The commemoration of the millennium of the birth of St. Veremundo, gives us the opportunity to review his report in his monastery where he spent his life in plenary session of the Executive Council XI century. It was especially from the 16th century onwards that he was vindicated as an excellent ruler, virtuous monk and blessed. His figure merged with the history of the monastery, at the wish of his community and some abbots, and his images, as well as some portentous and legendary scenes of his life, gained special prominence.

His representations were also very present in the two localities that dispute his birth: Arellano and Villatuerta. A very important fact for his cult and iconography took place in the last third of the 16th century, in a period of cult to the relics of the saints, favored by the church and exemplified by Felipe II in El Escorial. The abbot of Irache, Fray Antonio de Comontes, in 1583, grateful for his recovered health, had a carved and polychrome wooden chest made with scenes from the life of the saint to keep most of his relics.

From 1591 onwards, indulgences abound for those who, having gone to confession and received communion, visit the monastery church on March 8, the day of his death, as well as the decrees of the bishops of Pamplona in 1614 and 1745 on the celebration of his feast day. In April of 1745, Bishop Miranda y Argaiz prescribed the extension of his prayer for the entire diocese of Pamplona. The aforementioned prelate acted without communicating anything to the cathedral chapter, which did not learn of the episcopal decision until it appeared in the gallofa of 1746. The matter gave rise to certain doubts about the legality of the decision and the canons consulted Jesuits, Carmelites and Franciscans, obtaining different opinions. The prior of the cathedral, Don Fermín de Lubián, prepared a draft for the opportune enquiry to the Holy See, about the validity of the episcopal decree, which finally was not followed up.

In 1765 another step was taken in the extension of their cult. The abbots of Irache and Fitero asked the Cortes of Navarre, meeting in Pamplona, to urge the Sacred Congregation of Rites to obtain the extension of the cult of St. Veremundo and St. Raimundo of Fitero for all of Navarre. The Deputation of the Kingdom gave an account in the following meeting of the Cortes, in 1780, of how the matter had been positively resolved and the Offices were already printed. By then, the abbot of Irache, Fray Miguel de Soto Sandoval, had already published, in 1764, in the presses of Pamplona, a Life of St. Veremundo accompanied by an engraving of the saint with Benedictine habit, crosier and mitre at his feet, made by the Aragonese José Lamarca.
 

The image of the Benedictine abbot and the miracle of the dove

The sculptures of the saint are very simple and present him erect, with the wide Benedictine cowl, sometimes carrying a crozier, pectoral and, sometimes, the mitre at his feet. The image from the main altarpiece of Irache (Juan III Imberto, 1613-1621), another stone image from the façade of the monastery, the baroque one from Arellano (c. 1660), and others in Grocin and Villatuerta have been preserved. The reliquary of the saint in the latter town, made in 1640 by the silversmith Antonio Herrera, is topped with the image of the saint and contains the relics that were introduced in it in 1641 in Irache. Outside Navarre, the most remarkable thing is the board of the high order of the ashlar of San Benito de Valladolid, in the seat corresponding to Irache (Andrés de Nájera, 1525-1529), that in the superior part shows the coat of arms of the monastery. As it is known, the thirty-four houses that made up the Benedictine congregation were represented in that place, showing the founder, famous saint or titular of his invocation. We also know its prototype in some engravings, gozos and novenas.

The passage of his life with the greatest iconographic fortune was that of the miracle of the dove, represented in places as significant as the Renaissance reliquary chest, a relief of the main altarpiece of Villatuerta (1641, by Pedro Izquierdo and Juan Imberto III) and the historical engraving of 1746. The prodigy is narrated in detail in the main texts on St. Veremundo by Father Yepes, the Bolandistas and Fray Miguel Soto. Apparently, all of them took it from the monastic Lectionary of 1547, whose text translated from Latin is: "It happened in those times that a cruel famine destroyed the whole kingdom of Navarre, for which many, compelled by such a great calamity, came to the holy man to ask him for alms; and as the famine grew more and more severe every hour, one day it came to gather issue of three thousand men; But as there was not enough food in the house to feed such a crowd, because the servants who, by order of the holy abbot, had gone to look for food outside the province, had not returned, a great clamor and uproar arose among those present; for as they were overcome with hunger, they had no effort to go anywhere else... When the saint saw this miserable spectacle, he went to the altar to say mass with B feeling: a marvelous thing! That having arrived at that place, where the priest prays to God for the people, as St. Veremundo asked God for help with many tears, a white dove came down from heaven, which fluttered over the heads of each one, almost as if it wanted to touch them, and then went up to heaven in the sight of all: After this, each one of those present felt that he had eaten his fill, and each one was as satisfied as if he had eaten splendid and varied delicacies; for man does not live by bread alone, but by the word that proceeds from the mouth of God. So they all, giving thanks to the Lord together with St. Veremundo, returned to their homes.

The Renaissance reliquary chest and the sumptuous baroque chapel

This singular and B piece was attributed by Biurrun to the sculptor Pedro de Troas and the fact is repeated time and time again, although those who really made it were a sculptor named Francisco -surely Francisco de Iciz- who worked on it with his servant for fifty-one days, Master Martín de Morgota? who did it for seventeen days, and Pedro de Gabiria for twenty-five days, for which they were paid in December 1584 and June of the following year. Pedro de Troas made some figures of angels and a Baby Jesus for the lid that have not been preserved, and the polychromy of the whole was done by the prestigious Juan de Frías Salazar at position . Of Francisco de Iciz we only know for certain that he attended the auction of the altarpiece of San Juan de Estella in 1563.

