The Convent of St. Francis (Spanish: Convento de San Francisco), in Valladolid, Spain, was founded in the 13th century and located outside the city walls, in front of the market square (which would become the future Plaza Mayor). The convent was protected and sponsored in that century by Doña Violante, wife of King Alfonso X of Castile ('Alfonso the Wise'). Its existence had a great impact on the social and religious life of Valladolid, extending its life until 1836, when it was demolished and its huge plot of land was divided up and put up for sale. From that date, it became part of the lost patrimony of Valladolid.

Christopher Columbus died in Valladolid in May 1506 and was buried in the church of this Franciscan convent, although it is still not known in which house or hospital exactly he died. During the commemoration of the 5th centenary of his death, the City Council of Valladolid placed a plaque in his memory on the site of the Convent of St. Francis.In 1513, Ferdinand the Catholic ordered his remains to be transferred to the Cartuja de Santa María de las Cuevas, outside the walls of Seville. Emperor Charles I issued a Royal Decree in Valladolid on 2 June 1537 to Doña María de Toledo to bury Columbus in the main chapel of the Cathedral of Santo Domingo on the island of Hispaniola. The island was ceded to the French in 1796, so the remains were transferred to the cathedral of Havana, kept in a rich silver urn on the Gospel side of the presbytery, as a great honor. But Havana also ceased to be Spanish and then the remains of Columbus crossed the ocean again to be placed in 1899 in the Holy Church Cathedral Basilica of Seville.

History of the convent

The Franciscans arrived in the city of Valladolid in the first third of the 13th century, although there are many discussions about the exact date. The founding document is lost and the different historians and researchers have been shuffling dates in accordance with other events and with the trips that St. Francis himself made to Spain to found convents. The architect and academician of Fine Arts Juan Agapito y Revilla mentions the date of 1210 as the arrival of the Franciscans to Valladolid taking as references the opinions of the historians of this city Matías Sangrador y Vítores, Juan Ortega Rubio, Casimiro G. García-Valladolid and Juan Antolínez de Burgos (the oldest historian) who says in his Historia de Valladolid:

The historian Manuel Canesi also mentions this friar; he says that he was born in Assisi and that he was first a disciple and then a companion of St. Francis.

In the first years of the 20th century, a manuscript —which had been considered lost— called Manuscrito de fray Matías de Sobremonte, written in 1660, with the abbreviated title of Historia inédita del convento de San Francisco de Valladolid, became known. It was discovered by the scholar Antonio de Nicolás, who dedicated a whole chapter to it in the Boletín de la Sociedad Castellana de Excursiones, volume I; the scholars and disseminators of the text were Agapito y Revilla and José Martí y Monsó; the original was kept in the library of the Palacio de Santa Cruz. The author of this manuscript is the Franciscan father Matías de Sobremonte. This friar was a scholar of the history of the convents of his order, including this one in Valladolid. Sobremonte speaks of the traditional date of 1210 as the foundation of the Valladolid convent, but at the same time he doubts it by making other considerations. Researchers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have assured a later date, around 1230, being in complete agreement on what were the beginnings and on its later transfer in the 1260s.

Start-up and relocation Queen Berengaria of Castile, wife of King Alfonso IX of León, ceded to the Franciscan Fathers the lands of an estate located in the area known as Río de Olmos.It was known as Río de Olmos an area between the Pisuerga River (at the height of the Arturo Eyríes bridge) and the Paseo de Zorrilla, near the slaughterhouse until reaching the Camino Viejo de Simancas to the bridge of Hispanoamerica or Hispanidad. On these lands there were many properties with houses, orchards and fruit trees, which were called riberas because they were on the banks of the river. Some of these properties were donated by their owners to found convents, such as this one of the Franciscans, another of the Carmelite friars and a first house of St. Teresa of Ávila. It is possible that this happened around 1230, but the date is controversial. This place was quite far from the city and was considered quite unhealthy to live in, and since it was far from the town, alms were scarce. The Franciscans always tried to build their convents in the city itself, or at least in the nearby outskirts, since their condition of preachers and mendicants required a continuous contact with the citizens. Some years later, another queen, Violante, wife of Alfonso X the Wise, offered them a plot of land and some houses near the first wall, for their possible relocation. For this purpose, she issued a letter of donation on March 6, 1267, signed in Seville, in which she declared that she was ceding land and houses to the new queen.

The large site was located outside the walls but next to the large area that was then used as a market. Over the centuries all this space would remain in the center of the city of Valladolid. At the beginning, the friars had many difficulties with the move, as they were opposed by the abbot,In the 13th century Valladolid was not a cathedral diocese but had a collegiate church headed by an abbot. This collegiate church had its own collegiate chapter. the infante Sancho and the Cathedral chapter, but the support of Queen Violant was definitive for the new location of the Franciscans. A century later, another queen, María de Molina, would also protect this convent, making a donation of some palace-houses that she kept adjacent to the Franciscan facilities and that overlooked Olleros Street, which would form part of the extension.

