Valladolid's Medieval Treasures: San Cebrián de Mazote

The side of San Cebrián where you can best see the mozarabic contours
All photos in this post 2018 Jessica Knauss unless otherwise indicated. 

Another of the places I passed by many times in the province of Valladolid this winter was San Cebrián de Mazote. The name fascinated me, being a version of San Cipriano, the third-century Bishop of Carthage who loans his name to one of the most interesting churches in Zamora. On one of the drive-bys, I spotted a sign that indicated it was the site of a tenth-century mozarabic church. Sign me up!

No amount of camouflage can hide this building's ancientness! 

Like many such ancient buildings, you have to catch it at exactly the right moment so that there will be someone willing to open the door for you, especially in winter. Finally, my travel partner and I checked the schedule and made a special trip. It was worth the wait and the effort.

Beautifully restored ceiling
Photo 2018 José Pablo Palencia Morchón 

In the tenth century, the town of San Cebrián was on the border between Muslim territory and the Christian push from north to south known as the Reconquest. People came from Asturias to live in the area, and apparently some Christian monks from Córdoba joined them. They built the church in about 916 on the foundations of a former Visigothic building. It's this fusion of Roman-Visigothic tradition and Arabic sensibilities via Córdoba that gives us the enduring mozarabic style.

San Cebrián is the largest and best preserved church of this style and time period.

Although the seventeenth-century bell gable as you head toward the church is not promising, when the man comes with the keys to let you, your companion, and more weekend medievalists than you expected inside, all your hopes for a tenth-century experience are immediately satisfied.

You're surrounded by horseshoe arches that divide the space into three naves.

Each column and its capital (most Corinthian in design) was culled from former Roman buildings to be recycled here. All the capitals are unique, with no repeats. While the tenth-century arches are flawlessly uniform, the capitals and columns come up to slightly different heights, punctuating their uniqueness.

Photos 2018 José Pablo Palencia Morchón 

Other tenth-century delights include a separate horseshoe arch obviously inspired by Córdoba...

and a lintel found during archaeological excavations. Again, I love the alien feel of pre-Romanesque carving.

The right side chapel has an original mozarabic ceiling, but like
the left side chapel, its shape doesn't quite achieve a horseshoe. 

The arches over the central colonnades, as I mentioned, are strikingly uniform, but all of us on the tour wondered why the arches that frame the main altar and the chapels to its sides have a drawn-out, warped look to them. Enraptured with what the guide was telling us, it wasn't until near the end of the visit that someone got up the nerve to ask what the funny shapes were all about.

The left side chapel archway 

Yes, the guide said. The architects and artisans were obviously capable of creating perfection on command. What probably happened was that tastes changed.

The mozarabic aesthetic, like the Visigothic one, called for secretive ceremonies cut off from the congregation. It didn't matter, in fact it was preferable, if the opening to the altar was too small for anyone in the peanut gallery to get a view. In just a few hundred years, this policy was reviewed, and probably by the twelfth century--that universal medieval style, Romanesque--new architects and craftsmen with new ideas wanted to widen the arches that opened onto the main altar and chapels. They inserted a few more bricks into the horseshoe arches and moved the columns, a process that made it impossible to preserve the integrity of the original design.

I think the same process happened in Wamba.

Outside, this filled-in horseshoe arch is more evidence of changes in the way the building was used over time.

This sixteenth-century alabaster Virgin of the Assumption by Inocencio Burruguete probably came from the nearby Monastery of the Holy Thorn, where they now have a replica.

Photo 2018 José Pablo Palencia Morchón 

We spent a great deal of time appreciating this seventeenth-century recumbent Christ made by the school of Gregorio Fernández. The poor state of its painting actually allows us to see how the sculpture was assembled in puzzle-like pieces.

The foot of the church has a display about
the modern architectural discovery of the building. 

After many years of neglect, San Cebrián's rare value was rediscovered for the modern world by Agapito Revilla and Vicente Lamperez in 1902. A lovely 1932 restoration was supervised by Manuel Gómez Moreno, and for this reason alone, we can enjoy San Cebrián today.

Photo 2018 José Pablo Palencia Morchón 

The sixteenth-century bishop sculpture behind me is the man himself, San Cipriano. We visited this site in March, and I fondly remember (now that it's a sultry August) being so cold, I could hardly feel my hands, even inside the church.

Now I see the sense in wintertime tourism. At least you can warm up afterward, maybe have a tea or hot chocolate, while in the summer, it's hard to enjoy anything under pounding sunlight close to 100 degrees when you don't have air conditioning back home! Don't be surprised if I lie low and ride out the summer, writing blogs about all the amazing things I saw this winter.