Cathedral of Ciudad Real: A Gothic Cathedral and Priory Church of the Military Orders
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
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- Country
- Spain
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Crown of Castile, Spanish
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Cathedral
On this page25 sections
History
The Cathedral of Ciudad Real is a Catholic church in Ciudad Real, Spain, dedicated to Saint Mary of the Prado and associated with the Diocese of Ciudad Real. Its present Gothic building developed from a thirteenth-century church and later became a basilica, a cathedral, and the priory church of the Military Orders.
Traditions and the first churches
According to local tradition, a Romanesque image of the Virgin of the Prado arrived at the nearby settlement of Pozuelo Seco de Don Gil in the royal entourage of Alfonso VI on 25 May 1088. After an alleged apparition, inhabitants asked that the image remain for veneration. The settlement later became Ciudad Real, and a small hermitage may have occupied the cathedral site.
Following Alfonso VIII’s defeat by the Almohads at the Battle of Alarcos in 1195, he is believed to have ordered a new church on the site of the hermitage. The relationship between the supposed hermitage and this church is uncertain, since they may have been the same building. The first clearly documented predecessor was the Church of Santa Maria, ordered by Alfonso X in 1255 after he granted the settlement town status.
The foundation of Santa Maria formed part of Castilian efforts to repopulate and strengthen La Mancha after the abandonment of Alarcos. The same urban programme included the town walls and the Toledo Gate. Built throughout the thirteenth century in a mixture of late Romanesque and Gothic forms, the church was considerably shorter and lower than the cathedral that replaced it.
Ciudad Real and the Gothic cathedral
In 1420, Juan II of Castile raised Villa Real to city status and gave it the name Ciudad Real. The change recognized the inhabitants’ support for the Castilian monarchy against the military orders, religious-military institutions that combined monastic obligations with warfare and territorial administration during the Christian reconquest of Iberia. A cathedral project was then undertaken in accordance with the city’s new status.
Construction of the present Gothic cathedral began in the early fifteenth century with the apse and the fourth vault bay. The third bay, covered by a tierceron vault, a complex rib vault with secondary ribs running toward its centre, was complete by 1514. The second and first bays followed by about 1580. Antonio de Écija executed the vault coverings in the mid-sixteenth century under a construction licence issued by Cardinal Arteaga in 1553.
Two towers were planned around 1550. Only one was completed as a tower, while the other reached two storeys and was adapted for the Old Sacristy and Treviño Chapel. These spaces introduced Renaissance features into the medieval building. Further additions followed in the seventeenth century, including the Baroque New Sacristy and the Camarín of the Virgin of the Prado.
The priory of the Military Orders
A papal bull, a formal document issued by the pope, transformed the former parish church into the priory church of the Military Orders in 1875. A priory is a religious institution or church governed by a prior. The four Spanish orders associated with the priory were Calatrava, Montesa, Santiago, and Alcántara.
Ceremonial objects belonging to the orders were transferred to the cathedral, including the master’s seat of the Order of Santiago and the Uclés pax tablet. Francisco Becerril made the tablet in 1565. It survives in fourteen recently recovered pieces and is displayed in the Diocesan Museum of Ciudad Real. The church became the seat of the Diocese of Ciudad Real in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, acquired official cathedral status around 1980–81, and received basilica status in 1967.
War, protection, and conservation
The cathedral was declared a Historic-Artistic Monument and placed under Spain’s national artistic-treasure protection on 3 June 1931. It is registered as a Spanish Cultural Heritage monument under reference RI-51-0000514.
During the Spanish Civil War, Republican forces used the building as a garage. Much of its ecclesiastical heritage was stolen or destroyed. The master’s seat of the Order of Santiago was destroyed in 1936, the Uclés pax tablet was stolen in August of that year, and the probably tenth-century Romanesque image of the Virgin of the Prado disappeared.
Major conservation campaigns followed. The tower was restored between 1983 and 1986 because of the danger of collapse, and its structure was reinforced with an internal concrete tower. The façades and Old Sacristy doorway were restored from 1998 to 2002, the organ in 2001, the High Altarpiece in 2003–04, the Camarín in 2009–10, and the tower’s spire roof in 2013. The bells were recast or mechanized in 1967 and 1987–88, while the smallest and oldest bell was welded in 1992.
