Villarrodrigo / Alábaladejuelo

The Villarrodrigo blog of Luis Miguel Sánchez López [http://villarrodrigo-jaen.blogspot.com/2009_08_01_archive.html] [accessed 16 April 2010] illustrates the baptismal font in this parish; it quotes from a visitation of this church ["1.554.- GUIA DE LAS ORDENES MILITARES (AHN) VISITAS de la Orden de Santiago. Visita a los Partidos de Sierra de Segura y Campo de Montiel. (Sig. 1087 C. Pag. 597-611)"], which inspected the baptismal font and observed it had a cover with lock and key ["Visitose la pila del bautismo la qual está en una parte de la iglesia, con su cobierta encima, con su cerradura e llave."]; this blog also includes the contents of the parish account book for the year 1689 ["Cuentas de la Fábrica de la Iglesia Parroquial de Villarrodrigo. (Archivo Parroquial de Villarrodrigo, Libros de Cuentas y diezmos)"]; in it there are several entries related to the baptismal font: the first is a payment made for the whitewashing of the baptistery chapel; the second is a payment for repairs made to the font cover; the third payment is for clening the font and installing it; the fourth entry records several separate payments: one for bringing the font from Bayonas, another paymment to Miguel Sánchez Cano for bringing the font in his ox-cart, one more payment to the four men who helped with the transport, and the last one for the wine they were given ["-37 R en traer la Pila Bautismal de Bayonas: 18 R a Miguel Sánchez Cano, por traer la pila con sus bueyes. 16 R a cuatro hombres que fueron a ayudarle a traerla. 3 R de ½ arroba de vino para refresco"]. The baptismal font consists of a roughly hemispherical basin decorated with a ribbed pattern all around, raised on a short round stem and a square lower base; the present cover is modern, plain, and not the one recorded in the 1554 visitation noted above. This font appears to have been originally from the abandoned village of Bayonas [aka Vayonas], as the following source informs. The website on Bienservida [http://www.bienservida.eu/] [accessed 16 April 2010] by Tomás Martínez Pérez, who cites a 1690 visitation to Bayonas' parish church in which the baptismal font was found missing ["En 1690 según otra visita a la iglesia de Bayonas, Don GABRIEL JOSÉ PONCE. (cura de Bienservida y vicario de Villarrodrigo) "no halló el Santísimo Sacramento en el Sagrario... y no halló Pila Bautismal ni crismeras..."]. The font cited in the 1554 visitation of Villarrodrigo must have been a different one. The font recorded in the 1689 account books of Villarrodrigo was the font originally from Bayonas, which had been moved to Villarrodrigo on an ox-cart only a year earler.