SAN JUAN BAUTISTA DE BURGUILLOS DEL CERRO

After more than two centuries plunged into a dream from which it seemed unable to wake up, the Church of San Juan Bautista returned to life, recovering part of the splendor lost during years of neglect. Thanks to the efforts of the Hon. Burguillos del Cerro City Council received the necessary funding for the recovery of one of the jewels of Extremadura’s medieval architecture. The investment made has not only made it easier to consolidate and restore a building condemned to disappear, it has also allowed the ex-church and its surroundings to be put to use by turning them into an interpretive area dedicated to the Order of the Temple, to which they were closely linked.

From the 6th-7th centuries, when the first church was erected, until the end of the 18th century, when it was abandoned, in San Juan and its surroundings, a Visigothic church was erected successively, a zawiya arose around a rabita with its maqbara, which were in use at least between the 10th and 13th centuries, and a Templar church, which with numerous reforms carried out between the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth, has reached our days.

The small Visigothic temple, of which both the head and the start of its nave have been recognizable, was built between the 6th and 7th centuries; It must have remained in use until well into the period of Islamic domination, a circumstance that is repeated in numerous temples of ancient Lusitania.

The site of the old Gothic church and the remains of buildings still standing were completely transformed to adapt them to new needs between the end of the emirate and the beginning of the caliphate (first quarter of the 10th century). Taking advantage of part of the Christian building, the Muslims erected a zawiya. A zawiya is a set of buildings dedicated to hostelry and Koranic school raised in the vicinity of a rabita, a room that houses the burial of a Muslim holy man. The veneration of this individual generated a maqbara (cemetery) in his environment, as many wanted to bury themselves near him to perceive their spiritual benefits, and the pilgrimage of the living in search of the baraka< /i> of the saint between the 10th and 13th centuries.

The rabita, fully preserved, and parts of other buildings of the zawiya, were readapted by the Temple to create an atypical, singular church, which orbited more on the rabita, now transformed into a chapel, that over the head. The Knights Templar consecrated it under the invocation of San Juan Bautista, one of the titular saints of the Order. The temple had a quadrangular head and three naves; Around it there was a very large cemetery, superimposed, in part, on the previous ones from the Visigothic and Islamic times. The Knights Templar, installed in the town since 1238, the year in which it was conquered, took advantage of the enormous attraction capacity that the place generated since ancient times to win over the inhabitants of the town and the nearby regions under the approach of making them pray in the same place. place though to a different divinity.

After the suppression of the Order, the population was incorporated into royal lands, to the Crown, before being donated to members of the nobility. Alfonso Fernández de Vargas was one of them, he held possession of Burguillos in the last third of the 14th century. When he died in 1390 he was buried in the old rabita , already called the Consolation Chapel, as he defined in his will. A magnificent marble tomb with his effigy and the hallmarks of his class was arranged there, a fact that only redounded to the sacredness of a space with a high symbolic value.

Between the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th century, important reforms took place on the then old buildings, as well as the addition of a body of bells. The head was enlarged by adding a new section to the east and grew in height. The 18th century brought the construction of two new chapels attached to that of La Consolación: those of San José and El Cristo. At the end of the 18th century, given the construction of a new temple that brought together the two parishes into which the population was divided, San Juan Bautista was abandoned and turned into a municipal cemetery, a use that it maintained until the mid-19th century.

Located to the NW of the town between San Juan and Espíritu Santo streets stands San Juan Bautista, first one of the parish churches, and since the end of the 18th century one of the municipality’s cemeteries, used until the construction of the cemetery that currently remains in use. The church occupies a peripheral position with respect to the town, but it has subsisted encased in an urban cul-de-sac that has facilitated its survival; a perimeter fence has protected it from urban growth, and has left it totally isolated since the 19th century, until it generated a large space that was not inhabited or occupied in part of its surface for approximately two centuries.

