St. John's Day in the western festive calendar and, of course, in Navarre evokes the solstice together with celebrations studied by anthropologists such as Julio Caro Baroja. It is striking that a saint who is affiliated with penance, became an icon related to the festival, because his feast day coincides with June 24, the day of the summer solstice. Julio Cara Baroja, together with Burke, argue that the medieval church appropriated a pre-Christian feast and made it its own.

In addition to some reflections and considerations on topic, which is quite well known and widely disseminated, we will add some testimonies that are hardly known.

The celebrations around the Baptist, coinciding with the summer solstice, have enjoyed great popularity throughout the Foral geography, as in many other regions, characterizing their celebrations by the joy lived in streets and squares in an extroverted way. Throughout its eve and on its day, various rites are documented, some of them secular, around the longest day of the year. Dances, dances and paloteados, enramadas, masquerades and other rites can be traced throughout Navarre, as in the rest of Europe, where it was celebrated with joy during the Modern Age and well into the last century.

Iribarren, Satrústegui, Jimeno Jurío and Usunáriz have studied the festival and its expressions in Navarra in detail. Fire, sun and water as symbols of purification, at one with vegetation, were the protagonists of the festival. Bathing in the river or in the source, drinking water at dawn, welcoming the sun in an early morning walk and, above all, jumping over bonfires next to a purifying fire, have been constant throughout the centuries. Occasionally, these rites were accompanied by bells, ditties and songs, some of which have survived to the present day. The burning of wimps and monigots goes from Larráun to the Alhama basin in Cintruénigo -chapalangarras-, Corella -juanberingas- or Fitero -the old man and the old woman-. The herbs and branches blessed in their day were considered as apt to ward off storms and against evil spells and livestock diseases. Balconies and doorknobs were decorated with cherry, olive and fruit branches. This custom became so popular that, in 1772, a Pamplona municipal library porter prohibited it with severe financial penalties.

The masquerades are documented early in the north of Navarre, having been prohibited in 1567 by the great excesses that were derived from eating and drinking with quarrels and bad examples. Of that of Lesaca we have numerous news, with the participation of Moorish and Christian kings and retinues of people in disguise. In the middle of the XVIII century, the famous Jesuit, Father Mendiburu, condemned those festive expressions for "scandals and sinful disorders".

The town of Torralba del Río preserves the ceremony of the Moor Juan, to represent the victory of the neighbors over a robber named Juan Lobo, whom they catch by the raft.

Under the patronage of the saint, we find forty-three parishes in Navarre, which places him in sixth place after St. Martin, the Assumption, St. Peter, St. Stephen and St. Michael. As far as hermitages are concerned, there are almost a hundred, and only Saint Michael is ahead of him at issue , with such popular saints as Saint Martin and Saint Peter in second place.

All these places of worship, in addition to the chapels dedicated to him in various temples, keep not only images, paintings, goldsmith objects and sumptuary arts with his representations, but also altarpieces, some of them with cycles of his life, with the themes of his preaching, birth, imprisonment, beheading or baptism of Christ. Artists of different periods had the opportunity to face a penitent model very Pass to show anatomical and expressive values.

Their confraternities have been studied by Gregorio Silanes, who mentions those of Ostiz, composed of residents of the valley of Oláibar, Miranda de Arga, Peralta, Torralba del Río, Aguilar de Codés, Lumbier and Burdada. The same researcher also points out some brotherhoods under the dedication of the martyrdom of the Baptist, called of the Degollation of San Juan, such as those of Cintruénigo, Tudela and Torrano.

Of special interest are the iconographic cycles with the aforementioned passages of the main altarpieces of the parishes of Cintruénigo, Mendavia, Tabar, Subiza, Cortes and San Juan de Estella, as well as those of the chapels of the Victoria de Cascante and the cathedral of Pamplona.

From the Gothic period it is worth mentioning the head of its great chapel in Santa María de Viana, a sculpture attributed by Labeaga to Jehan de Tournai. The 16th century left spectacular sculptures from both the Expressionist period and the Romanesque period. Of the pictorial examples we will emphasize the head of its altarpiece of the choir of Tulebras, today in the Museum of Navarre and the table of Rolan Mois of the main altarpiece of the monastery of Fitero, that copies an original of Tiziano.

The Baroque centuries, in line with the triumph of painting, have given us bequest outstanding canvases of the saint preserved in the Shrine of Our Lady of Fair Love de Zuberoa de Garde, Acedo, Carmelitas Descalzos and Pamplona Cathedral, among other examples.

Among the most beautiful and delicate examples are the aforementioned panel by Rolan Mois in the main altarpiece of Fitero and the sculpture by José Ramírez de Arellano in the Comendadoras de Puente la Reina. The former is a copy of a Titian panel preserved in El Escorial, with strong chiaroscuro that foreshadows the triumph of tenebrist art. Regarding the image of Puente la Reina, made by the Zaragozan José Ramírez, we must affirm once again that it is, together with the other five by his hand and those of the altarpiece of Peralta, one of the best sculptures of all the Aragonese masters who worked in Navarre. 

There was no shortage of images of the saint, sometimes as a child, in private homes and niches on their facades. Saint Juanito also formed an inescapable part of the particular universe of the female cloisters. It was the excesses in the zeal of his care that provoked such harsh comments as those expressed in 1782, by Friar Juan Interián de Ayala, when he provided instructions to artists when representing the sacred figures in his work El pintor christiano y erudito, where he writes: "I will not stop here in reprehending the foolishness that women commit, when they ridiculously, although with good intention, adorn the image of the Baptist as a child, proposing him almost, or entirely naked, covered not with the skin.... but with a short skin that barely covers half of his body behind his back, wearing small sandals, and also adorned with his blond head, combed and curled in a thousand ways, to which are often added many other nonsense of this class...".

