The identity of Navarre has also been related, traditionally, with some saints of different projection and some invocations of the Virgin, whose echoes went beyond the foral borders because they belonged to outstanding sanctuaries. Along the following lines we will make some reflections and considerations on these aspects related to beliefs, mentalities and the sacred.

The saints of the great monasteries

Leire, Irache and Fitero had as authentic signs of identity the saints Nunilo and Alodia and San Virila, in the first case, and San Veremundo and San Raimundo in the last two. Saint Virila does not seem to have had a great projection outside the walls of Leger and his native town of Tiebas. Not so the martyrs Nunilo and Alodia, whose relics were kept in the monastery next to an elegant late-Romanesque altarpiece and were the object of prayers and petitions from the town of Adauesca in Huesca. Eulate and Allo conserve images of them of excellent invoice.

Saint Veremundo, not only received special veneration in Irache, but also in the towns that disputed his birth: Villatuerta and Arellano. Images, altarpieces and reliquaries give good testimony. A very important event for his cult and iconography took place in the last third of the 16th century, in the midst of the fever for the cult of the relics of the saints promoted by the church and exemplified by Philip II in El Escorial. The abbot of Irache, Friar Antonio de Comontes, in 1583, grateful for his recovered health, had a polychrome wooden chest made with scenes from the life of the saint for his relics. In 1657 his beautiful chapel and a silver urn were built. During the 18th century his cult had two special moments linked to the extension of his prayer, first for the whole bishopric of Pamplona at the request of its prelate, in 1746, and two decades later for the whole kingdom of Navarre.

Regarding the Abbot Raimundo de Fitero, founder of the Order of Calatrava, his cult in the Navarre monastery was but a appendix of a veneration in numerous places of the peninsula linked to the mentioned order of chivalry and, very particularly, of other Cistercian monasteries and of Calatravan nuns. Engravings like those of Fray Matías Irala and Juan Bernabé Palomino give good account of the relevance that it acquired throughout the XVIII century, when the Congregation of Rites was authorizing its cult gradually and staggered for the Cistercians (1702), the committee of Military Orders (1718), city and diocese of Tarazona (1727), Trinitarians (1728), kingdom of Navarre (1766) and for all the Hispanic dominions (1800).

In reference letter to the two saints, Veremundo and Raimundo, it is necessary to remember the initiative of the abbots of Irache and Fitero asking the Cortes of Navarre, in 1765, to urge the Congregation of Rites for the extension to all the kingdom of the Offices of San Veremundo and San Raimundo. The Deputation of the Kingdom gave an account in the following meeting of the Cortes, in 1780, of how the mandate of the previous Cortes had been positively resolved and the liturgical Offices of both saints had already been printed.

The co-patrons: Xavier as a new model of sanctity

The whole problem raised in Navarre regarding the co-patronage of San Fermin and St. Francis Xavier must be contextualized in plenary session of the Executive Council period of the Catholic Reform, when renewed ideals of sanctity were being promoted and the Diputación of the Kingdom of Navarre, in 1621, received Xavier as patron saint , proposing that the Cortes, as an institution that embodied the Kingdom itself, ratify the board of trustees, something that happened in 1624.

The lawsuits for the patronages were frequent in Spain in the sixteenth century, especially in the case of Santiago and Santa Teresa. In Navarre, the Xavierists, strongly influenced by the Jesuits, were supported by the institutions of the Kingdom -Cortes and Diputación-, among whose members there were former students of the Society, while the Ferminists were supported by the city of Pamplona and the chapter of its cathedral, together with a clergy quite suspicious of the power and influence that the sons of St. Ignatius were assuming.

The lawsuit reached the Roman Curia and ended with a Papal Brief in 1657, by which San Fermin and San Francisco Javier were declared the main patron saints of the Kingdom. The celebrations of all subject, of religious and ludic character, replaced the confrontations with some of the biggest celebrations lived in Navarre. From now on, their images would coexist peacefully in numerous altarpieces, engravings and paintings throughout Navarre, with the Gospel side reserved for San Fermín, as a martyr.

