There are many tombs in the cathedral belonging to the transitional period from Byzantine to Gothic, mostly of bishops of the thirteenth century. The best preserved is in the Capilla del Nacimiento, and enshrines the remains of Bishop Rodrigo, who died in 1232. The tympanum of the arch is occupied by a representation of the Crucifixion, below this being shown a funeral procession, with the mourners tearing their hair in a grotesque excess of grief. The benevolence of the good prelate is immortalised by a figure distributing food to the poor, the halt, and the blind. The tomb of Bishop Martin (1254-1289), in the south transept, is adorned with the favourite scene from the life of St. Martin of Tours--the division of the cloak. The monuments to the bishops Manrique de Lara, Erasmus, and Martin (second of the name) are all in much the same style, but differing stages of preservation. In the Capilla del Salvador, behind the High Altar, may be seen the graceful effigy of the Countess Sancha (eleventh century), executed in the fourteenth century by Maestre Juan Lope, as an inscription on the robe informs us. The relief on the front of the tomb, showing a youth dragged along by a fiery horse, probably refers to the punishment in this world or the next of the wicked nephew, by whom the countess was assassinated. Another tomb in the same chapel bears the figure of a venerable man with flowing beard and ample robes.
At the north-eastern shoulder of the church, between it and the tower in the city wall already mentioned, is the fine rectangular chapel of Santiago, built in the time of the Catholic sovereigns--on the site, it would seem, of a twelfth-century chapel. The pillars are borne on the shoulders of various figures, among them being Samson, the Queen of Sheba, Laocoon, and a monk with a book on which is the derisive motto _legere et non intelligere_. The details of the architecture are capricious and graceful. The chapel is lighted by colossal windows, filled with gorgeous stained glass--blue and gold, purple and emerald--the reflected colour producing a magical effect.
The spacious cloister, which conceals the northern façade of the cathedral, was built in the early fourteenth century, but it has been rebuilt, restored, and altered into what Street calls ‘a very poor and weak kind of Renaissance.’ The ornamentation is profuse and not in bad taste. The inner walls have not been much altered, and the pillars supporting them are sculptured in the Gothic style. The bays are painted with an extremely valuable and interesting series of frescoes, so well drawn that they were more likely the work of some fifteenth-century Italian artist than productions of native talent. The subjects are all from the history of Christ and Mary, the Crucifixion curiously enough being omitted. When Street saw these paintings forty years ago, he spoke of the colours as pure and good, but they have now been almost entirely obliterated by the damp. The cloister contains several sepulchral monuments, some mere slabs, but one--that of the Canon Juan de Grajal (1447)--elaborately and artistically sculptured. Some colossal idiot has cut off the heads of the angels shown in this fine piece of work. Near the beautiful Gothic entrance to the cloister is an image of our Lady of Regla, to which at one time the people used to proceed in procession to return thanks for the mythical victory of Clavijo, a choir of damsels representing the equally mythical tribute of one hundred virgins said to have been paid by Mauregato to the Moors.