Monasteries of San Millán de la Cogolla

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Spanish. (November 2010) Click [show] for important translation instructions.

View a machine-translated version of the Spanish article.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 5,020 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Spanish Wikipedia article at [[:es:Monasterio de San Millán de Yuso]]; see its history for attribution.
You should also add the template {{Translated|es|Monasterio de San Millán de Yuso}} to the talk page.
For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

UNESCO World Heritage Site in La Rioja, Spain

Yuso Monastery and Monastic Kitchen Gardens
Suso Monastery and Archaeological Sites

CriteriaCultural: (ii), (iv), (vi)Reference805Inscription1997 (21st Session)Area19.01 ha (47.0 acres)Buffer zone266.24 ha (657.9 acres)Websitewww.monasteriodesanmillan.comCoordinates42°19′33″N 2°51′54″W / 42.32583°N 2.86500°W / 42.32583; -2.86500

Spanish Cultural Heritage

Official nameMonasterios de Yuso y SusoTypeReal propertyCriteriaMonument

Location of Monasteries of San Millán de la Cogolla in La Rioja, Spain

Show map of La Rioja, Spain

Monasteries of San Millán de la Cogolla (Spain)

Show map of Spain

The monasteries of San Millán de Suso (6th century) and San Millán de Yuso (11th century) are two monasteries situated in the village of San Millán de la Cogolla, La Rioja, Spain. They have been designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO since December 1997.^[1]

The two monasteries' names Suso and Yuso mean the "upper" and the "lower" in archaic Castilian, respectively. Suso is the older building and is believed to be built on the site of a hermitage where Saint Emilian (Spanish: San Millán) lived. Perhaps Suso's major claim to fame is as the place where phrases in the Spanish and Basque languages were written for the first time.^[2] UNESCO acknowledges the property "as the birthplace of the modern written and spoken Spanish language".^[1] The phrases in Spanish and Basque are glosses on a Latin text and are known as the Glosas Emilianenses. There is some debate as to whether the Spanish words are written in an early form of Castilian (Spanish), or in a similar early form of Navarro-Aragonese (ancestor to modern Aragonese). In either case, San Millán's importance as a cradle of the Spanish language is reinforced by the proximity of the village of Berceo which is associated with Gonzalo de Berceo, the first Spanish poet known by name.

There is a continuous history of Christianity at San Millán since the time of the saint. The scriptorium produced the second phase of the San Millán Beatus and remained active during the period of Muslim rule; and over the centuries, the religious community has overcome various vicissitudes which affected the monasteries (for example being sacked by the Black Prince). However the type of monastic life evolved: the original monks living at Suso were hermits, but Yuso, the refoundation of the monastery on a lower site, developed as a Benedictine community. As the UNESCO evaluation noted, San Millán shows the transformation from an eremitic to a cenobitic community in material terms.^[3]

Suso monastery has been uninhabited since the Ecclesiastical Confiscations of Mendizábal in the nineteenth century. Yuso monastery was also abandoned for some years in the nineteenth century, but was reoccupied. It houses an Augustinian community, but part of the monastery has been converted into a hotel. Today San Millán attracts pilgrims on the Way of St James (even though it lies somewhat off the line of the official route between Nájera and Burgos).^[4]^[5]

Processional cloister. Yuso Monastery.
Mozarabic arches in the Suso Monastery.

Notes

^ ^a ^b "San Millán Yuso and Suso Monasteries". UNESCO. 1997. Retrieved 1 April 2013.
^ The codex in question was subsequently preserved in the monastery library at Yuso before being moved to its current location in Madrid. See Glosas Emilianenses.
^ Entry on the World Heritage website.
^ route map
^ (in Spanish) Cervantes Centre