San Millán de Suso (19/03/15)

The following morning we had a hearty Continental breakfast of yoghurt, fruit, chorizo and bread at the Hospederia La Calera guesthouse, settled the bill (which we thought at €25 each, was good value for the standard of accommodation we had experienced) and made our way back over to San Millán de Yuso. Part of the monastery complex has been turned into a hotel and beside it there is a modern visitor’s centre and reception facing onto the external courtyard where tickets for the guided tours of both monasteries can be purchased.

San Millán de Suso

The monastery of San Millán de Suso is much smaller and more ancient than it’s grandiose younger brother Yuso. Due to factors such as the age of the structure, it’s geographical location on a hillside, the rainfall levels in the area, the vicissitudes of history (it was burnt by Almanzor, Vizier and de facto ruler of El Andalus in 1002 and sacked by the Black Prince, son of Edward III of England, who was an ally of Pedro the Cruel, king of Castille, in the 1300’s) and neglect, the building has been severely damaged and has required restoration and reinforcement. This has meant that access is only with a tour guide in timed groups of about 20 people.

We booked on the 10:25 tour and received a reduction on the ticket price due to being pilgrims with a credencial. A small bus took us up the mountainside on a winding road through mature deciduous woodland.

San Millán de Suso viewed from Yuso

Arriving, the first thing that struck me was the sense of tranquility. Standing still for a short time and letting the other visitors in the group go on ahead, I was mesmerised by the sound of birdsong, woodpeckers and sheep bells drifting through the dripping trees. I could easily imagine San Millán and his band of followers living here in the surrounding caves as hermits in the 6^th Century. Originally, before the monastery was built abutting onto the cliff face of a outcrop of rock, a natural crevice contained several caves which provided shelter for a community of hermits who lived here in contemplation. These included San Millán himself who was subsequently buried in one of the caves.

The tour guide brought me back to reality from my reverie by shouting up the path at me. I don’t speak Spanish, but a rough translation would probably be “stop hanging around daydreaming and get inside the monastery with the other visitors or you will miss the tour!” and indeed when I looked the other visitors had already gone through the outer door! I ran up to the door, pushed it open and quickly joined them along with David, who was already getting used to my dreamy detailed examinations of ancient buildings!

I have visited ancient Orthodox monasteries in Albania on several occasions and to my mind, the monastery building itself reminded me much more of these than any monastery I have visited in Western Europe before. It combines Visigothic (post-Roman and pre-Arab invasions in A.D. 711), Mozarabic (Christians who lived under Muslim rule) and Romanesque architectural elements. The square tower beside the entrance gate with it’s overhanging eaves and tiled roofs is very picturesque when viewed through the woodland.

View of San Millán de Yuso in valley below from Suso

Stepping through the door I found a cobbled verandah – like atrium with arched openings from which the valley below could be viewed through the mist. The cobbling dates from Visigothic times and the floor is lined with the tombs of the Seven Infants of Lara with the tomb of their tutor, Don Nuño Salido.

Tombs of the Seven Infants of Lara and Don Nuño Salido

The Legend of the Seven Infants of Lara is told in a Spanish epic poem, which like the Chanson de Roland mixes real events and people with wildly exaggerated myths. The “Seven Infants” and their tutor Don Nuño Salido probably were real individuals who lived in the 10^th Century.

They were said to be the the sons of Gonzalo Gustioz the Lord of Salas (an area near Burgos). Reputedly of the blood of the Counts of Castille, they were trained in Cavalry skills by Nuño Salido, and were said to be knighted on the same day. They took part in the Reconquest or wars against the Muslims in Southern Spain.

The theme of revenge runs through the poem and at a wedding in Burgos in 986, one of the infants Gonzalez, the youngest of the seven brothers, quarrels with and kills Alvar Sanchez the relative of the bride called Doña Lambra. Her husband Ruy Velázquez Lord of Villaren, is persuaded to avenge this offence and so Velázquez sends Gonzalo Gustioz, a guest at the wedding to Cordoba, capital of the Umayyad Caliphate, unknowingly carrying a letter written in Arabic addressed to Almanzor asking the Vizier to murder him. Almanzor however, does not murder him, but imprisons him in Cordoba.

