With the still recent echoes of the day of the Immaculate Conception and as the end of 2025 approaches, I do not want to neglect the 300 years that a church in Cordoba dedicated to the Immaculate Conception. Maybe not because of this name … familiar, but if I tell you the Cistercian convent in the street Carbonell and Morandof course yes. It was occupied by Cistercian nuns, among whom Cordoba once had five communities, only that of La Encarnación remaining today. This convent has a curious story that I will tell you.
Founded in Guadalcázar in 1620 by Luis Fernández de Córdoba y Mendoza, bishop of Salamanca, Málaga, Compostela and Seville, it moved to Córdoba in the mid-17th century for health reasons. Its church was consecrated in 1725 and financed by the bishop. Marcelino Siurithe prelate builder par excellence in the history of the diocese, who designed the squares of San Andrés and the Capuchins and promoted the necessary reforms in the churches of San Andrés, Sainte MarinaCapuchins, San Hipólito or Corpus Christi.
On its baroque granite facade is an Immaculate Conception. The very small interior consists of a nave with a transept. Its walls are heterogeneous and filled with paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries. In its main altarpiece, the sculptures of Saint Benedict and Saint Bernard and, in the attic, a large canvas of the Immaculate Conception. It preserves a collection of religious silverware of great historical and artistic value. And it has the particularity of having several superimposed floors, so that the facade that faces Alfaros Street, in which the wall has been integrated, presents the convent rooms above the houses.
Its nuns were renowned for their embroidery work and the nuns were founded here in 1976. Blood Brotherhoodknown precisely as the Cistercian and of important presence in our Holy Week. Part of its story ended in April 2017, when the last five nuns, for age reasons, were transferred to other destinations. But the good news was that the temple was not closed. Closing a church, a convent, even in the center of our modern cities, is closing a space of prayer and spirituality which, what do you want me to tell you, is no small matter in this world of precipitation, relativism and materialism.
In the same 2017, the Cistercian order, which remains owner of the property, did not put any obstacle to the initiative of the bishopric to move the order of Cistercians to the convent and the church. Slaves of the Eucharist and Santa María Virgen, which until then were located in the hermitage of the Virgen de la Salud. Thus, the Church of the Immaculate Conception celebrated its 300th anniversary, quietly, but open and fulfilling its mission.
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