2014-09-10 Rioseco, 'Monasterio de Santa María, Rioseco, Valle de Manzanedo, Burgos

The Rioseco abbey, located at the beginning of Manzanedo Valley, at a height that dominates the Ebro, alongside the road to San Martin del Rojo.

It was inhabited for centuries by "white monks of the Cistercian Order, named for their clothing, unlike Cluny monks known as" black monks ".

But it was not always situated where we are now witnessing. Their first property was in Quintanajuar between Cernégula and Masa. In 1135, King Alfonso VII "The Emperor" Quintanajuar gave the monastery the monk Christopher, scientists disagree about whether it is a "black monk."

King Alfonso VIII wanted the border with Navarra Castilla pacify, he offers the monks donations to move them bwegen of from Quintanajuar to San Cipriano Montes de Oca in La Rioja, a place where they go in 1184. But they do not live in Montes de Oca, because there were acquired in the pre-previous years donations and through land purchases-Manzanedo Valley. So erhuisden, the monks in 1204 to Rioseco, without notice to the General Chapter of the Order and to the displeasure of the king. Through this decision, the abbot was deposed.
They did not come up at the current location, as this area was of Velasco, the men of Medina de Pomar, but next to a stream that rises in Source Humorera and flows into the Ebro.
With the purchase of land forVelasco, and due to a flood that destroyed the original monastery, this time they were welcome in the General Chapter, in 1236 they moved permanently to its current place.
The Cistercian community was a perfect stratified society of lawyers, laymen and converts. they were employed on farms of monks.
At best Rioseco was a community of about 100 people, including 25 monks.
In the monastic housing units were monks separated the inn and travelers as well as the hospital, where she cared for the sick poor monks also took care of the homeless who came to the monastery for alms, food or kleding.Buiten monastery families working on farms,
The monks of Rioseco also created a model farm in the Valley of Manzanedo wheat crops, vineyards and linen. It also introduced the fruit in the Valley.
Important it the site of the monastery on the fertile banks of the Ebro river.

XIX century and XX century Abandonmentt and looting.

ln nineteenth century began badly for the monastery. With the Revolutionary War seized the French troops a large portion of the grain stored in the Cilla. The monks were forced to cloistered from 1809 until June 1814, date of return of the absolutist Fernando VII to Spain could return to Rioseco. During the Liberal three years (1820-1823) were secularized and went back to auction off some of the properties of the monastery. They were particularly good sales acceptance and mills. Another order of Fernando VII, after the end of the liberal insurrection them back to the monastery.

In 1835 Mendizabal disentailment law regulating the sale of monastic goods. This was the end of the monastery. The last abbot was Julian Barbillo.
On November 6,1835 the covent was sold. Years later, Francisco Arquiaga, provincial commissioner of the sale remained with him for the starting price, the absence of public interest to acquire this property, because, due to the vicissitudes of the past few years, it was already in ruins.

Of the seizure, laziness, forgetfulness and gradually they plunder the magnificent monastery ruins in a dangerous, why in the fifties grandchildren purchaser donated the ruins of the monastery archbishop of Burgos, the current owner.

In the sixties, the church still in use, the proof is the last wedding was held there in 1964, the Adelaide da Silva and Eduardo Peña Rodríguez Cuesta. But in the seventies, the church gradually began her road to ruin and oblivion.

The monastery. Construction Stages

It is difficult to give an accurate reconstruction of the construction phases of the monastery of Rioseco, which has undergone many renovations, and most importantly, by also by the condition of the ruin it now stands.

But there are three very different periods:
The monastery church. XIII-XIV century, which is good for the monastery. We know that there was a convent at the moment and a constructive first chapter other than those we know today.

1.The Cistercian architecture was characterized by elegant, seeming sobriety in the corbels north side of the church, which is decorated with geometric motifs and in the capitals of columns with simple flower motifs. The churches were filled with white light through the window pointed header and windows that opened on the south side of the church, which opened in this constructive first time at the monastery of a single height.

2. Renaissance
We dated in the sixteenth century. During this period of economic prosperity, a number of works for the monastery, which we quote the beginning of the chapter hall and other government departments as well as recruitment of teachers work and traces of Juan de Naveda is taken.

3. Baroque
The activities start at the beginning of the seventeenth century and continued into the next century. That's when the current monastery was built. In one of the stone engraved date from the year 1637. A number of baroque elements are scattered throughout the monastery. The monastery date is accessible from the end of the chapter panda, is now most ruined part of the monastic environment. From this time, tribes important works in the church, such as doors, moldings and cornices. Decorations were made on the two arches of the side chapels