Ricardo Fernández Gracia, Director of the Chair de Patrimonio y Arte Navarro. University of Navarra
Immaculate vows in Navarra
The immaculist phenomenon, in the Spain of the sixteenth century, constituted a case of religious exaltation with wide-ranging consequences. It should be noted that the Immaculate Conception in its iconography, poetry, sermons, music, etc., became a historical and sociological fact, giving rise to unique experiences on the part of the people, as well as a veritable hotbed of ideas, images and writings by theologians, artists and members of other social elites. Everything related to the topic transcended the strictly religious to be framed in a broader dimension of sociological and cultural subject .
Society lived with intensity the pious belief of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, since it was not dogma until 1854. Some towns proclaimed her patron saint, others denounced the Dominicans who preached against the popular belief and many others made their particular conceptionist vows. The fervor was deeply lived until recent times. Just think that on the eve of the proclamation of the dogma, in the middle of the XIX century, the neighbors exchanged the angelic greeting, as a courtesy, when crossing each other in the street. The parish priest of Lacunza, in 1849, informed the bishop that the inhabitants of that town used the Ave Maria Purisima, to greet each other, since "still, thanks to God, the modern greetings have not been put in internship, in these people".
Parishes, hermitages and confraternities
Among the most legendary events related to the Immaculate Conception and Navarre is the celebration of her feast day in the monastery of Irache. The feast had been celebrated since the dawn of the 12th century. A text of Cardinal Saenz de Aguirre says that, shortly after the death of St. Veremundo, the feast was celebrated on December 8. The famous University of Irache would pick up the tradition with an oath to its graduates, in which they were asked: "Do you swear to defend the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as the Church celebrates and receives it?
In the Cathedral Breviary of 1332, considered the oldest liturgical guide of the diocese, its feast is listed among the "magnas", along with those of the Transfiguration, Magdalene and Relics, although in the internship it was celebrated as of higher rank and with octave, since the late fifteenth century. Its feast was listed among those of keeping, at least since the last decade of the sixteenth century.
A total of seventeen parishes are or were under his patronage: Egulbati, Ezperun, Garrués, Naguiz, Ollacarizqueta, Anchóriz, Errea, Ilúrdoz, Arive, Ongoz, Arce, Artozqui, Gurpegui, Ayanz, Uli de Lónguida, Uroz and Tirapu. There were sixteen hermitages, the oldest being that of La Concepción del Monte de Torralba del Río, built by the hermit Juan de Codés in 1540, although the most famous was that of Cintruénigo, with the greatest social, devotional and artistic projection.
Among the confraternities we know those of Ablitas (the oldest, documented in 1562), Cintruénigo, Echarri-Aranaz, Lazagurría, Mendavia, Fitero, Corella, Artozqui, Lodosa, Legaria, Falces, Cárcar, Torralba del Río, Caparroso and Sangüesa. To these we must add some guilds such as the Estella waxmakers and the Congregations of the Jesuit schools. Special mention should be made of the Congregation of the Conception of the Conception of the high school of Pamplona, founded in 1613, which had to leave the celebration of the feast for the 21st of October.
the celebration of the feast for December 21, because the city was full of Conceptionist feasts in the cathedral, Franciscans, Recollects... etc., both on the day and throughout the octave.
The vows of the Kingdom; cities and towns
The case of Navarre, in its territories governed by the bishop of Pamplona and the prelates of Zaragoza, Calahorra-La Calzada and Tarazona, was no exception to what was happening in other peninsular areas. The immaculist movement was present, early on, in the institutions of Navarre, those of the Kingdom, the local and diocesan ones, as well as in those of the religious orders - especially the Jesuits and Franciscans - and of multiple confraternities. The conceptionist oath of the Cortes of Navarre of 1621 and the votes of the main town councils (Pamplona in 1618, Tudela in 1619, Estella in 1622, Olite in 1624 and Sangüesa in 1625) constitute a good sample of it. To the same feeling was due the obligation to swear the oath of defense of the mystery for those who settled or became naturalized in these lands, or became part of a strictly civil or religious institution, either the Courts of Navarre or the cathedral chapter. To all this must be added the festive celebrations, the processions, the music, the tournaments and amusements with which the people celebrated, in an extroverted way, the festivity. The pleasure of feeling and the joy of celebrating were veryThe pleasure of feeling and the joy of celebrating were very present in harmony with the art and culture of the Baroque, always tending to captivate people through the senses, which were more fragile than the intellect.
