SANTA MARIA DE MELQUE

“A church that looks like Roman for its design and its section; Latin for the disposition of its secondary departments; Byzantine for its plan, and Visigothic and Primary Arabic for the contexture of its arches; Romanesque for its vaults, its dome and its semicolumns; Barbarian for its way of execution; and has several details belonging to various of those arts. What is it?”

Included in what was a broad monastic ensemble, built in lands of the city of Toledo during the 7th and 8th centuries, this church, from which we already find references in the “Relations” of Philip the Second, was rediscovered by the Count of Cedillo, the author, in 1907, of the description heading this file. From then it turned into the most conflictive construction of the whole Spanish Pre Romanesque art. Since Gómez Moreno, who was the first one to study it in depth, until not long ago, it has been considered as Mozarabic although there were several arguments against that theory, but after the latest excavations between 1970 and 1972, there are very few doubts left that it is a Visigothic church of the 7th century..

From our point of view, there are sound reasons to think it is a cruciform Visigothic church of the end of the 7th and beginnings of the 8th centuries, which decoration was not finished in 711 but its structure was, and that during the Arabic domination was initially occupied by Mozarabics and when, starting the 9th century, they emigrated to the north; the church burnt out and partially destroyed, on a date close to the year 930 that coincides with the taking of Toledo by Abderramán the Third, as we learn from the essays with C14 carried out in the last excavations, according to the report by Pablo Latorre. Later it would be occupied by the Arabs for defensive purposes, as it is supported by the existence of a watch tower of military characteristics in the Caliphal period. Let us see some of those reasons:

From the historical point of view:

• It does not seem reasonable to think that it had been built, not even partially, under the Arabic domination, as he Koran specifically forbids, under death penalty, the building of churches, and had it been any construction of that period, nothing of it could possibly remain, after the order of sultan Mohammed the First around 855 to destroy the Christian churches of recent building and the elimination of all new ornamentation in the old ones as an answer to the revolt of San Eulogio and his “Christian martyrs”. In fact, the only Mozarabic church that was built in Arabic zone of which we have any information is later to Bobastro, in an independent kingdom that Omar ben Hatsun, a Mozarab, probably a descendant from a Visigothic count, achieved to keep in the mountain range of Ronda, between 869 and 917, after the uprising against the caliphate of Córdoba.
• The conquest of Toledo by Alphonse the Sixth took place in 1085. It is unthinkable that this church could have been built later, as in those times, the churches built in Castuilla arae manifestly Romanesque, like the Priorato de San Frutos de Duratón.
• Therefore, all the historical circumstances support the thesis that it was built before the Arabic invasion.

From the design of the church:

• The structure of Santa María de Melque is clearly the one of a cruciform church, to the extreme that it is not only obvious its similarity with Santa Comba de Bande and San Pedro de la Mata, but that Luis Caballero has demonstrated that its plan corresponds to the same ones that were used for the construction in Mata, using measuring units like “Deunx”, around 30cm, in Bande; “Cubitus”, around 50cm, in Melque; and “Palmitas”, around 41cm, in Mata.
• Whilst its external image, of solid appearance, with triangular pediments, is a clear reflection of the one in San Fructuoso de Montelios. Its interior, not only for its structure and decoration, but also for the “spirit” that both inspire, is very similar to Santa Comba de Bande.
• Another detail of its similarity with Montelios and Bande, that increases its relation with de mausoleum of Gala Placidia, is that in all three cases there is a niche inlaid in a wall, located in Melque in the interior of the church, whereas in the two Galician ones it was in their exterior. Even for the type of construction, very solid, based on big ashlars, its funeral nature, the circular small windows on the vault, the atypical circular rabbet in the corners and even for the blind series of arches in the cloister, this churrch also recalls us the grave of Teodorico in Rávena. The similarities found between this group of cruciform churches and San Vital and both mausoleums in Rávena are indeed surprising and we think very little studied so far.
• By the end of the 7th century the kind of structure of cruciform churches disappears, to the extreme that even the latest Visigothic ones tend to the basilical plan with crossing, like San Pedro de la Nave and Quintanilla de las Viñas. No plans of this kind are known from the three later centuries.

For the remains of decoration:

• In one of the chambers in the north of one of the close excavated buildings there are two granite mouldings, decorated in three sides with secant circles, typical in Visigothic art.
• In the excavations of the church at the level of the foundations of walls and floors that correspond to the moment they were built, some sculptoric elements came out, like barroteras fragments, inner door plates and an altar base, considered to be of Visigothic times.

Both the church and a part of the environment have been restored, although in a questionable way but, in spite of that, the visit should be one of the most interesting ones within the High Medieval Spanish panorama. In the surrounding land levels of different periods intersperse separation walls and gray metal banisters, whereas a very different kind of stone than the original one has been utilized in the exterior of the building. All of this helps the visitor to differentiate, from our point of view, in a very exaggerated way, the different levels and the restored and original zones, but changing completely the original appearance of the church and its environment that still existed not long ago, as can be seen on our first photograph. However, other aspects of the restoration seem very positive to us, like the roofs that have been completely covered with new tiles of a similar colour than the original tile must have had, and the works inside the church, with an excellent treatment of the light and the floor, the latter one with a high density floating wooden floorboards, upon which the results of the excavations have been drawn so that they can be easily seen in the most meaningful zones.

With all of that, an interpretation centre has been created that explains the visitor the numerous historical details that Melque treasures and the research process developed during the last thirty years. The “Sitio Histórico de Melque” has been created to reveal the most ancient monastic ensemble preserved in the Spanish peninsula, that was formed by the walled enclosure, the dwellings of the monks, several ancient dams, probably of Roman origin, and the church of Santa María de Melque.

L’Art Preroman Hispanique **: ZODIAQUE
Imagen del Arte Mozárabe: José
Fernández Arenas

Arquivoltas: Santa María de Melque
Iglesia de Santa María de Melque
ArteHistoria: Santa María de Melque