2024, "El desaparecido convento de San Francisco de Valladolid: arquitectura, georradar y unos singulares sepultados" / "The disappeared Friary of Saint Francis, Valladolid: Architecture, Georadar and Unique Buried Bodies."
In 1506, the explorer Christopher Columbus was buried in the Franciscan Friary of St. Francis, Valladolid in Spain. He was laid to rest in a chapel which was, at the same time, the chapter house of the friary and opened onto the main...
moreIn 1506, the explorer Christopher Columbus was buried in the Franciscan Friary of St. Francis, Valladolid in Spain. He was laid to rest in a chapel which was, at the same time, the chapter house of the friary and opened onto the main cloister of said friary. During the late middle ages and early modern times, the friary was an important institution in the town and city of Valladolid.
In 1602, Red Hugh O'Donnell, the Irish chief from Donegal, died in Simancas near Valladolid. As was the case with Columbus a century earlier, Red Hugh was buried in the chapter house of St. Francis Friary. This was in keeping with his family's patronage of the Franciscan Order in Donegal. Two years later, O'Donnell's kinsman, the MacWilliam Bourke from Mayo in the west of Ireland, died in Valladolid. He shared the same Irish Franciscan confessor as O'Donnell, Flaithrí Ó Maolchonaire, who recorded that the MacWilliam Bourke was interred next to O'Donnell in the chapter house of St. Francis Friary, Valladolid.
As shown by Francisco García González, another Franciscan friar, Mateo de Oviedo, died in Valladolid at St. Francis Friary where he was buried on 10 January 1610. A decade earlier, Irish leaders regarded Oviedo as their best supporter at the court of Philip II. Oviedo served as archbishop of Dublin for a decade before his death.
Although this research preserves some schematic plans, contemporary details about the layout of the friary and supporting source material about its appearance are scarce. Nevertheless, a detailed description of the friary survives from 1660. Early seventeenth-century documentary evidence for the burials of Red Hugh O'Donnell and the MacWilliam Burke therefore enhances our understanding of the chapter house of the friary and the 1506 burial place of Columbus.
Located just south of the market and Plaza Mayor of Valladolid, the friary was subjected to exclaustration and confiscation from 1835-1836. Its buildings were completely destroyed from 1837 and, in the following years, a new neighbourhood was built on its site, opening onto two streets, the current Constitución and Menéndez Pelayo. A Ground-Penetrating Radar survey was conducted in December of 2021, directed by the archaeologist, Javier Quintana López, (Patrimonio Inteligente). Completed by Geozone Asesores S.L., this intervention covered a sizeable part of the area of the current Constitución and Menéndez Pelayo streets, where the friary was located. The zone where Christopher Columbus was first buried in 1506 was located, as well as further friary buildings nearby. This Ground-Penetrating Radar intervention identified correlations between the results and the plan of the chapel proposed in the work of Marcial Castro in 2021.
