CHURCH OF SAN BENITO

The parish of San Benito was founded at the beginning of the 12th century by people from southern France, known as “gaellici”. They arrived in the city with the medieval repopulation and settled in the area outside the first medieval wall, very close to the Puerta del Sol.

The church hosted and gave its name to the “Faction of San Benito”, one of the two factions of nobles into which the city of Salamanca was divided at the end of the Middle Ages. Even today, one of the bells in the tower is named after “Los Bandos” (The Factions). The disputes and confrontations with the Faction of Santo Tomé marked some of the bloodiest episodes in the city's history, including the legendary story of María la Brava and the decisive role of Saint John of Sahagún in pacifying the factions.

Several of the palaces near the church belonged to members of the Maldonado family, who made this temple their burial site. Likewise, Archbishop Fonseca II, a descendant on his mother's side of a branch of the Maldonados, had his family residence on the current Calle de la Compañía, at the corner with Calle Cañizal. He was baptized in this church and, after the destruction of the Romanesque temple by fire, ordered its reconstruction between 1506-1511.

It functioned as a parish until the parochial reform at the end of the 19th century, when it became an annex to the Church of La Purísima. It was then ceded to the Salesians to teach doctrine to the children of workers. In 1939, there was a plan to demolish it because part of its vaults were in ruins, but thanks to popular outcry against its disappearance, it was finally restored and opened for worship.

Currently, it is the canonical seat of the Seraphic Brotherhood of the Christ of Agony.

The exterior of the temple presents a massive and solid appearance. From its walls protrude enormous buttresses that externally support the great thrust of the Gothic vaults of its single nave. On them display the four coats of arms of Don Alonso de Fonseca, Archbishop of Santiago: Fonseca, Acevedo, Ulloa, and Maldonado.

The main portal opens on the southern facade, nestled between two buttresses, and protected by a small roof supported by a Renaissance column. Its rich flamboyant Gothic style decoration is surprising to visitors, contrasting with the flatness and sobriety of the church's walls. It features a basket-handle arch and is framed between two pilasters topped with richly decorated pinnacles. Above the basket-handle arch, a series of superimposed arches follow, with rich decoration of cardinas, buds, and small animals. A beautiful scene of the Annunciation stands out, with the Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin housed in separate ogee arches. The figure of God the Father presides over the scene. The composition is completed with the coats of arms of Fonseca and Acevedo, main surnames of Archbishop Fonseca II.

At the end of the 17th century, José de Churriguera was commissioned to build a chapel-dressing room to house the image of Our Lady of Perpetual Help (Nuestra Señora del Socorro). On the exterior, the dressing room window opens between two buttresses framed by pilasters decorated with flowers, fruits, and foliage.

INTERIOR
The interior, with a single nave, is spacious and open, without columns to hinder the contemplation of the main altar. The chancel, narrower than the nave, is polygonal. It has stellar ribbed vaults whose arches rest on late Gothic corbels, adorned with spheres, cardinas, and a hare on one of them. The absence of columns attached to the walls allowed for maximum use of the wall surface to open burial niches. However, the lack of columns or pilasters to counteract the weight of the vaults caused numerous stability problems and necessitated the construction of enormous buttresses on the exterior of the temple.

THE ALTARPIECE
The church had a Renaissance altarpiece carved in wood. At the end of the 18th century, facing the threat of ruin of the main chapel, they decided to replace it with another made of stone to support the vault.
The stone altarpiece is a Neoclassical work by Eustaquio Román and is painted to imitate marble. It is structured in two bodies, separated by an entablature of triglyphs and metopes. In the first body, the two side sections house the sculptures of Saint Benedict and Saint Anthony the Abbot. The central section contains a chapel-dressing room with a modern image of the Immaculate Conception that replaces the previous Virgin of Perpetual Help. The central section of the upper body is occupied by a wooden Calvary from the early 16th century, flanked by sculptures of Saint Paul the Hermit and Saint Joachim. The Calvary comes from the disappeared altarpiece of the Chapel of Saint Jerome at the University of Salamanca and was ceded to the parish at the end of the 18th century. Its authorship is debated, with some attributing it to Gil de Ronza and others to Diego de Siloé. The attic features two side paintings with the theme of the Annunciation and in the central section, the scene of the Coronation of the Virgin.

FUNERARY USE OF THE CHURCH
The Church of San Benito became the burial place for the Maldonado family, many of whom had their palaces in Plaza de San Benito or its immediate vicinity. The typology of all the tombs corresponds to the arcosolium embedded in the wall, thus not obstructing the view of the main altar and allowing the church to have greater capacity.
In the main chapel, there are two beautiful tombs within burial niches. In the one on the Gospel side rests Arias Pérez Maldonado, dressed in armor with a page at his feet. In the one on the Epistle side, dressed in attire from the time of the Catholic Monarchs. Among the numerous tombs, that of Don Rodrigo Maldonado de Monleón stands out. This nobleman seized Monleón Castle and kept its inhabitants subjugated, who, desperate, appealed to King Ferdinand the Catholic for help. The monarch captured Maldonado and, faced with his wife's firm refusal to return the fortress, ordered a gallows to be erected in front of the castle to execute him. Finally, the occupants yielded and handed over the castle to the king.