The history of Roncesvalles, the reconstruction of what it meant in the medieval culture of Navarre and Europe, is known thanks to the programs of study of different specialists. As in other cases, what happened in the centuries of the Ancien Régime has gone unnoticed, although the news are abundant in the file of the collegiate church and many were published in the monograph of Javier de Ibarra, rich in data, but with few references to the documentary sources used. An enormous and complex patrimony continued to be administered from Roncesvalles.

There were many priors who occupied the position in their cursus honorum, to reach bishoprics. Some were men of letters, others collectors of works of art, many belonged to the nobility, and some, perhaps the fewest, felt spiritually in love with the collegiate church. As today, with an extreme climate, many pilgrims were received, with more or less religious sentiment. In the centuries of marvelous times, such as those of the Baroque, some legends were definitively shaped, such as that of its patron saint, and famous relics and memories linked to the famous Roldán were mythologized. Daily life developed with repetitive rhythms and was punctuated with the festivities of spring pilgrimages and a renowned commemoration, in September, in honor of its patron saint. The course of the year saw rewards for wolf and bear hunters, succulent banquets for illustrious visitors, which were not lacking in a place of passage and frontier.

Winter rigors that led to consider a relocation

A popular proverb collected at the beginning of the sixteenth century stated: "Roncesvalles has eight months of winter and four months of hell", in allusion to the severity of the climate. The written sources also mention the "strong winters and sad summers". The Navarrese doctor, Martín de Azpilicueta, wrote that the sanctuary was "among its deserted summits (of high mountains and crags) covered with gray clouds and white snow, with extreme cold and harsh ice and thick and humid fogs". Several documents give testimony of some historical snowfalls. Among them, it is necessary to mention the one of 1600, manager of the collapse of the old cloister. In that year, 19 palms of snow were measured with a pike in Ibañeta. 

The winters are described, at the beginning of the XVII century, as "almost intolerable, due to the rigorous inclemency of the region, of cold, ice and excessive snows that usually last until the month of May and some years until San Juan". Regarding the summers, "the calamity of the fogs is mentioned , where they usually spend twenty days and a month without seeing the light of the sun, oozing such strange humidities that force them to be on the fire, when in other parts they burn with heat". The sub-prior Juan de Huarte affirms that life in common was very difficult in those circumstances, and the refectory could only be used in summer, since in the rest of the year it was necessary to eat by the fire, "since there are usually so many snowfalls that, with the houses being almost next to the church, it is not possible to reach entrance, since all the alleys are closed, and the snow goes up to the windows, which in such storms serve as doors for the church, as has happened the present year of 1616, and the biggest work that happens is the one not being able to reach water, because it closes as with wall all the fountains and streams and stagnates the mill and for lack of it the snow melts in boilers and pans for drinking and for the service, the other, the download roofs because with the excess weight would sink the houses, as has happened many times and as it sank the cloister the year of 1600, breaking all its columns and arches, whose repair will cost more than 16.000 ducats".

Not all snowstorms were negative. In November 1613, when the de Baigorry were seeking revenge on the lands of Navarre, so much snow suddenly fell "that it was eight spans in all those mountains, which closed all the entrances, avenues, gates, roads and paths in such a way that it was impossible to enter Alduides or Navarre by the royal and beaten paths and it seemed like a miracle business, because the two previous days the weather was good, warm and clear, and then the following night and the next day, suddenly, the mentioned quantity fell, which was never seen in the mountains of Navarre nor in Roncesvalles, being the burrow of the snow, to settle such a copy and quantity in such a short time". In 1622 and 1623, the snowfalls left the roads impracticable and the canons could not go to church, having to continually download the roofs of their houses so that they would not sink.

The inclement weather was also reflected in the lightning storms. One of the biggest, referenced in the texts, was that of September 2, 1617, at five o'clock in the afternoon. In the same one it was necessary to lament some personal misfortunes in Burguete, when before the stone and the embarrassment a group of five men, two women -of name Dominica and Inés- and a pair of oxen with the cart of firewood, took refuge under a great beech tree. When they were about to return to the village, a thunder shook Roncesvalles and Burguete and a lightning bolt that is described as "of lively fire that had ignited the buildings, causing terrible fear and fright" discharged in the tree and killed the two women and the oxen.

All these climatic rigours and the frontier location, which did not allow for the quiet and seclusion of a religious community with a regular life, led to the idea of moving the chapterhouse to the interior of Navarre, something that was not done due to the great expense that the construction of the architectural complex would entail. However, there was also speculation about asking the king for one of the "sumptuous palaces" of Olite or Tafalla, endowed with numerous buildings, arguing that for the monarch they were nothing more than expenses, or moving to San Salvador de Sangüesa. In that case, the hospital would remain in Roncesvalles with a canon and another cleric, with the staff to attend to the institution and a village with natural inhabitants with its mayor, all subject to the prior and chapter wherever they were.

