Castillo de San Servando

The Castle of San Servando is a medieval castle in Toledo, Spain, near the Tagus River. It was begun as a monastery, occupied first by monks and later by the Knights Templar.

In 1874 the castle was named a national monument. The fortress was depicted in El Greco's painting View of Toledo.

Evidence exists of an ancient monastery attached to a basilica of the same name, possibly founded in the 7th century. In 1080, Cardinal Richard of St. Victor, a monk of the ancient Abbey of St. Victor in Marseille, was sent as the legate of Pope Gregory VII to the Council of Burgos held that year. One of his mandates was to ensure the adoption of the Roman Rite, replacing the ancient Mozarabic Rite used by the Christians of Iberia for centuries. He carried specific instructions for the restoration of San Servando and its adoption of Roman liturgical practice.

After surviving for several centuries under Muslim rule, when the city was conquered by the Christian army of King Alfonso VI of Castile in 1085, both he and his wife, Constance of Burgundy, became generous benefactors of the basilica and rebuilt the monastery. According to John Ormsby, the English translator of "Don Quixote" by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Alfonso VI called the castle "San Servando" after a Spanish martyr, a name subsequently modified into San Servan (in which form it appears in the "Poem of the Cid"), San Servantes, and San Cervantes. Mr. Ormsby mentions that "there is a complete history of the Cervantes family from the tenth century down to the seventeenth extant under the title "Illustrious Ancestry, Glorious Deeds, and Noble Posterity of the Famous Nuino Alfonso, Alcaide of Toledo," written in 1648 Rodrigo Mendez Silva." On the side of the mountain, near the Castle, a poem by Miguel de Cervantes was enshrined in 2005, four hundred years after Miguel de Cervantes wrote it. A picture of the poem is at panoramio.com.

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