The cathedral remains associated with the veneration and processions of the Virgin of the Prado. Her image is carried through Ciudad Real on 15 and 22 August. The image of the Christ of Piety is carried on the night of Good Friday. In 1985, several skulls, including one with an arrow embedded in it, were discovered during work at the altar. Heavy rain on 30 September 2013 flooded part of the interior.
Remains
Plan and medieval fabric
The cathedral has a basilical plan with a single nave. The nave is approximately 34 metres high, 53 metres long, and 18 metres wide, making it the second-widest Spanish cathedral of this type after Girona Cathedral. Four bays are covered by star-shaped rib vaults with tiercerons, and the nave ends in a polygonal apse beneath a pointed vault.
Church of Santa Maria
Parts of the predecessor Church of Santa Maria survive within the cathedral. They include three western rose windows, a pointed window now blocked by the Old Sacristy, the lateral and western walls, and the western Door of Forgiveness. The largest rose window is aligned above the western doorway. Its tracery contains nineteen six-lobed circles enclosed within a square, a design resembling the decoration of the hermitage at Alarcos.
Door of Forgiveness
The Door of Forgiveness belongs to the late thirteenth century. Set between two large projecting buttresses, it has a pointed, splayed opening with two archivolts, or decorated bands following the curve of an arch. Alternating quatrefoils and small heads ornament the archivolts, which rest on square pillars with continuous vegetal capitals and moulded imposts. The doorway may have been reassembled at a later date.
Apse and choir
The apse originally had a pointed stained-glass window in each of its five walls. The two lateral windows survive, while the other three have become blind arches. The Chapter Choir now occupies the apse. The Cruz Solís brothers carved it in 1960, in the location of the former Churrigueresque choir stalls and the Prioral chair of Uclés, both lost in 1936.
At the western end, the High Choir is supported by three arches. A central basket-handle arch communicates with the Door of Forgiveness, and two lateral pointed arches complete the support. Its Gothic-style stalls form part of the Chapter Choir. A Spanish-built organ in the High Choir replaced an instrument lost in 1936. It has two manual keyboards, one pedal keyboard, and 2,000 sounding pipes, and was inaugurated in 1946 with a concert conducted by Jesús Guridi.
Chapels and sacristies
Former Chapel of the Sorrows
The former Chapel of the Sorrows is a Gothic chapel original to the cathedral, set in the first apse wall on the right. It has a square plan and a rib vault with tiercerons. Heraldic and vegetal decoration appears on the vault bosses, and the space includes choir stalls. It was later used as the Chapter House.
Treviño Chapel and Old Sacristy
The Treviño Chapel occupies the second storey of the unfinished tower on the right side of the nave. A Renaissance doorway with Byzantine-style decoration leads to a spiral staircase. Inside, a domical ribbed vault curves inward from the walls toward a central crown and is formed from concentric limestone slabs. The chapel also has a Renaissance window and an exterior Renaissance frieze decorated with angel heads.
The Old Sacristy occupies the first storey of the same unfinished tower. Renaissance in style, it has a rib vault with tiercerons and Renaissance decoration. A carved stone baptismal font from the primitive church is preserved inside.
Virgin of the Sorrows Chapel
The Chapel of the Virgin of the Sorrows lies beneath the High Choir on the left side of the plan. Its gilded Baroque altarpiece is described as sixteenth-century, and it contains a wooden image of the Virgin carved by Antonio Lastrucci in 1940. This replaced an image lost in 1936 and variously attributed to Salzillo or Martínez Montañés.
Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament
The Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament stands on the left side of the nave at the crossing. This Neo-Gothic chapel, built in the early twentieth century, is dedicated to Saint Thomas of Villanueva, patron of the diocese. Its 1955 altarpiece by Bravo Nogales commemorates the fourth centenary of the saint’s death. Saint Thomas occupies the central niche, with Saint John of Avila and Saint John the Baptist of the Conception in the side niches. The stained glass depicts scenes from Saint Thomas’s life.
Penitential Chapel
The Penitential Chapel, also called the Chapel of the Christ of Piety, occupies the right side of the crossing. Formerly the Chapel of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, it was built in the same period and style as the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament. Faustino Sanz made its penitential side reliefs in 1967, while the stained glass depicts Saint Michael and Saint Ferdinand.
The wooden Christ of Piety was carved by Castillo Lastrucci in 1947. It replaced an image by García Coronado and, earlier, an original lost in 1936 and attributed by some to Giraldo de Merlo. A sixteenth-century Renaissance panel depicting the Descent from the Cross hangs above it.
