Few countries can boast of having as many cathedrals listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites as Spain. Our country is a propitious territory for cathedral tourism, causing the United Nations to have set up to 14 times to bestow this award.
However, there is a small trap in that fourteen, since some of the World Heritage Sites are made up of several cathedralsas is the case with the Mudejar cathedrals of Aragon (one in Zaragoza and another in Teruel) or with the Cathedrals of the Camino de Santiago, which has six other cathedrals attached to it.
However, the oldest cathedral in Spain It is not a World Heritage Site. That does not mean that it is also considered the oldest church in our country and that, unfortunately, it goes more unnoticed than its history invites.
for that we we have to go to the province of Lugo. We are talking, neither more nor less, than the Basilica of San Martín de Mondoñedo (or Basilica of Santo Martiño), located about five kilometers from Foz, in the region of Marina Lugo, and which is considered the oldest church in Spain, since its initial base dates from the 6th century.
Although the current appearance of the basilica has Romanesque overtones, Since it was built between the 11th and 12th centuries, the excavations and details of the construction allow us to ensure that it was already a pre-Romanesque temple from the 10th century.
However, its history is still much older and that is the reason why it is ensures that it is the oldest cathedral in Spain. Although now it does not serve as a cathedral or episcopal seat, the Basilica of Santo Martiño was a duplicate episcopal seat during the High Middle Ages.
Due to constant invasions and pressures, the area was filled with Christians. First those who fled from Roman Britain after the imperial collapse, already in the sixth century. Later, in the 9th century, due to the unstoppable rise of the Muslims, which forced this discreet basilica to end up being the seat of two bishoprics at the same timethat of Bretoña (after the destruction of Santa María de Bretoña at the hands of the Vikings in the 9th century) and that of Dumio, which was abandoned by the Muslim impetus, which ended up assuming that Santo Martiño was a duplicate bishopric in the hands of Bishop Sabarico , protected by King Alfonso III.
As the Muslim pressure waned, as a result of the Reconquest, and when the Vikings stopped fighting on the Iberian coasts, the area began to flourish and would give the basilica the name it has today, known as San Martín de Mondoñedo.
Slate masonry and a basilica plan with three naves and three apses, the Basilica of San Martín de Mondoñedo has a imposing flared arch façade and a double-arched window, dating from the 11th century, and inside it houses an altarpiece made of stone and wall paintings from the 13th century, dated among the oldest in Galicia.
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The irony is that this episcopal seat would already lose strength during the Late Middle Ages, when the Mondoñedo’s own town would begin to shinedue to its nature as a passage along the Camino de Santiago, whose importance would be reinforced with the creation of a bishopric and a cathedral, nicknamed ‘the kneeling cathedral’ due to its short stature, and which is attached to the World Heritage Site of the Cathedrals of the Camino de Santiago.
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