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LEGEND OF THE ENGULPHED CONVENT.
At the dark and melancholy period when Don Roderick the
Goth and his chivalry were overthrown on the banks of the Guadalete,
and all Spain was overrun by the Moors, great was the
devastation of churches and convents throughout that pious kingdom.
The miraculous fate of one of those holy piles is thus recorded
in an authentic legend of those days.
On the summit of a hill, not very distant from the capital city
of Toledo, stood an ancient convent and chapel, dedicated to the
invocation of Saint Benedict, and inhabited by a sisterhood of
Benedictine nuns. This holy asylum was confined to females of
noble lineage. The younger sisters of the highest families were
here given in religious marriage to their Saviour, in order that
the portions of their elder sisters might be increased, and they
enabled to make suitable matches on earth; or that the family
wealth might go undivided to elder brothers, and the dignity of
their ancient houses be protected from decay. The convent was
renowned, therefore, for enshrining within its walls a sisterhood
of the purest blood, the most immaculate virtue, and most resplendent
beauty, of all Gothic Spain.
When the Moors overran the kingdom, there was nothing that
more excited their hostility, than these virgin asylums. The
very sight of a convent-spire was sufficient to set their Moslem
blood in a foment, and they sacked it with as fierce a zeal as
though the sacking of a nunnery were a sure passport to Elysium.
Tidings of such outrages, committed in various parts of the
kingdom, reached this noble sanctuary, and filled it with dismay.
The danger came nearer and nearer; the infidel hosts were spreading
all over the country; Toledo itself was captured; there was
no flying from the convent, and no security within its walls.
In the midst of this agitation, the alarm was given one day,
that a great band of Saracens were spurring across the plain. In
an instant the whole convent was a scene of confusion. Some of
the nuns wrung their fair hands at the windows; others waved
their veils, and uttered shrieks, from the tops of the towers, vainly
hoping to draw relief from a country overrun by the foe. The
sight of these innocent doves thus fluttering about their dove-cote,
but increased the zealot fury of the whiskered Moors. They thundered
at the portal, and at every blow the ponderous gates trembled
on their hinges.
The nuns now crowded round the abbess. They had been accustomed
to look up to her as all-powerful, and they now implored
her protection. The mother abbess looked with a rueful eye upon
the treasures of beauty and vestal virtue exposed to such imminent
peril. Alas! how was she to protect them from the spoiler!
She had, it is true, experienced many signal interpositions of
Providence in her individual favor. Her early days had been
passed amid the temptations of a court, where her virtue had
been purified by repeated trials, from none of which had she escaped
she hope that the marvellous protection shown to herself, would
be extended to a whole sisterhood? There was no other resource.
The Moors were at the threshold; a few moments more, and the
convent would be at their mercy. Summoning her nuns to follow
her, she hurried into the chapel, and throwing herself on her
knees before the image of the blessed Mary, “Oh, holy Lady!”
exclaimed she, “oh, most pure and immaculate of virgins! thou
seest our extremity. The ravager is at the gate, and there is none
on earth to help us! Look down with pity, and grant that
the earth may gape and swallow us, rather than that our cloister
vows should suffer violation!”
The Moors redoubled their assault upon the portal; the gates
gave way, with a tremendous crash; a savage yell of exultation
arose; when of a sudden the earth yawned; down sank the convent,
with its cloisters, its dormitories, and all its nuns. The
chapel tower was the last that sank, the bell ringing forth a peal
of triumph in the very teeth of the infidels.
Forty years had passed and gone, since the period of this
miracle. The subjugation of Spain was complete. The Moors
lorded it over city and country; and such of the Christian population
as remained, and were permitted to exercise their religion,
did it in humble resignation to the Moslem sway.
At this time, a Christian cavalier, of Cordova, hearing that
a patriotic band of his countrymen had raised the standard of
the cross in the mountains of the Asturias, resolved to join
them, and unite in breaking the yoke of bondage. Secretly
Cordova, and pursued his course by unfrequented mule-paths,
and along the dry channels made by winter torrents. His spirit
burned with indignation, whenever, on commanding a view over
a long sweeping plain, he beheld the mosque swelling in the distance,
and the Arab horsemen careering about, as if the rightful
lords of the soil. Many a deep-drawn sigh, and heavy groan,
also, did the good cavalier utter, on passing the ruins of churches
and convents desolated by the conquerors.
