Monastery of Santa María de La Vid

Santa María de La Vid is a monastery in Spain's Duero Valley.

The monastery was initially founded on a different site called Montesacro in about 1146 by Domingo Gómez, illegitimate son of Queen Urraca of León and Castile and her lover Count Gómez González de Candespina.

[1] The monastery was then moved to its present site in 1152, having been given the estate of La Vid by Alfonso VII of León and Castile, who was the half-brother of Domingo Gómez.

Saint Dominic, who would later found the eponymous Dominican Order, was sent to the monastery at 14 years of age, before going on to study at Palencia.

[2] A statue of Dominic in the monastery depicts him in the habit which he would have worn as a Premonstratensian canon.