Walter Muir Whitehill

The Destroyed Romanesque Church of Santo Domingo de Silos

The cloisters of Santo Domingo de Silos have long been the battleground of conflicting archaeological theories. The community living there under the Rule of St. Benedict was dissolved in 1835 by Mendizabals exclaustration decree, and for forty-five years the monastic buildings were deserted. In 1880, however, just at the beginning of the process of disintegration, which has reduced Sahagu;n, Arlanza, and so many other Spanish monasteries to hopeless ruins, Benedictines of the congregation of Solesmes, driven from France, were allowed to settle in Silos. By immediate and drastic repairs they saved the monument from destruction, and one of their number, Dom Marius Ferotin, made the historical importance of the monastery known by the publication of his Histoire de l Abbaye de Silos and Recueil des chartes de l Abbaye de Silos.1