The Convento de los Mercedarios Descalzos del Corpus Christi was built between 1604 and 1617. The works were carried out by Diego Pérez Alaraz, financed by the IV Countess of Castellar, Doña Beatriz Ramírez de Mendoza, to locate a new community of barefoot Mercedarian friars. In its original conception, the Convent had a cloister and around it on the first floor there was a pantry, the kitchen, the refectory, the “rest room”, the porter’s lodge, the hostelry, and the chapter house, which by means of a staircase led to the upper floor, where the friars’ cells were located.
The convent door is linteled, flanked by a panel with lugs, an architrave with moldings with angled moldings on it, and a semicircular tympanum broken as upper scallops; in the center of it there is an interesting and beautiful ceramic altarpiece representing St. Peter Nolasco embarking to redeem captives, dated 1630.
The cloister of the convent It has four fronts with six Doric pillars each, which are joined by semicircular arches, and the fronts are interlocking as the pillars are L-shaped. The galleries of the cloister are covered with half-barrel vaults with lunettes, which are supported by transverse arches, except for the four vertices (of the cistern or cloister corner type). The lower floor is separated from the first floor by an overhanging, continuous frieze and an architrave decorated with drops. The upper floor consists of alternating balconies and canvases.
We can highlight. also, a beautiful belfry with bells.
Currently, this building is a Cultural Center, with activity throughout the year, where we can contemplate artistic exhibitions and an interesting archaeological sample of the locality.
Annexed to the conventual house is the Conventual Church of Corpus Christi which, on the other side, communicated with the Palace House of the Counts. Thus, through two open windows in the tribune of the main chapel of the church, the counts and those who lived in the palace attended Mass from there.
The façade of the complex is defined by the two access doors to the complex, windows, balconies and a very flat stepped cornice. The door of the convent church is linteled, flanked by angled pilasters with upper architrave, frieze (with triglyphs and metopes) and cornice (with small lateral mixtilinear moldings and central window); it reflects, therefore, great sobriety, within the purist phase of the Baroque in which it was reformed, being completed in 1776.
The convent church has a single nave covered with a barrel vault with lunettes, and in the presbytery a lowered half-orange dome, which on the outside is manifested by a gable roof (the single-pitched roof only faces the street). In the vestibule, on the epistle side, there is a chapel where the titular members of the Brotherhood of Nuestro Padre Jesús Nazareno can be found. At the foot of the nave is the choir loft.
The nave is structured by decorative pilasters that separate lateral altars, and an altarpiece in the main altar, presided by the image of Nuestra Señora de la Merced and where the image of the Patron Saint of the town, San Pedro Nolasco, stands out.
The church had an original plasterwork altarpiece, hidden behind the current one, which was replaced and remains today, of great beauty, and late baroque style made in 1762 by Juan Cano. The body of the altarpiece is structured in three streets, separated by stipites. In the central niche we can observe the aforementioned carving of the Virgen de la Merced, a magnificent sculpture of the seventeenth century. Around it are the images of San Pedro Nolasco, San Serapio, San Ramón Nonato and San Lorenzo. The whole is crowned by a mixtilinear medallion with a relief of “The Last Supper”, in clear allusion to the dedication of the convent.
In the side altarpieces, there is a recumbent Christ, a small image of San Antonio, interesting paintings or the Christ of Mercy, an image with a reputation of miraculous, wood-paste, from the early seventeenth century.