'... enter, then, to the bridge, and, before it, anchor in San Juan de Duero, with its wet river walls, in front of the hermitage of the Virgin and in view of the city. Ah, the sanjuanistas of the twelfth century knew what they were doing !. As authentic knights, they chose the best of the riverbank and built a monastery where the orchards begin, very close to the bridge, and such a delightful place that, if there were anything better in the world than the santería of San Saturio, it would be nothing but Romanesque abaciazgo of San Juan de Duero, picnicking, as the sanjuanistas would do, a lamb roasted in the cloister, five meters from the water and its herbs.
['The santero of San Saturio', Juan Antonio Gaya Nuño, 1953 (1)]

Time of summer, of vacations and of happy festivities, that push us to the movement and to the adventure. Time in which the days, longer, allow a better use of time. With or without crisis, people come and go. Many move to the beaches of the Levant, to embrace the Mediterranean and smear with saltpeter from its sands; others prefer the beauty, tranquility and peace that the mountain provides.

Some, however, desist from one or the other alternative and stay in their place of residence, enjoying their well-deserved labor truce, making short trips to the neighboring provinces. Although it is dedicated to everyone, it is precisely to the latter that the following alternative recommendations are directed, in case they are of interest.

Soria, without a doubt, is a place that offers multiple perspectives; and although it lacks coasts and beaches, of the rest it is amply left. A place, which could be defined, dreamily speaking, as situated 'far from nowhere and yet close to all'; a place, which has enough attraction to make a journey, however short, through its villages or simply its most emblematic places, becomes a magical, unforgettable and opportunely cultural trip.

This, possibly, could have its best start in the same capital of the province, once crossed the border of that old stone bridge that separates the polis - where past and present alternate with future projects - of that natural shore where the Duero - as the providential Nile in Egypt - provides the water and silt necessary to fertilize a land anxious to show its generosity in the form of succulent fruits.

It is precisely here, on this privileged side of the riverbank, where magic still exists and where, as in the ancient spells of the stories we read avidly as children, time, relative, strange and tremendously capricious, after all, it seems have stopped forever.

Now, attention, as shown in the video that illustrates the present entry, falls right in front of that mysterious Monte de las Ánimas of the Becquerian legend. There, in what was once a monastery - officially, sanjuanistas monks or hospitable; romantically, from freires milites or templars - a rough, ancient wall of stone and adobe, hidden, like the rock at the entrance to the cave of Ali Baba, an immeasurable treasure of beauty and precision.

Indeed, once the austere door has been crossed, it is difficult not to escape the tingling sensation that implies to think that the threshold has been crossed to a hidden dimension; a dimension where mathematics and geometry are conjured to make beauty a symbol of immortality, because not in vain, such a wonder was created - as the video that is projected to the visitors says - to last. As a significant relic of a time of war, of darkness, and also of faith, the shape and distribution of its arches - famous throughout the world, without having to be plundered and exposed in the The Cloister's section, in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, like the ill-fated paintings of San Baudelio- achieve a subliminal effect, which conjures up an alliance of civilizations, where the oriental current, or Mudejar, is uncensored with that other western, or Romanesque, current, creating a hybrid of perfection almost absolute.

It is nothing short of impossible, to walk through them and not feel that special magnetism that emanates from their distribution, giving meaning and value to each side of the rectangle; not to feel, also, that particular magic, turned into practical geometry that, which oriental mandala, invites recollection, reflection and the search for knowledge. In short, to that search for perfection, which made possible one of the best-known rules of the Emerald Tablet, attributed to Hermes Trismegistus: 'as it is above, that's the way down'.

To contemplate, then, the arches that make up the cloister of the monastery of San Juan de Duero, is to glimpse, in passing, an infinitesimally astronomical portion of that Universe that is barely beginning to be understood, and whose fundamental rules, among others, are: proportion; Balance; measure; harmony and geometry.

Notes:

(1) Excerpt from the recently created guide 'Monastery of San Juan de Duero: architecture and iconography', Elías Terés Navarro / Carmen Jiménez Gil, based on the book by José Antonio Gaya Nuño, 'El santero de San Saturio', Editorial Espasa Calpe, SA, Madrid, 1953.

Related movie:

NOTICE: the text, except for some corrections, was originally published on my blog SORIA WAY WALK WALKING. Both this one, as the photographs, as the video (except music, reproduced under license of Youtube), are my exclusive intellectual property. The original entry, where you can verify the authorship of juancar347, can be found at the following address: https://juancar347.blogspot.com/2008/07/itinerarios-culturales-monasterio-de.html

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