but the treaties were broken, apparently that mockery might embitter pain. The Moors and Christians did not deport themselves to each other with chivalric courtesy; and history gives no warrant to the romantic stories of any magnanimity or grandeur of soul illuminating the last years of the Arabs in Spain.[201] Among the Christians themselves, indeed, the chivalric character was sustained in all its vigour and gracefulness. Ecclesiastical history furnishes us with a very amusing instance of its influence. When Alphonso IX., about the year 1214, had expelled the Moors from Toledo, he endeavoured to establish the Roman missal in the place of St. Isidore's. But the people clung to their old ideas, and resisted the innovation. Those were not the days of theological argument; but the sword was the only means of deciding disputes and of determining truth. Each party chose a doughty knight, and commended to his chivalry the cause of a missal. The two champions met in the lists; the two parties ranged themselves in the surrounding galleries, and to the joy of the Spaniards the champion of St. Isidore was victorious.[202] [Sidenote: Gallantry of a knight.]