Bell tower of the Church San José de Mapuey

Following in the wake of my previous publication, I want to talk about another of the objects of great value that can be found in the Casa La Blanquera Museum.

In the journey made by the different environments of the large house, the pieces that are present there They are of great significance and have their own story to tell. Such is the case of the Bell Tower of the Church of San José de Mapuey.

The bell tower

This piece from the colonial era of casting in bronze and whose dimensions are 65 x 53 centimeters, was entered into the collection of La Blanquera in 1964, by donation from the Governorate of the state of Cojedes.

The prolific oral tradition Cojedeña attributes the origin of this bell to the extinct temple of San José de Mapuey, located in an inaccurate site in the vicinity of the current homonymous population of Cojedes, about two or three blocks past the San Carlos River or the Tirgua River from the road to Lagunitas.

As described by Bishop Mariano Martí after his visit on March 31, 1781, this church was dedicated to the advocation of St. Joseph, shared with the lesser patron Saint Francis of Assisi.

This temple was of three naves, divided by columns of bricks. Wall of wall and rafas, cover of cane and
roof tiles. The Sacristy surrounded the entire Presbytery on the sides and behind, but the Sacristy served the piece that corresponded to the side of the Epistle. He had the cemetery outside of it but also the band of the epistle; brick floor only in the presbytery.

It had a small high choir, a good Baptistery and also a Bell Tower. Being common case in different temples the use of one or more bells, the one that I exhibit in this post does not seem to have occupied said Bell Tower at least during the previous twenty years, to its manufacture, this is between 1781, year of the visit of Bishop Mariano Martí and 1801, date that shows in relief this bell as a temporary reference of its confection in the widest section of its conicity. Some suppose, however, that it could have been incorporated into the church from that year through the commission, by virtue of the almost unlikely that the artisan would build it for the highest bidder.

Despite its precarious and simple attributes of form, such as the crude modeling of the clay mold that reproduced his body and its decoration in relief by addition with obvious Christian motifs, he has not ceased to exercise in time the fascination of mystery, which which Victoria of Samotracia, still has its true origin and destiny as well as the disappearance of said church.

By: Luis Gerardo Sanchez