The legend of the Cristo de la Luz: the horse that knelt in Toledo

What does the legend of the Cristo de la Luz say?

The scene has everything a good legend needs. May 1085: Toledo has surrendered on terms, and the Castilian king is making his entry into the city. As he passes a small mosque, a stone's throw from a gate in the walls, his horse folds its legs and kneels. There's no getting it to move. Someone goes inside to look and finds a hidden crucifix, with a lamp that has somehow kept burning through almost four centuries of Muslim rule.

Depending on who's telling it, the horse isn't the king's but El Cid's. Today the king's version prevails. And alongside it ran another tradition: that the first Mass of Christian Toledo was said right there.

How old is the story?

The first time we've found the legend in writing is in 1845, in Toledo pintoresca, by José Amador de los Ríos. And he reports it at arm's length: "there's no lack of people who swear" that El Cid's horse knelt, and that the lamp had burned for 369 years. That same year he saw in the chapel a wooden cross with a sign saying it was the shield Alfonso VI had left there when he won Toledo and the first Mass was said.

In 1857, Sixto Ramón Parro, in Toledo en la mano, can't decide between the king's horse, "according to some", and El Cid's, "according to others"; he makes it 370 years of lamp. And he adds that the Mass was said by Abbot Bernard of Sahagún.

By 1888 the legend even had an object to show visitors. Juan Moraleda, in his Tradiciones y recuerdos de Toledo, describes a paler flagstone in the paving, a couple of steps from the chapel door: supposedly the stone where the horse knelt, and the one that had covered the hidden image. The guides were already pointing it out. Moraleda tells how a local man, knife in hand, stopped two French officers from prising it up. It's the legend telling its own story. Whether that flagstone survives, we can't say: we haven't been able to check.

And before 1845? Searches through the digitised texts of Toledo's historians of the 16th and 17th centuries (Pedro de Alcocer, 1554; Francisco de Pisa, 1605; Antonio de Quintanadueñas, 1651; Pedro de Rojas, 1654) turn up nothing. Pisa mentions the "hermita de la Cruz", the chapel of the brothers of St John, and says nothing about a miracle. That doesn't prove nobody told it earlier, but if the story existed, it doesn't seem to have been the famous tale it is today.

What do the medieval records say?

The key document dates from 1183. That year, Domingo Pérez and his wife, Juliana, gave the Order of St John of Jerusalem a house called Santa Cruz, in the parish of San Nicolás, next to the gate the text calls "de Bani Abardon", today's Puerta de Valmardón. And they describe it as "que olim fuit mesquita maurorum": formerly a Moorish mosque. They were giving it so that it could be consecrated as a chapel.

So almost a hundred years after 1085, the old mosque wasn't a church but a private house. That's why the historian Susana Calvo Capilla, who studied these documents, concludes that the legends placing its consecration on the day Alfonso VI entered the city have to be ruled out.

Why did it end up in private hands rather than becoming a church? Calvo suggests an explanation she herself calls risky: that it was both a neighbourhood oratory and a place of teaching for the family who built it. It's a hypothesis.

The decisive step came soon after. Archbishop Gonzalo Pérez, at the request of King Alfonso VIII, "established" the church of the Hospitallers of Santa Cruz by the Valmardón gate, on strict terms: no parishioners and no tithes. The year of that document is debated (1186 is the usual date, but the date as transcribed works out as 1182). What's certain is that it was the late 12th century. Around then the Christian apse was added, and it became a model for others in Toledo.

Fact or legend?

• Legend: the horse of Alfonso VI (or of El Cid) that knelt, the crucifix that was found and the lamp alight since Visigothic times. In writing from 1845; not found earlier in what we've checked.
• Traditions recorded in the 19th century: the pale flagstone as the horse's stone (1888) and the first Mass in the chapel (a sign seen in 1845).
• Documented fact: in 1183 it was a house "which was once a mosque", given to the Order of St John to be made into a chapel; in the late 12th century it was established as a church.
• Fact: the inscription on the façade names Ahmad ibn al-Hadidi and gives the year 390 of the Hijra (999–1000).
• Hypotheses: that the work of 999 remodelled an earlier oratory; that it was also a school for the founding family.

