bones have since been removed to the town hall
of Burgos. Philip II. tried to get him canonized, but Rome objected, and
not without reason.

Whatever were his qualities as a fighter, the Cid was but indifferent
material out of which to make a saint,--a man who battled against
Christian and against Moslem with equal zeal, who burnt churches and
mosques with equal zest, who ravaged, plundered and slew as much for a
livelihood as for any patriotic or religious purpose, and was in truth
almost as much of a Mussulman as a Christian in his habits and his
character. His true place in history is that of the greatest of the
_guerrilleros_--the perfect type of that sort of warrior in which, from
the days of Viriathus to those of Juan Diaz, El Empecinado, the soil of
Spain has been most productive.

The Cid of romance, the Cid of a thousand battles, legends and dramas,
the Cid as apotheosized in literature, the Cid invoked by good Spaniards
in every national crisis, whose name is a perpetual and ever-present
inspiration to Spanish patriotism, is a very different character from
the historical Rodrigo Diaz--the freebooter, the rebel, the consorter
with the infidels and the enemies of Spain. He is the Perfect One, the
Born in a Happy Hour, "My Cid," the invincible, the magnanimous, the
all-powerful. He is the type of knightly virtue, the mirror of patriotic
duty, the flower of all Christian grace. He is Roland and Bayard in one.
In the popular literature of Spain he holds a place such as has no
parallel in other countries. From an almost contemporary period he has
been the subject of song; and he who was chanted by wandering minstrels
in the 12th century has survived to be hymned in revolutionary odes of
the 19th. In a barbarous Latin poem, written in celebration of the
conquest of Almeria by Alphonso VII. in the year 1147, we have the bard
testifying to the supereminence of the Cid among his country's heroes:--

"Ipse Rodericus _Mio_ Cid semper vocatus,
De quo cantatur quod ab hostibus haud superatus,
Qui domuit Mauros, comites domuit quoque nostros."

Within a hundred years of his death the Cid had become the centre of a
whole system of myths. The _Poema del Cid_, written in the latter half
of the 12th century, has scarcely any trace of a historical character.
Already the Cid had reached his apotheosis, and Castilian loyalty could
not consent to degrade him when banished by his sovereign:--

"Dios, que buen vassalo si