St. Gregory Ostiense, St. Michael of Aralar and other legendary saints

If any saint, affiliated with Navarre, achieved popularity in past centuries, it was San Gregorio Ostiense. His legend placed him as bishop of Ostia and librarian of Rome, sent to these lands in the time of King García of Nájera, to prevent a plague, dying in Logroño on May 9, 1044. Placed his corpse on a mule, they released the animal, because the deceased bishop had ordered it to be buried where the horse fell for the third time and died. This circumstance occurred in Piñava, jurisdiction of Sorlada, which is where the sanctuary is located. As protector of the locust plagues that devastated the Spanish countryside, he gained devotees and his relics began to make pilgrimages to different geographical areas. The oldest departure of the "Santa Cabeza" dates back to 1552. In 1687 the Diputación del Reino asked it to travel through the merindades of Navarra and its most important and longest journey dates from 1756-1757, in this case paid for by the Royal Treasury, traveling through Aragon, Levante, Andalusia, Extremadura and La Mancha. Of singular financial aid in the extension of his cult was that of the bishop of Pamplona, Don Gaspar de Miranda y Argáiz.

As far as San Miguel de Aralar is concerned, its legend seems to have taken shape throughout the centuries of the Ancien Régime with the story of the parricide Teodosio de Goñi. Some printed texts, on the one hand, and engraved prints, on the other, contributed to this. With a peculiar iconography of the cruciferous angel that has representations in medieval buildings such as the Shrine of Our Lady of Fair Love of Villatuerta or the parish of Berrioplano, the current image is no longer the one that bore the coats of arms of the Cruzat family in the 16th century and is due to the silversmith José Yábar in 1756, who lined the icon "with more care and decency than in the old one". Another remodeling was carried out in 1797, as a result of the theft and destruction of the same in 1797, in this case to position of the silversmith Francisco Iturralde. The devotional prints opened throughout the 18th century, from 1735 onwards, contributed to its diffusion and its expression in canvases and paintings.

Among the legendary saints we will mention San Babil who has two apocryphal accounts in Navarre, one as bishop of Pamplona-monk of Leire and another that makes him a native of Cascante, invoked as an advocate for the lame and rheumatic. The latter city has worshiped him until recently and in the parish of San Jorge de Tudela he had a powerful brotherhood founded in 1711. Other towns in Navarre such as Falces, Puente la Reina, Artajona and Sangüesa also paid him special tributes.

Another saint wrapped in legend was San Simeón de Cabredo, venerated in his native town and in Azuelo. Some churches in Alava also have images of him, although his most important sculpture, both for its artistic category and for the place where it was placed, was that of the sculptor Manuel Pereira, which, together with nine other saints of saintly farmers, was in the chapel of San Isidro in Madrid in the 17th century. Later, all of them were moved to the cathedral of San Isidro, being lost in the civil war.

Finally, we cannot fail to mention among the legendary saints San Guillén and his sister Santa Felicia, with a legend around the Camino de Santiago and a shrine in Labiano, where it is preserved in a delicate baroque silver urn, surrounded by votive offerings with the body of Santa Felicia invoked secularly against headaches. Her legend took literary form in the Mystery of Obanos.

The invocations of the great Marian sanctuaries

To the advocations with an extensive devotional and popular history since the Age average, fundamentally of Roncesvalles and Ujué, would join with force, during the centuries of the Modern Age, others like Our Lady of the Way and the Virgin of the Wonders in Pamplona. All of them together with the images of Codés, El Villar and Araceli de Corella are those that appear in the famous work of the Jesuit Father Juan de Villafañe of 1729, entitled Compendio histórico en que se da noticia de las milagrosas y devotas imágenes de la Reyna de los cielos María Santísima que se veneran en los mas célebres santuarios de España - that we can consider as an accurate testimony about the importance of the Marian icons seen from a distance by a great scholar. In the 1740 edition of the same work, Our Lady of the Tabernacle of the cathedral of Pamplona was added. Other repertories of famous Marian images of the 19th century, such as the work of the Count of Fabraquer (1861), added small reviews of other advocations such as those of Pero de Peralta, Yugo de Arguedas or Camino de Monteagudo.

