Coelleira

A Coelleira is a small island located in the entrance of the ria of O Barqueiro, that is part of the Rias Altas or Upper Estuaries in the north coast of Galicia. The island belongs to the municipality of O Vicedo.

There existed in the antiquity the monastery of San Miguel of the Coelleira and their monks were transferred to the villa of Viveiro in leather boats to say mass in the chapel that served after first church the franciscans.

According to Mr. Amor Meilán the monastery could be founded at the beginning of century V by Consencio Bishop but other historians aim that it was possible to be founded on the reign of Leovigildo (573-586), during the vile persecution against the Christians; thus, several monks of San Claudius of León could be saved and erected houses of monks in different islands from the Galician territory.

In XI century they appear documents of a donation that Vimara Menéndez made in the 1095 to the monastery of San Miguel de Quonicularia (present Coelleira), in which it donated the third part to the church of San Julian de Loiva, doing of intermediary bishop Gonzalo. At that time the Monastery did not have monumental character and lacked all suntuosity.

After many events this Monastery became property of the order of Temple . On the reason that took to the Templarios to inhabit the Monastery of San Miguel of the Coelleira, it could be due to the cruel persecution of which they were object by the King of France, Felipe the Beautiful one.

Also one ignores the reason for his disappearance of the monastery years later, although Garcia Dóriga tells that "one night was heard sound to alarm the bell of the monastery and several twigs without entrails began to degollar the monks who underwent the martyrdom with value and resignation" Is a legend that tells that of this slaughter one of the monks was saved, which, dressed countryman, was lodged in a house of Vicedo, the district of Baltar (located next to the beach of Xilloi), and that still today knows the house where do was lodged like House Of the same country. Also one says that these monks took to the church of San Roman of the Valley a picture of San Esteban, and who when being created the parish of San Esteban of the Val (at the moment of Or Vicedo), due to the great veneration of which santo was object, named their pattern. Another version says that one night of great storm appeared the saint in the beach of Xilloi, placed it on a car of oxen that walked until the place where the church of San Esteban was constructed. According to Garcia Dóriga, years later, "in the borders of the poetic Landro, a nobleman pertaining to the illustrious family of Bernaldo de Quirós, gentleman of all those contours and, under whose domination the slaughter of the monks of the mentioned island had been carried out. And it affirms the tradition, that, to unload perhaps the overwhelmed conscience by the crime, the horseman ordered that this clause was written in its testament: I leave thirty and six masses for good of the souls of thirty and six friars who, by order of the King (Felipe the Beautiful one) I have commanded to degollar in the island of the Coelleira." In 1489 the bishop Makes of Guzmán united east monastery to the one of San Martín de Mondoñedo, and in s. XVI in an act of the town hall of Mondoñedo he appears with the name of Coelleira, related to the abundance of rabbits that was in the island. Later the island was yielded in renting to different people, thus in 1551 the Bachelor Gomez Dourado, canon of Mondoñedo and administrator of San Miguel, by writing granted in Viveiro, gave in renting to Alonso Cordido, pertaining merchant of the villa "half entirely of the Island of San Miguel de Coelleira with half of the places, heirties, fruits and rents to this half".