.
They have the main features of a style with which their architects were
familiar and in which they had long since taken the initial steps. They
are working with a practically developed system, whose infancy and early
growth had been followed elsewhere.

While in the twelfth, and the early portion of the thirteenth century,
Frenchmen were gradually evolving the new system of ecclesiastical
architecture, the Spaniards, destined to surpass them, were to all
purposes still producing nothing but Romanesque buildings, borrowing
certain ornamental or constructional features of the new style, but in
so slight and illogical a degree, that their style remained based upon
its old principles. They employed the pointed arch between arcades and
vaulting, and unlike the French, threw a dome or cimborio over the
intersection of nave and transepts. In some instances we find a regular
French quadripartite vault at the crossing, but such changes are not
sufficient to term the cathedrals of the period (Tudela, Tarragona,
Zamora, and Lerida) Gothic. They remain historically, rather than
artistically, interesting. With the second quarter of the thirteenth
century, comes the change.

In style Toledo corresponds most closely to the early Gothic of the
north of France. Its plan reminds one forcibly of Bourges, though it is
far more ambitious in size. Owing to the long period of its building, it
bears late Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque features, while traces of
Moorish influence are not wanting.

The Cathedral of Toledo was built in an imaginative, creative and
passionate age,--an age when the ordinary mason was a master builder as
well as sculptor, stimulated by local affection, pride and piety. The
results of his work were tremendous,--his finished product was a
storehouse of art. Artists of all nations had a hand in the work.
Bermudez mentions 149 names of those who embellished the Cathedral
during six centuries. Here worked Borgona, Berruguete, Cespedes, and
Villalpando, Copin, Vergara Egas, and Covarrubias. It is rather
difficult to analyze their genius. They were not naturally artists, as
were the French and Italians; they did not create as easily, but were
rather stimulated by a more naive craving for vast dimensions. With this
we find interwoven in places the sparkling, jewel-like intricacy and
play of light and shade so natural to the Moorish artisan, and the
sombre, overpowering solemnity of the warlike Spanish cavalier.

It