Lo, there was light

It was curious going all that way just to see a patch of sunlight.

It all started with a message from our great friend, Ana Cervera,. What she doesn’t know about things happening in Valencia just isn’t worth knowing. She’s also good at getting us off our backsides to go and take advantage of them.

“The monastery of St Michael and the Kings is having an open day on the 29th of September,” she told us. “Let me know if you want to go and I’ll reserve places.”

We’d seen the monastery from outside but had never been in. It looked worth visiting, though, so we naturally agreed.

Back she came to us. “We’re booked on the tour at 12:00. Let’s meet at the main entrance at 8:45”. 

8:45 for a 12.00 tour? It struck me as a little early.

“Well, we can go for a snack and a coffee, can’t we?” Ana assured me. 

She was right of course, and there were far worse ways to spend two or three hours than chatting with Ana, so I raised no further objections.

We duly arrived at 8:45, despite the early start. Well, not early compared to what many working people face on weekdays, but early all the same for the retired, like us, who enjoy a lie-in. Especially since we had to walk the dogs before we left.

We joined the queue that was already forming outside the main gate. And that’s when Ana explained to me that we needed to be at the crypt by 9:30 to see the famous light beam. Whose fame, I have to admit, hadn’t reached me.

Still, we were there on time. Down the steps we went and – lo and behold – there, lying on the floor, after passing through a long channel cut through the stone, was indeed the patch of light we’d been told about. 

The patch of light that turned out to be more
remarkable than I at first thought

Dare I admit it? It really didn’t make that much of an impression on me. Though, as I later discovered, that was mostly down to my not knowing the story.

To be fair, the monastery itself was impressive enough. And it has its own fine story. 

It’s been many things in its time. An Arab farm. A first monastery that fell into decrepitude. A new monastery built on the orders of the Viceroys of Valencia. They called it St Michael of the Kings, by the way, and I was relieved to discover that the kings in question weren’t for the usual ‘Catholic Kings’ of Spain, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabel of Castile, who first united the kingdom under one monarchy. No, the monastery honours the three kings of Orient, the ones who in the Gospel story brought gifts to the infant Jesus, and whose day, the 6th of January, is a major celebration throughout Spain, the day when the kids get presents just like Jesus (though these days gold, frankincense and myrrh tend to give way to video games, sports equipment or toys). 

Later, the monastery became an artillery barracks during the French occupation, a women’s prison, a men’s prison, and now, finally, the Legal Deposit Library for the Community of Valencia. 

Forty years ago, I did some research in the British Library in London. This was in the round reading room inside the British Museum building, before the Library moved to its present new location. It was under that same soaring dome that Karl Marx worked, and it was quite a kick to be doing research in the same place as that old, bearded German troublemaker. 

It was there I learned about Legal Deposit Libraries, or Copyright Libraries as we sometimes call them in Britain. They’re libraries which have the right to at least one copy of any material published within the territory for which they’re responsible. The United Kingdom has six: the British Library, the libraries of the two ancient universities, the Bodleian in Oxford and the University Library in Cambridge, and the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales. 

The sixth came as a surprise: it’s the library of Trinity College Dublin, which isn’t even in the UK. As is well known, the separation between the UK and Ireland wasn’t amicable. But it seems that in all the noise and smoke, no one thought of removing Trinity College from the list of copyright libraries. Consequently, to this day, it’s entitled to a copy of any book published in the United Kingdom.

Only the British Library exercises that right in full, collecting a copy of everything published in the country. The others pick and choose what they want. 

The Spanish Legal Deposit Library is in Madrid. It takes two copies of any publication anywhere in Spain. As for the Deposit Library of the Community of Valencia, it takes a copy of anything published in Valencia, and stores it in steel cabinets, in rooms floodable with uninflammable gas in case of fire. Already a million items strong, it has room for a further million, a pretty impressive collection.

Our visit took us into the depository and our guide showed us a couple of its more remarkable possessions.

Our guide to the Valencian Legal Deposit Library
showing us a facsimile produced in Valencia
(so liable to be included in the library) of an
illuminated manuscript originally made in Sweden
(which wouldn’t have been)

But back to the monastery itself. As I said, the second monastic structure was set up by the joint Viceroys of Valencia, who were Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria, and his wife, Germaine de Foix.

“Calabria?” I hear you saying, “Isn’t that in Italy?”

Well, yes. But this was the time when Spain was the world’s superpower, and much of Italy was Spanish. The Duke of Calabria was a cousin of Ferdinand of Aragon. That’s the one who was half the Ferdinand-and-Isabella show.

Anyway, Germaine de Foix asked to be buried in the new monastery. She died before enough of the building was complete to fulfil her wish. In fact, the monastery was never completed, since when her husband died, the money ran out, so one of the two courtyards has fine cloisters and the other doesn’t. 

One of the two cloisters planned,
but the only one completed

In time, both husband and wife were buried in the chapel. Later, though, it was decided to move their sarcophagi down to the crypt. Then in 2006, archaeologists decided to investigate those great stone coffins themselves. To everyone’s astonishment, they turned out not to contain bodies. That was a hard finding to reconcile with the tradition that both were in the crypt.

So they kept looking. With a radar probe they checked out the whole place and, eventually, tracked them down.

There were indeed bodies, undoubtedly those of the viceroys and two others from their family. Simply, they weren’t in the sarcophagi, but under the paving stones on the floor.

And then they realised something else. The famous light, coming from a window on a staircase outside the crypt, then travelling along a channel cut through the rock, and hitting the floor, only did so on the 29th of September each year. That happens to be the feast of St Michael, patron of the monastery.

What’s more, the light falls right above where the bodies are buried.

The light is therefore their tombstone. It shines down on them annually, on the holy day of the saint they had chosen to honour. A clever piece of architectural work, making the light far more impressive than I’d thought, and far more touching.

That was well worth getting up for a little early...