From the legendary: from Roland to the apparition of the Virgin Mary and a famous reliquary

The full-page drawing, which incorporates the handwritten history of Roncesvalles, written by graduate Huarte between 1609 and 1624, is a graphic test about a context and a vision of the collegiate church's past at the beginning of the 17th century. It is dated 1617 and made in pen and ink, with colored watercolors. It contains three coats of arms and a registration in Latin, the translation of which is: "These three insignia are more resplendent than the scepters of kings, because they represent the trophies of the holy faith and the sacred laws". The first of them represents the Virgin on a throne of Renaissance ancestry, which is a copy of an engraving of another Marian devotion of the 16th century. At her feet, a kneeling pilgrim commends himself to her, stalked by a pair of wolves, which dates back to the founding of the hospital in the second quarter of the 12th century. The second coat of arms presents the chains of Navarre and the green cross of the collegiate church, emblems of the kingdom and of Roncesvalles. The third is more complex and depicts two ivory cornets, the larger one of Roland and the smaller one of Oliberos; next to them are two maces, the Durindana sword of Roland "which in these times the king of Spain has in his royal armory," according to the author of the manuscript, and the stirrup of Archbishop Turpin. All these objects were secularly placed on the main altar of Roncesvalles, between lamps and were visited by French knights, ambassadors and other persons of rank who "make them come down and venerate them kissing them, and I have seen some of them cry with tenderness at the mere report and representation of such insignificant and ancient things".

Everything related to the legend of the apparition of the Virgin was written down and even published, a fortiori, since Father Villafañe included it in his famous work on Spanish Marian images in 1740. But already in the 17th century the canons Huarte and Burges dealt with topic. The first, gathering the information of the old canons, as well as the description of some very old paintings of the cloister of the church of Sancti Spiritus, recreates the passage in the source, with the deer with its luminaries in the antlers, the angels singing the salve and the peasants that listen and come, a little before the queen Doña Oneca, who would have had the image covered in silver. Martín Burges y Elizondo, studied by Carlos Ayerra and Eloy Tejero for having biographed Martín de Azpilicueta, adds the detail of the presence of the bishop of Pamplona, who would have been warned of the apparition by an angel while he slept. A drawing of the event, at source de los Angeles, is found in his manuscript work.

As if all that were not enough, some legendary relics, always at the height of the sanctuary, were collected in the so-called chess of Charlemagne, a piece of mid-fourteenth century Montpellier workshops, which according to the chronicle were collected by Don Francisco de Navarra, prior of the house and future archbishop of Valencia. Some of those insignificant pieces were exhibited in a reliquary cabinet, at the head of the temple until well into the twentieth century.

The collegiate church also boasted of keeping, together with the remains of Sancho the Strong, the entrails and hearts of several monarchs. Subprior Huarte states in one of his works: "I note here an antiquity: that the kings of France and Navarre and many other princes kept a custom and that was that, when they had just died, they embalmed the bodies, especially when they had to be taken far away for burial and they divided the heart and entrails, taking them to the churches where the deceased had more devotion ..., in which masses and other suffrages were celebrated for the souls on the day they were transferred or deposited". It includes, among other examples, what happened to Queen Joanna, wife of Charles II, who died in 1374, buried in Saint Denis, whose heart went to the Pamplona church and her entrails to Roncesvalles.

Pilgrims of various kinds

Again, it is the aforementioned Juan de Huarte, educated at the University of Salamanca, who at the beginning of the 17th century and with decades of experience as a canon, between 1598 and 1625, provides us with an accurate description of the pilgrims who came to the collegiate church and its hospital. Specifically, he distinguishes four types. In the first he includes the true ones, but warns of the great difference between the ancient ones "and those of these times, because the ancient ones, as true Christians and zealous for the salvation of their souls, made their pilgrimages in a holy manner, moved by holy ends, with proportionate means to achieve them, some for penance for their sins, others to venerate the pious places in which God had shown his mercy in aid of the faithful and confusion of the unbelievers, working miracles; Others for honoring the Virgin Mother of God, the holy apostles, visiting their tombs and relics, and those of many other saints, and especially that of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem with the other places sanctified by the presence of Christ our Lord. I well understand that still in these times there will be many pilgrims who will make their pilgrimages for some or all of these holy purposes, but they are very rare".

    In the second class he includes vagabonds, idlers, wastrels, useless, bad workers, vicious "who are neither for God nor for the world" and banished from their lands. With a average sotanilla, a slavina, zurrón, calabaza and bordón, together with a partner, pretending to be married, "discurren por toda España, donde hallan la gente más caritativa que en otras partes de la cristiandad" (they travel all over Spain, where they find people more charitable than in other parts of Christendom). In the same subject he enlists those who go all their lives with degree scroll of captives, deceiving the simple people with stories of what they suffered in Algiers, Constantinople or Morocco, in lands of Turks and Moors, always pretending a thousand lies.

The third corresponds to farmers coming from France and northern Europe. Remember that, if they come from Bearne, they never indicate it, stating that they are from the Christian lands of France. They do not come with true pilgrimage, but only for sustenance in Spain and accompanied by wives and children. He identifies them with farmers who, once the sowing is finished in order not to spend in their houses or not to have, they dedicate themselves to go singing coplas and donosa songs until the time of the harvest. He gathers in this same section the French hawkers, called merchants, "a very lucid people like nettles among weeds, among Christians they are Christians and among heretics, like them". They are accompanied by bells and rattles and with pendants around their necks full of charms and ballads.

Finally, in fourth place, were the most pernicious "for being heretics", both principals and commoners. The first were moved by curiosity to see Spain, by their condition of spies in times of war and disguised with the habits of friars and with staffs and slaves. They never entered the church, nor took off their hats in front of the temple and if they did it was out of mere curiosity "to see the antiquities of Roldán and Oliberos", simulating Christian ceremonies to be welcomed in the hospital. The latter were many and of diverse groups: farmers, cavacequias, paleros, guadañeros and cattlemen, generally Bearneses who came to Castile and Aragon. When they finished cutting the hay, they returned to their land with the money earned. Both on the way there and on the way back they stopped at Roncesvalles, where they received rations in the hospital.