Saint Vincent Monastery

The monastery of San Vicente is a monastic complex in the old town of Oviedo, Spain whose foundation in turn led to the founding of the city around the year 761 (VIII). It is currently state-owned, belonging to the Ministry of Culture. In its dependencies it houses the Archaeological Museum of Asturias.

History

The monastery of San Vicente was founded on November 25, 781, the date of its founding document, which describes the arrival and settlement of Maximus and Fromestano twenty years earlier, in 761, in a place called Oueto to found the basilica of San Vicente, deacon and martyr of Valencian origin. Shortly after these two characters and their followers would build the Monastery of San Vicente, an ecclesiastical formation that shortly after would accept the rule of San Benito and which had twenty-six inhabitants in its beginnings and was the original nucleus of the future Oviedo.

Thanks to the support of Asturian royalty and nobility, the monastery was rebuilt in the XI and XII. At that time the monastery was submitted in obedience to the Bishop of Oviedo in such a way that it was even connected to the Basilica of San Salvador.

The Monastery was rebuilt on numerous other occasions in such a way that the elements belonging to the medieval works and the Romanesque cloister were disseminated and lost. The complex expanded towards the monks' garden, towards the Paraíso street wall during the XVII century. This L-shaped expansion is connected through the San Vicente Arch —on the street of the same name— to the main house and today is occupied by the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Oviedo. The square where this Faculty is located is also dedicated to the figure of Fray Benito Jerónimo Feijoo (1676-1764) and has in its center a work in thinking attitude by the sculptor Gerardo Zaragoza. This friar occupied a cell in the Monastery for fifty-five years — today it can be visited in the Archaeological Museum, as well as his library — of which he was his abbot for more than thirty years.

Until its dissolution in 1836, it was considered the richest and most influential monastery in Asturias, thanks to the favor of the kings and local nobility. It was declared a Historic-Artistic Monument in March 1962, although its cloister had already enjoyed such recognition since 1934.

Today the church of San Vicente, the only part of the Monastery still in the hands of the church, is owned by the Parish of Santa María la Real de la Corte.

Pieces of interest

• Cloister of the Monastery, the first third of the centuryXVI and Gothic-renaissance style that replaced another Romanesque, apparently of Juan de Badajoz "the Young". The cloister is formed on its ground floor by a group of twenty archery vaults in the low silver; and on the high, silver-style, mid-centuryXVI, for columns of capitals and shoes ornamented with masks and medals. It is in this cloister where the Archaeological Museum of Asturias is located.
• Tomb of Rodrigo Álvarez de las Asturias, lord of Noreña and Gijón, protector of the Monastery, that at his death, which occurred in 1332, would be buried in the convent church of Saint Vincent. The tomb, considered a work of exceptional value of Gothic-Mudéjar style, was thus defined by Tubino in the description of the visit of the Kings of Spain in 1860:

It consists of a white marble box placed on two shelves, which include lions lying on the ground. Close it on top, a triangular-shaped shed, which adapts to the bottom, or fixed to the bottom monument. It offers, both in one and in another body, different coats of relief and among them fill the work of branches and leaves, according to the ojival style, drawn with taste and elegance. The mausoleum must have been painted with a variety of colors, and in the field of the coats of arms the blazons also by polychrome. Everything has disappeared and only in some points will still discover reddish vestiges that the background seems to have been painted.

In 1860 the tomb was transferred to the Archaeological Museum, leaving the remains of such an illustrious gentleman in a zinc box lined with wood. Today a plaque to the right of the transept reads:

Here lies Don Rodrigo Álvarez
Sr de Noreña merino de Asturias
adoptive parent
of King Henry II of Castile
well-made of this Church.

• Ara of a pre-Romanical altar and two baptismal batteries recovered in certain works performed in the sacristy in 1970. The first of the piles round and the second, the most interesting of all the pieces, rectangular cut and measures 100 x 63 x 55 cm of glossy marble has the edges decorated in a floral drawing bevel that clearly recalls the Roman era. It is considered as one of the first baptismal piles of immersion existing in the Peninsula. At present you can admire in the sacristy of the Church.