The temple has a highly developed head in plan, compartmentalized into two perfectly differentiated sections thanks to the presence of a pointed arch; The first section presents a ribbed vault whose molded ribs start from prismatic corbels with two groined tubes in the NE and SE corners. Two very narrow openings under semicircular arches and flared inwards illuminated the space, one to the South and the other to the North. The second section connects with the nave through a pointed triumphal arch that starts from two pilasters whose capital appears decorated with a simple moulding. The foundation of its south wall is from Visigothic chronology. A hemispherical cap made of brick covers this section, resting said vault on four large pendentives. Two facing windows are located in the North and South canvases, they are two semicircular openings in which two pieces of granite carved from a single block are located, in the upper area of which four circles are carved in a cross and under them two pointed bays separated by a separate sculpted mullion. The sacristy has disappeared, although its structure is perfectly legible thanks to the traces left on the attached factories.

The construction shows clear traces of the Gothic-Mudejar style typical of the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th century interspersed with clearly archaic elements whose existence we will explain in the following section, elements whose presence would not be understood if we do not consider them as part of a building. oldest of which the visible today is legatee. Four pillars externally reinforce the front wall at the points where the thrusts of the vaults require a counterbalance, they are buttresses attached to the main factory with a staggered layout at the top. Leaning on the one located next to the NE corner, the square-shaped bell tower was built in the 16th century, in which two bells were placed.

The three naves configured an irregular space, tending to trapezoid, elongated and spacious, they were eliminated in the 19th century, they must have been roofed with a wooden cover. Next to the southern wall three chapels were built, known as de la Consolación or de Vargas, San José y el Cristo. The first one stands out among the others for its differential architectural typology and that it served as the burial place of the former lord of the town of Burguillos del Cerro, Alfonso Fernández de Vargas. It is a well-proportioned building that is accessed through a wide opening that occupies a good part of the North canvas; this opening is framed by an alfiz that starts from the line of imposts, its layout is somewhat strange due to being altered.

Once inside, where the access opening repeats the frame with a rafter documented on the outside, it can be seen that the property is structured around a central, square plan, whose dimensions reach almost 25 square meters; the geometric scheme only presents an alteration in its western wall, since a quadrangular body in which a staircase is collected that leads to the roof of the building protrudes slightly in an East-West direction. The entire space is covered by an eight-panel vault that starts from a slightly protruding simple cornice and raises its keystone over seven and a half meters high; the mentioned vault rests on four groin tubes located in the corners of the construction. On the southern front there are two blind tumid arches arranged as arches that start from very degraded square-section pilasters; above them a window opens with a notable flare towards the interior, this opening, once blinded, was used as a niche in which to place a sacred image, still conserving a pedestal on which to raise it. The East canvas stands out for offering a set of three blind arches that, despite being highly altered, could be defined as tumid; the central one is higher than the lateral ones, one and the other appear framed by independent alfices; the arches present their supports (pilasters with octagonal corners) ddecorated with lacerations that appear under different layers of late-medieval and modern mortar, some of these layers preserve remains of pictorial decoration. The roof was made using bricks arranged in a herringbone pattern, later covered by tiles, which seal and waterproof each of the vault panels, on whose keystone stands a prismatic octagonal section finish, a decorative and functional element at the same time. On the roof, raised on a parapet, are some of the battlements that finished off the entire building, giving it a characteristic Andalusian appearance.

The architectural concept on which this building is based is very simple: it is made up of two pure volumetric shapes such as a cubic basement, only altered by the body of the stairway that protrudes to the west, and a hemispherical roof, both being linked by a transition body between the square and the circle made up of four angular-edged horns that transform a square space into an octagonal one. The interior height corresponds to one and a half times the length of each of the sides of the plant. This constructive model, called qubba, had a long life in Hispano-Muslim architecture in its multiple variants, whether civil or religious, its roots lie in the construction traditions of both Roman and Eastern Antiquity. Next.

Victor Cibello for URBS REGIA

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Antigua Iglesia de San Juan Bautista

San Juan Bautista de Burguillos del Cerro, el lugar donde se cumplen los sueños