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Image of the «new Christianity» was the Virgin Mary. For this reason, in the middle of the III
century, they transformed the Roman Basilica where they officiated the Cult of Vesta in a
Christian Ecclesiae. They conserved the edifice intact, but they replaced the Statue of Vesta
and they constructed an Altar to celebrate the Eucharist, where they deposited also, the
Perennial Lamp. When it was possible, the Lords of Tharsis tried to make that the Chapel be
attended always by clerics of the family, although due to its importance it received periodic
visits of the Bishop of Seville and the presbyteries of the surroundings. The chosen worship for
the Cult of the Virgin had an autochthonous origin due to the own Lords of Tharsis, when they
had presented before the Christian Priests, they made it assuring that they had witnessed a
manifestation of the Virgin. According to them the Virgin had appeared in a shallow grotto
situated a few metres from the Village of Turdes, case that could be attested by all the members
of the family and some servants: the Virgin had shown herself in the Splendor of her Majesty
and had asked them to worship her Divine Son and to remember her with a Cult. Then the
Lords of Tharsis, visible prey of excitation, declared that they wanted to abandon the Pagan
Cult and became Christians. The voluntary conversion of such powerful Roman-Hispanic
family, caused great satisfaction to the Catholic Priests due to it would add exemplary prestige
to their evangelizing missions in the region. Thence, they accepted willingly the initiative of the
House of Tharsis occulted behind the Sculpture with which they replaced the Vesta's Statue.
Things had overly changed since the Age of the Carthaginensis. Now the Village counted
of an enormous Seigniorial Residence in the terra dominicata and with some fifty hectares of
terra indominicata given to the cultivation; a peasant dorp, also called Village of Turdes, had
been erected near to the Residence of the Lords of Tharsis; and in the limit of the dorp, over a
hill which smoothly descended to the Seigniorial Residence, the Lords of Tharsis had destined
for the local Church and Parish an excellent Roman Basilica. The catechumens, who were going
to hear the missa catechumenorum, and the faithfuls, who then would assist to the particular
missa fidelium, reached to the atrium, a garden surrounded by columns, and they passed
beside a fount called Cantharus, before entering the central nave. Constructed over a
rectangular level, the Basilica had three naves: two lateral naves that formed the Cross, and a
Central nave, was divided by two columns of seats, occupied, in the right side by men and the
left, by women; the central nave ended in the apse, a vaulted widening and elevated where was
the Sanctuarium. Normally, in every church of that time, at the bottom of the apse was the
Episcopal Cathedral, as will be seen immediately, had been assigned to the Holy Virgin. In front
of the Episcopal Cathedral, in the core of the Sanctuary, was the sacra mensa of the Altar and,
over it, the instruments of the Cult: the Chalice, the Paten, and the Perennial Lamp.
The culminating moment of the Mass of the Faithful’s, take place immediately after the
pronunciation of the Eucharistic words of the Priest: then he recites the epiclesis, an
invocation to the Holy Spirit, soliciting its presence to propitiate the miracle of the
transmutation of the Bread and the Wine, and draw a little curtain which leaves exposed,
to the Faithful’s sight, the Divine Image of the Virgin. The faithful’s were absorbed in the
Contemplation: the Sculpture of the Virgin is of painted wood, of smalls dimensions: seventy
centimetres of elevation, thirty of width and thirty of depth; she is seated, in a majestic
attitude, over a Cathedra made also of wood; her countenance is of beautiful occidental
factions, because she was a reproduction of one of the Ladies of Tharsis, and smiles smoothly
while her eyes are fixed directly ahead; her hair falls down in the form of sixteen braids finely
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