The ancient and beautiful city of Segovia occupies one of those sites which men would have chosen for the building of towns as soon as towns ever came to be built. We may therefore be sure that the roots of the city’s life lie very far back in the past--an assurance confirmed by the name, which bespeaks an Iberian origin. Mediæval writers mentioned this as among the towns built by the fabulous King Hispan, whose name, with those of his relatives, Iberia and Pyrrhus, is always introduced to explain a mystery or to adorn a tale. To the Romans the place was known as Segobriga; and that it was a flourishing and important colony the great aqueduct, the most famous of its monuments, remains to this day to attest. We may assume the town under the Roman yoke was happy, for it had no history--at least, nothing of it has reached us. There were bishops on these barren heights in early times, for they are referred to by name as attending councils at Toledo in the sixth and seventh centuries. At the time of the Mohammedan conquest, a hermit called Fruto rallied the Christians in the fastnesses of the mountains and kept alive in them the Christian faith and traditions. This holy person was the brother of the martyrs Valentin and Engracia, whom the Moors put to death. This the hardened infidels did, the chroniclers assure us, in spite of miracles which might have converted Mohammed himself; for the Segovian saints cleft mountains asunder with the stroke of a knife, and produced fountains from the solid rock with the touch of a wand; while a mare, to whom the Eucharist had been offered as food, dropped on her knees in adoration. It is clear that in after years the Christians of Segovia enjoyed the liberty of worship that the Muslims of Spain everywhere conceded to their subjects; for we hear of a bishop, Ildered, governing his flock here in the year 940. In the following century it was included within the dominions of the Amir of Toledo, and on the downfall of that monarchy was annexed to the growing kingdom of Castile.
Like Salamanca and Avila, Segovia was repeopled at the instance of Count Raymond of Burgundy, chiefly by Gallegos from the north-west. It received its first charter from Alfonso VI. in 1108. Thereafter its citizens were always to be found in the fighting line. Tradition avers that Madrid was recovered from the Moors by the Segovians; and their chiefs on that glorious occasion were Dia Sanz and Fernán Garcia, whose descendants for many years after divided the government of the city between them. But the chronicles register a very black stain on the city’s fame: the assassination by the townsfolk of Alvar Fañez, the illustrious brother-in-arms of Alfonso VI., at Easter, 1114. Four years later, the Segovians took the side of Alfonso VII. against his mother, Queen Urraca, and were rewarded by the reconstitution of their town into a bishopric.