Iglesia de Santiago el Real, Church in Medina del Campo, Spain

The Iglesia de Santiago el Real in Medina del Campo is a brick church with a single rectangular nave, side chapels connected by openings in the transverse walls, a wide crossing and a square head. It is covered by star-ribbed vaults from the late Gothic period with Renaissance decoration, and the side chapels have barrel vaults. The sacristy and relicario lie behind the head.

A church dedicated to Santiago already existed in Medina del Campo by 1177, at the end of today's calle de Santa Teresa. The present building was begun in July 1553 as the church of the Jesuit novitiate, with the first stone laid by Francisco de Borja; it opened for worship ten years later. In 1770 the parish moved here and took the name Santiago el Real, and the tower was added in 1799.

The church keeps the recumbent statue of its founders, Pedro Cuadrado and Francisca Manjón, praying in a niche on the Gospel wall; they paid for the building. The high altar is crowned by a mounted figure of Saint James the Moor-slayer, brought from the old parish. The two reliquary altarpieces of 1635 hold busts for relics of different saints.

The church stands on the plaza de Santiago, facing the site of the former Jesuit college; the entrance is at the west end, under the tower built in 1799 for the bells. The sacristy and the relicario lie behind the square head of the church, the relicario opening off the gospel side of the crossing. The two relicario altarpieces of 1635 face each other on the crossing walls.

The two relicario altarpieces on the transept walls, installed in 1635, follow Rainaldi's design for the canonisation ceremony of Saint Charles Borromeo. Their titular images, Jesus at the Column and the Virgin with the Child, were carved between 1563 and 1565 by the Jesuit brother Domingo Beltrán de Otazu, and both are ringed by small busts made to hold saints' relics.