The reliefs on their faces narrate as many miraculous passages from the life of the saint, of the many that were attributed to him. Thus, we see the saint rejecting the devil, the celebration of the mass, the miracle of the dove, the coronation of the saint by angels, a miracle of cures and the death of the saint. It can be deduced that the sculptor took good grade from the monks of Irache themselves, good connoisseurs of the life of their holy abbot, as well as from the Lectionary of 1547, which is the oldest written text with news of his life, although at that time there may also have been other written sources. If the sculpture of the reliefs is rich, its delicate polychromy is no less so.

In July of 1613 the monks contracted an altarpiece so that the ark would be with greater dignity "in the arch of the church, where the sepulcher is, in front of the door of Wayside Cross". Juan III Imberto was in charge of its realization for the amount of 80 ducats and deadline to be finished by All Saints of the same year.

In the middle of the century it was decided to build a large chapel with a combined floor plan. In 1654, after licence of the general of the Benedictines, its execution was contracted to Miguel Martínez, his son Juan and Juan de Raon, master builder, after an auction in which other masters participated. A first design, preserved in the file General de Navarra, was slightly modified. The new altarpiece for the chapel -preserved in Dicastillo- is stylistically very close to the larger one in the monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla. It is a very unique piece in its typology, clearly from Madrid. It was made from December 1655 by Gil de Iriarte, following the design of Friar Esteban de Cervera, a distinguished Benedictine master who worked for various monasteries. The gilding of the piece was done by position by Gregorio Gómez and Francisco de Astiz. To finish the project, in 1657, the new silver urn of the saint's relics was placed, in accordance with the sumptuous space. The piece disappeared in 1813 and its vicissitudes in the War are dealt with in this same series (Diario de Navarra, 6-III-2020). Various silver lamps and twenty-six paintings adorned the walls of the chapel. All this was due to the special interest of an abbot from Navarre, a native of Sada, Friar Pedro de Uriz.

The construction of that space, incomprehensibly demolished in 1982, had a combined floor plan, with a section covered by a half barrel vault with lunettes and another with a dome, all decorated, in 1701, with colorful plasterwork, the work of Vicente López Frías. Its interior had large paintings, with passages from the life of St. Veremundo, the work of the Aragonese painter and member of the clergy established in Soria, Don Juan Zapata Ferrer (1657-1710), specialized in fresco mural painting and author, among others, of the paintings of the Shrine of Our Lady of Fair Love of San Saturio de Soria.

It was neither the first nor the last Baroque chapel erected in our monasteries for images of great worship, such as that of San Bernardo in Tulebras, the Christ of the guide in Fitero or San Marcial in Azuelo. If the cities competed, in the centuries of the Baroque, with the chapels of their patrons, the monasteries did it with those of their saints and venerable relics.
 

An engraving of 1745 as a wundervita

A very unique engraving, made by the discalced Carmelite friar José de San Juan de la Cruz, is dated 1746, shortly after the cult of Saint Veremundo was extended to the whole bishopric of Pamplona.

Its typology obeys to a "wundervita", or admirable life, because of the representation in the set of diverse prodigies of the protagonist. The events narrated in the vignettes have their literary correspondence with the texts that until then had been written about St. Veremundo, already mentioned. It is an authentic hagiography on paper. Some of those passages were already in the Renaissance chest.

The composition presents an oval with the figure of the saint in his usual iconography under the coat of arms of the monastery, four vignettes around him and in the lower third a large registration with two other scenes on the sides. The upper left vignette presents the saint in prayer before a baroque altar with vegetal finials presided over by an image of the Virgin of Irache.    

The upper right scene represents the apparition of the Virgin of El Puy. The relationship of the abbot of Irache with the image of the Puy, authentic sign of identity of Estella and its lands, came very well to spread the devotion and popularity of San Veremundo. The central left vignette presents the saint freeing a demoniac and helping the needy and crippled who approach him. This School of the saint is referred to in 1610 by the chronicler Fray Antonio de Yepes briefly and with these words: "he expelled the demons from the bodies of men, and that he gave sight to the blind and healed different illnesses". 

In the central right scene we find him in a country passage next to the harvest in attitude of protecting them in front of cloudy weather and some immobilized characters. Miguel Soto refers to these prodigies, specifying some of them, like that of a man who was saved in a flood of the Ega river invoking the saint, or that of the men of bad life that gave fire to the crops of the monastery, being the criminals immobile after the intervention of the abbot, being able to walk only towards the monastery, where they asked pardon to the saint. Regarding the storms, the intervention of the relics of the saint is documented on the occasion of clouds at the beginning of the 17th century, in 1614, when several witnesses affirmed that "when the relics are taken out because of some storm that throws stones, at the point they change into water and then the storm ceases". The lower left vignette narrates the miracle of the dove inside the abbey church, to which we have already referred.

In the lower left scene appears the miracle of the dove and in the last of the representations, in the lower right margin, another scene of his life is narrated, where he appears kneeling showing his abbot the bread that he carried for the needy, converted into wood chips. This fact is echoed in hagiographic texts and is a topic with parallels with passages from the lives of such popular saints as Saint Diego Alcalá or Saint Isabel of Hungary.

The promoter of the printing press was Father José Balboa (1688-1771), abbot of Irache between 1745 and 1749 and general of the Benedictine order between 1757 and 1761. From this last position, he determined the distribution of teaching positions among the most deserving subjects, the strict observance of the rule, as well as the study and reading in order to raise the cultural level of the monks.