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The Monastery of Vallbona de les Monjas (in Catalan, Monestir de Vallbona de les Monges), also called the Royal Monastery of Santa Maria de Vallbona and Our Lady of Vallbona, is a female Cistercian abbey, located in the Catalan region of Urgel within the municipality of Vallbona de las Monjas (Lérida).

It was declared a National Monument by Royal Order on 3 June 1931. Built between the 12th and 14th centuries, it is of Romanesque style with much of it already done in Gothic architecture. It is the most important female Cistercian monastery in Catalonia and together with the monastery of Poblet and the monastery of Santes Creus it forms part of the Cistercian Route.

Foundation and origins
From a primitive group of mixed anchorites, founded in the year 1153 by Ramon de Vallbona under the rule of St. Benedict, in 1175 only a female community remained in the place that decided to take advantage of the Cistercian observance. They counted for their establishment with the land given for this purpose in 1163 by the Count of Barcelona Ramon Berenguer IV. To lead the community, the following year its first abbess was incorporated from the Monastery of Santa Maria de la Caridad in Tulebras (Navarra): Oria Ramirez (1176-1180). The monastery soon acquired a great reputation and attracted to its bosom ladies of the Catalan nobility. It also gained royal favour, demonstrated by visits from Alfonso II the Chaste and his wife Sancha de Castilla or Jaime I the Conqueror, who not only stayed in the monastery on repeated occasions but also sponsored its construction. From Pope Innocent III he received in 1198 and 1200 the immunity and protection of goods and a bull granted by the same pope in 1201 that regulated the enclosure and ensured its independence from the episcopate. Thanks to the numerous properties received through donations and wills, among them that of Count Ermengol VII himself, the great dominion of the monastery was formed between the 12th and 13th centuries, especially in the County of Urgel. Legal recognition was achieved under the mandate of Abbess Saurena of Anglesola (1379-1392), who bought from King Peter III of Aragon the civil and criminal jurisdiction of all the monastery's possessions for 22. 000 Barcelona salaries, these acquisitions allowed the establishment of the barony of Vallbona and made the monastery the centre of political and legal life for all the towns and districts that made it up. At this time, the community was made up of 150 nuns, most of whom belonged to the Catalan nobility, such as the Cardona, Cervera, Queralt, Boixadors, Anglesola, etc.

Decline and resurgence
The civil war of 1462-1472 and later the Council of Trent (1545-1563) had a notable repercussion on the abbey: one of its agreements prohibited the existence of female communities in unpopulated places, which forced the nuns in 1573 to cede part of their lands to people from other places, mainly inhabitants of Montesquiu, so that they could settle in their surroundings and thus create a population nucleus that derived in the current Vallbona de las Monjas.

For the foundation of this town, the whole series of external buildings that the monastery had were fitted out, similar to those that still remain in Poblet or Santes Creus, so that only the strictly monastic premises remain in this monastery, apart from the church and the cloister. The following times were not superb, in the 17th century he had disputes with his order, mainly with Santa Maria de Poblet, the tributes they had to pay left their economy in a bad place that joined the ravages caused by the Reapers' War (1640-1652), followed by the Succession Wars (1705-1717) and the Roussillon War (1788-1795), They had numerous disputes with the towns belonging to their barony, because of Mendizábal's disentailment and the Exclaustration. They were absent from the monastery for six months so that they could continue monastic life and did not suffer as much damage as the monasteries of Poblet or Santes Creus. Today the monastery still houses a community of Cistercian nuns as it has done uninterruptedly since its foundation, with the sole exception of the period of the Spanish Civil War.

With the new works carried out, some rooms have been fitted out for accommodation service which, together with ceramic works, word processing and computer music scores and tourist visits to the monastery, represent a good source of income for the community.

Desk
Its library together with the scriptorium achieved great fame. Fourteen codices from the 13th century are copied and illustrated by the old nuns and are kept in the archive with numerous old documents of great interest for regional and national historiography. Relevant was its pharmacy, which supplied all the villages of the barony with documentation from the 15th century.

Building
The Church, built between the XII and XIV centuries, that is, in the transition from the Romanesque to the Gothic, has a Latin cross plan with only one nave and four sections up to the transept; this one is very long but narrower than the nave, so it gives rise to a rectangular transept that is covered with an octagonal dome that rests on trumpets whose construction is dated in the XIII century. In the two arms of the transept there are two square apse chapels. The main apse at the head of the nave is also quadrangular and smooth. The temple is covered with a gothic ribbed vault and the apses and transept with barrel vaults.

