LIGNUM CRUCIS in SAINT TORIBIO DE LIÉBANA MONASTERY
Lignum Crucis
|
Saint Toribio de Liébana Monastery
|
Pilgrimage to Camaleño (Cantabria)
The Camino Lebaniego route starts in Santander.
Camino Lebaniego is a “hidden” Camino that starts at the Bay of Biscay and goes through lush hinterland and into the National Park of Picos de Europa.
It is one of the world's most important pilgrimages and a Unesco World Heritage Site.
The stretch on the Camino del Norte between Santander to Gijón is a clear example of the best of Northern Spain: lovely beaches, quaint fishing towns, impressive natural landscapes and culture. The cuisine is some of the best and judging from a scenery point of view, it would be difficult to find anything more beautiful. The terrain along the Camino del Norte is quite varied without being difficult to hike. The majority of the days it's possible to divide the stages, if you like.
The end of the Pilgrimage is the Romanesque Monastery of Toribio, which is one of the five most important Christian pilgrimage sites in the world. The Monastery preserves a one of a kind relic (Lignum Crucis), the world's largest piece of the Holy Cross of Jesus, brought to Spain from Jerusalem by Constantino, who is also buried in the Monastery.
According to tradition, this relic is part of the True Cross that the Empress Saint Helena unearthed in Jerusalem. From there, Saint Turibius of Astorga, Custodian of the Holy Places, took it to the cathedral of his hometown in Astorga, Spain, where he was soon made bishop. When the Moors invaded Spain in 711, the relic was hidden along with others in a fold on Mount Viorna in the Liebana Valley, next to St. Turibius' relics. Both relics were eventually transferred to the monastery that immediately became an important place to be visited by pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela. Documents dated 1507 state that, "since time immemorial" the Jubilee is celebrated every time the saint's feast-day falls on a Sunday.
Fr. Sandoval, chronicler of the Benedictine order, wrote that this relic is the "left arm of the Holy Cross. It was sawed and assembled in the form of a cross, leaving intact the hole where was nailed down the hand of Christ". The vertical bar is 635 millimetres (25.0 in) long and the crossbar is 393 millimetres (15.5 in) long. The cross has a thickness of 38 millimetres (1.5 in). It is the largest preserved relic of the True Cross.
The wood was embedded in a Gothic silver gilt cross, manufactured by a workshop of Valladolid in 1679. It lies in a housing of golden wood in a baroque, domed, early 18th-century chapel in the north wall of the church, looked over by an effigy of the chapel's founder, Francisco de Cosío y Otero (1640–1715), Grand Inquisitor of Madrid and later Archbishop of Bogotá in Colombia, who was born locally.
In 1817 Ignacio Ramón de Roda, Bishop of León, went to the monastery and asked permission of the prior of the Benedictine monks to remove a portion of the Cross. Two pieces of wood arranged in the form of a cross in a reliquary were given to Don Joachim and Don Felix Columbus, descendants of Christopher Columbus, for the chapel of their family castle in Asturias. In 1909 Terry and Mathilde Boal inherited and imported to their American estate the chapel of the Columbus family, including an admiral's desk that belonged to the famous explorer himself. They brought from Spain to Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, the entrance door and the whole interior of the Columbus Chapel with the relic of the True Cross.
Camino Lebaniego is a “hidden” Camino that starts at the Bay of Biscay and goes through lush hinterland and into the National Park of Picos de Europa.
It is one of the world's most important pilgrimages and a Unesco World Heritage Site.
The stretch on the Camino del Norte between Santander to Gijón is a clear example of the best of Northern Spain: lovely beaches, quaint fishing towns, impressive natural landscapes and culture. The cuisine is some of the best and judging from a scenery point of view, it would be difficult to find anything more beautiful. The terrain along the Camino del Norte is quite varied without being difficult to hike. The majority of the days it's possible to divide the stages, if you like.
The end of the Pilgrimage is the Romanesque Monastery of Toribio, which is one of the five most important Christian pilgrimage sites in the world. The Monastery preserves a one of a kind relic (Lignum Crucis), the world's largest piece of the Holy Cross of Jesus, brought to Spain from Jerusalem by Constantino, who is also buried in the Monastery.
According to tradition, this relic is part of the True Cross that the Empress Saint Helena unearthed in Jerusalem. From there, Saint Turibius of Astorga, Custodian of the Holy Places, took it to the cathedral of his hometown in Astorga, Spain, where he was soon made bishop. When the Moors invaded Spain in 711, the relic was hidden along with others in a fold on Mount Viorna in the Liebana Valley, next to St. Turibius' relics. Both relics were eventually transferred to the monastery that immediately became an important place to be visited by pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela. Documents dated 1507 state that, "since time immemorial" the Jubilee is celebrated every time the saint's feast-day falls on a Sunday.
Fr. Sandoval, chronicler of the Benedictine order, wrote that this relic is the "left arm of the Holy Cross. It was sawed and assembled in the form of a cross, leaving intact the hole where was nailed down the hand of Christ". The vertical bar is 635 millimetres (25.0 in) long and the crossbar is 393 millimetres (15.5 in) long. The cross has a thickness of 38 millimetres (1.5 in). It is the largest preserved relic of the True Cross.
The wood was embedded in a Gothic silver gilt cross, manufactured by a workshop of Valladolid in 1679. It lies in a housing of golden wood in a baroque, domed, early 18th-century chapel in the north wall of the church, looked over by an effigy of the chapel's founder, Francisco de Cosío y Otero (1640–1715), Grand Inquisitor of Madrid and later Archbishop of Bogotá in Colombia, who was born locally.
In 1817 Ignacio Ramón de Roda, Bishop of León, went to the monastery and asked permission of the prior of the Benedictine monks to remove a portion of the Cross. Two pieces of wood arranged in the form of a cross in a reliquary were given to Don Joachim and Don Felix Columbus, descendants of Christopher Columbus, for the chapel of their family castle in Asturias. In 1909 Terry and Mathilde Boal inherited and imported to their American estate the chapel of the Columbus family, including an admiral's desk that belonged to the famous explorer himself. They brought from Spain to Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, the entrance door and the whole interior of the Columbus Chapel with the relic of the True Cross.
