The Case of the Curious Sexton

Handsome Alfonso VIII of Castile was married to a haughty English princess named Eleanor of Aquitaine (sister of Richard the Lionhearted), but he tired of her and ran off to Toledo with his darkly lovely Jewish mistress. The love story lasted for seven years, and then the mistress was poisoned by Eleanor's agents. Alfonso, gnawed by both a guilty conscience and a dark suspicion that he was next on the poisoners' list, went home to Eleanor and atonement. Last week, almost 800 years later, the fruits of Alfonso's atonement were providing Spanish archeologists and medieval experts with one of their richest finds in years.

As proof of his penitence, Alfonso transformed the royal summer palace at Burgos' Las Huelgas del Rey into a cloister administered by the white-robed Order of Cistercian nuns. The cloister, Alfonso decreed, would also be the burial site for the dead of the House of Castile; the first of the royal bodies, that of baby Prince Sancho, was entombed there in 1181.

Forgotten Royalty. During the next 200 years, 37 members of the royal family were laid to rest there in hermetically sealed sarcophagi, and the tombs were untouched until the Napoleonic invasion of 1808, when French troops drove out the nuns and turned the cloister into a barracks. Later, when Wellington's troops in turn drove out the French, the nuns returned to their desecrated convent to find a ghastly spectacle: tombs torn open, their occupants (whose bodies the nuns regarded as sacred) sitting up or falling out haphazardly, valuables gone. The shocked nuns hastily replaced the bodies as best they could, and without outside help replaced the heavy lids of the sarcophagi. For another century the royal dead of Las Huelgas remained, unseen and forgotten, in the custody of the pious Cistercian sisters.

White-haired Lorenzo Garcia, the only man allowed within its walls, had been the cloister's sexton for almost 40 years when his curiosity about the tombs finally got the better of him. One night while the nuns were safely asleep, Garcia pried open one of the coffins with a heavy metal hook. After fishing around patiently, he pulled out a fragment of gold brocade. Then, afraid of a sound scolding from the abbess, he hid his find, kept his secret to himself. Finally Garcia confided in Archeologist Jose Luis Monteverde, curator of national property. Monteverde communicated with Madrid and a joint committee of medieval experts, headed by 80-year-old Gomez Moreno, eventually succeeded in getting the nuns' permission to open the tombs.

Withered Roses. When the stone lids of the sarcophagi were slid off and the pinewood caskets opened, the assembled scientists made an astonishing discovery: 24 of the bodies were completely mummified and in an excellent state of preservation; other bodies, although skeletons, were still held together by their ligaments. How were the bodies preserved? The experts disagreed. Some attributed the mummification to the climate, others to some unknown process of embalming, probably of Moorish or perhaps even Egyptian origin. The nuns had a simpler explanation. Said Sister Blanca: "They were all saints. Their bodies could not decay."

But still more important discoveries awaited the investigators. Napoleon's soldiers had missed one tomb entirely; within it lay undisturbed the young Prince Fernando de la Cerda, eldest son of Alfonso X, who died in 1275. He lay on embroidered cushions, a jeweled toque on his head, a jeweled belt around him, his hand still gripping a jeweled sword hilt.

Queen Eleanor, whose domestic difficulties resulted in the convent's foundation, still lay in her royal robes, her hand still covered by a white calfskin glove embroidered in green silk. From other tombs came exquisite brocade bonnets. The colors of the silks were as bright as though dyed yesterday. There was even a bunch of tiny withered roses, a token of personal tenderness 700 years old.

Energetic Medievalist Gomez Moreno was exuberant. Said he: "Before this discovery, we could only guess what had been accomplished in the arts of weaving, embroidery, lace-making and knitting in the 13th Century. Now, people can see and actually touch the entire outfit of a 13th Century man or woman."

There were other revelations, said the enthusiastic Spaniards. Bobbin lace, formerly thought to have been unknown before the 16th Century, was found in the tombs, as was cloth from China. Until the opening of the Las Huelgas sarcophagi, Spanish historians had not been absolutely sure whether Enrique I of Castile died from a blow on the head at Palencia in 1217, or from natural causes. Enrique's skull, found in the tomb, confirmed the theory of violent death; it also showed what archeologists interpreted as advanced techniques of trepanation, demonstrating a medieval knowledge of surgery hitherto unsuspected.

The bodies of Castile's ancient rulers are now back in their tombs, dressed this time in the white robes and black hoods of the Cistercians. Their clothes and accouterments, displayed in 18 glass cases, are open to the study of a few visitors, who enter the convent discreetly through a door that the nuns leave "unguarded." Sexton Garcia is pleased with the fruits of his nocturnal curiosity. Says he: "This museum should really bear my name."

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