San Bartolomé and Calle Levíes
Why is it significant?
Stop in front of the calm, rather severe facade of San Bartolomé, all straight lines and pale stone, on a lane so quiet you can hear the swifts. It looks like a church built by people who had read about ancient Rome in books... which is roughly what it is.
Key Facts
| Place | San Bartolomé and Calle Levíes |
|---|---|
| Address | Calle Virgen de la Alegría, 41004 Sevilla, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 37.38800, -5.98660 |
| Part of Walk | The Lost Judería of Seville: Santa Cruz, Susona and the Synagogues That Became Churches |
| Generated | Generated |
Stop in front of the calm, rather severe facade of San Bartolomé, all straight lines and pale stone, on a lane so quiet you can hear the swifts. It looks like a church built by people who had read about ancient Rome in books... which is roughly what it is.
The building you see went up in the decades either side of 1800, in the neoclassical taste of the time. But the parish is far older, and Sevillian tradition holds that one of the synagogues of the Judería stood on or near this spot until 1391, when it was taken and turned into a church. The new facade did a good job of hiding that history. Most worshippers walking in today have no idea of it.
Now look at the street sign on the corner: Calle Levíes. The Leví family. The most famous man of that name was Samuel ha-Leví, treasurer to King Pedro the First of Castile in the fourteenth century. He was so powerful that in Toledo he built a magnificent synagogue, the one now called El Tránsito, with the king's own coat of arms in its plaster. Tradition places his houses here in Seville, on this street. Then the king turned on him, as kings did. Samuel was arrested, and around 1360 he died in prison.
There is a second twist. The palace a few steps along, the house of the Mañara family, is where Miguel de Mañara was born in 1627. As a young nobleman he had a reputation for gambling, duels and seduction, and many Sevillians still link him with the legend of Don Juan. Then his young wife died, and Mañara changed completely. He spent the rest of his life burying the poor and nursing the sick, at the Hospital de la Caridad by the river.
So on one short street you have a Jewish treasurer brought down by his king, and a Christian rake who became something close to a saint. Seville likes to put its extremes next door to each other. Walk back south a few steps to the church on Calle Santa María la Blanca, whose name holds a surprise.