Monastery of the Holy Face (Alicante)

The monastery of Santa Faz, also known as monastery of Veronica, is a cloistered monastery of Canon Regular Lateran nuns of Saint Augustine located in the city Spanish from Alicante.

In its interior, the Holy Face of Alicante is preserved, a relic of the Holy Face that according to tradition (although no scientific studies have been carried out) would have been one of the folds of the cloth with which a woman Verónica cleaned the face of Christ on his way to Calvary.

Around the monastery, a district also called Santa Faz has been formed, which belongs to the municipality of Alicante, and to that of San Juan de Alicante.

History

Work of Juan Conchillos Falcó (1680) representing the miracle of the tear of the canvas.

The origin of the devotion to the Holy Face of Alicante, according to tradition, dates back to the 15th century, when Mosen Pedro Mena, priest of San Juan de Alicante traveled to Rome, where he was presented with a canvas of the face of Christ who was credited with saving the city of Venice from the plague. Legend has it that the priest kept it at the bottom of a chest, but it always appeared at the top, and for this reason it was decided to remove it in prayer on March 17, 1489 due to lack of rain. Upon reaching the Lloixa ravine, the bearer could not hold the canvas, and saw a tear flow from it, constituting the first miracle attributed to the canvas.

In the place where the miracle happened, the monastery was built. At first, a church and cloister must have been built, originally belonging, apparently, to the Order of the Jerónimos. Clara de Gandía. There is no agreement among historians when it comes to dating the construction of the building, so its chronology is subject to different criteria. With this, the dates that are handled range from the year 1557 to 1584.

On July 26, 1936, during the course of the Spanish Civil War, the monastic complex was assaulted by communist militiamen, although Vicente Rocamora Onteniente was accompanied by the village mayor Antonio Ramos Alberola (Tonico Santamaría) entered the dressing room that guarded the relic and managed to put it to safety. The church was devastated, burning the Baroque-style main altarpiece, destroying the statues on the façade and the Renaissance baptismal font. Later the temple was used as an aircraft factory and the monastery as a Czech, and once the conflict ended, it was restored, erecting a new altar, the work of the architect Juan Vidal Ramos.

On July 2, 2019, the Community of Lateran Canons Regular of San Agustín of the Monastery of the Most Precious Blood of Christ of Alicante took possession of the Monastery, replacing the Order of Franciscan Clarisas Sisters to continue the mission of guardianship, custody and veneration of the holy canvas of the Holy Face, Concluded the entire processing process on July 29, 2020, the Holy See grants the transfer of Headquarters to the Community of Lateran Canons Regular of San Agustín, which will be renamed the Monastery of the Holy Face.

Description of the complex

The architectural ensemble is made up of all the buildings included in the monastery enclosure, such as the main church and the rest of the volumes that develop around it, as well as the building attached to the tower on one of its sides that defines one of the elevations of the square.

Church

Church view.

The architectural structure of the church is the result of different interventions suffered throughout history, especially the one carried out in the 17th century XVIII, which gave it its current baroque look.

The altarpiece of the main altar is neo-baroque in style, and was built during the restoration after the civil war. It is the work of the architect Juan Vidal Ramos and carvers, and was made possible thanks to donations from Manuel Prytz. Inside the temple are buried the composer Óscar Esplá and the artist Eusebio Sempere, being the only two contemporary personalities who have been buried in the monastery.

Rook

View of the complex, with the tower on the right.

The tower is the only constructive element that remains from the primitive building, built in the XVI century. It is located on one of the sides of the hortus patio of the monastery, to the east of the cloister.

It is a building with a rectangular floor plan and a truncated pyramidal volume. It stands on a pyramidal plinth and has a ground floor, three main levels and an accessible terrace and, according to the description by Valls and Maestre, it had a basement that is now inaccessible and blinded. The second level presents, in turn, a subdivision into two levels, and from this height the staircase, initially rectangular in its beginning, resumes a circular development. The openings in the facades are the result of the different reform operations that the building has undergone. The tower is topped by a classicist molding cornice and four scaraguaitas in each of the corners. There are several defensive elements of the tower: machicolations appear on the north and south fronts and loopholes on the north and east fronts. These last elements are solved by masonry, a constructive solution that is repeated in the corners and in the openings. The canvases of the tower are stone masonry walls.