Silos Romanesque cloister: Cultural Heritage of Humanity

The traveler is only passing through, but it is already a sufficient excuse not to ignore the opportunity to set foot again in one of the most charismatic places of the rich Spanish Cultural Heritage and, by default, deserved worldwide extension: the Romanesque cloister of the monastery of Santo Domingo de Silos.

He thinks, while sweating through the narrow streets of a town that seems eternally anchored in the unfathomable worlds of the past, that, unlike the scorching wind that hangs, inclement, over this archaic and first-born corner of Castile, his steps will lead him, in brief, until that mysterious place, cradle of a masterful stonemasonry that became a school, where, metaphorically speaking and unlike the vicissitudes of the modern world, the sands of time only obey the winds of the Spirit.

It does not matter, therefore, to join the queue of tourists, who, more or less informed of the historical-artistic tour they are about to undertake, wait patiently, taking over that small space, where in the past and also now, the Silense monks kept and they maintain the work of their old hostelry.

Flowered shirts and casual attire replace the coarse smocks of medieval travelers and pilgrims, who one day, following the unknowable demands of life's labyrinths, directed their steps to this place of rest, prayer, and even going further, of sublime admiration.

In fact, in other times not so distant, as one might think and based on the principles of decorum, most of them would not have been able to cross a threshold, which, without metaphors or comparisons involved, is, by its own merit, a machine of time more subtle, sophisticated and real than the one invented, among other writers, today barely remembered by the new generations, H.G. Wells.

An Aleph, as Borges and Coelho would say, where Yesterday is Today and, paradoxically, also Still, which carries, in its heart of stone, the scab of countless centuries, the wounds of different times and the hermeticism of the magisteriality of in the past, where Art, Architecture and Symbolism merge into a close embrace, which certainly, as the traveler knows, leaves no one indifferent.

They say - the traveler ignores whether the bad or the good tongues - that this monastery dates back to the Visigothic era, although, of said nothing remains - not even the four boulders, which, still and is not little, having the maleficent history against the Heritage of this country, can still be seen in the nearby Quintanilla de las Viñas- and what your eyes, as well as the eyes of the rest of the curious see, go back to the 11th century on the one hand, in terms of architecture and its on the one hand, and in the 16th century, when the Gothic style was beginning to be eclipsed, its wonderful Mudejar coffered ceilings, which, unfortunately, today have lost part of that mocking and heterodox grandeur -like the famous wolf dressed in priest and officiating mass- that once characterized him.

However, the traveler also knows that, in this stanch of wounds and deficiencies, there is still a good part, which, subjected to the watchful eye of details, is capable of arousing the greatest suspicions: the familiar oriental style and more specifically , Egyptian, with which the first workshops that worked in this cloister endowed, for example, those creatures of the unfathomable mythological abysses, which are the harpies, those same beings, who, curiously, like wrens, serpents or dragons, guardians of treasures, they also guarded, in the times of Jason and the Argonauts, the famous Golden Fleece, located, supposedly, somewhere in the Caucasus called Colchis.

The monumental scepter that Santo Domingo himself collects with a firm hand, in his cenotaph, not only an object of authority, but also one of the essential objects used by the master stonemasons of the time, such as the plumb line, the compass and the analemma and which, in this case, ends in a remarkable and esoteric dragon head, perhaps also recalling the skill of the Egyptian magicians and learned by Moses himself, capable of playing with illusions, transforming the rod into a serpent.

Without forgetting, of course, the significant reliefs, which, in the corners, develop scenes from the life of Christ, where it is worth noting the appearance to the disciples and, in particular, to the incredulous, objective and rational Thomas, an action that also meant, the use of phrases as forceful as 'seeing is believing' or 'putting your finger in the sore spot'.

Both one and the other, as far as this place is concerned, are completely valid, the traveler thinks, as it is, also, to think about what this same place would be like in those times, close to the fateful and feared Year Thousand and the continuous raids of Almanzor, when Castile was just beginning to kick in at the hands of the first counts and judges, such as Fernán González, whose tower-fortress still stands, after a millennium, in the neighboring town of Covarrubias.

In short: a journey through time, highly recommended for anyone who feels not only the call of History, Art or Architecture, but also the call of that immemorial Labyrinth, which is, after all, life and its infinite paths.

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NOTICE: Both the text and the photographs that accompany it, as well as the video that illustrates it, are my exclusive intellectual property and, therefore, are subject to my Copyright.

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