SANTO TORIBIO DE LIEBANA MONASTERY

This imposing building (restored), which includes elements from the pre-Romanesque period, is of great symbolic importance: the Franciscans keep in it the Lignum Crucis, the largest known piece of the Holy Cross. This relic is believed to have arrived at the monastery around the 8th century, along with the remains of Santo Toribio. Today it is located in the center of the chapel (18th century), in a gilded silver cross-shaped reliquary in the Gothic style. In 1958, scientific tests confirmed that its wood, which is over 2,000 years old, comes from a variety of cypress tree native to Palestine. Santo Toribio was, above all, one of the very first monastic retreats (this remote area was particularly suitable). Inspired, the monk Beatus wrote his famous commentaries on the Apocalypse, at the beginning of the 8th century, to explain the hermetic text of Saint John. Copies (beautifully illustrated and illuminated in the purest Mozarabic style) are on display around the cloister. The door to the monastery's Pardon is only opened if April 16, the feast of Saint Toribio, falls on a Sunday. When this is the case, the Holy Year of the Liebaniega begins and lasts until the following April 16th. The faithful who pass through the Door of Forgiveness are washed of all their sins committed before that day. This privilege, granted by a bull of Pope Julius II, puts the monastery of Santo Toribio de Liébana on the same level as Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago de Compostela.