Church of San Juan de Baños

The Church of San Juan Bautista is a Visigothic monument located in the town of Baños de Cerrato (formerly Balneos) just 7 km from the capital of Palencia. This town belongs to the municipality of Venta de Baños, in the province of Palencia (Spain), a place that was home to Roman villas and recreation. It has been an Asset of Cultural Interest since 1897.

History

It is a Visigothic church ordered to be built by King Recesvinto in the year 661 and whose solemn consecration ceremony is believed to have taken place on January 3, 661. It is located in a flat area of the Pisuerga river plain near its confluence with the Carrión river, in the current province of Palencia. Traditionally this was a cereal area well known to the Romans who built important villas there (remains have been found in the place called Dos Nogales), and later the Visigoths also knew how to take advantage of the land.

Tradition —without historical or archaeological support— tells in this way why the Visigothic king ordered the construction of this temple:

The king Godo Recesvinto returned, having defeated the leader of the vascons, called Fruela, and in this small hand he stopped to rest, for he felt sick of a kidney condition. During this rest he drank the water of an existing spring in the same place where previously there were Roman hot springs and quickly recovering his health attributed it to a miraculous fact. As gratitude he decided to erect in that place the temple that we see today dedicated to Saint John the Baptist.

The temple was erected as a royal foundation under the guardianship of the episcopal seat of Palencia. According to scholars, it is the most original and Spanish church of all the Visigothic art that persists. It also has good information about its origin, written in stone and perpetuated on the triumphal arch of the building, with a clumsy script all in capital letters. This text is also preserved in a codex from the X century, copied from a Toledo manuscript from the VII.

Description of the building

South Facade.

Consecration tablet.

Cover.

Archery.

Interior.

Recess Crown.

It has a basilica plan with three naves and three apses (only the one in the center is authentic). Over the years it has undergone some partial reconstructions, even on the original plan, which widened at the height of the fourth and last arch in a kind of transept or transept that opened on a triple apse made up of three rectangular and non-continuous chapels.. After the reconstruction, the lateral apses disappeared and the floor plan was converted into a simple rectangle with a disfigured head. Even so, it is of great beauty with its balance of simple structure and its discreet decoration. The belfry that can be seen outside is an addition by restorers from the XIX century.

The exterior door is of pure Visigothic architecture with a horseshoe arch exceeded by 1/3 (the Mozarabic arch is exceeded by 2/3, the Caliphate by 1/2). The extrados of the voussoirs does not follow parallel to the intrados and its thickness is irregular. The Maltese kicked cross is carved on the keystone with a clipeus (small shield with the bust of a god or character), carved with symmetrical quatrefoils that evoke the classic goldsmith work of the Visigoths. The decoration of the imposts and the extrados of the voussoirs has the same drawing as that of the crown of Recesvinto from the Treasury of Guarrazar; They are intersecting circles.

Inside you can see the Visigothic arches on reused marble columns, grey, beige and pink, with the pastel yellow ocher capitals that contrast with the ashlars of the walls that are made of hard beige limestone pale. Of all the capitals, only one is authentic Corinthian Roman, the rest are imitations that were made in the Visigothic period. In the keystone of the triumphal arch, the kicked cross can be seen again and on top, a marble tablet with the dedication, written in hexameters and with an expressive and very poetic way. This plate is embedded and with the appearance that the four corner modillions hold it. These are decorated with stylized swastikas, palmettes, and birds. From a historical point of view, the most important thing about this plaque is that it notify the name of the donor and the date of foundation (661). The literal translation of the consecration tablet would be:

Precursor of the Lord, martyr John the Baptist possesses this house, built as an eternal gift which, myself, Recessed king, devotee and beloved of your name, I dedicated you, by his own right, in the third year, after the tenth as an intimate companion of the kingdom. In the Age six hundred ninety-nine

A sculpture of Saint John the Baptist, created in alabaster and dated to the 15th century, is the titular effigy, but It is not in the basilica but in the parish church of San Martín de Tours. According to tradition, it was broken into two fragments by the French soldiers of General Lasalle in 1808.

Outside you can see high up, to the right of the arch, sculpted pieces that are the decorative remains from another building, or more probably, from the stone gate that separated the area from the altar, since fragments have been found very similar. This was a custom that Romanesque master builders also had. In the apse there is a stone lattice window, traditional Visigothic work. All the current lattices of the building are a restoration based on pieces of Visigothic lattices that were appearing.

The surroundings of the building are the characteristic landscape of El Cerrato in Palencia: hills, plains, agricultural fields and scarce trees (in this case poplars).

Archaeological excavations

In the XIX century, significant restorations were made under the protection of which some drawings of what could have been the Primitive plan —of which the main chapel, the central nave with its columns and something of the entrance porch are preserved. Between 1956 and 1963, the archaeologist Pedro de Palol carried out important excavations and discovered that these hypotheses could be considered valid. Palol and his team also discovered a medieval necropolis in which fifty-eight burials came to light. However, no significant Visigothic objects were found except for some pieces of little importance attributed to a reuse of the previous building. The Visigothic evidence was found on the land where the car park was built: two belt fibulae with a rigid plate and a liriform profile that coincided in time with the time of the founding plate. The conclusions were that the Visigothic necropolis was in this area.

San Juan Fountain

Source of San Juan.

The Fountain of San Juan is located to the right of the Basilica of San Juan, on a gentle terrace facing the Pisuerga River. It has been declared a provincial monument on February 8, 1966 (BOE of 03/09/1966).

It is also known as the Recesvinto Fountain, for having restored its health to this monarch. However, this spring was known from ancient times, first by the Celts and later by the Romans, as evidenced by written documents and archeology, and it seems that it was always famous for producing healthy water. In Roman times there was a temple in this area dedicated to the god Aesculapius (Asclepius in Greek mythology) and very close to the current church, archaeologists located the ara de las nymphas with a votive dedication to the beneficent goddesses of the spring that says:

NVMINI SACRVUM VOTO SOL-TO («At the end of the spring, vote fulfilled»).

It is currently in the National Archaeological Museum of Madrid. In Christian times the place was sanctified, dedicating it to Saint John the Baptist. It still maintains a copious flow.

The fountain is built with two horseshoe arches that access a kind of reservoir that is where the spring gushes out. It is one of the few hydraulic and civil works of pre-Romanesque architecture. It preserves the original remains of the cistern that was used for immersion baths. All of this is protected by modern bars.