Meanwhile Velázquez pretends to make an incursion into Moorish territory accompanied by the seven brothers and arranges for them to be ambushed. The seven infants and Salido fight to the death and are slain and their bodies beheaded. Their heads are displayed in Cordoba, (where a street is still called the Street of Heads). Almanzor shows the heads to Gustioz who weeps when he recognises them, and so Almanzor has pity on him and asks his sister to visit Gustioz and console him. She seems to do this very effectively (!) because she gives birth to Gustioz’s son who is named Mudarra.

Mudarra is raised in Cordoba and Gustioz is released and returns to Salas. But when Mudarra turns fourteen he goes in search of his father and learning of the treachery of Velázquez he avenges the death of his half-brothers by killing Ruy Velázquez while he is on a hunting expedition, and then gathering together a band of follower, he attacks the castle of Villaren, where Doña Lambra is captured, stoned and burnt at the stake. Mudarra then lives happily ever after as he is adopted by Gustioz’s and inherits his estate.  

This story of revenge and blood feud seemed strangely at odds with the peace and tranquillity of Suso, but I suppose all human passion, hatred, ambition and strife is ultimately stilled by death and the stone sarcophagi in the atrium spoke of this. Certainly the epic conjures up well, the mixed loyalties of the Reconquest period given that, for example, king Sancho the Strong married his sister to Almanzor and Christians sometimes allied with the Muslims as the early Spanish kingdoms struggled with each other as well as the Moors. To quote the poem itself seems appropriate:

        “Seven gentler boys, nor braver, were never nursed in Spain,       

          And blood of Moors, God rest your souls, ye shed on her like rain.”

This is not the only literary association with Suso as according to tradition, the atrium is said to be the spot where Gonzalo de Berceo, the 13^th Century Benedictine monk, wrote his poetry in the developing vernacular language of his time instead of in Latin, thereby creating the earliest literature by a known author in Spanish. It was also at Suso that the Glosa Emilianensis was written.

Medieval Graffiti

At the other end of the atrium are the tombs of three queens of Navarre Doña Toda, Doña Elvira and Doña Jimena dating from the 10^th and 11^th Centuries. The walls of the atrium are covered with graffiti written by pilgrims and monks in the 11^th and 12^th Centuries.

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monasterio_de_San_Mill%C3%A1n_de_Suso

Accessing the main building through a Mozarabic doorway from the atrium, three different phases of construction can be discerned although the construction at first seems quite complicated. The first phase of building construction is in front of the original caves where the hermits lived and has been built onto the original cliff face. It is Visigothic and dates from the 6^th and 7^th Centuries.

Original Hermit's Caves

The most westerly facing cave contains bones from medieval burials, which can be seen in an alcove through a modern glass window. These must be the burials of important people being sited so close to the tomb of San Millán, but their names have been lost.

Beside this is the Oratory Cave of San Millán where the saint was originally buried in A.D. 574. Although his actual relics were removed to Yuso in 1030, a dark alabaster sepulchre was placed in the cave in the 12^th Century and is one of the oldest statues in Spain. Beside this can be seen further caves

Sepulchre of San Millan
Photo: Cruccone
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Monasterio_Suso_cenotafio_SMillan.jpg

In front of the caves can be seen the 10^th Century Mozarabic monastery which was built in A.D. 959 with characteristic horseshoe shaped arches. This second part of the building took advantage of some of the caves and is oriented to the south and west. In 1002 Almanzor, burnt this part of the building and the original monochrome decoration on the arches has been largely destroyed, though remnants remain.

Visigothic structure left, Mozarab horseshoe arches right.
Blue tiled Reliquary of the Wood to right of central arch
Photo: Jose Luis Filp Cabana
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monasterio_de_San_Mill%C3%A1n_de_Suso._Iglesia.jpg

The third part of the building was completed in the 11^th and 12^th Centuries when the Benedictines arrived and lengthened the horseshoe arches with two further Romanesque ones.

