The Chapel of Our Lady of Chiquinquirá is a temple of
Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
worship, dedicated to the Virgin Mary under the title of
Our Lady of Chiquinquirá. It is located in the eastern side of the main square of
La Ceja, Colombia, and belongs to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the
Diocese of Sonsón-Rionegro.
The chapel contains the remains of some prominent Colombian people, such as the poet
Gregorio Gutiérrez González and his wife Julia de Isaza, former President Juan de Dios Aranzazu, the first president of Colombia from
Antioquia,
and political and business leader José María Bernal.
The building has a colonial style, with a singular rectangular
nave
The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...
. It houses a collection of paintings of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, among which include works by the Colombian master
Gregorio Vasquez de Arce y Ceballos
Gregorio is a masculine given name and a surname. It may refer to:
Given name
* Gregorio Conrado Álvarez (1925–2016), Uruguayan army general and de facto President of Uruguay from 1981 until 1985
* Gregorio Álvarez (historian) (1889–1986), A ...
. For that reason, in 1968, Monsignor Alfonso Uribe Jaramillo, bishop of Sonsón-Rionegro, declared the church a "Temple Museum of Religious Art". On November 2, 1995, the national government also declared it a
national monument of Colombia
The National Monuments of Colombia ( es, Monumentos Nacionales de Colombia) are the set of properties, nature reserves, archaeological sites, historic districts, urban areas and property that, for values of authenticity, originality, aesthetics, ...
.
History
In 1820, construction of the chapel began on land donated by María Josefa Marulanda. The project was financed by Bárbara Villegas, whose family was devoted to the Virgin Mary of Chiquinquirá. This chapel replaced one that was built in El Hato in the 18th century, which was dedicated to La Chinca and was demolished in 1792. Goods that belonged to the chapels of El Burro, El Hato and Chaparral were brought to this chapel for its endowment.
The
bishops of Antioquia, Fray Mariano Garnica y Orjuela, during his first pastoral visit to
La Ceja in 1829, ordered that all be moved to the parish church built by Father Mateo Cardona. As a result, the chapel was dismantled and abandoned.
In 1853, due to the expansion of the church of Our Lady of Carmen, worship returned to the chapel for five years.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chapel of Our Lady of Chiquinquira
National Monuments of Colombia
Churches in Colombia