The octagonal-shaped bell tower, which rises like a second dome over the second section of the nave, is remarkable. It is markedly Gothic and has a surprising originality and architectural audacity, as it is directly supported by the side walls, and was built during the mandate of Abbess Elisenda de Copons between 1340 and 1348 (sister of the Abbot of Poblet Copons). In the presbytery, on the right side of the altar, there is the tomb of Violante de Hungría wife of Jaime I, who died in 1251 in the monastery of Salas de Huesca, but it was moved to the monastery in 1275 and it is the date of the inscription of her sarcophagus, which she arranged, Due to the prestige achieved by the monastery, his remains were laid to rest in it and on the other side that of the daughter of both, Sancha de Aragon, who died in the Holy Land and was transferred to the monastery, her sarcophagus is on three inverted columns "to the funeral" as a sign of mourning. In the southern abyssle there is a tomb belonging to Ferrer Alamany de Toralla, who died in 1360, and his wife Beatriz de Guimerà, the image of him on the lid dressed as a gentleman with heraldry at his level and the figure of her on one side in the Cistercian habit. At the bottom of the wall there is a representation of two angels carrying the souls of the dead to heaven. To the right of the choir is the chapel of Corpus Christi, where there is an image of Saint Mary in polychrome stone, the work of Guillem Seguer. From the altar of this chapel, two anti-fires from the 14th century are preserved in the National Art Museum of Catalonia. A gate separates the nave from the transept and the head of the temple.

Gates
The main door, located on the north arm of the transept and facing the Plaza Mayor, has a semicircular arch with five archivolts supported on columns with capitals with plant reliefs similar to the east gallery of the cloister and a carved tympanum with a figure of the Virgin and Child blessing with her right hand, surrounded by angels. Above it there is a cornice with a frieze of blind arcades with corbels sculpted with various motifs. In the north wall there is a door that would lead to the third section of the nave, which is closed and obstructed by a sarcophagus inside its arch as an arcosolium and on which there is a Trinitarian chrismonium from the end of the 12th century. In total, there are five sarcophagi on this wall, four Romanesque ones from the 13th century and one Gothic one, in all of them heraldic symbols can be seen and in two of them the names of the recumbents can be read: Sibil-la de Guimerà, wife of Guerau Alamany, and the other, Miquela Sasala, from 1244.

The cloister
The cloister forms a quadrilateral with unequal sides and corresponds to different periods and constructive forms that took place between the 12th and 15th centuries. Access is through the door located in the middle of the nave of the church, which coincides with the gallery on the east side. The vaults throughout the cloister are ribbed.

The south wing is the oldest part corresponding to the 12th century; it is executed according to the austere Cistercian canons in Romanesque style, and consists of three sections formed by three pillars and between these, three semicircular arches supported by pairs of columns with totally smooth capitals.

The east wing is also Romanesque from the first half of the 13th century, consisting of five sections divided by four pillars, under pointed arches and eight-spoke rosettes that join in the centre with an Islamic design, triple semicircular arches are grouped together on pairs of columns and capitals, already with sculpted plant motifs.

The northern wing, the shortest, is made up of two large ogival-shaped openings of typically Gothic tracery and was made during the 14th century. The west wing, the most recent, is already Renaissance, although it takes up the former Romanesque forms and was built by the abbesses of the Caldés family in the 15th century. The capitals of the columns show the heraldry of these abbesses.

Around the cloister other rooms are developed, among which the chapter house could not miss its access is from the northeast corner of the cloister through a Gothic door commanded by the abbess Anglesola in the fourteenth century, is covered with a gothic ribbed vault, on its floor are several tombstones of the former abbesses of the community, presiding over this room is the image of the Virgin of Mercy, made of alabaster and attributed to the sculptor Père Johan.

In the east side of the cloister, where there is an entrance, is the chapel from 1895 that holds the Virgin of the Cloister, a magnificent Romanesque stone carving from the 13th century. There is also another entrance to the transept of the church,

Reforms
In 1986, the Department of Culture of the Generalitat de Catalunya commissioned the architect Llorens i Perelló to restore the buildings and to construct a new building for the nuns' cells and work rooms. These works were resumed in 1997.

Biography