Presentation of the book “Spirituality, art and madness” of the Franciscan Convent of Santa María de Jesús de Patraix

01 Oct Presentation of the book “Spirituality, art and madness” of the Franciscan Convent of Santa María de Jesús de Patraix Work by Mercedes Puchades

The Valencian psychopedagogue Mercedes Puchades Ortiz, with a degree in Philosophy and Educational Sciences, has presented her book “Spirituality, art and madness” of the Franciscan Convent of Santa María de Jesús de Patraix, a historical essay about this monastery whose history begins in 1428 when It was created by the will of Queen María de Castilla.

Throughout its six hundred years of life, the story “traverses its three stages: four centuries of a Franciscan convent, twenty-four years of a silk spinning factory and one hundred and twenty-three years of a provincial asylum when it was acquired by the Provincial Council of Valencia, an institution that still holds the ownership of their remains,” states its author.

Thus, throughout the narrative the lives of its most prominent protagonists are described: María de Castilla and Alfons el Magnànim kings of the Crown of Aragon, Fray Mateu d’Agrigent, the architect Francesc Baldomar, Isabel de Villena and Pedro Nicolás Factor Estaña, Franciscan friar and mystic of Santa María de Jesús, and his connection with the Monastery of the Trinity.

The book, by NPQ Editores, reproduces images of some of the works of art from the 18th century that have been preserved in its conventual Church, and other significant ones. The author details that “in this history of six hundred years in which this historical space has been the object of plundering and continuous mistreatment since its confiscation in 1838, the Church has miraculously survived with its paintings from the 18th century intact, and also two minor cloisters from the 15th century, which need to be restored and preserved and for which a cultural use is claimed. “Cloisters that should once again become a place of peace and good, following the Franciscan motto of their origin.”