Go Feedback:'Sacred stones' from a 1,000-year-old Spanish monastery are finding a new home in a Cistercian Chapter House in California, writes ELGY GILLESPIE
WHEN BROTHER John Cullen was a small boy, he played around the “sacred stones” in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, while their future swung in the void.
As a six-year-old, he had no idea the stones came from a 1,000-year-old Spanish monastery, a Cistercian architectural masterpiece. “And I lived less than 10 minutes away, and saw them all the time, for heaven’s sakes!”
Now, by a satisfying coincidence, Brother John and the “sacred stones” have wound up together 100 miles north of San Francisco in New Clairvaux, sharing the dusty 595-acre Viña Ranch that once belonged to “robber baron” Leland Stanford.
The New Cistercians grow prunes and walnuts, run a retreat house, produce wine and beer – and are reconstructing the 1190 Cistercian Chapter House from the park on their grounds with the proceeds.
For years I’d wanted to visit them, but somehow never made it. Turned out it was easy: a three-hour drive from San Francisco, a turn-off into a lane, and there was Brother John Cullen to meet us.
For fifty-odd years, John’s been a Trappist-Cistercian here, a rosy-cheeked advert for St Benedict’s rule of iron discipline, poverty, and hospitality. A life of hard labour and prayer has left him years younger looking than his 80. Sitting on his electric cart, a winning smile beneath his baseball cap, he waves us past walnut groves to Clairvaux’s “sacred stones”.
The “sacred stones” have had their difficult moments. A man addicted to extravagance, Hearst bought the disused monastery in 1931, dismembering its curves into numbered stones and ferrying them over for lining a pool and bowling alley at a future mansion.
The Depression hit, and he paid off outstanding city taxes by giving Santa Maria to San Francisco’s Parks and Museums department and hiring architect Julia Morgan to draw up plans for a medieval museum at the park. The project was voted down by the city, and successive fires burned the crates, erasing their numbers.
Now the finely-etched, pale-golden arches of the Chapter House are rising in New Clairvaux, thanks to former Abbot Thomas Davis, who persuaded the museums to let them start a fundraising crusade to bring them to Viña.
For an order based on silence until recently, there’s noise aplenty now: the drilling and clattering of trainee masons fitting 21 vaulted arches of Chapter House together like a giant jigsaw puzzle.
New Clairvaux’s master mason Frank Helmholz feels a deep connection to the original craftsmen. Though not raised Catholic, he finds the work spiritual. He’s carved missing capitals by hand. About 80 per cent of the originals survive. A Texas quarry replaced missing stones.
Spiritual but not religious, Helmholz learned his trade in his Black Forest village, then worked on Saint-Denis Basilica in Paris, and now restores Luxor’s Abu el-Haggag mosque in wintertime.
“I’m not a monk, but I’ve dedicated my life to sacred architecture. Given the choice I would have left the stones in Spain. But they are here. To rebuild is an act of devotion. They connect us to our roots and by rebuilding, we’re welcoming them home.”
The monks store the stones in their century-old brandy barns, across from their “Poor Souls” cellars. Brother Rafael from Ecuador shows off his well-trained vines – his “children” – with pride. “It’s become a passion! I’ve studied heat-resisting grapes and aim for 100 per cent organic.”
Vintners Scott and Karla Johnston oversee the cellars, while Aimee Sanseri takes charge of winemaking. Their work is gaining increasing respect. Today’s Syrahs and Viogniers are uncorked and poured by Brothers Francis Pham and Joe Gilbert.
Their hope is their wines and handcrafted Belgian beers – medal winners among them – can subsidise rebuilding the Chapter House. Near the gates is St Luke’s Guesthouse: simple, silent rooms with bathrooms and names such as “Joy” and “Peace” and a cat named Buster, cost from $60 (€40); a gift shop with monastery honey and jams; koi pool with fish donated by a Buddhist monastery, a meditation room, and tiny St Cecilia Chapel for weddings.
Some visitors are scholars or seek a refuge to be quiet, or just enjoy peace and good wines. Make no mistake; it’s as quiet as a tomb here after curfew, when the simple supper is cleared.
This is a very quiet place to be some of the time.
Get there
Where: Abbey of New Clairvaux, 26240 Seventh Street, Viña, CA 96092-0080.
Airport: nearest are Sacramento and San Francisco.
Website: the excellent monastery website at newclairvaux.org has maps and directions under retreats/day visit/general guest information.
Directions: New Clairvaux Monastery is just off Interstate 5, 30 minutes from Chico or an hour north of Sacramento. From San Francisco, drive 1-80 east then take 505 north to I-5, and at Corning take 99 south to Viña. (Trying to get here by bus or train is impractical.)