King, Georgiana Goddard: A brief account of the military orders in Spain (New York: The Hispanic Society of America, 1921)

IN SPAIN
173
something real and not perhaps to be
blushed for as homely or bourgeois lies in
the dim backward of time, earlier in the
twelfth century.
The official account may be examined
first.
Where the Way of S. James runs through
Under the
Leon, it crosses the river Esla. From time
immemorial there has been a bridge there,
passing
stars, foam
of the sky
and before the bridge and beside it a ford,
and for the up-keep and care of this a
hermitage with a chapel. A hospice grew
up: a building, that is, was erected where
any pilgrim might sleep and the sick stay
“till they were well or dead”—as in the
Hospital del Rey in a similar situation at
Burgos. Money was found, chiefly in the
form of rents charged on real estate, to
feed the lodgers and the attendants and
give a bowl of broth and a piece of bread
to any one who passed, hungry and on the
tramp. I think a mediaeval institution of
The
this sort might never refuse a dole, when
asked, lest it should be found to have
refused the Lord. If not an unmixed good
(what institution is that?) it had great
Hospital of
S. Marcos
AND MONOGRAPHS