Iglesia de San Juan de Toledo de Lanata, church building in La Fueva, Spain
The Iglesia de San Juan de Toledo de Lanata is a Romanesque church in the Sobrarbe region. The building has a single nave that ends in three small apses and is covered by a rib vault in the center, creating an unusual structural arrangement in this area.
A Mozarabic or possibly Visigothic temple preceded the present church, which was rebuilt in the 12th century; a consecration letter is dated 1134. A Lombard master began the Romanesque work but did not finish it, and local Aragonese masons built most of the structure. Later changes were minor additions to the Romanesque model.
The 16th-century murals name the four evangelists in 16th-century Aragonese Romance rather than Latin: Sanct Matheu, Sanct Ioan, S. Marcos and Sanct Luc. On the triumphal arch, seated kings of Israel are painted with their names and identifying attributes, and the calendar 1599 appears somewhere in the murals. The right apse shows the Last Judgment, with an archangel weighing souls while Lucifer, red and horned, hooks them from the scales.
The church stands in the village of San Juan, in the municipality of La Fueva (Sobrarbe, Huesca). It keeps its role as the parish church of the village, so access depends on parish use rather than on a fixed visitor schedule. The interior is reached through the space of the former main door, now walled off, and a stair in the side chapel leads up to the upper floor.
Inside is a white quartz stone fragment preserved in an urn containing bone fragments whose origin remains a mystery. This mysterious object recalls reliquaries that were venerated in medieval churches.
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