Description

 

There is the undocumented opinion that there was previously a mosque. Once the city was conquered by Fernando III, it was converted into a Christian temple and Don Rodrigo de Jiménez de Navarra officiated the first mass.

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It was a parish until 1843, however, the temple remained open to the cult until not too distant. In November of 1994 the Bishopric gave it to the Excellent City Council of Andújar for a cultural use and with the obligation of its restoration.

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It is a temple of three naves articulated in four sections. The first one conserves its primitive ribbed vault, not thus the three remaining ones that have vault of tube, decorated with lunettes whose edges are finished off with valance. Between the lunettes of each section, an eight-pointed star.

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Its main chapel was remodeled in 1646 by the elder bishop, Don Juan de Aranda y Salazar. It has a square floor covered with a half orange vault over pendentives in which there are shields with the lineage of Don Pedro and Don Luís Pérez de Vargas and Palomino.

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Its two covers are of a great simplicity, being the one of the feet of the temple, baroque and in stone, the one that presents a greater monumentality.

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The temple was housed in a Virgen del Carmen, from the old convent of the Carmelites, and the Christ of the Battles that were destroyed in the Civil War. The image of the Christ of the Battles was brought to the city by the same Fernando III and was exposed on the side of the epistle of the main chapel. In the year 1703 the brotherhood of his name was created. Its founders were middle-class workers, since only two of them had the "gift" treatment. The number of Brothers was thirty-three; the other accompanying members were the so-called "Slaves". When a Brother died, his son had preference to fill the vacancy left by his father and, to do so, he had to contribute alms of 12 reales and two pounds of wax. It was the obligation of the Brothers to go to the funeral of the deceased accompanied by twelve clergymen who had to carry a hacheta of a pound on fire. This brotherhood celebrated its celebration the third Sunday of Lent and the thirty of May, day of St. Fernando.

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As early as 1921, the local newspaper El Guadalquivir pointed out that this tradition so typical of Andujar was being lost. At the present time there are no vestiges of it.

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Association of Friends of the Patrimony of Andujar