St. Bernard de Clairvaux Church

St. Bernard de Clairvaux Church ( es, Monasterio Español de Sacramenia) is a medieval Spanish monastery cloister which was built in the town of Sacramenia in Segovia, Spain, in the 12th century but dismantled in the 20th century and shipped to New York City in the United States. It was eventually reassembled at 16711 West Dixie Highway, North Miami Beach, Florida, where it is now an Episcopal church and tourist attraction called Ancient Spanish Monastery.

History from 1133–1926

The Cistercian monastery was constructed during the years 1133–1141.
It was originally named "Monastery of Our Lady, Queen of the Angels", or the "Royal Monastery of Saint Mary" (Spanish: ''Santa María la Real''), but it was renamed to honor Bernard of Clairvaux (in Spanish ''San Bernardo de Claraval)'' upon his canonization. Use of the building as a Cistercian monastery lasted for almost 700 years until it was seized and sold off to be used as a granary and a stable during a period of social unrest in the 1830s.‹ref›Joanne Elaine Sowell, The Monastery of Sacramenia and Twelfth-Century Cistercian Architecture in Spain, Florida State University, Doctoral Dissertation, 1985‹/ref›

It was located in an area known as ''Coto de San Bernardo'' (St. Bernard land preserve), two miles from Sacramenia in the province of Segovia (Spain). The Monasterio was in a mountain region at 830 m above sea level, on a high plateau near the Sierra de Guadarrama, the region is known for extreme weather.
The area has medieval churches, chapels, monasteries, walls, castles, within the natural landscape of the Duratón River Gorges.
The traditional access to the monastery was an ancient path with the masonry ruins of a watermill. The monastery was constructed with necessary defensive strength among a web of minor fortresses in an area heavily populated by Muslims.

The monastery was founded by Alfonso VII of Castile and León and built in the traditional style of Cistercian Romanesque architecture in Spain. Alfonso VII had introduced the Cistercians monasteries into Spain and after the monastery's completion, he settled in place Cistercian monks who had come from France. Alfonso VII, and afterward his grandson Alfonso VIII of Castile, extended privileges to the monastery several times in order to exempt rights of way tax for people and goods, and grant freedom of movement for their grazing flocks.

The Christian conquests and reconquests were followed by migrations of Muslims for religious reasons that could cause the depopulation of entire areas. Muslims had populated the surviving cities that had been founded during the Roman Empire and Visigothic civilization. The area of Segovia had a large Muslim population which resisted the Christian reconquest several times after attempts at cultural assimilation. The newly founded monasteries served, among other things, as centers of evangelization and colonization. Abundant irrigation systems, canals, ditches, and castles had already been constructed during the Muslim era.
The Muslim people established their cities on the banks of rivers, because their economy was based on agriculture, concentrating on the cultivation of irrigated land. Some areas of the Pyrenees had not been effectively occupied because of the high altitude, but the traffic of people and goods was controlled by establishing fortified steps at the entrance to the valleys.

Because of Muslim occupation, the nobles and Christian clergy had settled mostly in the north of present-day Spain, then small independent Christian kingdoms. There they began to organize churches and monasteries around which the Christian communities soon developed. Religious communities revived trade among other Iberian towns especially in wool and salt, also the cultivation of vines and raising of livestock.
Differences between newly arrived monks and earlier residents of the area caused altercations concerning the passage of merchant mule caravans, the exploitation of salt, water use in the region's villages, dominion over the towns, pastures, and tithes.

Some parts of the monastery were rebuilt after being destroyed by fire in 1641. The abbey remained an active monastic community until 1835. The monastery was closed about 1836-1840 during Isabella II of Spain's rule as a consequence of the Ecclesiastical Confiscations of Mendizábal