Iglesia de Santa Leocadia, Toledo

Coordinates: 39°51′34.76″N 4°1′42.01″W / 39.8596556°N 4.0283361°W / 39.8596556; -4.0283361

Tower and apse of the church
Portal

The Iglesia de Santa Leocadia is a church located in Toledo, in Castile-La Mancha, Spain. The Toledan tradition maintains that this church is built on the site of the house where Saint Leocadia of Toledo was born, to which would belong a small underground room, where it is affirmed that it made prayer. This cave corresponds to the crypt located next to the right pillar of the presbytery, and is covered with a plaster crossery vault, which can be dated in the first half of the 16th century. In the tower and in the facade of the church are preserved, embedded, some fragments of Visigothic style's reliefs.

It dates back to the 11th Century, but the oldest remains of its construction date from the 13th Century. The only remaining Mudéjar elements are the tower, part of the entrance and the apse. The present appearance is due to the changes at the end of the 18th century, ordered by the queen Maria Luisa de Parma, wife of Carlos IV, a devout follower of the saint.[1]

The parish is mentioned in documents from the middle of the 12th century, with the denomination of "Santa Leocadia within Toledo", to differentiate it from another church, with the same name, "next to the alcázar", built in the place where the saint was in prison, and the basilica outside the walls, "of the outside", Cristo de la Vega, where she was buried. Both the present church and the tower respond, in their older parts, to the Toledan Mudéjar of the end of the 13th century, which leads to think that existed another previous building, of which have not been remains. There are only references to think that the primitive arrangement was that of an isolated building, separated of the convento de Santo Domingo el Antiguo by a street that was suppressed, in times of Alfonso X of Castile, when extending that convent.

References

  1. ↑ toledo-turismo.com. "Church of Santa Leocadia".
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