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In the centre of the valley of Cárdenas springs up a complex construction of buildings that make up the monastery of Yuso. Above this you can distinguish a humbler monastery: the church of Suso, protected amongst the overgrowth and trees. It´s there above on the hillside of a mountain - a primitive construction - where the traces of the monastic life of San Millán can be found. Today only the robust age old rocks remain, that know the secrets of this history, that saw the writings and viellums for the parchment of those copyists. The monastery of Suso is one to have caused most conjectures about it´s styles. Many opinions over the possibilities that conform the history of it´s art. |
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A crevice in the rock where many caves open up, at the side of a spring that descends down to the river Cárdenas, explains the localisation of the monastery at Suso. Rustic fissures in the rock of the mountain, with very little space to move. In the 6th century existed a community or hermitic township of independent men that practiced a contemplative life of pray and meditation. These ascetics lived in caves that, excavated in the cliff, had diverse functions, such as chapel or oratory. No more than eleven caves or cells on some enclosed within the mountain, together with beech and oak trees. The life of San Millán and his disciples was as simple as the places in which they lived. |
In Suso the monks worked their own tombs, fashioned it into it´s form and size. They were buried with a shroud and a heavy tombstone was placed on top. At different levels, the caves of the monastery are populated with tombs, some of which are in the actual structure of the church. The trapezoids, burials on the side, of visor, antropomorphs (with the head centred, in the form of a horsehoe or with space for the head squared). This neocroplois is unique where six styles have appeared in different sepulchres. More than one hundred and twenty sepulchres have been discovered, all of the orientation facing east, towards the orient.
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Art 2-8