Next in order of interest, and probably of date, comes San Gil, a cruciform structure in the north of the city, founded, or at any rate rebuilt, in the fourteenth century. Its chief treasure is a wrought-iron pulpit, with very beautiful tracery, in part gilded. Very curious are the effigies in the floor of the church, with bodies of black marble and heads and hands of white. Another feature of the building worthy of notice is the mixture of painting and sculpture and carving in the decoration of the chapels on each side of the choir. The retablos are gorgeous, and some of the tombs interesting and apparently very ancient.
Only the very patient or enthusiastic sightseer will trouble to visit the other churches of Burgos, which, as it seems to me, contain little to reward one’s curiosity. San Nicolás, a sixteenth-century parish church, being close to the cathedral, should not be neglected. The life of the saint--the patron of youth--is illustrated in some ancient paintings in the north aisle and on the admirably carved stone retablo of the high altar. This fine work, as an inscription declares, was the gift of Gonsalvo Solanco and his wife Leonor de Miranda, both of whom are buried here. The tombs in these old forgotten churches are generally interesting. St. Lesmes contains the sepulchre of the patron, a devout French monk, who lived in the reign of Alfonso VI., but whose cult never seems to have spread beyond Castile.
The old convent of San Pablo, now appropriated to military uses, is hardly worth a visit, but the story of its founder, Bishop Pablo de Santa Maria, is, as Street remarks, worth telling. Originally a Jew, he was baptized a Christian in 1390. Of his four sons one at least followed his example, and afterwards became Bishop of Siguenza; but his wife, Juana, remained deaf to all his persuasions and refused to abandon the faith of her fathers. Accordingly he had the marriage legally dissolved, and was ordained priest. In 1415, being then at Valladolid, he was raised to the episcopal see of his native city, and among those who met him upon his induction were ‘his venerable mother, Doña Maria, and his well-loved wife, Juana.’ His well-loved wife, despite their religious differences, she seems to have remained, for she was buried near her husband in this church of San Pablo, unconverted to the last. The bishop survived her fifteen years. It is strange that these tombs should have been spared in the days of Torquemada, when many bishops of Jewish ancestry were compelled to disinter the bones of their remote ancestors to save them from the fury of the new school of Christians.