Our Divine Origin

The Royal Decree

DC TV

Page 221, Section 2:

During this period of comparative tranquility, Granada had taken the place of Cordova as the home of the arts and sciences. Its architects were renowned throughout Europe; they had built the marvelous "Red Palace," Alhambra, so called from the color of the ferruginous soil on which it stands, and they had covered it with the splendid gold ornament and Arabesque moldings, which are still the wonder of artists of all countries. Granada itself, with its two castles, was a pearl of price. It stands on the border of a rich plain, the famous " Vega," lying at the feet of the snowy " mountains of the moon," Sierra Nevada. From the heights of the city, and still better from the Alhambra, which stands sentinel over the plain like the Acropolis of Athens, the eye ranges over this beautiful Vega, with its streams and vineyards, its orchards and orange groves. No city in Andalusia was more favored in site or climate; the breezes from the snow mountains made the hottest summer tolerable.

Page 222:
And the land was fertile beyond compare. The site chosen by the Moors for their celebrated Red Palace is a terrace bounded by precipitous ravines, at the foot of which, to the north, flow the waters of the river Darro. Solid walls of stone covered with stucco, and strengthened at frequent intervals by towers, surround the terrace. The enclosed space is somewhat of the form of a lanceolate leaf lying on the tableland, with its greatest length (about half a mile) from east to west. The visitor finds his way into the enclosure through a massive embattled tower of orange and red pierced by the Gate of Justice under which the khalifs, like the judges of the Hebrews, would want to sit in judgment. Twenty-eight feet above the pavement, over the horseshoe arch, a cabalistic key and a gigantic hand are carved on two stones. Once inside the walls, the visitor finds himself in a square, on one side of which is an unfinished palace designed by Charles the Fifth. The corridor through which entrance is now gained to the Alhambra crosses an angle of this ruined structure and admits the visitor to the Court of the Myrtles, so called from the profusion of those shrubs which adorn its sides

Page 225, Section 3:
We stop before the window looking over the Darro to think how Ayesha once let Boabdil down in a basket from it five centuries ago; how Charles the Fifth said of the unfortunate Moor, " Ill-fated was the man who lost all this!" We bring up before us the discoverer of America, as tradition paints him pleading in this place with the good Isabella for gracious permission to add another jewel to her crown - the bright gem of a New World.