The chapels are all square and of the same height and size--twenty-eight feet square and fifty-four feet high. They are all decorated in the Gothic style, a uniformity which suggests that they were all built at the same time, or very carefully copied from the first one planned. Each contains a semicircular window, and four arched recesses for tombs. This regularity of style has operated to some extent as a check upon the excesses of the Churrigueresque school. The Golden Chapel--the second in the south aisle--dates from the sixteenth century. All within it is superbly gilded, the decoration reflecting credit on its author, Canon Francisco Sanchez de Palencia, whose noble tomb is here. His dignities are set forth on the beautiful plateresque _reja_. The chapel also contains a notable skeleton or memento mori. The next chapel is called after the Presidente de Lievana, and is adorned with some good paintings by the dumb artist Navarrete, particularly by a copy of Titian’s ‘Deposition.’ The fourth chapel on this side contains the good statue of a very good man, Canon Palacios, who died in the odour of sanctity in the year 1591. We may now descend to the old cathedral by a doorway on the right, close to a fine picture of the Madonna and Child and St. John, by Morales. The monuments of Count Raymond and Doña Urraca must have been destroyed to make room for this part of the new building. Good paintings by Gallego may be seen in the Capilla de San Antonio on the opposite side of the church. There are not many good tombs, the only ones remaining to be mentioned being those of the Bishops Corrionero (1620), Felipe Beltran (1783), and Agustino Varela (nineteenth century).
The sacristy is a gorgeous apartment, where mirrors, gilding, and ornamentation of every style are combined to produce a not altogether unpleasing effect. The treasury is rich in relics of doubtful authenticity. The silver reliquaries were once the property of the Knights Templars, whose cause Salamanca long upheld. Here you may gaze (with a befittingly credulous air) upon three thorns from Christ’s crown, a piece of the true cross, an arm of St. George, St. Lawrence’s shoulder, the head of one of the eleven thousand virgins who escorted St. Ursula, the hearts of St. Bartholomew and St. Sebastian, and the bodies of five Spanish martyrs who suffered under the Vandals. More interesting are a letter in St. Teresa’s handwriting, and a small crucifix of blackened bronze, often confounded with the Cristo de las Batallas, and probably of the same period and source. The chalice, monstrance, and other sacred vessels are beautifully wrought, even for a country where metal-working has been carried almost to perfection.