Of that tutelary divinity of Burgos, the Cid, there are several shrines, mostly, alas! spurious. You may visit the church variously called Santa Agueda and Santa Gadea, a fourteenth-century building, which succeeded the historic church where the champion constrained Alfonso VI. to take the oath. That event is recorded by the stone cross near the entrance, and the iron lock over the door. But the real lock on which the oath was taken was stolen by the French, who showed themselves particularly greedy for relics of Spain’s national hero. Of the church of San Martin, where he was baptized, no trace remains. The site of the Casa solar del Cid is hardly worth visiting. The house, as might be expected, has long since disappeared, and the present uninteresting monument was erected by Carlos III. in the eighteenth century. The very monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña, which the hero chose for his last resting-place, and to which he was brought across Spain seated, dead, but still dreadful, on his war-horse, has been modernised, and contains little to assist the imagination. Its memories are stirring enough. The foundation dates from Visigothic times, and here, in the ninth century, two hundred monks were massacred by the Moors. Somewhere here is buried Babieca, the horse of the Cid, one of those four-footed heroes who have attained to world-wide fame. ‘Bury him deep,’ was his master’s last injunction, ‘for it is not meet that he should be eaten by dogs who has trampled under foot so many dogs of Moors.’ The honourable interment of animals who have endeared themselves to their masters is far from being a modern craze and a proof of the degeneracy of a people, as some pseudo-moralists of to-day appear in their ignorance to believe.
The Cid’s own tomb at Cardeña is now empty. Some of his bones were carried off by the French during the Peninsular War, and were ultimately discovered at Sigmaringen, when they were restored to the Spanish Government. Meanwhile the rest of the skeleton and that of the Cid’s wife, Doña Ximena, had been removed from their insecure place of sepulture, and are now contained in a walnut case, to be seen in a modern chapel at the Ayuntamiento, or town hall. In the same building--an eighteenth century structure--is shown the bench from which those early judges of the nation, Lain Calvo and Nuño Rasura, are affirmed by tradition to have administered justice. The archives are said to merit exhaustive examination, and are rich in rare autographs and manuscripts.