In the same way as in the case of the Sanctuary of the Virgin of Jaraba, the apparitionist and Marian origins of this Molinian sanctuary of the Virgen de la Hoz, date back to the dawn of that prodigious twelfth century, lavish in mystery episodes involved in avatars of a very long, complicated and epic national episode, to which History, precisely, for a change, has succeeded in calling it Reconquista.

Surprising results, as well, the parallels that make both places an ancient cult focus -numerous is the Celtiberian footprint, for example, located throughout the length and breadth of the Señorío de Molina, as evidenced, among others, by the remains of the castro de The Ceremeño, in the nearby town of Herrería -as well as the common denominator, which makes the figure of the shepherd the favorite vehicle through which the Divinity manifests itself, transmitting its desire to receive worship in that precise place and not in another.

Anyone who has ever visited this particular area of the Alto Tajo, will agree, I have no doubt, that his feet have today a place of extraordinary beauty, consisting of a gorge, in whose channel a river, the Rooster has been licking, throughout its displacement, an ancestral rock formation to which Nature, apart from the help received by erosion, has wanted to endow it with forms and contours worthy of a small lost world inside a microcosmic planet called Fantasy.

So much is felt this fantasy feeling walking through the Sanctuary and its surroundings, it is difficult not to wonder and at the same time marvel, how this has survived intact at the foot of an impressive rocky cliff on top of which the rocks seem to maintain a miraculous balance.

It is understandable, therefore, that a place of such characteristics did not take long to be clothed with the sacred character of the pilgrimage and with the presence, not only of the canonical monks of St. Augustine, who apparently were the first to settle, but also, by white monks of Císter, who were already settled in the nearby Santa María de Huerta and of course, if we are to pay attention to the popular tradition, by that other type of Bernardo pioneers, who were the Knights Templar.

Little remains, it is true, of the primitive sanctuary; and it is even possible that the tiny Marian image of Romanesque aspect that crowns the High Altar, is just a modern reproduction of the original one.

But it is true that a visit is worthwhile, and it is even possible that -although of a modern invoice- one does not stop wondering what is hidden, in reality, behind the symbolic figures of the two wolves that seem to protect the threshold of the door of access to the house of the monks or of the santero, as if it were the hounds that guard the entrance to that imaginary subconscious universe, where the myths and archetypes of Humanity rest.

NOTICE: Originally posted on my blog MEMORIES OF A PILGRIM. Both the text and the photographs that accompany it are my exclusive intellectual property. The original entry, where you can check the authorship of juancar347, can be found at the following address: https://jc347.blogspot.com/2010/08/molina-de-aragon-santuario-de-la-virgen.html

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[Martial, latin poet]

Ars vtinam more Animvm qve effingere. Posses pulchrior in ter. Ris nvlla tabella foret.

Arte Ojala pudieras representar. el carácter y el espíritu. No habría sobre la tierra. Imagen más bella

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