Sant Silvestre de Valleta
Sant Silvestre de Valleta is a Romanesque church building from the 10th century in the municipality of Llançà in northern Catalonia ( province of Girona , Alt Empordà ). The church forms part of the cultural heritage of Catalonia and is included in the Inventari del Patrimoni Arquitectònic Català .
location
The church of Sant Silvestre is located at the confluence of the Rec de Carxell and the Recs de l'Heura , from which the Riera de Valleta emerges, 5 kilometers west of the center of Llança (as the crow flies). It is 4 kilometers to the village of La Valleta in the south-southeast. The 408 meter high Puig Tifell rises about 2 kilometers to the northeast . The church itself is located at 117 meters above sea level. Immediately to the southeast are the remains of the wall of a dilapidated homestead. The long-distance hiking trail GR 11 from Llançà to Vilamaniscle leads past the church.
description
The church, named after Pope Silvester I , is a pre-Romanesque or Romanesque building 14.50 meters long and 7.20 meters wide. The single-nave hall church is closed in the east by a semicircular apse with a quarter-spherical ceiling. The apse is connected to the nave via a round arch made of hewn natural stone. A very similar round arch separates the somewhat less wide choir area from the rest of the nave. Stone benches run along the side walls. The font is in the southwest corner of the ship . In the apse there are two arched windows with sloping soffits, whereas the arched windows on the south and west side are double-sloped. The entrance portal is on the south side. It consists of three stepped round arches, a monolithic lintel and a semicircular tympanum field , which is filled with hewn stones. The bell gable , which is divided into three pillars , towers over the gable wall in the west . As with Sant Quirze de Colera and Sant Miquel de Colera , the final round arches are also missing here.
The apse masonry, the gable and the north wall were built with relatively small, unhewn natural stones embedded in lime mortar. The lower wall section of the apse shows three layers that were built with the herringbone technique, the so-called opus spicatum . The south wall of the ship, on the other hand, was built in more or less regular layers of hewn slate . The roof is covered with slates that have been embedded in plenty of lime mortar.
It is very likely that Sant Silvestre was built in two stages. The apse is believed to date from the 10th century - the time the church was consecrated. The windows and the entrance portal, however, can be assigned to a late Romanesque style and belong to the 12th and 13th centuries.
Next to the church are the remains of an old homestead, which was mentioned in a document as early as 1019.
history
Beginnings
The oldest written record of Sant Silvestre goes back to November 24th, 854. Here the abbot Pere (Peter) of Sant Esteve de Banyoles mentions the donation of houses and lands in Vallmalla (as the valley of Sant Silvestre was then called) to his abbey. According to Joan Badia Homs, who for his part refers to Ramon d'Abadal i de Vinyals, the Vallmalla belonged to the Vice-County of Peralada at the time . The abbot had inherited the property in Vallmalla from his father, who in turn had acquired the property through Presura . Somewhat later, in 877 , Ludwig II ( the Stammler ) confirmed the possession of the Cella of Sant Silvestre to the Abbey of Banyoles, including the surrounding vineyards and dwellings and the nearby church of Sant Martí de Vallmala . The name Valleta does not appear in documents from the following 10th century, as the river valley was still called Budica or Budiga at that time.
A bull from Pope Benedict VIII from 1017 confirms the possession of Sant Silvestre to Banyoles Abbey. The church of Sant Silvestre and its homestead are also mentioned at the dedication of Sant Martí de Vallmala in 1019. In a dedication from December 17, 1029, in which the church was elevated to parish church, the Bishop of Girona Pere Roger de Carcasona described Sant Silvestre as belonging to Vilar Renoall or Vila Mala . In the same document, the bishop granted the new parish church a 30 paces wide cemetery with the associated rights and at the same time set the boundaries of the parish. Much later (in 1279 and 1280) the parish church was then called Sancto Silvestro .
Decline
The Sant Silvestre chapel was located in a very sparsely populated landscape. Nevertheless, as the parish church for the Valleta valley, it was a center of public life until the 17th century, but then fell into disrepair due to a decline in population. It is no longer mentioned in parish records between 1606 and 1691 as an independent parish and it seems that the chapel was incorporated into the parish of Garriguella , where it remained until 1920. It was not until years later that she finally came to the parish of Llançà.
renovation
At the insistence of the population, renovation work began on the church on May 15, 1983, after the Department de Cultura of the Generalitat de Catalunya , the Diputació de Girona and the Amics de Sant Silvestre considered a restoration project for the entire building in 1982 . Repairs were urgently needed, especially on the roof over the nave and the apse vault, but the walls and inner arches were also damaged and the original slab floor was lost. The tympanum above the door was missing reveal stones and the wooden door leaf was completely rotten. Relocation of the river bed of the Riera de la Valleta, which had worked its way up to the gable wall and especially the north wall, and threatened to destabilize the building was also urgent. After all this work had been completed, a new altar was installed, the access routes repaired and the immediate vicinity of the church cleaned. At the end, a power connection was installed that is supplied by a generator.
Since the renovation work was completed, services have been celebrated again in Sant Silvestre. At the same time there has been an annual folk festival at the church since May 1980.
Fire danger
In July 1986 a wild fire spread in the area, which destroyed a large part of the forests in the Serra de Rodes and destroyed holm oak and pine forests in the valley of the Riera de Valleta .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Direcció General del Patrimoni Cultural de la Generalitat de Catalunya: Sant Silvestre de Valleta . In: Pat.mapa: arquitectura .
- ↑ a b CEDIP: Sant Silvestre de Valleta . poblesdecatalunya.cat.
- ↑ Juan Badia y Homs: L'arquitectura medieval de l'Empordà . Diputació Provincial, 1981, ISBN 84-500-3141-9 .
- ^ Enric Sànchez-Cid: Ermites i temples insòlits de Catalunya . Cossetània Edicions, 2001, ISBN 84-95684-34-9 , pp. 11 .
- ↑ Publicacions de l'Abadia de Montserrat; Daniel Orio: Senders de gran recorregut: GR 11 . L'Abadia de Montserrat, 1991, ISBN 84-7826-062-5 , pp. 99-102 .
Web links
Coordinates: 42 ° 22 '12 " N , 3 ° 5' 52" E