The bishoprics of Tarazona and Calahorra, with territories under their jurisdiction in the Kingdom of Navarra also made their immaculist vows in 1650 and 1652, respectively. In 1760 the Pope, at the request of Charles III, declared the Immaculate Conception as patron saint of Spain. The Diputación de Navarra received the royal missive in 1761 and left the resolution on how to celebrate the feast to be determined by the Kingdom gathered in Cortes. In 1765 the latter institution decided to commemorate the feast as was done with the patron saints, the Immaculate Conception appearing, in successive years, as co-patroness of the Kingdom in all the official acts that were carried out.
As we have pointed out, the city of Pamplona made the vow earlier, in 1618. The vow was renewed annually with a feast in the church of the Hospital, in the Franciscan monastery most of the time and, after the Disentailment, in San Cernin. The main image of the vow is preserved in the latter parish, where it was transferred from the aforementioned convent in 1842. It is a dress image, typically of the seventeenth century. The city's Book of Ceremonial details all the details of the festive protocol .
In Tudela, it was made in 1619, and solemnized annually in the collegiate church. In 1620 a tournament was held in his honor, perhaps the most important of those held in the city in the centuries of the Modern Age. The municipal corporation agreed to make it a holiday in 1646, and to leave the church as a community if the preacher "due to ignorance or any other cause" failed to proclaim the immaculist mystery.
The Kingdom, by means of agreement of the Cortes de Navarra, did the same on March 14, 1621. The solemnity of the act is attested to by some items in the accounts, such as the 700 reales paid to the music chapel or the 200 for the minstrels.
The city of Estella made its vow in 1622 and we know the text employee, to which these lines belong: "We swear and faithfully propose to have and defend and keep and have it kept and defended as far as we are concerned that the Blessed Virgin our Lady, Holy Mary, Mother of God, was conceived without any stain of sin, original guilt, through the merits of Jesus Christ our Lord and Redeemer, her Son. And in this same sentence and opinion we will be, we will make to be and to be forever and ever, as long as by your Holiness or by our Mother Church it is not resolved, determined or proposed to have or to believe otherwise". In the annual ceremony of renewal of the vow, the aldermen wore, as a necklace "the picture and image of the Mother of God, with a sign of her Most Pure Conception, and on the other side of the picture a star with a crown, which are the arms of the said City", which in time would become the veneration of the aldermen.
Olite formalized the vow in 1624, and a little later, in 1643, the Inmaculada was declared Patron Saint by the same municipal institution. From those times dates the municipal band, whose submission appears in the municipal conference proceedings of 1630 and which is still worn by the councillors. As in other localities, the insignia shows on one side the coat of arms of the city and on the other, the image of the Immaculate Conception.
Sangüesa made its vow on October 24, 1625, in this case due to a great flooding of the Aragón River that made people fear for the preservation of the urban area. The annual banns for its celebration in the Franciscanos give us account of the festivities and of the indications of the City council so that the neighbors lit bonfires and placed luminaries in balconies and windows of their houses. The procession was accompanied by a fife and atabales.
The gilded silver scallops of the rulers of the Town Hall of Sangüesa show on one side the image of the Immaculate Conception with the rays of the sun and the moon at her feet and on the other side, the coat of arms of the town. A visual testimony that has reached our days and that, as any cultural good, possesses the deep historical and sociological meaning of how much the locality lived around the immaculist mystery that would end with the foundation of an important brotherhood in 1727.
Among the factors that must be taken into account to understand all that Marian ardor we have to point out: the Spanish Marian tradition, which prepared it; the rivalry between schools and religious orders, which fueled it; the artists, lyric poets and playwrights, who reflected and sang it; the sacred orators, who exalted and propagated it; the people, who lived it with intensity, in the baroque way and the generosity of the monarchs, who sustained it.