Other extensions to the building have not survived and the building was finally abandoned in 1835 when Mendizábal closed many religious houses including Yuso and Suso (although Yuso was later given to the Augustinians).

Near the Ossuary cave can be also be seen an unusual reliquary consisting of a blue tiled box attached to one of the pillars which contains an ancient piece of wood. This relates to a story about San Millán in which some workers were said to be building a barn when they found that the timber they were going to use as a support was not the right length. However, after San Millán had prayed, the timber was miraculously found to have lengthened in size and a left over piece of wood not used for building was preserved in the reliquary!

The monastery of San Millán de Suso is an interesting and atmospheric place evocative of so much Spanish and Camino history and with added benefit of being in such a beautiful location. David and I agreed that it our visit to San Millán de la Cogolla had been well worth the effort involved in taking a detour off the main Camino Francés route.

San Millán de la Cogolla & San Millán de Yuso (18/03/14)

The village of San Millán de la Cogolla sits at the end of a beautiful valley whose steep sides are thickly wooded. Large sandstone bluffs protrude in places from the trees and add dramatic beauty to the scenery. Even though it was raining when we arrived and continued to lightly drizzle during our stay, this only seemed to add to the beauty as wisps of mist clung to the trees on the higher slopes and I was reminded of the damp tranquility of Glendalough; David and I agreed that the scenery made us feel like we were in Co. Wicklow as the valley and weather had a very Irish feel.


San Millán

The suffix of the place name de la Cogolla means “of the cowl” and refers to the monastic cowl or hood and is variously thought to be a reference to the shape of the valley or the monastic history of the area. This is because
San Millán is primarily famous not for it’s scenery, but for it’s two monasteries; San Millán de Suso founded in the 6^th Century and San Millán de Yuso founded in the 11^th. Suso and Yuso mean “upper” and “lower” (from the Latin “sursum” – “above” and “deorsum” - below) in archaic Castillian because  San Millán de Suso developed high up the side of the valley in the forest and then later, because there was little room to expand the monastery buildings, San Millán de Yuso was built on the valley floor.

 

In 1997 both monasteries were declared a UNESCO World Heritage site for two main reasons. Firstly because San Millán de la Cogolla is considered, as UNESCO acknowledges “the birthplace of the modern written and spoken Spanish language” – the third most widely spoken language on the globe. Sometime in the 11^th Century, an anonymous monk in the scriptorium at Suso wrote a codex manuscript now called the Glosa Emilianenses. The main text was written in a simplified form of Latin, but importantly, he wrote notes or marginalia around the edges in Medieval Basque and a medieval form of a Hispanic language which scholars debate was either Castillian or Old Spanish or alternatively Navarro- Aragonese. The main point is that these notes are the earliest written example of the Basque language and one of the earliest examples of early Spanish (the Real Academia Española declared in 2010 that written Spanish found in another medieval document , Cartularies of Valpuesta from the Province of Burgos is actually earlier that the Glosa Emilianenses).

Copy of the Glosa Emilianenses

The second reason for the UNESCO declaration is that the two monasteries are important because they show the transition from the earlier Eremitic monastic tradition, where a hermit might live in a cave and maybe slowly gather a group of followers around themselves, to the Cenobitic or Community tradition, which became the dominant form of monasticism, where monks live together under a monastic rule.

San Millan de Yuso

The monastic history of the area begins during the Visigothic period with Saint Aemilian (Emilianus in Latin and San Millán in Spanish). According to a Vita or saintly biography written by Braulius, Bishop of Caesaraugusta (modern Zaragoza) written between 50 – 100 years after the saint’s death, and based on the testimony of four of his disciples, San Millán was born in Berceo in A.D.473 and according to tradition, lived over one hundred years, dying in 574.

He spent his early years as a shepherd in the mountains, but about the age of twenty he had a dream and decided to dedicate his life to serving God. He decided to seek advice and training from a hermit at Bilibio, San Felices or Felix and lived with him for a number of years before becoming a travelling hermit (or gyrovagus) living in the mountains and remote regions along the ancient Roman road that developed into the Camino de Santiago between Logroño and Burgos. Tradition says that he spent much of this period, about 40 years, living in the hills around La Cogolla.

