s compose the square bases. The great piers of the
transept are trefoiled in section. The outer walls of the main body of
the church are pierced by arches leading into uninteresting, rectangular
chapels, some of them decorated with elaborate vaulting. In the outer
wall of the intermediate aisle is a triforium, formed by an arcade of
cusped arches, and above this, quite close to the point of the vault, a
rose window in each bay. The clerestory, filling the space above the
great arches on each side of the nave, is subdivided into a double row
of lancet-pointed windows, surmounted by a rosette coming directly under
the spring of the vault.

The treatment of the crossing of transept and nave is in Toledo, as in
all Spanish churches, emphatic and peculiar. The old central lantern of
the cruciform church was retained and developed in their Gothic as well
as in their Renaissance edifices, and was permitted illogically to break
the Gothic roof line. The lantern of Ely is the nearest reminder we have
of it in English or French Gothic. In Spain the "cimborio" became an
important feature and made the croisee beneath it the lightest portion
of the edifice. It shed light to the east and west of it, into the high
altar and the choir.

The position of the choir is striking and distressing. Its rectangular
body completely fills the sixth and seventh bays of the nave,
interrupting its continuity and spoiling the sweep and grandeur of the
edifice at its most important point. It sticks like a bone in the
throat. Any complete view of the interior becomes impossible, and its
impressive majesty is belittled. One constantly finds the choir of
Spanish cathedrals in this position, which deprives them of the fine
perspective found in northern edifices. In Westminster Abbey, strangely
enough, the choir is similarly placed, and there, as here, it is as if
the hands were tied and the breath stifled, where action should be
freest.

This peculiar position of the choir was owing to the admission of the
laity to the transept in front of the altar. In earlier days the choir
was adjacent to and facing the altar, the singers and readers being
there enclosed by a low and unimportant rail. The short, eastern apses
of the Spanish cathedrals and the undeveloped and insufficient room for
the clergy immediately surrounding the altar almost necessitated this
divorce of the choir. In France and England the happier and more logical
alternative was resorted to,