A
work of the century XIII
built 'out-walls' of the city
Long trajectory the one of this church,
that corresponds to location of old hermitage of Santa Maria de Afuera,
- Santa Maria de Foris (or Foras, by being "outside" of
the stone wall, that is to say, 'extrawalls') -, taht was built in front
of the door of Montearagón (the popular Porteta -the very
little door-), to the side of the way of the same name (in the East flank
of the urban helmet) that, crossing the Isuela river by the bridge
of tables, lead to the illustrious abbey and famous castle of Montearagón.
From year 1135 there are references of
its existence like head of its district, maintaining its condition of
parish to 1422. In it settled bernardas nuns coming from the monasteries
of Santa Maria de Iguácel (in the Garcipollera or "valley of the
onions") and of Cambrón, near Sádaba, until 1473, in which
they returned to the second. Later, in 1510, the bishop allowed to settle
down in this church to the augustinians, on condition that they
annually paid four capons to him in the Christmas eve.
To this convent the honor was possible to
it to lodge to the illustrious Navarrese agustino and famous mystical
writer fray Pedro Malón de Chaide (graduated and doctorate in Theology
by the Sertoriana university , and there professor and accountant), that
in 1579 or 1580 wrote here the famous Book of the conversion of the Magdalena,
highest work of the mystical Literature of the Century of Gold, very praised
by Don Marcelino Menéndez and Pelayo.
In 1788 the augustinians would happen
to occupy the residence and temple of the expelled Jesuits. In the occasion
of the call war of the Convention, against revolutionary France (1793),
this old convent of augustinians fulfilled functions of military hospital
until year 1796. From then the convent became house of abandoned children,
employee of the Cathedral. The bishop Don Cayetano de la Peńa and Granda,
who thought to institute here a House of Mercy of great 'standing', did
not get to see his intentions reality, because he had passed away in 1792.
In 1830 it happened to depend of the 'Junta de la Sitiada' and later (1838)
on the provincial Charity. The building was recovered in 1842 and extended
later.
Constructed in ashlar masonry, its factory
can be dated in second half of century XIII, although it maintains vestiges
of previous times. It presents its access in the side of the epistle,
through an arc of average point on imposts. Nevertheless, the original
entrance, of much greater interest, is under the tower and it is made
up of four archivolts on floral capitals. It develops its plant in a single
ship with four sections covered by vault of gun tracked on arcs fajones.
In its polygonal head, covered by vault with boss (decorative projection),
appears a chequered frieze and braces, and in its outside the ceiling
stands out on modillons of rolls.
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The tower, of square plant, is leaned to
the outside of the factory (the church body) and it is developed in two
bodies, first with small windows of average point, and the superior one
with ample pointed hollows. It is romanesque in its low part and gothic
in the rest, of century XIV, and in it, the prisoners of the Inquisition
were locked, and mainly the witches, when saying of the Aynsa historian.
The urban remodeling of this zone del old
helmet of the city of Huesca, has undressed it of almost all the small
villages that surrounded it - with a certain typical style -, leaving
it perhaps, more evident, more present .....
This Church is called thus, by to have
comprised of disappeared convent of San Agustín or Santa Maria
de Foris, of the agustinians order. Still it continues being its faithful
companion the apparent solidity of the large houses of the old Provincial
Residence of Children (to that belonged) that so many uses and destinies
suffered at the end of the last century. Between some of the functions
that this Residence carried out - and by a long time -, the one went to
give lodging to the Courts of Huesca.
Today, the street Round of the Miseridordia
-where the church is located- has continuity of road traffic with the
Lucas Mallada promenade, saving rio Isuela by a new bridge that
replaces the one of "tables or the Devil"; name this of the Devil that
takes many bridges and that must to fabulous legend relative to their
construction or episodes located in it. Long ago the way of the Mercy
went this way that left from the door of Santo Domingo -from the
earth wall- to get to be united to the way of Montearagón, before
the church of Santa Maria de Foris.
At the moment, new constructions and next
urbanizations are giving a renewed and flourishing air to this zone of
the city, that during lustrums seems to have somewhat unnoticed past to
the eyes of the visitor; perhaps by beingin at a zone of noneasy urban
growth.
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