Eventually, against San Millán’s personal wishes, Didymus, Bishop of Tarazona ordained him as a priest, however he soon drew upon himself the opposition and anger of his fellow priests because he gave away his possessions in alms and was accused of wasting the goods of the church and deprived of his office.

Yuso Cloister

After this, San Millán returned to the wilderness and became famous for his holiness, miracle working and compassion for the poor. In his last years, although his ascetic lifestyle increased, he allowed a small band of disciples to live with him in his cell.

Entrance to abbey church from cloister

Braulius records miracles that were supposed to have occurred after San Millán’s death and some of San Millán’s liturgical prayers were written down by a medieval poet San Eugenio in A.D. 634 who also dedicated some Latin distichs (elegiac verses) to him. The monastery of San Millán de Suso was built over the site of his hermit’s caves and tomb and became increasingly popular as the Camino de Santiago developed.

Interior of church door

By the 10^th Century the rival kingdoms of Castille and Navarre were both interested in bringing the monastery within their sphere of influence because it was already setting up monastic colonies, copying out codexes and providing both royal courts with scribes. Both kingdoms vied with each other to grant the monastery privileges. In 1030 Sancho the Great as part of his efforts to develop the Camino de Santiago, ordered San Millán’s relics to be exhumed and displayed to encourage prayer. At the same time San Millán was declared a saint and was in time came to be considered the patron saint of Castille and Navarre.

High Altar with painting of San Millan

Sancho’s son Don Garcia of Najéra began the construction of a second monastery, San Millán de Yuso. Like the evocative story of Don Garcia entering the cave at Najéra, there is another legend associated with the same king and the founding of Yuso. It is a story reminiscent of the biblical account of the return of the Ark of the Covenant to the Israelites from the Philistines in the book of 1 Samuel chapter 6. According to tradition Don Garcia decided to transfer San Millán’s relics to the monastery of Santa Maria la Real in Najéra from Suso. The remains were placed inside some wooden caskets decorated with ivory panels and precious stones and placed on an ox cart. However, when the oxen reached the bottom of the valley they refused to continue and everyone then understood that the saint did not want to leave the valley and so San Millán de Yuso was built on the spot where the oxen stopped and the saint’s relics are still kept at Yuso today.

Dome over crossing

The two monasteries had separate abbots until the 12^th Century and became Benedictine foundations. Work on Yuso was finished in 1067 during the reign of Sancho IV el de Peñalen and around the same time a marble reliquary for San Millán’s remains was completed.

Baroque altarpiece in Parish Church

The Benedictines claimed San Millán as their own and representations of the saint show him in a Benedictine monk’s cowl, although San Millán himself was never a member of a monastic order or organised community. He is also often shown in a similar way to images of Santiago Matamoros – Moor slayer, with a wavy sword to distinguish him from St James, as he was supposed to have miraculously appeared at the battle of Hacinas in favour of the Christian forces.

Imprisoned saint in Parish Church side chapel

Later figures linked with the monasteries include Santo Domingo de Silos (or Cañas), Santo Domingo de la Calzada (who we shall come across in future posts) who was considered so intellectually dull that he got thrown out of Yuso, and a poet famous in Spanish literature, Gonzalo de Berceo.

Once David and I had rested, we walked the short distance from the guest house over to San Millán de Yuso. It was still raining and it was now late afternoon, so we agreed that we would visit Yuso and then examine the smaller monastery of San Millán de Suso the following morning before we walked to Cirueña to rejoin the main Camino route.

Sacristy

Yuso could only be viewed via a guided tour which took approximately one hour. Although the tour guide only spoke in Spanish, there were excellent information boards in French, English and German throughout the tour. 



