Santa María (Melque)

Santa Maria de Melque

Window with horseshoe arch

Santa María (Santa María de Melque) is a pre-Romanesque church in the autonomous Spanish region of Castile-La Mancha . It is located about 50 km southwest of Toledo and belongs to the municipality of San Martín de Montalbán , from which it is almost seven kilometers away in Melque, an abandoned place (Spanish: despoblado ), at the end of a dead end road. The church is assigned to the Visigothic architectural style and was probably built towards the end of the 7th century. However, the time when the church was built has not been proven with certainty. After years of decline, the church became the subject of art historical research at the beginning of the 20th century . In 1931 the church was declared a cultural monument (Monumento Nacional). Since 1968 it has been owned by the Diputación de Toledo , which excavated the site and set up a museum.

history

The name Melque is derived from the Arabic balat el-melk and means way of the king .

The excavations in the 1970s showed that the area around Melque was already settled in Roman times . There was a Roman villa on the site of today's church and the remains of a Roman aqueduct have been discovered nearby .

Remnants of the wall and five water basins of an early medieval monastery complex were also excavated, which extended over an area of twelve hectares and was enclosed by a wall. The church was built as part of this monastery. The monastery continued under the Moorish rule . The monks were Mozarabs , i. H. Christians who lived under Moorish rule. Around 930 the monastery was abandoned, possibly after a fire, and the church was converted into a castle . About the Vierungs dome was erected a square watchtower ( atalaya califal ), which is still preserved. After the Christian reconquest of Toledo in 1085 by Alfonso VI. (1065–1109) the building was used as a church again. The area remained a contested borderland and the monastery, like the Castillo de Montalbán located a few kilometers away, was in the 12th / 13th centuries. Century a branch of the Knights Templar . As the Reconquista progressed , the fortifications were gradually abandoned. A place developed around the church that existed until the 19th century, and Santa María de Melque became the destination of a pilgrimage . After the confiscation of the church property ( disamortization ) in the 1830s, the church was sold and used as a barn, cattle shed and to dry tobacco. Thanks to the continuous use, the building was preserved.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the art-historical importance of the church was recognized and examined by Manuel Gómez-Moreno Martínez in his 1919 treatise Iglesias Mozárabes . He assigned Santa María de Melque to Mozarabic architecture , while the church in more recent research - u. a. due to comparisons with other churches of the Visigothic period like Santa Comba de Bande - is considered a Visigothic building. Santa María de Melque is considered to be one of the best-preserved buildings of the early Middle Ages.

architecture

The construction, the construction of the vaults and the use of large stone blocks are in the late Roman tradition, while the floor plan of the Greek cross shows Byzantine influence. In the 6./7. In the 19th century, the Byzantine Empire extended to southern Spain . It bordered the Spanish Visigoth Empire, whose capital was Toledo, and inspired its art and culture.

Since there is no clear evidence of the date of origin of Santa María de Melque, it has not been proven whether the church was built before or after the Moorish conquest of the Iberian Peninsula . The floor plan, the (no longer existing) anteroom in front of the entrance in the west and the construction in dry masonry made of cyclope-like ashlar stones speak for an assignment to Visigothic architecture . The Mozarabic architectural features such as the horseshoe-shaped apse , the very tightly closed horseshoe arches of the windows and their keystones , which are larger than the other wedge stones , speak for the development of the church under Moorish rule .

Layout

Santa María de Melque, floor plan

The plan of the church is a Greek cross with a horseshoe-shaped apse with a square outer wall attached to its longitudinal arm in the east. The entrance to the church is on the west. It was originally provided with a porch that is no longer preserved today. With this porch, the east-west axis was around 30 meters long, the north-south axis is 20 meters long. On the north side there is a rectangular room, in which blind arcades can still be seen, and a square chapel , which - like the square chapel on the south side, of which only remains are preserved - were added at a later time.

Exterior construction

Large granite blocks are joined together in regular layers without mortar . The rounded corners of the outer walls (except on the west facade) are unusual. A recess, which runs as a vertical line along the rounded corners, underlines its curvature and sets it apart from the outer walls like three-quarter columns that resemble those inside. An only partially preserved profiled cornice runs under the roof approach . The same profiling have the fighters on the window. With the exception of one arched window, all windows and doors have horseshoe arches with carefully cut keystones.

The building is staggered in three heights. The apse is dominated by the longitudinal and transverse arms, in the middle of which the dome of the crossing rises.

inner space

Santa María de Melque, interior view

apse

The longitudinal and transverse arms of the church have a horseshoe-shaped barrel vault , the apse is vaulted with a quarter ton. The crossing dome rises above the horseshoe-shaped belt arches with the watchtower from the time when the monastery served as a Moorish fortress, which has been restored today. The belt arches rest on three-quarter pillars that are reminiscent of the rounded corners of the outer walls. The inner walls were originally plastered, a few remains of the stucco are still present on the belt arches of the crossing. At the beginning of the vault, as on the outer wall, there is a simple, profiled frieze , which is also continued on the transoms of the belt arches.

On the front wall of the south arm there is an arcosolium , a grave niche in which an important personality of the Western Roman Empire was probably buried. In the north side chapel there is an altar made from a stone column .

Graves

Stone carved graves with human shapes dating from the 12th to 15th centuries have been discovered near the church.

literature

Achim Arbeiter , Sabine Noack-Haley: Hispania antiqua. Christian monuments of the early Middle Ages from the 8th to the 11th centuries . Verlag Philipp von Zabern , Mainz 1999, ISBN 3-8053-2312-3 , pp. 89-94.
Jaime Cobreros: Guía del Prerrománico en España . Madrid 2006, ISBN 84-9776-215-0 , pp. 211-214
Jacques Fontaine: L'Art Mozarabe. L'Art Préroman Hispanique . Volume 2, 2nd edition, Éditions Zodiaque, Abbaye de la Pierre-Qui-Vire 1995, ISBN 2-7369-0215-7 , pp. 76-81.