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The Pantheon of Asturian Kings in a chapel of Nuestra Señora del Rey Casto in the Cathedral of San Salvador, Oviedo, Spain. It is the burial place of many of the rulers of the medieval kingdoms of Asturias and León. The name ''Nuestra Señora del Rey Casto'' ("Our Lady of the Chaste King") alludes to Alfonso II of Asturias, known as ''"the Chaste"'', considered the founder of the cathedral. The original royal pantheon was located in the 9th-century Church of Nuestra Señora del Rey Casto on the same site. On the initiative of Tomás Reluz, Bishop of Oviedo, that pantheon and the church were demolished in the early 18th century due to their poor state of conservation. Both were rebuilt and reconsecrated in 1712. == The primitive Pantheon of Kings of the Cathedral of Oviedo == In the 9th century Alfonso II of Asturias, king of Asturias, ordered the erection of a church of Our Lady in his new capital of Oviedo, with the intention of establishing a royal pantheon as a final resting place for himself and his wife, queen Berta. This church later became know in his honor as the Iglesia de Nuestra Señora del Rey Casto ("Church of Our Lady of the Chaste King"). The primitive Pantheon of Kings was located in the narthex of the church. Rather than the church being entered through the narthex as is customary, the main entrance was through doorway in the southern arm of the church, with the narthex being dedicated entirely as place of entombment for Asturian monarchs. The primitive pantheon was a small oblong room wide (the same width as the principal nave of the church), deep, and somewhere between and in height. The ceiling was of wood, and over the pantheon was the upper choir of the church, which, as in the churches of San Miguel de Lillo and San Salvador de Valdediós, was located in the narthex. On either side of the royal pantheon, were small closet-like rooms, one of which contained the staircase to the choir upstairs. The other small room may have been for storage of items used during religious services. The pantheon was connected to the main sanctuary of the church through a wide door near the main altar of the church; a small window also connected the pantheon to the sanctuary. Both, according to the chroniclers of the time, were closed with heavy iron bars that nearly prevented any sunlight from entering the pantheon.〔 Fortunato de Selgas, (''La primitiva basílica de Santa María del rey Casto de Oviedo y su real panteón'' ), 20 May 1887. Accessed online on cervantesvirtual.com.〕 Humble in appearance, the royal pantheon received the bodies of numerous members of the Asturian-Leonese royal family over the course of several centuries. According to the chroniclers of the period, the tombs were quite close together, to the point where it was not possible to walk between them; for lack of space, some members of the royal family were entombed elsewhere in the church. Not all of the bodies were entombed in the walls or in freestanding tombs; some were buried in the floor, their graves covered by unadorned slabs of stone, in most cases without inscriptions. Near the staircase connecting the church to the upper choir was a tomb that was much venerated in the 16th century, owing to the widespread belief that saints were buried there. Nonetheless, chronicler Ambrosio de Morales believed that by that time the bodies that had been buried there had been removed to another place. The tomb was covered with a marble slab. A worn and nearly illegible Latin inscription read ''"Adepti...Regna Celestia potiti"''.〔 It is impossible to know exactly what the inscription may have originally said, but ''Regna Celestia'' is "the Kingdom of Heaven" and ''adepti'' and ''potiti'' both mean "obtained" or "attained". In the royal pantheon, near the entrance, some above the floor, was a tomb covered by a roughly worked lid without adornment or inscription. Nonetheless, tradition and the preeminent location of the tomb led to general agreement among historians that it was the tomb of Alfonso II, founder of the church and of the royal pantheon.〔 Several other members of the Asturian-Leonese royal family were entombed elsewhere in the primitive Church of Nuestra Señora del Rey Casto, outside the royal pantheon:〔 * Fruela I of Asturias (722-768), king of Asturias. Son of Alfonso I of Asturias "the Catholic" and queen Ermesinda.〔Tradition says that in one of the tombs of the church, sheltered by an arch, rested the remains of this king and his wife queen Munia of Álava, and that both bodies had been moved here, after having been entombed in the primitive church of San Salvador of Oviedo, on the orders of their son Alfonso II "the Chaste".〕 * Queen Munia de Álava, wife of Fruela I and mother of Alfonso II "the Chaste". * Queen Elvira Menéndez (?-921), wife of Ordoño II of León and mother of Alfonso IV of León and Ramiro II of León. * Queen Urraca Sánchez (?-956), wife of Ramiro II and mother of Sancho I of León.〔Other authors state that the Queen Urraca entombed here is not the wife of Ramiro II but the wife of the infante Ramiro, aspirant to the throne and son of Alfonso III of Asturias "the Great".〕 * Queen Teresa Ansúrez (?-997), wife of Sancho I, and mother of Ramiro III of León. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Pantheon of Asturian Kings」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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