Cornellana

Cornelius was one of the oldest and most prestigious Roman patrician gens, borne by families such as the Scipios (Cornelius Scipio Africanus, conqueror of Carthage) or the Sullas (Cornelius Sulla, dictator of the 1st century BC). The nomen was Christianised in late-Roman anthroponymy through devotion to Saint Cornelius pope (3rd century), and continued in use in Visigothic and early-medieval onomastics. The possessive adjective Corneliana applied to an elided villa follows the habitual pattern of Hispano-Roman possessive toponyms —⁠we saw the same in Cirueña (Ciriana) or in Marciana, Lucena, Pampliega. Asturian phonetics palatalised the -ll- cluster: Corneliana → Cornellana. The hamlet is small; its monastery counts among the principal in Asturias: San Salvador de Cornellana, founded in 1024 by doña Cristina Bermúdez as a Benedictine cenobitic community, preserves a 12th-century Romanesque church with a well-preserved chancel and a late-medieval cloister. The monastery was the retreat of the infanta after her brief marriage to García Sánchez III of Navarre.