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Old Spanish Monastery
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Central courtyard surrounded by the cloisters.
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| Location: | North Miami Beach, Florida, USA |
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| Built: | 1133-1141 |
| Architectural style: | Romanesque |
| NRHP Reference#: | 72000307 |
| Added to NRHP: | November 9, 1972 |
St. Bernard de Clairvaux Church is a medieval Spanish monastery cloister which was built in the town of Sacramenia in Segovia, Spain, in the 12th century but dismantled in the 20th century and shipped to New York in the United States. It was eventually reassembled in North Miami Beach, Florida, where it is now an Episcopal church and tourist attraction. It is one of the oldest buildings in the Western Hemisphere.[1][2]
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The Royal Monastery of Saint Mary in Sacramenia was a Abbey of Order of Cistercian, located in an area known as Coto de San Bernardo (St. Bernard land preserve), two miles from Sacramenia province of Segovia (Spain). The Monasterio was in a mountain region at 830 m over level sea, in the high plateau near of "Sierra de Guadarrama", the region have a extreme weather. He was pronounced "Bien de interes Cultural" on June 3 of 1931. The area have medieval churches, chapels, monasteries, walls, castles, with the natural landscape of the Duratón River Gorges. In the traditional access there is an old path to the monastery, with the masonry ruins of a watermill. The monastery was constructed how a defensive strength with a web of minor fortress in an area populated by Muslims.
The Cistercian monastery, Santa Maria la Real, was constructed during the years 1133-1141. The spanish legislation Ecclesiastical Confiscations of Mendizabal, encompassed a set of decrees from 1835-1837 that resulted in the expropriation, and privatization, of monastic properties in Spain. Its Romanesque abbey church remains one of the monuments of Sacramenia. Originally, it was named "Monastery of Our Lady, Queen of the Angels", but was renamed to honor Bernard of Clairvaux upon his canonization. Use of the building as a Cistercian monastery lasted for almost 700 years until it was seized and sold off to be used as a granary and a stable during a period of social unrest in the 1830's.
The monastery was founded by Alfonso VII of León in 1141, so it was built between the XII and XIII centuries, belonging to cistercian romanesque architecture in Spain.
Alfonso VII of Castile, introduced the Cistercian in Spain, and founded of the monastery in 1141 and settlement in the place the monks who came from France. By this king, and after by Alfonso VIII of Castile, the monastery received several privileges in order to exempt rights of way tax for people and goods and freedom of movement to their grazing flocks.
The conquests and reconquests were followed by migrations for religious reasons that could cause the depopulation of entire areas. Muslims populated the existing cities from the Roman Empire and Visigothic civilization. The area had a big Muslim population which resisted several times after the Christian reconquest, attempts of cultural assimilation. The monasteries they served, among other things, as centers of evangelization and colonization. From the muslim era, there are abundant irrigation systems, canals, ditches, castles. The muslim people established their cities on the banks of rivers, because its economy was based on agriculture, emphasizing the cultivation of irrigated land. This is why people discarded in height and thus not effectively occupied areas of the Pyrenees, where merely controlling traffic of people and goods through fortified steps at the entrance to the valleys.
The noble and Christian clergy settle mostly in the north of today Spain, then little christian kingdoms, where they began to organize churches and monasteries around which the Christian communities would be developed. Religious communities revive trade among others, wool, salt trade, cultivation of the vine, pig and cattle livestock. The differences between monks and residents caused altercations among others related to the passage of merchant caravan of mules, the exploitation of the salt, water use in the villages of the region, dominion over the villages and pastures, tithe, etc.
Some parts were rebuilt after being destroyed by fire in 1647, the abbey remained active in their monastic life until 1835. The monastery was closed down about 1836-1840 during Isabella II of Spain's rule as a consequence of the Ecclesiastical Confiscations of Mendizábal. The Desamortización caused the exclaustration of the place, brought monastic life to an end and the main church was privatized.
In February 1836, the Mendizabal Confiscation ecclesiastical Act declared the sale of all property belonging to the regular clergy, and the proceeds were intended to amortize the debt. The decree was part of a program that sought to win the Carlist civil war to raise funds and troops to restore confidence in the credit of the State and in the long term, allow the tax reform. Mendizabal, in the preamble, setting out other basic objectives of the seizure: clean up the Hacienda reducing debt, getting access to the property of bourgeois sectors, which would improve production and revalue, and create a new social sector related to the system owners and to the side of queen Cristina. Since abandoned, the cool environment in this remote rural area, maintaining farming and livestock in the place.
The historic monastery building is in most part in the United States, this is, the faculty, the chapter house and the refectory of the monks. The rest of the monastic set, that is, the church and other facilities such as Cilla (mullion) remain privately owned in Spain, in Sacramenia village, although the temple can be visited on certain days.
The monastery's cloisters and its outbuildings were purchased by William Randolph Hearst in 1925. In order to be transported to the USA, the structures were carefully dismantled with each piece being numbered and packaged in wooden crates lined with hay. The total shipment comprised 11,000 crates. However, some of the information contained in this labeling was lost when the shipment was quarantined in the USA because of a break-out of hoof and mouth disease in Segovia. During the quarantine, the crates were opened and the hay filling was burned as a measure to prevent the spread of the disease. Afterwards, the content of the crates was not replaced correctly. William Randolph Hearst was ultimately unable to pursue his plan of rebuilding the monastery because of financial difficulties and the pieces were stored in a warehouse in Brooklyn, New York until they were purchased in 1952 by Raymond Moss and William Edgemon, who eventually reassembled them at the site of a small plant nursery north of Miami, where the buildings became a tourist attraction known as the Ancient Spanish Monastery.
The historic building was took charge of rebuiding in 1964 by Raymond Moss and William Edgemon, completing the original set with other pieces of different spanish buildings, like the large-scale carved stone coats of arms round of the cloister, which belong to the House of Albuquerque and come from the monastery of San Francisco de Cuellar, also in the province of Segovia, whose chapel was erected in the fifteenth century by Beltran de la Cueva, favorite of Henry IV of Castile and the first Duke of Alburquerque to be earmarked for family vault, which were also sold in the twentieth century after the secularization of the monastery. Reassembling the buildings took 19 months and cost almost 1.5 million dollars. Some of the stones remained unused in the process.
The property was purchased by Bishop Henry I. Louttit in 1964 for the Episcopal Diocese of South Florida, which later was split into the Dioceses of Central, Southeast and Southwest Florida. Financial difficulties forced the three dioceses to sell the monastery, it was purchased by Colonel Robert Pentland, Jr., who gave it to the Episcopal parish of St. Bernard de Clairvaux.
The address of St. Bernard de Clairvaux Church is 16711 West Dixie Highway, North Miami Beach, Florida 33160, USA.