Precious Door

The cloister communicates with the church through a beautiful doorway in the northeast corner, framed between the two pilasters that delimit the section of the northeast corner, called Especiosa or Preciosa, because it is dedicated to the Virgin. In the main Marian festivities the abbot and the community would stand before this door intoning the antiphon "Speciosa facta est", which they would sing as they entered the church in procession. For this reason, the name Speciosa Door is probably taken from the Introit of the mass of the feast of the Conception of the Virgin Mary, which comes from the Song of Songs.

This façade, which follows the outline of a triumphal arch, reveals the knowledge that its designer had of the architectural treatises of the Renaissance, such as the Medidas del Romano by Diego de Sagredo (1526), whose influence was evident in the façades of many of the churches undertaken in the 16th century in Navarre, such as the façade of the church of Arguedas, on which Juan de Aguirre worked, or that of the parish of Cáseda.

The door consists of a wide, smooth, recessed base, on which pilasters and capitals rest, continued by a line of imposts, that give way to semicircular arches carved with a fine decoration of grotesques, including in the core topic of the arch a cartouche with the year of execution, 1547. In the space of the spandrels there are two large medallions with the busts in relief of St. Peter and St. Paul bearing their attributes. This lower body, which describes a semicircular arch, is topped by a frieze of cherubs, centered by the half-length relief of Christ the Savior, flanked by two Latin inscriptions that support angels: "I am the door, if one enters through me, he will be saved2 (John, 10); "I am the Way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John, 14).

The composition is crowned by an attic of small columns with a fluted shaft that houses the sculptural group of the Assumption of the Virgin into heaven, with praying hands in front of her chest, standing on the average moon and accompanied by angels crowning her. At her sides are the figures in relief of Saint Benedict and Saint Bernard -or Saint Bernard of Baume-, kneeling and praying, holding the staff in their arms and surrounded by a phylactery with a Latin registration alluding to the Virgin as Mother of Grace and Mercy, as defender and protector of the human race, especially at the moment of death: "Mary, Mother of Grace, Mother of Mercy, Protect us from the enemy and protect us at the hour of death". A reference letter belonging to the second stanza of the Memento salutis auctor, which was the Hymn of Prima of the official document Parvo of the Virgin, that the monks of this monastery prayed on numerous occasions throughout the centuries, since this monastery was built as a devotional and liturgical space erected under the title of the Virgin Mary. In the frieze that crowns the linteled niche a Latin registration from the Song of Songs (ch. 8, verse 8) was sculpted, above which is a triangular pediment with the bust of the eternal Father blessing, and two angels bearing shields.