Apart from it´s creation the monastery at San Millán went on enlarging itself little by little thanks to the numerous donations of which was the objective to win over the new monks in time with wealth.

The importance to acquire the monastery in the 10th century is understood by the fact that it is situated in the context of the profound religiousity of those years. If we also add to this that it was the proper monarchy of Navarra who worked to revalue the land and to politically assure the area, the concluding result was beneficiary. The monastery of Suso.

During these first years, the monks lived a colonised period, in which the monastery accumulated an excessive production for cattle and of visible human strength.

Some individuals attempted to obtain pardon for their sins as salvation of their souls behind the donations they offered to the monks. Although these acquisitions were also used to buy land and to change property. The coffers of the monastery were swelling with lands , vineyards, churches and mills etc.

This prosperity was interrupted in the last 10th of the 10th century, that was marked by inssessant tragedies and fights. The most outstanding was the attack of Almanzar (a victorious muslim war hero and strong man of Cordoba) that levelled nearly all of La Rioja, setting fire to the monastery at Suso.


It will be the King of Navarro, Sancho el Mayor, that after Almanzar had destroyed the emilianense monastery, that with renewed spirit, at the time of his linking with the Navarra monarchy.

 

The 11th century contemplated a world presided over by the omnipotence of the all powerful God, the life had a star protagonist: the earth. These reddish lands that sapped your strength to obtain alimentation. The agricultural cycles, were related to prayer and worship to God and the saints with the good harvests. A world in which until you looked a little further to the skies to deduce, by the colour of the clouds, if it would increase the caudal of the river with which to water the garden.

The monastery counted, then for ample geographical bases and investigators such as José Angel Garcia of Cortazas started to dominate a political emilianense supply, with more than one sufficient cereal production and horticulture.

 

In the 11th century the emilianense monaster lived in an era of prosperity thanks to the religiousity of the Middle Ages, that were proportioned between numeruos donations and the enlarging of it´s frontiers.

 

At the same time, the monks were renouncing to do specific task related with the agriculture and rose up as the shepard of San Millán,looking after the sheep, and the mills etc.

The 11th century was a period of recuperation for the monastery after the time of Almanzor, an enlargement of it´s frontiers, increase of possessions under the reign of Sancho III of Navarra and his son. The process of didn´t occur over night. The geograpgical base of the dominium little by little and it´s productions totally diversify.

 

The Monastery possessed vineyards, vegetable gardens, farms, with which it provided for itself.


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