Home at Last: The Journey of a Medieval Spanish Church
The church, at first glance, does not appear to hold much significance. It is a stone building that looks unfinished. The windows have no glass, and the doorway stands open to the elements. From the outside, the building gives few hints of the rich history held within its walls. However, the three impenetrable windows on the church’s southern side represent a style of architecture rarely found in this part of the world. Walking through the high- arched doorway of the church, Santa Maria de Ovila, is like stepping through time. Sunlight falls on the cold floors and illuminates the stones, uncovering markings engraved on them more than 800 years before. The ceiling rises up from thick stone columns allowing sound to swell and fill the whole building. Though it is thousands of miles from its original home, this building will once more serve its original purpose as a refuge and meeting place for Cistercian monks.
The church that now stands above the orchards and vineyards in Vina, Calif. has made a long journey from its earliest home near Trillo, Guadalajara, Spain. After sitting vacant for many years, the building was bought by William Randolph Hearst. One July day in 1931 the first of 11 ships sailed into the San Francisco Bay carrying pieces of Santa Maria de Ovila. The stones were unloaded and stored in the city’s largest warehouse. There the stones sat in crates, unused for many years. When Hearst’s project was unable to be funded, he turned the intricately carved stones over to the city.
“Hearst gave the stones to the city of San Francisco with the idea that the stones could be reassembled and used as a museum,” said Susie Zimmer, director of operations at New Clairvaux. “The city did not have the financing to even begin the proposed project so the city gave them to the De Young Museum.”
However, besides being incorporated into the landscape of Golden Gate Park, the De Young Museum did not make use of the stones. Many decades passed, and most of the pieces of Santa Maria de Ovila remained in a cold damp warehouse.
“Father Davis heard about the stones in 1955 on a tour of the Japanese Tea Gardens in Golden Gate Park,” Zimmer said. “His interest began then and continued until the stones were given to the abbey in 1994. Father Davis was the Abbott then and he was the driving force petitioning the city for the stones.”
The stones of Santa Maria de Ovila were gathered from the overgrowth in Golden Gate Park, taken from crates in the harbor warehouse and finally loaded into trucks bound for New Clairvaux Abbey. It took nearly 40 years of petitioning to bring the stones back to Cistercian soil, but the labor was worth the reward. The reconstruction project has brought new life to the abbey community. As visitors walk through the church, and hear its story, they realize the importance of the project. The reconstruction of Santa Maria de Ovila will both preserve the tradition of Cistercian architecture, and serve as a new house of worship for the monks. As construction began, more people became aware of the medieval church that was slowly being resurrected in Northern California.
“The community accepted that with the construction of this project, the daily rhythm here would change,” Zimmer said. “The cloister provides a buffer for the community when they need to be away from the hustle and bustle of the winery and the visitors. Previously, this little community led very quiet lives and had limited interaction with their surrounding communities.”
The Cistercian monks, who can be seen through the cloister gate, wear simple clothes and engage daily in work both tending the grounds and cultivating their vineyards. They live by certain vows unique to their order; one of them is a vow of poverty. This vow dictates that the monks live very humble lives, and are not able to singlehandedly take on a project costing several million dollars to fund. However, through private donations, collaboration with the Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., and New Clairvaux Vineyard wine sales, the church is nearing completion.
“The money has come from a few grants and foundations but the lion’s share has come from private donors,” Zimmer said. “The monks help grow, harvest and prepare the wine that is sold at New Clairvaux to help fund the Sacred Stone Project. A few individual monks have let us sell some of their handiwork to fund the project.”
New Clairvaux Abbey, positioned in the midst of the fertile Sacramento Valley, is surrounded by an agricultural landscape. The monks rely on their vineyards and orchards to make their living, as well as help fund the reconstruction of Santa Maria de Ovila.
“We are a very small production. We produce just under 5,000 cases each year,” said Jennifer Hancock, a staff member at the New Clairvaux Vineyard.
The monks work side by side with New Clairvaux Vineyard staff, producing and bottling the wine. Since Cistercian monks have traditions in wine production that go back more than 800 years, New Clairvaux Vineyard has high standards to live up to.
“Cistercian monks are the world’s preeminent wine makers,” said Shawn Volland, New Clairvaux Vineyard staff member. “They taught the world how to train the vines on a trellis.”
As the first Cistercian winery in the U.S., the abbey vineyard is thriving, often selling out of their yearly production. Individuals from surrounding communities have shown their support through generous donations and the purchase of wine from the New Clairvaux Vineyard.
As the monks quietly disperse from their work to begin their prayers in a temporary building, currently serving as their church, it is easy to see how important the new church will be to them. When this building is complete the two centuries of silence will be broken. The echo of the monk’s voices will serve as a connecting thread to their brothers, who once sang and worshipped surrounded by the very same stones.
