Our Lady of Montesclaras

Royal Dominican Sanctuary · patron of the Mercy of Campoo

On the middle of the hill and the Ebro, in the south of Cantabria, the Royal Sanctuary of Montesclaras is the spiritual heart of the Campurian land; the Dominicans who guard it pray there every day the Rosary, and every spring they bless thousands of roses in the famous "Feast of the Rose."

Origin and history

The place of Montesclaras shows an ancient Christian continuity: the archaeological vestiges place a preromanic chapel into the X-XI centuries, on which the present temple rises. The Royal Sanctuary is a stable Dominican cenobium, whose friars serve the spiritual life of many peoples of the region. The tradition links the arrival of the image to the movements of the Spanish-Visigoda population that, fleeing the invasion, would have hidden it in a cave of the environment; account of traditional reconstruction, not coetanial document, to which are associated a venerated relics of hairs attested in a declaration of 1613.

Montesclaras is venerated as patron of the Mercy of Campoo and spiritual center of the area, to which the pilgrims come to give thanks, fulfill promises and ask for favors. Its most famous devotional feature is the "Festival of the Rose," on the last Sunday of May: thousands of faithful go up in Romeria, hundreds of roses are blessed in the open-air mass and the image is processed, and then the rose is preserved as a gesture of the sanctuary. The Dominicans pray there communitatively the Rosary, within the spirituality of their Order.

Canonical coronation: not found in the sources.