Sacristy Fresco



The monastery complex of San Millán de Yuso is an enormous edifice with stupendously opulent Baroque interiors and additions and we greatly enjoyed our tour. We were led firstly into a hall by the cloister to view a facsimile of the Glosa Emilianenses and then through the cloister and an elaborate doorway (the interior of which was a stunning confection of gilded Rococo motifs) to the abbey church.

The church itself was built between 1504 and 1540 and is the first example of a Hall Church or so called Hallen-Kirchen (a church with a nave and side aisles of approximately equal heights) in Spain. The front part of the church is used as the monastery church and the rear as the local parish church.

Gilded carvings in Sacristy

A 17^th Century renaissance altarpiece has paintings by Fray Juan Ricci, a Benedictine monk who belonged to the school of El Greco and the central panels show San Millán appearing at the battle of Hacinas with the Assumption of the Virgin above. A small dome above the crossing is tastefully plastered with stucco in a surprisingly muted manner and reminded me of the tiny domed church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane that I saw last year in Rome.

Cloister

At the rear of the monastery church an incredibly elaborate screen made by Sebastian de Medina in 1676, divides the choir off from the parish church area. A very interesting feature of the screen is a large circle above the door through to the Parish Church, where on the Spring and Autumn equinoxes on the 21^st March and 21^st September at 17:30 the sun shines through the church window and forms a perfect ellipse on the choir floor through this circular screen opening, thus demonstrating the west – east axis of the church.

Monk's cells

The parish church section is dominated by the elaborate 18^th Century baroque altarpiece made from walnut wood covered in gold leaf which forms the far side of the dividing screen and is decorated with carvings of saints associated with the life of San Millán. There are several side chapels where masses were said for the locals; some of them have interesting altarpieces featuring carvings of imprisoned saints behind bars!

Gregorian Chant Books

We moved on to the extraordinary sacristy which made us gasp due to the richness of it’s gilded walnut carvings and vibrant coloured frescoes which date from 1766 when the abbot Fray José Fernándes converted the Chapter House. The richness of the original colours has survived because the floor is made from alabaster which maintains a constant temperature and humidity. The frescoes are an exuberant riot of dancing musical cherubs framed by swags of fruit and flowers.

Codex Calixtinus

On the second floor of the cloister we passed the monk’s cells and then viewed the storeroom where a collection of 25 original books of Gregorian Chant are kept in locked wooden store cupboards. Copied between 1729 and 1731 on calfskin parchment, each book was impressively large. There are only four such surviving complete collections of Gregorian Chant in Spain including this one at Yuso; two in Madrid, at the Palacio Real  and El Escorial and the fourth at the Monastery of Guadalupe (Cáceres). Nearby in the same room was an illuminated 13^th Century copy of the Codex Calixtinus – the most famous medieval account of pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago.

Reliquary of San Millan

Before leaving the monastery we finally were taken to see the chapel were the silver reliquaries containing the remains of San Millán and San Felices de Bilibio are kept. Both were created in 1944 under the orders of General Francisco Franco; “Prudentissimo Duci Maximo” as the inscription on San Millán’s reliquary describes him. San Millán’s reliquary is decorated with delightful 11^th Century ivory plates showing scenes from San Millán’s life and miracles and the panels are one of the most important surviving pieces of Romanesque art. San Felice’s box is also decorated with ivory panels, but this time from the 12^th Century. I spent a long time enjoying the panels with their intricate carvings of religious scenes and their evocation of medieval chapels, castles, knights, horses and costumes with the hand of God blessing all from above.

Ivory panel

Also nearby at the back of the room and not to be missed, was a 16^th Century Italian gilt bronze crucifix attributed to Benvenuto Cellini.

We left the monastery feeling very pleased that we had achieved so much in one day; not only had we managed to walk from Najéra to San Millán de la Cogolla, but we had been able to view two important monasteries – Cañas and Yuso and had the satisfaction of knowing that we still had Suso to see the following morning.

16th Century Italian crucifix

We enjoyed a well-deserved meal at the restaurant opposite Yuso which included a segundo fish course washed down with half a bottle of rioja each, then retired to our guesthouse to rest. David snored the rest of the evening away whilst I wrote up my journal and read!