There are many texts that abound in the spiritual filiation between the Carmelites and the holy Precursor, as well as sermons and books dedicated to him in the sphere of the Discalced. There is no lack of images of the Baptist in the convents of the order, both of the old observance and among the sons of St. Teresa. The histories pointed to him in the attempts to legitimize the holy founders Elijah and Elisha. The cloistered world, far from being oblivious to all this, celebrated its June feast with special significance. Among the devotional practices of the Carmelite cloisters, Elijah and St. John the Baptist were paired as precursors of each other: Elijah of John and John of Christ. Both allude to the purifying fire as a means to reach God.

plenary session of the Executive Council In the 17th century, Brother Juan de Jesús San Joaquín (1590-1669), a native of Añorbe and a Carmelite layman, resided in Pamplona. He was famous for his prodigies during his lifetime and for the numerous accounts contained in his biography, published in 1684. Since then, until a century ago, the seiscentist text has been reprinted several times. Called upon by peoples to ward off epidemics, by the king, courtiers, nobles and viceroys.

His biographer, Father José de la Madre de Dios affirms that, in the year 1622, when the Pamplona convent was still outside the walls, in the neighborhood of the Magdalena, a custom was introduced on St. John's Day that transcended to other houses of the order. Let us leave the narration to the author of the seiscentist text: "On this day the brothers receive communion very early in the morning in the novitiates, and they are given lunch in the garden, and then they entertain themselves with their master, run, jump and have a good time until the hour of the high mass. For this occasion, Brother Juan made a statue of a devil and dressed him in a most despicable way. And placing it on a donkey, very tightly tied, he took it to the brothers, saying that there he was presenting the devil to them so that each one of them could bring the charges against him, and if he deserved it, he would have him publicly punished. He appointed the father-teacher as judge, and he constituted himself the devil's advocate, and all the others were actors. Beginning the charges, each one alleged temptations, with which he had annoyed him. The lawyer answered position , and after hearing the parties, sentence was passed that he be beaten, whipped, dragged and hanged. Then the brother released the young buck and handed the prisoner over to the people who were to carry out the sentence. They unloaded on him the sticks already foreseen and ran after the donkey until they knocked down the devil and mistreated him, and when they were tired of running, they hung him in a tree, and there they gave him again so many sticks and stones that he was torn to pieces. With this invention the brother left this year and continued in all the following years and today he lasts in our novitiates with great feeling for the devil. This happened in the city and as they searched the garden from the main church and all that stretch of wall that falls towards the neighborhood of the Magdalena, there were many people who came out to the novelty, and as they had a concept of sanctity, and they knew that on this day they had this feast and that they were not allowed to enter to see it in the garden, so many people went out to these stalls that it seems to me, five years that I was there, there were more than two hundred people each one of them, all of which was the greatest vilification for the devil".

He also relates some demonic apparitions, as well as the fact of having hung for a year the figure of the devil on a walnut tree that bore large nuts, which later no longer bore fruit. Likewise, he makes accredited specialization of what happened in 1672, when they had taken a possessed person to the convent, with an even more marvelous account, in keeping with the taste of the time.

Among the testimonies of the extension of the custom, we know that, in Calahorra, that day was expected singularly by the novices, because "they made a paper monkey full of straw with a devil figure" and after eating one of the young novices dressed in a frock coat and accompanied by others dressed as altar boys, launched an imprecatory speech against the devil that hung from the ceiling. Once the expletive was finished, the monigote was set on fire and its ashes were thrown into the irrigation ditch and once that symbolic auto de fe was over, a picture of St. John surrounded by branches and flowers was placed in the recreational conference room , accompanied by the images of the Divine Infant of the convent.

In the heart of Pamplona, in what was once the convent of the Discalced Carmelites and today the Palace of Navarra and its surroundings, the following event took place on St. John's Day, 1772, which we copy from its handwritten chronicle. The story begins with the preparation by the novices of "a figure of Lucifer well executed as a man to outrage her with all the scorn that each of the nuns can think of and finally sentencing her to be dragged and burned, starting from the eve of the saint to give her more compliments and contempt outrages. Everything was executed in the above mentioned year and having the eve of San Juan left it, as we were accustomed, in the most filthy place that is named the Common Piece and until the following day...". The following day they heard noises and barking and the nuns went to the place where they had kept the romper suit, finding a great dusting of earth, closing it immediately. Finally, a nun with more courage went there and "saw only that they had stabbed her with eyes like those of a dog, because she could not see any more because it was dark. The community came together and said that it was not a natural dog and that the enemy had become a dog". Immediately they brought the holy water and went to the place and found "the figure of the enemy that we had placed in the deep, all undone, so that having formed the figure of Lucifer in that of a large man in straw, we found the straw naked of the dress, without head or arms or anything of the figure of a person, removed the rope with which we had tied him to take him out. And wanting to find out if any dog could have come through the ducts, we called the same stonemason who made them, who assured us that it could not be because they were very closed, and the men having entered to recognize the duct in which we put him, they saw a thick iron grille in front, like a lattice, through which no dog could have entered, not even a very small one, and the rest of the room was also very closed, for which reason we were persuaded that it was all done by the enemy in demonstration that he wanted more to undo the figure of a man in which we had placed him and to stay in that filthy place than that we should do him more scorn and outrages in it, and for that reason we took out the dress and straw that was found separated to make them bigger and also immediately we figured a small devil to drag him, step on him and burn him, which was done on the very day of San Juan Bautista".