New Sacristy
The New Sacristy was built in 1632 in the Baroque style. It has an octagonal plan and a plaster Baroque vault with a lantern. Paintings of the Latin Church Fathers, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory, occupy the pendentives. Copper paintings showing scenes from the Passion of Christ decorate the wall angles.
Portals and tower
Door of the Kings
The Door of the Kings is a transitional Gothic-Renaissance portal. Its semicircular archivolts rest on slender columns, and its limited decoration includes a nineteenth-century tympanum, the field enclosed by a portal arch.
Door of the Umbría
The Door of the Umbría is set within a narthex, or entrance hall, opened to the exterior by a pointed arch. The present arch is contemporary and imitates an earlier Renaissance arch. The doorway itself is Gothic, with a pointed arch and slender archivolts in deteriorated condition.
Tower
The original tower may have belonged to Alfonso X’s parish church and was demolished when the cathedral project began. Its earlier existence was later supported by a sworn statement from the architect Joaquín Romero and by subsequent studies. A bell traditionally associated with that tower, the Maria of the Assumption or Prado Bell, was said to commemorate King Ferdinand’s visit in 1242. It was probably recast in 1967.
A cathedral tower built in the mid-sixteenth century was destroyed in the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. The chronology of its replacement is uncertain, with some accounts placing construction as early as 1625, before the earthquake. The present tower was completed between 1827 and 1835. It consists of four prismatic stages topped by an octagonal stage, reaches approximately 62 metres, and is crowned by a coloured-scale dome and a lantern built in 1901 in place of the former slate spire.
The tower chamber contains seven bells, including one dated 1802. A separate Roman-shaped clock bell in the spire dates from 1858 and was made by Santiago and Juan Prádanos. The tower’s dome was repaired during the 1983–86 structural campaign.
Virgin of the Prado and principal altarpiece
Camarín of the Virgin
The Baroque Camarín of the Virgin of the Prado and its access stairs were built in the seventeenth century for Felipe Muñoz, a finance official. The chamber has a square plan and a dome with Baroque decoration. Its exterior Renaissance-style window was built in 1918 by Ángel Andrade, allowing the image to be venerated when it was turned outward at night.
The present Virgin of the Prado is a Valencian-school Baroque image carved in polychromed wood by Rausell and Llorens in 1950. It replaced a 1940 image by Vicente Navarro, polychromed by Carlos Vázquez, whose wood deteriorated. Both replaced the Romanesque Virgin and Child that disappeared in 1936.
High Altarpiece
The High Altarpiece was designed by Andrés de la Concha, carved and assembled by the Flemish-born sculptor Giraldo de Merlo, and painted and gilded by Juan de Asten with Cristóbal and Pedro Ruiz Elvira between 1612 and 1616. Juan de Villaseca, a wealthy native of Ciudad Real residing in Mexico, commissioned it. The work combines Renaissance and Baroque elements and was restored in 2003–04.
Its structure comprises a predella, the lower section of an altarpiece, three levels, a Calvary representing the Crucifixion, and a crowning section. The programme is dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The predella presents episodes from Christ’s Passion, including the Agony in the Garden, Christ before the Sanhedrin, the Flagellation, the Crowning with Thorns, Christ’s meeting with his mother, and the Pietà.
Doric columns support the first level, which contains reliefs of the Annunciation and Visitation within classical architectural settings. Ionic columns frame the second level, with the Adoration of the Shepherds and Adoration of the Magi on either side of the throne of the Virgin of the Prado. The third level depicts the Circumcision, the Coronation of the Virgin in Heaven, and the Imposition of the Chasuble on Saint Ildefonsus.
The upper section contains the Calvary, the cardinal virtues around Saint Michael the Archangel and the city’s protecting angel, and God the Father surrounded by the theological virtues. Several apostle sculptures in the first two levels and the titular image of the Virgin of the Prado were replaced during the Civil War. The original Crucifix was also replaced. Beneath the altarpiece are choir stalls carved in walnut during the first half of the eighteenth century.
Exterior details and processional images
The exterior includes an eighteenth-century sundial, a stone-carved child at one corner of the façade, and a carved head at the other. Two processional images kept inside the church are associated with the Brotherhood of the Christ of Piety and the Brotherhood of the Ave Maria. Both were carved by the Seville sculptor Antonio Castillo Lastrucci.
