Description

 

The convent of nuns of Jesus Mary of the order of St. Francisco de Paula, is in the vicinity of the Picture of the Virgin, and gives name to the street where it is.

 

Don Antonio Terrones Robles, in the seventeenth century, makes the following reference about it: "The Convent of Nuns of Jesus Mary, of the order of St. Francisco de Paula, was the first that the glorious Saint founded, not only in Spain, but of all his religion, in that charity and humility he left them in. It is a great Convent, Temple and Chapel, his patrons are the Valenzuela knights, and he has many relics left by the Saint, subject to the religious of that order. Say it all better than I do the most beloved Father Fray Lucas de Montoya, chronicler of the Order of the Minims.The Convent of our religious in this city of Andújar was founded in 1495, on June 11, the day of St. Bernabe, with a title of St. Elena, in which Pedro de Lucena Olid and his daughter Elena, gave to the Religion the houses of their dwelling to rebuild Monastery of Nuns, in which they entered by first founders María de Lucena Olid, and Francisca de Lucena Olid, daughter and granddaughter of Pedro and Elena de Lucena: Vicar the Father Fray Juan Bosco, it is the oldest Convent of Nuns of our Order, its number is ordinarily forty-six to fifty.

The Main Chapel is the burial and foundation of the Valenzuela, an illustrious family in all of Andalusia, which descends from the said Pedro de Lucena, has relics of our Father, some smaller canvas cloths, and the waistband is of very rough sackcloth, a long wedge with white felt peal "(1)

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Pedro de Lucena, son of Pedro de Lucena and Elvira Sánchez de Baraja, belonged to one of the most important lineages of the city. He married Elvira González Navarro, was an ambassador of the Catholic Monarchs in the French court of Charles VIII and met Francisco de Paula personally, with whom he had close friendship, to whom he gave the hermitage of St. Elena and annexed land to be founded Fathers Minimos the convent of Our Lady of Victory and his daughter Elena gave the land necessary for the foundation of the convent of Jesus Mary. His connection with the Olid lineage goes back to the marriage that his ancestor Pedro Gil de Lucena made with Mrs. Maria Olid in the second third of the 15th century.

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The convent badly damaged during the Civil War, suffered a disastrous reconstruction by Devastated Regions. On May 3, 1990, the Order presented the City Council with a project to remodel the facade of the convent, to "give it its primitive status", so that the exposed brick was used to achieve the mudejarism of its origin.

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His interest lies in the sobriety of his project that makes little concession to the ornament to focus on the purely constructive. The austerity of its elements is accompanied by the simplicity of the materials that make it up: the brick, the whitewashed masonry and the ironwork. The convent door, with a semicircular arch between pilasters and entablature on which the shield of the Order is located. More interest presents the door of the convent church. This door has great similarity with the door of the Renaissance palace of the Segundo de Cárdenas. It differs from the former by using brick and by its greater simplicity. Its semicircular arch is between pilasters of Tuscan order, which rest on the impost line to which it stands out. The entablature, of reduced proportions, is characterized by having the frieze decorated with tile.

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The church, of a single nave covered with a barrel vault with lunettes. The main chapel, somewhat higher than the rest of the temple, is covered with a beautiful Mudejar coffered ceiling. His armor of files of moamares, is of eight cloths and is decorated with reasons of bow. The center is decorated with a pineapple of golden Mozarabic. The hearth, horizontal timbers, with reliefs of heads of angels, and pendentives or quadrants with bow patterns. It houses the chapel a beautiful crucified of the XVII century, of baroque style, coming from the city of Ecija. Note also a canvas of the first half of the seventeenth century, tenebrist style in which it represents St. Francisco de Paula, founder of the order.

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Association of Friends of the Patrimony of Andujar

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