Traduction for Babel-fish, altavista
For images view the article: http://www.elmundo.es/magazine/2004/248/1088158148.html

RELIGION THE CONFLICT OF THE SIJENA NUNS
"Overbooking" in the convent

The Monastery of Sijena (Huesca) does not give supply. Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian young people... aspire to enter in the order of the sisters of Bethlehem, whose rule forces to them to eat, to study, to work and to live single inside its hermitages, small houses raised in the monacal enclosure. They only meet to say, and they never speak. The city-planning norms that they protect to this building, declared National Artistic Monument, prohibit new constructions. In order to take care of the avalanche of vocations, from end of 2003, 22 of these nuns they live in other so many "roulottes" installed to about 200 meters on the convent. Magazine has entered its caravans.




TEXT And PHOTOGRAPHIES DE MARIA JOSE VIDAL

Twenty-two caravans, painted of green camouflage, appear aligned near the Monastery of Sijena (Huesca). Not yet the great heat blow has taken place, but within roulottes the temperature is already unbearable. Their inhabitants are not, indeed, lovers of the free air nor hikers. They are 22 nuns, sisters of Bethlehem, daughters of San Bruno, who from end of the last year have turned these cockpits their homes. The causes: the increase of vocations and that within the enclosure of the monastery, where other 24 nuns coexist, cannot be constructed new buildings.

The members of this congregation must live isolated, single, according to send to their rules hermits. Thus, each one of the nuns must occupy its own hermitage (cells of solitude). The convent only has 24 of these houses, and the norms of the National Patrimony do not allow to build in this loaded place of history, declared National Monument in 1923.

"the small houses are small constructions where the sisters pass most of the day. Their work and its life, absolutely individual, pass in their interior. Each hermitage counts on a place to pray, other to sleep, the cleanliness, a corner for the study or work and other to eat ", explains Ramon Reig, architect of Lleida and member of the Association of the Monastery.

Solitude. "But these small houses must be installed around a communitarian zone, claustro rectangular. Each sister accedes to him from her own patio, thus respecting her rule of life: to listen God in the solitude and silence. Its goal is to deepen the individuality because each person is unique for God ".

And for want of new hermitages, these caravans have become their cells. Located to 200 meters of the monacal enclosure, a rubbish wall, a vegetal mud wall, isolates roulottes of others. Inside there is no space for the comfort: only one blanket and crucifijo; a corner to sleep (they lie down in the ground), other to say.

Nevertheless, this camping has caused certain controversy, since from the City council of Villanueva de Sijena it is considered that its location is not legal nor safe because they are near the Alcanadre river. On the contrary, the Hydrographic Confederation of the Ebro has emitted a favorable writing to the installation of this camping.

Controversies separate, are surprising that - at a time characterized by the lack of vocations this order, along with clarisas of Lerma (Towns), is the one that receives more requests to enter the convent. Many aspirings have arrived at him through relatives, friends..., and from all the corners of Spain, of Italy, of Portugal, of France and Suramérica. Perhaps their attractiveness is the independence spirit that governs the sisters of Bethlehem, since, except for saying, the rest of the activities does them in the complete solitude of their cells.

The daughter of Fabrizio is one of them. The emotion obstructs this lawyer of the south of Italy. It has traveled with his woman until Villanueva de Sijena to see his daughter, also lawyer, who left the world to embrace this order anchoret. To Fabrizio it hurts the soul to him and with great difficulty it controls his feelings: "What miracle must exist, so that a young person, to the 24 years, in the best thing of the life, leaves everything and she leaves far? If Santiago de Compostela is a peregrination center, this is like a great light in half of as much descreimiento and absence of faith ", it still counts affected by the decision of his girl.

Vocations. And it is that the avalanche of young people - the average age of aspirings does not arrive at the 30 years is so, that the priora sister has been itself forced to transfer them, since they did not have individual cells. In which it goes of year, 10 have been sent to other communities of the south of Spain and to Lisbon. It is the only solution that exists until it reaches an agreement with the City council. The mayor, Ildefonso Salillas, argue that the city-planning norms prevent to build new land hermitages next to the convent. But Jose Antonio Millán, director of the legal cabinet Bald Millán, the great prestige in the community of Aragón, lawyer and representative of the religious community, is esperanzado. "We are on the way to obtaining a friendly agreement".

Ramon Reig Adds: "the Monastery is an architectonic jewel of cultural interest at national level. It has an extraordinary image of wall-plate and historical tradition. By its patrimonial value east religious enclosure must continue with that pious spirit to fulfill the purpose for which it was created: the monacal life. One is not due to weaken ". That is to say, that the sisters must continue living single.

"There is something important that she agrees to know: the Monastery of Sijena must go always united to the town of Villanueva de Sijena, as it were it in his origins. Because either of the monastery, it is or of the town. It must both have between an understanding and a total agreement ", says convinced Susana Grace, edile of the City council.

Almost all the nuns of the monastery - they live in him 46- have a professional past, lawyers in Right, Medicine, Psychology, Engineering, Computer science, Chemistry, History, Philosophy..., but nothing else to cross the walls of the convent, this one disappears. Nobody question nothing. All shuts up. They always keep silence. It only matters to say, to obey, to work and to be in solitude, because the essential for them is the contemplation and the oration. They rise to four of the dawn to pray, activity that they uninterruptedly develop until the eight. They eat in the morning to nine and they lie down to the eight of afternoon. They alternate the plegarias with the Biblical and theological study (they dedicate one hour to him and average) and the work (of four to five hours), whose function is, according to the spirit of the order, to speak of God. "What they do not say our words that our crafts say to it", it is his Maxima.

