At Vina, monks pray, work
as 800-year-old building takes shape

Stones gleaming in morning light at the Abbey of New Clairvaux in Vina were destined for William Randolph Hearst’s mountain villa overlooking the McCloud River near Mount Shasta.

Instead, the 800-year-old Spanish monastery that the newspaper tycoon dismantled in 1931 and shipped to San Francisco is taking shape once again as a house of prayer.

While masons gingerly scale scaffolding and tap limestone slabs into place, self-supporting Trappist monks continue the centuries-old Benedictine pattern of prayer and work.

At regular intervals during the day they chant sacred texts inside a small wooden church, and then fan out over the 580-acre property to tend walnut and prune orchards, and a recently planted vineyard. This year, the first commercial vintage will coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Cistercian monastery’s founding in this Tehama County farming community 15 miles north of Chico.

Benedictine Abbot Thomas Davis nurtured a dream of bringing the stones to Vina from the moment he saw them, in 1955, abandoned behind San Francisco’s de Young Museum. For years they had lain there, scattered and unprotected, after financial reversals forced Hearst to give them to the city to settle accounts. Finally, yielding to numerous entreaties, museum trustees awarded the 13th century hand-carved stones of Santa Maria de Oliva to the Vina monastery in 1994.

The 71-year-old abbot delights in watching the chapter house take shape as he goes about his work while riding a bicycle — the monks’ primary mode of transportation — from the abbey offices to other parts of the monastery.

“When the sun hits the building it’s just magnificent,” Abbot Davis said.

The abbot also nurtures a dream that the reconstructed chapter house, which will be the oldest building on the West Coast and one of only three examples of medieval Cistercian architecture in the United States, will inspire those who build modern religious structures.

“I hope it starts a whole new spirit — a jolt to ecclesiastical architects to use light and space and line to create something that has harmony and simple beauty,” he said.

While leading a small apprentice crew in constructing the outer shell, Frank Helmholtz notes the way shifting light changes and colors the limestone.

“Cistercian architecture uses geometry and light — that’s the main beauty,” said the German-born and trained master mason. “It’s in the structure itself and in the proportions.”

The outer shell, with three tall narrow windows on the rear eastern wall, is nearly complete. The monastery must raise at least one third of the $3 million in private funding needed to finance the next phase of the Sacred Stones project before construction can begin. That phase includes the foundation and walls of the cloister walkway, and the protective foyer to the chapter house along with its three original entrance portals, interior stone walls and soaring arches.

The biggest challenge for Chico architect Patrick Cole was creating plans for a structure that not only looks and performs as it did in the Middle Ages, but also meets modern California seismic codes.

“We built ‘suspenders’ into the project,” he said.

Instead of relying on a medieval rubble wall for support, the stones are anchored to a super structure sandwiched between the inner and outer walls. Ideally, that will enable the chapter house to withstand a magnitude eight earthquake on the Richter scale.

Depending on financing, the project could be finished in 2007 for a cost of about $6 million, with a new church and library to be built later, Sacred Stones project coordinator Sandy Goulart said.

“We have donors from 45 states and six foreign countries,” she said. “Many of them are people who come from all over to make retreats at the monastery.”

The stonemasons said that the work in the peaceful environment has distinct advantages.

“Working here is its own kind of retreat. When we sit at our lunch we watch the hawks flying,” Helmholtz said.

“A few weeks ago the prune orchards were in bloom. It was quite a plus to have an ocean of blossoms.”

“It’s a privilege to be able to work here,” assistant Denis Andrianon said. “I have a personal connection with each of the stones. It’s a very noble material and a noble project.”

Copyright © 2005 Diocese of Sacramento - All Rights Reserved