Our Lady of Sopetran

Old Benedictine monastery of the Alcarria (Guadalajara)

In the Vega of the Badiel River, next to Torre del Burgo, the ruins of the ancient Benedictine monastery of Sopetran keep the memory of a Marian devotion of visigod roots that radiated throughout the Alcarria and gave rise to other homonymous sanctuaries.

Origin and history

The monastery of Santa Maria de Sopetran was an ancient Benedictine cenobium in the Vega del Badiel, within the term Hita. The regional historical tradition dates back to its first foundation in 611, in Visigoda times, under King Gundemaro, and records successive refoundations, the last in 1372 under the Archbishop of Toledo Gómez Manrique. The structure preserved corresponds essentially to the end of the 11th century and later stages. It was an important Spanish monastery in the Middle and Modern Ages; today the ruins of the monastery are preserved next to the hermitage of Our Lady of Sopetran.

Various traditions bring the Marian cult back to a miraculous intervention of the Virgin: the best known tells of its apparition to a Muslim infant named Ali Maimon on a fig tree, in the 11th century, with the conversion of the character and the release of captives; some versions even relate the name of Sopetran to the converted Moor. They are stories of popular piety, not confirmed by historiography. The apvocation of Sopetran radiated a very widespread communal devotion, until it gave rise to other homonymous sanctuaries - such as those of Almoharín and Jarilla de la Vera -, and the place remained the center of pilgrimage of the people of the Alcarria.

Own liturgical feast, formal patronage and canonical coronation: they are not recorded in the sources.