Indeed, it was this activity the one that took to Peace Dufoll, French filóloga, mother of family and enthusiastic defender of the congregation, to discover them. "Everything arose by a Bethlehem that gave to him to my husband years ago. The stature of the figures and the expression of his faces it seemed to me of such beauty and espiritualidad that I did not stop until knowing who was its author. And which it was my surprise when I found not to a tallista, but to a religious order that was dedicated to create these delicious pieces of imaginería ", Dufoll explains.

Many of these works expose in the entrance of hospedería of the Monastery, opened the public. Figures of the Virgin, the Boy, of San jOse, of Christ..., worked in wood and dolomita, mix with containers of ceramics of diverse forms and sizes. All take printed the word "Bethlehem" and part of them exports France.

The past. The history of this monastery goes back to century XII. Doña Sancha, queen of Aragón, commanded to construct it in the same place in which, apparently, she had appeared the Virgin. It was the time of the crossed ones and one became peregrination center. But that land was so unhealthy that the sovereign ordered to build a new town in a hill, to two kilometers of the convent. Nevertheless, during centuries this one continued being lived by nuns, the hospitable sisters or sanjuanistas sisters of the order of Jerusalem, until the Civil War exploded. Soon it was sacked and burned.

Peace Dufoll continues with the biography of the convent: "After that terrible time, the hospitable ones returned. In 1984 four nuns of the monástica order of Bethlehem and the Asuncio'n of the Virgin arrived at Sijena; a French congregation born in 1950. After their arrival, the hospitable sisters, moved by the lack of vocations, left the convent and they yielded it to the nuns of Bethlehem during a period of 99 years. These began the delicate work to recover part of the damaged zones of the convent, to work the Earth, to build the 24 hermitages and to obtain that it rehabilitated the church and the chapel ".

Now, a deep atmosphere of withdrawal surrounds the chapel, flanked by a off-white wood ashlar masonry. It sounds the bell. The nuns occupy their sites laterally watching the altar. They dress white habits in hood. And their offices with a rite characterized by a constant movement begin. They intone psalms, they rise, they kiss the image of the Virgin, they incline, they say... They are his little communitarian acts.

The ruins of claustro, the impressive and gorgeous nerves of the vault of the refectory, the matojos, the intense humidity and the pátina of moss that grows everywhere are part of the legend of this convent.





The most severe rules
Between the closing nuns also there are classes, mainly as far as the rigidity of the rule by which they are governed and to the conditions of life. The most rigid congregations, are, by this order, the Minims, Carmelite of the Mother the Wonders, Carmelite barefoot and Cartujas. Less rigid, Benedictine, the Cisterciens ones, Dominican or Agustines .

Uninformed prolonged. The most rigid orders ayunan during all cuaresma and the Advent. The minims have a perpetual vote of cuaresma. Because, as it stipulates his rule, "uninformed the corporal one purifies the mind, sublimates the senses, puts under the meat the spirit, does the contrito and humiliated heart, it dissipates fires of the concupiscencia, extinguishes the ardors of ' libídiné and ignites the torch of the abstention".

Voluntary prison . In general, the closing nuns as soon as they can leave the convent once they have entered him. If they leave is with explicit permission of the abbess and to go to the doctor in very serious cases or only to vote, although most of them she prefers to exert his right to the vote by mail. Many of them cannot leave not even to attend the funerales of their parents. The minims never leave the closing.

Mortificaciones corporal. The use of corporal mortificaciones is common in almost all the nuns of closing, mainly hair shirts and disciplines with which all the nights are whipped.

Disconnected of the world. In the convents of more rigid closing there is hardly no contact with the outside. Some has television neither radio nor receives press, to not being the pious magazines that takes to them the chaplain, who usually is, next to the little visits, the bond of information and union with the outside.

Obligatory silence. Silence is obligatory almost throughout the day and if it is essential to speak, they must do it "in low voice, with few words and religiously". Because God lives in silence.

Two letters to the year. Until writing letters perfectly it is regulated. In some congregations two letters to the year to their parents only can write. The minims cannot send letter some, not to be in extreme cases and with license of "Corectora", name that receive the superioras.

Nothing own. No nun of closing has nothing in property, except for her two habits and the strictly necessary thing for her personal cleanliness.

Clothes. The nuns of the Mother Wonders wear the same clothes in winter that in summer. Carmelite the barefoot ones go with canvas shoes all the year, even in winter. The minims of San Francisco de Paula must take a long habit "until the heels and honest, elaborated with a coarse cloth that has been woven with wool of black color, a hood of the same color and cíngulo", that can be cleared "neither by day nor at night if it is not for changing them, to clean them or to repair them".

Neither eggs nor cheese nor milk. To the minims totally it is prohibited them to eat "meats and fats, the milk eggs, butter, the cheese and nobody ' lacticinió, and all and each one of his compounds and derivatives". Diet which they only can skip in case of serious disease, but considering whenever "legally it is prohibited such doctors to advise to the patients for the corporal health what could become danger of the soul".

Thanks for the article,though i know some forgein words don't translate well,it was very interesting.
The Sijena nuns,who belonged to the Order of St.John can be found on the websie of the Knights of Malta.There is some thought that the current form of the Maltese Cross may have come from them.
And they are mentioned in Sitwells book on Monks Nuns and Monasteries.
Unfortunately the community didn't survive the Spanish Civil War.So I don't know of any other convents of Nuns of St.John.
Though the Teutonic Order has been revieved and has priests,nuns and brothers working for Holy Mother Church mainly in places like Germany and Austria.

They sound like Carthusians to me...Order of St. John...gotta look this up! Thanks for sharing...I love stuff like this...