Church of Santa Engracia de Zaragoza

The Church of Santa Engracia de Zaragoza is a basilica church in Zaragoza, Spain. It was built on the spot where Saint Engratia and her companions were said to have been martyred in 303 AD. The Basilica of Santa Engracia is located at Plaza de Santa Engracia.

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Spanish. (December 2021) Click [show] for important translation instructions.

View a machine-translated version of the Spanish article.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Spanish Wikipedia article at [[:es:Basílica de Santa Engracia (Zaragoza)]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|es|Basílica de Santa Engracia (Zaragoza)}} to the talk page.
For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

History

The Basilica of Santa Engracia is believed to have been built on the spot where Saint Engratia and her companions were said to have been martyred in 303 AD. Early in the fourth century, a tomb was built on the site of the Christian-Roman necropolis. Around 609 the Abbey of Santa Engracia was established to house the relics of Saint Engratia and the many martyrs of Saragossa.^[1]

The abbey was demolished around 1492 when Ferdinand II of Aragon founded the Hieronymus monastery of Santa Engracia. After his election to the papacy, Pope Hadrian VI passed through Zaragoza on his way to Rome, spending Holy Week at Santa Egratia. King Philip III visited in 1599.

The monastery church was largely destroyed in the Siege of Saragossa (1809) during the Spanish War of Independence, with only the crypt and the facade being left.^[2]

Pope John Paul II honored the church with the designation of a minor basilica on the occasion of his visit in 1982.

Remove ads

Architecture

The façade was begun around 1511 by Gil Morlanes El Viejo and completed by his son five years later. It was modified between 1754 and 1759 after part of the church collapsed. Part of the façade is all that remains of the monastery church, when the present building was constructed between 1891 and 1899.

The most significant elements of the crypt are the two Early Christian sarcophagi of the fourth century, which were discovered in 1737.

Remove ads

Church of Santa Engracia de Zaragoza

History

Architecture

References

External links

Wikiwand - on