On the hundredth anniversary of the declaration as a National Monument of the Royal Monastery of Santa María de Sijena (Asset of Cultural Interest since 2002), the Government of Aragon has held a Governing Council in the old bedrooms of this space, which has constituted the Central act of the programming that the regional Executive, in collaboration with the Diputación de Huesca, the Comarca de Monegros and the Villanueva de Sijena City Council, has prepared to commemorate the event.
This event has been complemented by the edition of a non-venal facsimile with the rule of the Order in Aragonese, which has been delivered to the attendees. The facsimile of the Rule of Sijena recovers a fundamental document for the history of the Monastery. Drafted in 1188 by the Archdeacon Ricardo, who would later be Bishop of Huesca, to order the life of the nuns, it was in force throughout the existence of the Monastery and served as a model in other San Juan female monasteries.
The oldest version is in Latin and is preserved in the Provincial Historical Archive of Huesca. It has been transcribed and published several times (editions by Antonio Durán Gudiol and Agustín Ubieto Arteta). It has also been lent for numerous national and international exhibitions. The last time the original was shown in public was at the Royal Pantheons exhibition.
Also from medieval times (14th century) –and almost unknown– is the translation of the Rule into Aragonese that is preserved in the National Library of Catalonia (manuscript 3196). It is a small parchment codex – 37 sheets of paper size – in librarian Gothic font, decorated with miniated capitals. The importance of this medieval text lies in the fact that it is the first known translation of the rule into a Romance language. In addition, as indicated in a later note in the same document (16th-17th centuries), the translation was attributed in the Monastery to the same founder, Queen Sancha.
Within the programming planned for the centenary, for the weekend of April 8-9 another of the central acts of the commemoration is scheduled to take place. It is a recreation of the arrival in Sijena of the funeral procession that accompanied the body of Pedro II and his knights to bury them in the monastery, coming from Toulouse, where the battle of Muret had taken place, during which he died the monarch.
For that same weekend, an activity has been planned that consists of being able to see the appearance of the old Royal Pantheon, through virtual reality glasses. In addition, the program included the broadcast of a series of documentaries on the history of Aragon, which took place at the Sariñena cinema on weekends in February: Los muros vacías, El Sueño de Sijena, Sangre real and La Roca y el sea. The celebration of the Chapter of the Spanish Assembly of the Order of Malta will also take place on September 23.
During this meeting, they will enter as new members of the Order, knights and ladies. In addition to the members of the Spanish assembly, the Mothers Commanders of the Salinas de Añana convent will also attend, which will be an opportunity to see the San Juan nuns in Sijena again. On the other hand, the Museum of Huesca plans to publish a publication that includes, in addition to the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the exhibition center, the centenary of the declaration of the Monastery of Sijena as a Historical-Artistic Monument with a common link: Valentín Carderera .
It was precisely the first director of the Museum of Huesca who was the architect of the acquisition of four of the tables that made up the main altarpiece of the Monastery church: The embrace before the Golden Gate, The Birth of the Virgin, The Annunciation and The Visitation, works by the artist Rodrigo de Sajonia, formerly known as Maestro de Sijena, made between 1514 and 1519 and since 1873 have been part of the collections of the Museum of Huesca. Educational activities for schoolchildren, concerts and exhibitions complete a program that aims to highlight the importance of this monastery and the possibilities it offers from a tourist and economic point of view for the area.
In addition, later the liturgy of Sijena will be recovered, which remained intact for centuries and has not been celebrated since the San Juan nuns left the convent in 1970. In the choir, church and cloister of the Royal Monastery of Sijena of the Order of San Juan of Jerusalem, the sung prayer was always present: the Gregorian chant. The interpretation of 'Paradisi Portæ' will allow you to travel to some of the most significant moments of the liturgical year in the monastery. The pieces chosen for Christmas and Easter, for example, are melodies that were part of liturgical dramatizations that took place in the monastery since medieval times.
After the assumption of powers in cultural heritage by the Executive, more than 6.5 million euros have been invested in this monument. Of these, 1.8 million have been spent in the 2022 and 2023 financial years to finish the restoration work on the east panda of the cloister and the restoration and adaptation of the naves in which the old bedrooms are located with the aim of expanding the current exhibition area. The latter have been financed from the Next Generation EU MRR funds.
In addition to the investment that the Government of Aragon has carried out in the Royal Monastery of Sijena, there are almost another 4.9 million investment in the royal pantheons, to which is added the 1.2 that the State allocates to the castle of Montearagon. The exhibition project finalized by the Department of Education, Culture and Sport will revolve around 'Life in the Sijena Monastery'. The objective is to expose the daily life of the community harmonizing the presentation of the goods returned to the monastery together with two types of documentation, the textual documents from the monastery archive with the photographic collections that different Aragonese archives keep, especially the Photo Library of the Diputación Provincial of Huesca and the Provincial Historical Archive of Zaragoza.