Who built the mosque? A signature in brick

The mosque keeps something better than a legend: its birth certificate. Along the top of the façade runs an inscription in Kufic script that credits the building to Ahmad ibn al-Hadidi and dates its completion to the year 390 of the Hijra, between December 999 and January 1000. The letters aren't carved in stone: they're made of bricks cut and set on edge, an exceptional technique. According to the epigraphists' reading, the inscription also names the men who directed the work: Musa ibn Ali, the architect, and Sa'ada. Some researchers suggest that what happened in 999 was the remodelling of an earlier oratory.

That signature was hidden for a long time. It reappeared in 1899, during repairs, when the lime plaster was chipped off the caretaker's house that had been built up against the façade. The following year, 1900, the chapel was declared a National Monument.

Why is it called the Cristo de la Luz?

Cristo de la Luz means "the Christ of the Light", and the lamp fits the name so neatly that it's tempting to think it explains it. But the records say otherwise. In the old documents the building is the house, church or chapel of Santa Cruz, or "de la Cruz", of the Cross. As late as 1899, when it asked for the building to be declared a monument, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando was calling it the "Ermita del Santo Cristo de la Cruz y de Nuestra Señora de la Luz": the chapel of the Holy Christ of the Cross and of Our Lady of the Light. So, as far as we know, the light reached the name long after 1085, and attached to a dedication to the Virgin.

At some point in the past another, far uglier legend was also hung on the image, accusing Jews of having wounded it. By 1845 a notice in the chapel was telling it, and in 1862 a painting showed it. Tales like this were repeated in many cities and served to feed hatred: they don't record a fact, they record a prejudice.

Where to hear it

Podtour tells this story on Mosques, Mozarabs and Mudejars of Toledo, at the stop "The mosque with a signature in brick", in front of the façade with the inscription. Just before it, the stop at the Puerta de Valmardón tells the puzzle of the gate's Arabic name, Bab al-Mardum, which nobody can translate with certainty.

If it's your first walk in Toledo, the free route, Toledo's Gates and San Juan de los Reyes, asks at the Puerta de Alfonso VI which gate the king actually rode in by in 1085. And our Toledo guide covers the practical side.

Further reading

• Susana Calvo Capilla, "La mezquita de Bāb al-Mardūm y el proceso de consagración de pequeñas mezquitas en Toledo (s. XI-XIII)", Al-Qanṭara, 20/2 (1999), pp. 299–330 (in Spanish). https://al-qantara.revistas.csic.es/index.php/al-qantara/article/download/468/461
• José Amador de los Ríos, Toledo pintoresca, ó descripción de sus más célebres monumentos (Madrid, 1845) (in Spanish). https://archive.org/details/toledopintoresca00amaduoft
• Sixto Ramón Parro, Toledo en la mano, vol. II (Toledo, 1857) (in Spanish). https://archive.org/details/toledoenlamanod00parrgoog
• Juan Moraleda y Esteban, Tradiciones y recuerdos de Toledo, 3rd ed. (Toledo, 1888) (in Spanish). https://archive.org/details/tradicionesyrecu00mora
• "Del hallazgo de la inscripción fundacional a la declaración de monumento", Tulaytula, no. 15 (2011) (in Spanish). https://toledoislamico.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Tulaytula-2011-no-15-Cristo-Luz-pp-41-49.pdf
• Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha, Catálogo de Patrimonio Cultural, "Mezquita del Cristo de la Luz de Toledo" (in Spanish). https://cultura.castillalamancha.es/patrimonio/catalogo-patrimonio-cultural/mezquita-del-cristo-de-la-luz-de-toledo