La Abadía de Santa María de Burgohondo (Siglos XI-XVI)

Abstract

This historical research work tries to interpret the evolution of the monastery of Santa Maria del Burgo from its foundation, at the end of the 11th Century, until the middle of the 16th Century. The diplomatic study and the analysis of the archaeological sources try to contribute certain novelties in the debate on the depopulation of the Extreme Durii during the IXth and Xth Centuries. After the XIth Century, the regular canons of St. Augustine undertook, in this territory, an intense repopulating activity that acted on the old Mozarabic populations while facilitating the arrival of new quotas from the northern peninsula. During the XIIIth and XIVth Centuries, the monastery of Burgohondo came to order the ecclesial life of about fifty villages from Piedrahita and the Corneja valley to Cebreros and the middle Alberche; from the limits of the city of Avila to Tietar river, on the other side of the mountains. In the 16th Century, through the bull of Leon X of 1514, the secularization of the monastery took place. Apostolic attention was limited to the nine parishes of the Council of Burgo and the regular canons of St. Augustine renounced the common life they had led since its foundation.