Santa Maria la Real de Las Huelgas

Las Huelgas is a very interesting Cistercian convent (nuns) founded by Alfonso VIII (the king I study) and his wife, Eleanor. Eleanor was the daughter of the King of England, Henry II, and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine. Henry and Eleanor senior patronized the monastery of Fontevrault in Chinon (France) as a sort of spiritual home and royal pantheon. The younger Eleanor kept in contact with her mother's court in southern France, and imported many people and ideas from her illustrious parents. Thus it is not surprising that around 1180, the new royal couple of Castilla founded there own version of Fontevrault.

Las Huelgas, and the city of Burgos, were the favored residence of Alfonso's court, which, do to the expediencies of ruling a large kingdom, was always on the move. Still, the royal family spent lots of time in Las Huelgas. From 1211, with the death of Fernando, Alfonso's oldest son, the Monastery became the royal pantheon. Alfonso and Eleanor both died in October of 1214, and lie together in a massive double coffin in the center of the church. All of their descendents for two generations lie there as well, with the exceptions of Fernando III and Alfonso X, who chose to be buried in Sevilla, which they conquered from the Muslims in the middle of the thirteenth century.

So, like Santa Maria de Huerta, Las Huelgas was something of a historical pilgrimege site for me. I almost did not make it, as my train arrived late in Burgos, and I got to the Monastery with barely an hour until closing time.

Unfortunately, Las Huelgas can only be visited in guided tours, and photography is strictly forbidden inside. I was able to visit the royal tombs, but only for a few minutes, as our very pregnant and very ignorant tour guide whisked us through the Monastery. So while I did get to see everything, I did not get to take pictures or really study the details.

I was able to spend a little extra time in the museum at the end of the tour, which preserves a fairly extensive set of thirteenth century royal clothing. The provenance of this collection is worth describing. In the early nineteenth century, much of Spain was occupied by Napoleonic troops. The French, fired by the spirit of the French Revolution, eagerly wrecked any and all Church property they came across, both at home and abroad. Burgos was the northern headquarters for the French Peninsular forces, and so Las Huelgas was badly desecrated. The royal tombs were all kicked over, and the corpses stacked in a corner. When Wellington kicked the French out of Burgos in 1812, the slow process of fixing the Monastery began. The nuns replaced all the royal bodies in their coffins (or new ones, if the old ones were too damaged), carefully wrapping each corpse in new linens. They kept their old clothes. So suddenly Las Huelgas had a large collection of thirteenth century royal garb, which eventually ended up in their museum. It is great stuff, too. Who would have guessed that Prince Fernando, who by all accounts wanted to be a crusader, would have been buried in a coif decorated with Arabic wrtiting? Or that his sister Berenguela, mother to San Fernando and aunt to Saint Louis of France, would have rested her dead head on a pillow bearing verses from the Qur'an? Great stuff...