Santa María la Blanca: The Synagogue Dressed in Lace
Why is it significant?
From the street, the church of Santa María la Blanca hardly announces itself: a stone doorway, a plain wall, a small belfry. Step closer to the doorway, though, because it is older than everything behind it. This was a synagogue.
Key Facts
| Place | Santa María la Blanca: The Synagogue Dressed in Lace |
|---|---|
| Address | Calle Santa María la Blanca 5, 41004 Sevilla, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 37.38670, -5.98660 |
| Part of Walk | The Lost Judería of Seville: Santa Cruz, Susona and the Synagogues That Became Churches |
| Generated | Generated |
From the street, the church of Santa María la Blanca hardly announces itself: a stone doorway, a plain wall, a small belfry. Step closer to the doorway, though, because it is older than everything behind it.
This was a synagogue. After the assault of 1391 it was taken from the Jewish community and consecrated as a church, under the name Santa María la Blanca. And here is the strange coincidence: in Toledo, another famous former synagogue carries exactly the same name. Two cities, two stolen houses of prayer, both rededicated to the White Virgin.
Then, in the 1660s, the church was completely rebuilt, and the reason was a party. In 1661 Pope Alexander the Seventh issued a document favouring the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, a cause Seville had championed passionately for decades, and the city celebrated for weeks. This church was remade for the occasion. Inside, if the door is open, look up: the vaults are covered in white plaster ornament so dense it looks like lace, held up by slim columns of pink marble.
For the new church Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, the greatest painter in Seville, made four half-moon canvases. Two of them tell the legend of how a Roman patrician and his wife dreamed of a summer snowfall that showed them where to build a church to the Virgin. They are among the loveliest things Murillo ever painted... and you will not find them here. During the French occupation of Seville, from 1810 to 1812, they were carried off, and after a long journey they ended up in the Prado in Madrid.
So the church holds two kinds of absence: the synagogue that vanished inside it, and the paintings that vanished out of it. And yet it is still a living parish, with weddings and baptisms under that lace ceiling. Continue east to the end of Calle Santa María la Blanca, where the old quarter met the outside world at a gate.