It was on a sultry midsummer evening, that this wandering
cavalier, in skirting a hill thickly covered with forest, heard the
faint tones of a vesper bell sounding melodiously in the air, and
seeming to come from the summit of the hill. The cavalier
crossed himself with wonder, at this unwonted and Christian
sound. He supposed it to proceed from one of those humble
chapels and hermitages permitted to exist through the indulgence
of the Moslem conquerors. Turning his steed up a narrow
path of the forest, he sought this sanctuary, in hopes of
finding a hospitable shelter for the night. As he advanced, the
trees threw a deep gloom around him, and the bat flitted across
his path. The bell ceased to toll, and all was silence.
Presently a choir of female voices came stealing sweetly
through the forest, chanting the evening service, to the solemn
accompaniment of an organ. The heart of the good cavalier
melted at the sound, for it recalled the happier days of his country.
Urging forward his weary steed, he at length arrived at a
broad grassy area, on the summit of the hill, surrounded by the
forest. Here the melodious voices rose in full chorus, like the
swelling of the breeze; but whence they came, he could not tell.
in the air, sometimes as if from within the bosom of the earth.
At length they died away, and a holy stillness settled on the
place.
The cavalier gazed around with bewildered eye. There was
neither chapel nor convent, nor humble hermitage, to be seen;
nothing but a moss-grown stone pinnacle, rising out of the centre
of the area, surmounted by a cross. The green sward appeared
to have been sacred from the tread of man or beast, and
the surrounding trees bent toward the cross, as if in adoration.
The cavalier felt a sensation of holy awe. He alighted, and
tethered his steed on the skirts of the forest, where he might
crop the tender herbage; then approaching the cross, he knelt
and poured forth his evening prayers before this relic of the
Christian days of Spain. His orisons being concluded, he laid
himself down at the foot of the pinnacle, and reclining his head
against one of its stones, fell into a deep sleep.
About midnight, he was awakened by the tolling of a bell,
and found himself lying before the gate of an ancient convent.
A train of nuns passed by, each bearing a taper. He rose and
followed them into the chapel; in the centre was a bier, on which
lay the corpse of an aged nun. The organ performed a solemn
requiem: the nuns joining in chorus. When the funeral service
was finished, a melodious voice chanted, “Requiescat in pace!”
—“May she rest in peace!” The lights immediately vanished;
the whole passed away as a dream; and the cavalier found himself
at the foot of the cross, and beheld, by the faint rays of the
rising moon, his steed quietly grazing near him.
When the day dawned, he descended the hill, and following
which was seated an ancient man, in hermit's garb, with rosary
and cross, and a beard that descended to his girdle. He was
one of those holy anchorites permitted by the Moors to live unmolested
in the dens and caves, and humble hermitages, and even
to practise the rites of their religion. The cavalier, dismounting,
knelt and craved a benediction. He then related all that
had befallen him in the night, and besought the hermit to explain
the mystery.
“What thou hast heard and seen, my son,” replied the other,
“is but a type and shadow of the woes of Spain.”
He then related the foregoing story of the miraculous deliverance
of the convent.
“Forty years,” added the holy man, “have elapsed since this
event, yet the bells of that sacred edifice are still heard, from
time to time, sounding from underground, together with the
pealing of the organ, and the chanting of the choir. The Moors
avoid this neighborhood, as haunted ground, and the whole place,
as thou mayest perceive, has become covered with a thick and
lonely forest.”
The cavalier listened with wonder to the story. For three
days and nights did he keep vigils with the holy man beside the
cross; but nothing more was to be seen of nun or convent. It
is supposed that, forty years having elapsed, the natural lives of
all the nuns were finished, and the cavalier had beheld the obsequies
of the last. Certain it is, that from that time, bell, and
organ, and choral chant, have never more been heard.
The mouldering pinnacle, surmounted by the cross, remains
an object of pious pilgrimage. Some say that it anciently stood
remained above ground, when the main body of the building sank,
like the topmast of some tall ship that has foundered. These
pious believers maintain, that the convent is miraculously preserved
entire in the centre of the mountain, where, if proper excavations
were made, it would be found, with all its treasures,
and monuments, and shrines, and relics, and the tombs of its
virgin nuns.
Should any one doubt the truth of this marvellous interposition
of the Virgin, to protect the vestal purity of her votaries,
let him read the excellent work entitled “España Triumphante,”
written by Fray Antonio de Sancta Maria, a barefoot friar of
the Carmelite order, and he will doubt no longer.
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