Description

 

Former convent of the Capuchins, today the parish of the Divina Pastora, it is located between the Capuchins slide and the Plaza de Toros avenue.

 

The Capuchin Fathers settled in the city in 1622. The place chosen was the old hermitage of St. Roque, donated by Don Alonso Pérez Serrano, knight of the order of Alcántara, who won the patronage of the chapel and whose shields They decorate the facade of the convent church.

 

Carlos de Torres Laguna in his work Andújar Cristiana makes about this convent house the following review: "On October 4, 1747, the City Council of Andújar agreed, among other things, to celebrate solemn festivities in the Convent of Capuchins for the canonization of glorious saints St. Fidel de Sigmarringa and St. Jose de Leoniza. It was the all-time convent of saints, in it lived Fray Isidoro and the Apostle of Andalusia, Fray Diego de Cádiz, today beatified. Since the days of the establishment was venerated in the built temple, placed in the dressing room of the high altar, the image of the Divina Pastora, brought from Italy".

 

The convent of Capuchins was occupied by the French troops, suffering losses and deterioration of great consideration both its building and the temple. After the return of Fernando VII (1814), the community of Capuchin friars occupied it again. With the disentailment, the definitive exclaustration of the Capuchin friars takes place. The Charity Board of the city requested the government the building to install in it the Asylum of Elderly, Poor and the House of the Foundling Children. Petition that was taken for good by the government of the nation, beginning repair and refurbishment works by Mr. Pedro Madueño, with a cost of 4,562 reales. In November 1842, the town hall, presided over by the progressive Juan Romeu, approved the demolition of the church tower because it was completely ruined. In 1845 the marques del Puente, Don José María de Valenzuela and Lassus, claimed the ownership of the building and the church to the town hall, passing ownership to the referred noble. In 1879 the building was ceded to the Fathers Paules and since 1967 its temple is a parish, under the invocation of the Divina Pastora.

 

In the year 2008-09 the temple has undergone a profound remodeling, eliminating in its facade Little fortunate elements of the seventies. Its interior, also somewhat altered, is rectangular. Account with a single ship covered with vault of tube with lunettes, articulated in three sections with transverse arches. The vault rests in a Doric entablature supported by pilasters, decorated with undulating internal moldings. In the stretch of the feet, the choir, in high. Side chapels give the second and third section. The transept is individualized for its greater width and for having the space of the chapels. The transept covered with hemispherical vault decorated with the motif "creste e vele" and frescoed, until it became encased in the seventies. The rectangular main chapel has a flat roof decorated with coffered ceilings, as well as the arms of the transept. The eighteenth-century dressing room was replaced by a dissonant modern construction.

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