Evandriana: Roman mansio and monastery of Cauliana
A road station (mansio or statio) on the network of roads leaving Augusta Emerita, south-west of the city, on the way to Olisipo (Lisbon). It appears as Evandriana and Evandria in the Roman itinerary sources and is recorded as a station in the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (map 26 D3) and in the Pleiades geographical database.
- Type
- Mansio romana
- Preservation
- —
- Protection
- —
- Coordinates
- 38.87876, -6.49836
- Photographs
- 0
What it is and what is left
The Tabula Imperii Romani, Emerita sheet, links Evandriana with the site of Cubillana (or Cubilana), within the municipality of Mérida itself: a Roman rural settlement with a great deal of surface material, on which the monastery of Cauliana would later stand, cited in the anonymous Vitas Patrum Emeritensium, the main literary source for Visigothic Mérida. The place would thus have a long sequence: a road station in Roman times and a monastery in the Visigothic and medieval periods.
There is no published systematic excavation of the site, and its identification with Evandriana is a scholarly proposal based on the distances in the itineraries and on place names, not something demonstrated archaeologically. On the surface only scattered building material and pottery can be made out. The location is approximate, on the boundary between Mérida and Arroyo de San Serván.
What each period left here
It reads downwards: each band is a period with fabric in this site, newest first, deepest last.
0 facts
0 photographs
Christian medieval
This site has fabric from this period. Mérida has 8 more sites built in the same layer.
See the whole layer →0 facts
0 photographs
Late Antique / Visigothic
This site has fabric from this period. Mérida has 7 more sites built in the same layer.
See the whole layer →0 facts
0 photographs
Roman
This site has fabric from this period. Mérida has 57 more sites built in the same layer.
See the whole layer →Below the deepest layer of each site is the ground itself: what has not been excavated yet, or what left nothing built. The catalogue only claims what is documented.
What is told about this site
The Vitas Patrum Emeritensium tells a domestic scene from the monastery of Cauliana: a drunken monk told off by the children who were studying there. It is one of the few anecdotes of everyday Visigothic life to have come down in writing.
Monasterio de Cauliana — WikipediaThe monastery had a school, and it is held to be one of the cradles of Lusitanian Visigothic culture: out of its classrooms came officials, jurists and churchmen who rose to high posts in the kingdom's administration.
Lusipedia — La escuela de CubillanaWe know how its abbot Renovatus ended up: he held the metropolitan see of Mérida between the years 616 and 632.
Monasterio de Cauliana — WikipediaLegend has it that Roderic, the last Visigothic king, took refuge here after losing the battle of the Guadalete in 711.
Monasterio de Cauliana — WikipediaA short walk from here
Straight-line distances, worked out from the coordinates of each site.