The Leyre Abbey

The Abbey of San Salvador de Leyre nestles in the foothills of the Pyrenees, from the south (above), and (below) from the west. The only old parts of the Abbey still there are the Crypt and Church dating from the 1000s and 1100s with a somewhat later vaulted roof which replaced the wooden original. The monastery buildings to the south of the church date from the late 1500s. There was already a thriving abbey (including a well-stocked library) on this dramatic site in the mid 800s. In the 900s, 1000s and 1100s the monastery became progressively more powerful and wealthy as it was adopted by the Basque / Navarra Kings as their main church and also became their pantheon. Despite the fact that its abbots were appointed by the King, Leyre also linked up with the Burgundian Abbey of Cluny and became the main (and extremely richly endowed) Clunaic monastery in the Pyrenees. In the 1200s Leyre was flicked to the Cistercians in the wake of an upheaval in the Navarra royal dynasty and an attempt to settle things down on the religious front. But this led to a 70 year struggle between Benedictines and Cistercians, which was only resolved in favour of the latter in 1307. The glory days were over, and the monastery was on a 500 year downward slope that ended up in the general confiscation of monastic properties by the government in 1836. In the 1900s it was the government (of Navarra) who changed roles and came to the rescue - restoring the abbey and monastery buildings so that in 1954 they could be reoccupied - this time by a group of Benedictine monks from Santo Domingo de Silos (who in turn had arrived in Spain from the monastery of Solesmes, NE France, in 1880). Although the Abbey is listed in Cistercian Abbey guides, none of the Cistercian monastery buildings survive, and the existing church buildings, with the exception of the nave roof, all predate the Cistercian takeover.

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• Leyre
• Abbey
• Monastery
• Virila
• Benedictine
• Gregorian
• Chant
• Navarra
• Spain
• Romanesque
• Romanico
• Crypt
• Church
• Yesa
• Huesca
• Porta Speciosa