Santo Toribio de Liébana Monastery

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The Santo Toribio de Liébana Monastery is a medieval monastery in Spain .

Santo Toribio de Liébana Monastery

location

Cross relic
Tower of the Chapel of the Cross
Nave

The approximately 515 m high monastery complex is located in the Cantabrian Mountains , more precisely in the Picos de Europa , in the area of ​​the municipality of Potes in the autonomous region of Cantabria .

history

The origins of the monastery are in the dark: some consider the 6th century Turibius of Liébana , an alleged bishop of Palencia , to be the founder; others relate to St. Turibius of Astorga , whose bones were brought here along with other relics in the 8th century, at the time of the reconquest ( reconquista ) and repopulation ( repoblación ) by the Asturian King Alfonso I (r. 739-757). In its early days, the monastery church was dedicated to St. Consecrated to Martin of Tours (Spanish: Martín de Turieno ); only later did the patronage change - perhaps also because of the similarity of words of Turieno - to Toribio ; The name Santo Toribio de Liébana is documented for the first time in 1125. However, today's buildings date from the 12th to 18th centuries. In 1835 the monastery was dissolved ( desamortización ), declared a national monument in 1953 and revived by Franciscans in 1961 .

Cross relic

The greatest treasure of the monastery was and is the relic of part of the Holy Cross , which Turibius of Astorga is said to have brought from the Holy Land in the 5th century . In her honor, Pope Julius II allowed the monastery to celebrate a Holy Year in 1512 , when the feast day of St. Turibius, April 16, falls on a Sunday. The two parts of the relic, framed by a filigree gold cross, are now kept and shown in a chapel donated in the early 18th century by Francisco Gómez de Otero y Cossío (1640–1714), the Inquisitor of Madrid. The chapel itself is raised by an illuminated lantern tower ( cimborrio ).

buildings

Despite the long history of the monastery, only the three-aisled monastery church, built in the Gothic style and begun in 1256, is of architectural importance, the three apses of which are polygonal inside and outside. The three naves are almost the same height; in any case, the central nave and the slightly raised crossing are not illuminated independently. Approaches to standardizing the support members to form bundle pillars can be seen; the vault ribs are barely profiled , only chamfered on the sides. The two archivolt portals protruding slightly from the wall on the south side still belong to the Romanesque style and are probably from the previous building.

Beatus of Liébana

The monastery is also famous for the twelve-volume Beatus Apocalypse from around 775, which is decorated with many illustrations and which has been preserved in several copies and fragments from the 8th to 16th centuries.

Web links

Commons : Santo Toribio de Liébana Monastery  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Commons : Beatus manuscripts  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Santo Toribio de Liébana - Map with altitude information

Coordinates: 43 ° 9 ′ 1 ″  N , 4 ° 39 ′ 14 ″  W.