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This research establishes a narrative of how the Order of Saint Benedict was restored in Brazil, in the early years of the republican regime, after the Padroado was dissolved. Present there since the six-teenth century, at a time when Brazil was a Portuguese colony, the Benedictines importantly influenced the country's development in its ecclesial, intellectual, and artistic features. The Order's monasteries were mainly located in big cities, but their presence stretched to the fields, with many farming lands being incorporated to their estate. From the second half of the eighteenth century, however, a series of government interventions prevented religious orders from managing their assets and forbade them from admitting new members. This situation was constituted during the monarchical regime, when the emperor, justified by a diplomatic arrangement called the Padroado, held a sum of alleged rights to the Church's command. Consequently, monasteries were emptied almost completely, being extinct their community life and liturgical offices. In 1889, after a coup d'état and the proclamation of the Brazilian Republic, a friendly agreement formally separated Church and State, thus returning effective authority to ecclesiastical leaders and allowing religious groups to reorganize themselves. In this new context, monastic life was renewed by the efforts of monks from the Beuron Benedictine Congregation, present in Belgium, Germany and Austria. From this, the invigorated Brazilian Benedictines could reactivate some of its old monasteries, founded more houses and took new apostolic activities. Therefore, we seek to understand, under a new light, how Benedictine religious life was suppressed and rebuilt, highlighting the political circumstances in which it all happened. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The documentation we provide allows us establishing two phases in the building process of the Holy Chamber (or Lignum Crucis' Chapel) of the Royal Monastery of Santo Toribio de Liébana (Cantabria). After a failed attempt by the Dukes of the Infantado (1632), works began in 1675 under the patronage of the 10th Admiral of Castile. The completion of the building process was directed by the Biscay architect Juan Bautista de Arbaiza (1718-1721). He transformed the previously initiated work into a Baroque space magnified by the presence of one of the few stone-made octagonal lanterns of 18th-century Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article presents information on the Congreso de Abades de la Confederación Benedictina (Congress of the Confederation of Benedictine Abbeys), which took place in Rome, Italy, from September 5-16, 2016, and which featured the Benedictine Abbot Primate Gregory Polan.