Page:Lisbon and Cintra, Inchbold, 1907.djvu/44

Rh 336, and in the eighth century Christians of Valencia, the Saint's burial place, flying from the Moors, carried away with them the body of S. Vicente. A tempest drove their galley through the Pillars of Hercules, wrecking it on the west coast of Algarve at the cape which now bears his name. A raven had protected the body from wild beasts after the martyrdom, and ravens guarded the holy relics on Lusitanian soil. At this time the original Christian edifice on the site of the Sé, after being used in all probability for the pagan cult of the Romans, was converted into a mosque by the Moors. When D. Affonso Henriques took the town, the building was already aged and weather-worn. He had the structure rebuilt and enlarged under the name of the first cathedral possessed by Lisbon, and all the rights of the ancient ecclesiastical capital, Merida, were made over to the new diocese. A militant friar, named Gilbert, who had embarked with the squadron which on its way to Terra Santa stopped to help fight the infidels in Lusitania, was made the first Bishop of Lisbon. It is a curious and—to me—most interesting fact, found in an old, and apparently, trustworthy Portuguese book that Bishop Gilbert ordered the Breviary and Missal of the Anglican Church of Salzburg to be admitted for use into his diocese, and to find that this innovation was practised up to 1536—close upon four centuries—when the Latin liturgy was introduced for the first time. These are facts which make one think, for the circumstances fostered frequent interchange of letters on matters ecclesiastical between the two countries and may, indirectly, have strengthened other bonds.

The little praça of the Cathedral is reached by following the electrical lines which cross the Rua da Magdalena from the Rua da Conceicão, popularly Retrozeiros, or silk weavers. In the walls of a house on the left corner of the 22