It is the main artistic monument of Benavente and is located in the center of the city. The church shows the various artistic styles through which it has passed since the beginning of its construction in the XII century.
The beginning of its construction is attributed to the time of repopulation of the city by Fernando II, around 1180.
It is a Romanesque church with five beautiful apses and three doorways. Its construction is carried out in four phases.
In the first phase (XII century) the five apses, part of the perimeter and the two Romanesque doors of the transept were built. In 1188 the works were stopped due to the death of Fernando II.
What was built in this late Romanesque phase is easily recognizable by its slate sandstone masonry. In the motifs of the decoration and in the distribution of the apses and pillars of this Romanesque stage there is a clear influence of the Cistercian style, and specifically of the monastery of Moreruela located very close to here, in the town of Granja de Moreruela.
There are three exterior and one interior doorways in the church. Three of them obey the Romanesque style:
Southern doorway: The one located on the south side has as its theme the “Agnus Dei” or mystical lamb, surrounded by angels incensing. It has three archivolts that shelter a tympanum and are supported by three pairs of columns decorated with palmette capitals.
The exterior archivolt is formed by semicircular arches. The intermediate one is decorated with four-petal flowers. The interior contains various figurative representations, which from left to right are the following: Eve, appears seated on leaves under the tree of knowledge from which the forbidden fruit hangs, hiding her nakedness with her mantle because she has already sinned, while the serpent approaches her ear to tempt her; a winged lion (symbol of the evangelist St. Mark); an angel standing holding an open book in his hands (symbol of the evangelist St. Matthew). In the center of the archivolt the head of the Eternal Father, the figure of the Good God surrounded by four censer angels, two standing and two in flight. Next to them an eagle with open wings (symbol of the evangelist St. John); a winged bull (symbol of the evangelist St. Luke); and the Virgin Mary, standing and in prayerful attitude, on a monstrous mask that vomits stalks, representing a scene from Genesis. In the tympanum framed in a clipeo or circle, Christ is represented as a lamb, carrying the cross of salvation.
Northern doorway: The door to the north lacks iconographic development, but nevertheless offers an excellent sample of vegetal and schematic decoration. The style is very similar to that of the entire Romanesque style of Zamora and is replicated in another very similar doorway in the Church of San Juan del Mercado.
Interior doorway: In the interior of the chapel of Jesus is the oldest doorway of the church, which presents elements of a more archaic Romanesque style. It is formed by two molded archivolts resting on jambs that simulate a zigzag decoration. Above these are the corbels, decorated with animal heads, very deteriorated, which support a small tympanum decorated with a beveled bas-relief carved with vegetal motifs.
At the end of the 13th century, during the reign of Sancho IV, work was resumed. During this stage of construction, stone of lesser quality was used, and the transept was covered with ribbed vaults in the central sections and barrel vaults at the ends. The naves are raised and the arches used are pointed or pointed in the windows and in most of the vaults. The tower that will house the famous clock of Benavente, whose bell could be heard from all the surrounding valleys and of which the famous saying was popularized, also rises:
Toledo Bell
Cathedral of León
Benavente clock and
Villalón’s roll.
That mechanical device that originally had been marking the hours since the 15th century suffered several fires and had to be repaired and its bells replaced on several occasions. It was damaged by lightning during a big storm in 1877 and the one that replaces it nowadays is only an imitation of that famous clock that brought so much fame to Benavente.
In a third phase, already in the XV-XVI centuries, and under the patronage of the Pimentel family, the naves of the temple are vaulted and the current space of the sacristy is concluded in late Gothic – Renaissance style, which in principle should have been a noble pantheon.
In the fourth phase, XVII-XVIII centuries, the Chapel of Jesus was added, which caused that when this new body was added to the building, one of the exterior doors of the temple was transformed into an interior doorway.
In the XVIII century the collapse of the West door (called of the Apostles) took place probably due to the collapse of some subway cellars next to the building and that existed previously. Because of this, it was necessary to build in this last stage marked by a very refined baroque style a new front of lines and classicist air with an image of the Virgin in a niche of the frontispiece. The doorway as a whole bears the date 1735.
SCULPTURE AND PAINTING
Inside the church there are several altarpieces and sculptural works of great value, some of them belonging to Benavente churches that have disappeared.
It emphasizes a Virgin with the Boy, of Romanesque carving and, mainly, the group of the Annunciation, made in polychrome stone, probably in century XIII. The sculptural group is in a perfect state of conservation; the images that integrate it are placed in the transept, concretely in the two central pillars. In one of the pillars appears the archangel Saint Gabriel who is announcing to the Virgin the “Good News”, which, as a curiosity, appears already on a ribbon.
Also in this central apse is an exempt sculpture of the Eternal Father. In one of the spills of the toral arch there is a magnificent polychrome Gothic Calvary. In the paintings of the vault we find the representation of the zodiacal symbols, in what has been called “The sky of Benavente”.
In one of the sides of the Crucero on the North door of the temple is located a great baroque shield of the counts of Benavente, benefactors of the temple, on it shines the motto of the Pimentel family “Más vale volando” (It is better to fly). In one of the chapels is the sculpture of the Marine Christ.