Extension of the convent enclosure

The convent perimeter came to comprise a large space that extended along the entire front facing the market square (future Plaza Mayor and future Acera de San Francisco), turned the corner on Olleros Street and along this street to the south reached Verdugo Street, named Montero Calvo Street after the confiscation; it continued along this street until it reached Santiago Street and from there went up north until it reached the Acera de San Francisco again. In all this huge site were the monastic buildings, church, several cloisters, hostelry, orchard, corrals and gardens. There were also private houses sold or given by the Franciscans themselves, the hospital of Juan Hurtado and some council quarters next to the main door leading to the market. These quarters were used while the old City Hall building was being built.

It was surrounded by a fence that protected it, as was common in all convents and monasteries, in which only two doors opened: one was the access from the Plaza Mayor, the main door. It led to a large corral and immediately after it was the church that occupied the space that would later become Constitución Street. The other entrance was on Santiago Street, at the height of the Iglesia de Santiago itself. It was called Puerta de las Carretas and in 1599 a doorway with arch, cornice and frontispiece with a niche where a sculpture of St. Francis made of alabaster and stone was placed.García Chico, E. Arquitectos. After passing through the door, the church was reached through a narrow alley.

Life of the convent until its demolition The Franciscans of this convent had a great spiritual influence on the social life of Valladolid. It was also a great cultural contribution and its history was very rich in religious events. Its total disappearance in 1836 was a great loss for the city, although at the same time, the recovery of the extensive site brought with it an important urban transformation in a Valladolid that was growing in that area and that needed the creation of buildings and access roads.

At the beginning of the 15th century, the Franciscan monks had reached a rather relaxed form of enclosure.All the monastic orders, after a time, reach the relaxation. It is then that reforms and observance arise, trying to adjust again to the primitive rules of the founder. In 1416 there was a reformist movement that grouped together several convents that chose the one in Valladolid as the head of the Franciscan Province of the Immaculate Conception. By then this convent had a large community. To the point that Father Sobremonte says in his history:

Important events related to religious life in general or to the civil life of the city took place in the convent:

In 1570 fray Juan Perez de Pineda (1513?-1593?) (who had problems with the Inquisition), decided to change from the Province of Santiago, to the Province of the Conception in the convent of Valladolid, where he was well received and resided for quite some time. Juan de Pineda, erudite preacher, was one of the best writers of his time in Castilian language. Juan de Zumárraga, first bishop of New Spain, appointed by Charles V in 1528, had to return to Spain to be consecrated, a ceremony that took place on April 27, 1533, in this convent. In 1695 the consecration of the president of the Chancillería of Valladolid, Francisco Juániz de Muruzábal y Ocáriz, appointed archbishop of Cartagena, was celebrated. The large procession entered the church through the chapel of Copacabana, making a distinction between men and women; the women entered through the portico of the cloister in the nave of Santa Juana. The entire community came out to welcome the illustrious retinue. After the religious ceremony, the event ended with the celebration of festivities with fireworks, drinks and sweets. In 1740 the General Chapter of the Order was held in the convent. There was a great procession on June 5, the day of Pentecost, in which they paraded a great number of saints (behind each one there was a religious with a cope), closing the procession the image of the Immaculate Conception that was usually located in the choir of the church. This event was much celebrated in the city and was extensively narrated by C. González García Valladolid in his Recuerdos y grandezas (Memories and Greatness). Ventura Pérez also mentions it in his Diario de Valladolid in the section entitled Capítulo general de San Francisco en esta ciudad.

In the years 1746 and 1747 great festivities were celebrated on the occasion of the canonization of St. Peter de Regalado, patron saint of Valladolid. On June 20, 1747, the image of this saint was transferred from the chapel of Copacabana to the cathedral. Ventura Pérez gives an extensive account of more than seven pages in his book of memoirs.

The life of the convent and its relationship with the city went smoothly until the Spanish War of Independence when all these religious houses were suppressed. On August 18, 1809, they obtained a special authorization to keep the church open (the same happened with other convents). In September of that same year an inventory of the sumptuary works was made. Cfr: AGS (Archivo General de Simancas), Gracia y Justicia, leg. 1257. Ortega Rubio notes that in February 1811 the main doors, the façade and the patio of the church were demolished and work began on the construction of houses. In February 1814, after the war with Napoleon, the Franciscans returned to their convent, which they found quite reduced (part of it had already been sold to private individuals), until in 1835 (as a consequence of the confiscation) the orchard was also put up for public auction, which in addition to vegetables had 80 fruit trees and elm trees, plus a noria in good condition. Cfr: AHPV, leg. 4389, fol. 209 The Official Bulletin of Valladolid announced on August 6, 1836, the sale of the ...