Monastery of San Vicente de Oviedo

Oviedo, Spain

San Vicente de Oviedo is a church and monastery in Oviedo. Its foundation, in 761, is recorded in a charter known as the Pacto monástico de Oviedo ('Monastic Pact of Oviedo') a copy made in the 12th-century of the original that is dated 25 November 781 and is considered the earliest document on the monarchy of the Kingdom of Asturias. Although doubts exist as to the veracity of this document since the monastery, also called Antealtares in the Middle Ages, is not mentioned again until 969. According to the charter of 781, twenty years before, in 761, the monks Máximo, with his serfs, and Fromestano, founded a church in locum quod dicunt Oveto (the place called Oveto), which was to become the city of Oviedo.

Transformed into a monastery, the first abbot was Oveco, documented between 969 and 978, and the first reference mentioning that it followed the Benedictine Rule is dated in 1042.

The style of the building is Romanesque, although reworked in the 11th and 12th centuries. Its cloister is an official National Historic and Artistic Monument and since 1952 houses the Archaeological Museum of Asturias.

The Archaeological Museum of Asturias

The Archaeological Museum of Asturias hosts collections of the Asturian Neolithic, Megalithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Astur hill fort culture, Roman period, and of the Gothic, Pre-Romanesque and Romanesque periods of the Kingdom of Asturias. The museum also includes sections of Asturian Ethnography, Heraldry, Medieval and Modern Epigraphy, Spanish Numismatics, a European Medal Section, and Armor.

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Founded: 761 AD
Category: Religious sites in Spain

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Julio Enrique Muñoz Ponce de León (2 years ago)
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Pisadiel (3 years ago)
Monasteriu de San Vicente d'Uviéu (781), in calle San Vicente (Uviéu, Asturies). Monastery founded on November 25, 781 on the hill of Ouetum by 26 monks -shortly afterwards attached to the rule of San Benito-, having as founding patrons members of the reigning Asturian-Visigothic dynasty; place where in 761 the abbot Frómista and his nephew the monk Máximus arrived to found the basilica dedicated to Saint Vincent - a deacon from Huesca martyred in Valencia in 304 by order of the Roman praefecto Publio Daciano, governor of Lusitania (286-293) and Hispania Citerior ( 305), under the emperor Diocletian (284-305) -, an important crossroads where soon Fruela I (722-768), King of Asturias (757-768) built a basilica in El Salvador and built a royal palace, although the court continued in his native Cangues d'Onís. In the ss. XII-XIII, connected to the church-cathedral of San Salvador and submitted to the bishop d'Uviéu, it was rebuilt in the Romanesque fashion, thanks to the large donations of the high nobility. The centuries, artistic reforms and expansions followed one another, reaching the wall of Paraíso street in the s. XVII - L-shaped floor space currently occupied by the Faculty of Psychology. In 1836 he was exclaustrated by the government of the exalted liberal and clearly anticlerical from Cádiz Juan de Dios Álvarez Méndez -a surname that he changed in Mendizábal to pass for Basque (he said he was born in Bilbao, although he was born in Chiclana de la Frontera) and to hide his Marrano origin- , maximum representation of the avarice of the bourgeoisie -which once again deceived the people-, since it was the richest monastery in Asturies. Today, apart from the Church of Santa María de la Corte, a parochial one, the Muséu Arqueolóxicu d'Asturies and the Facultá de Psicoloxía of the Universidá d'Uviéu occupy their spaces of state ownership.
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