San Sebastián de Silos: The church dedicated or consecrated around 1088 through the documentation and archaeological remains.

Abstract

This article addresses the reconstruction of the church that was dedicated or consecrated around 1088. We have used the documents found in the monastery, mainly descriptions from the 16th and especially the 18th century, and other information provided by some monks from Silos in the 17th century. To this, we must add the reinterpretation of the archaeological remains, together with the information in the Memoriae Silenses. From all this, we propose the chronology of the church and its relation with the general plan of the Romanesque monastery. Based on archaeological information from the north wall of the church and the foundations of the tower, together with the descriptions from when the building was demolished in 1761 and information from coins, we are able to conjecture about the date and characteristics of the building1.