Legends, prodigies and miracles of all subject supported the pilgrimages, vows of institutions, brotherhoods and the attachment of the people. Her apparitions were sung in her joys, often set to music, which provide arguments to understand the extension of her cult. Some of them had their affectionate nickname, such as the Virgin of Villar de Corella, known as "la llovedera" or the one of the Camino de Pamplona as "la farandulera".

As C. Alarcón Román, many of those images look like static objects and give the sensation of having always been in the same form. But it is not true, since tastes and mentalities changed the appearance of the medieval sculptures, simple and majestic, turning them into vestments. It was then when the seated carvings with the Child on his lap were reconverted into slender standing images, mutilating them in those parts that were in the way to dress them with aprons and cloaks and stuffed in Structures campaniformes.

Printed novenas, letters of fraternity, measures, medals and stamps are very important elements to prove their devotional impact on society. In their sanctuaries, on days of great celebration and fairs, hundreds of these objects were sold to pilgrims and the faithful. In this way, for a modest price, devotion could be satisfied with the acquisition of their "real portraits" stamped, just as they were venerated in their temples. For those who did not go to the sanctuaries or conventual porteries, there was always the possibility of buying the prints from those who went out on various routes to make the annual demand, through more or less extensive geographical areas, according to the permits obtained from the civil and ecclesiastical authorities.

The intaglio engravings in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and lithographs of the nineteenth century, with medals minted in Rome or France and various cities of all those images, cooperated decisively to the dissemination of their cult. In the case of Roncesvalles, which had so many encomiendas, it should be pointed out that copies of the titular image were made. Roque Alberto Faci in his work on images in Aragon (1739). After noting that there were several in Spain, quotation the one from the Shrine of Our Lady of Fair Love of his name in the town of Alcolea de Cinca, where it had a confraternity and the one from the convent of San Eloy in Lisbon, where it was taken by Doña Leonor de Aragón, daughter of Fernando I of Aragón, married to the infante Don Duarte de Portugal in 1428.

There are some surprising facts about some images that were not apparently of great projection. An example is the case of the Virgins of Luquin, whose fame went beyond the local level. Its almsmen traveled to Berrueza, Valdega, La Solana, Echauri, Yerri, Orba and Araquil and towns such as Lerín, Peralta, Artajona, Andosilla, Sesma, Cárcar, Lodosa, Falces, Milagro, Valtierra, Mañeru and Salvatierra.

Finally, we would like to reflect on the presentation of those images before the faithful. In medieval times, the curtain or velum was part of the staging of the image. The action of "veiling / unveiling" concretized in those times the dialectic of the presentation of the images, of agreement with the liturgical function and the feast to be celebrated. It is significant that at the end of the 16th century and, above all, in the 17th century, the religious use of the veils practically disappeared in many places, when the documents attest to the irruption of the curtain in the presentation of the works of private character, particularly in the cabinets of painting, in which the best piece of the collection was covered to generate expectation among the visitors. However, in certain places, such as Navarra, its use survived in the case of the most famous Marian images until the beginning of the 19th century.

The names of the invocations were echoed in the onomastics, at different times, related to the extension of their cult. We will give some very significant examples. Coinciding with the fervor of the inauguration of the Pamplona chapel of the Virgen del Camino, the name Camino was given to her children. The first child documented is the baptism of Mª Camino Sierra y Ayerra (22-IV-1769). The second was Mª Camino Zamarquilla in May 1773 and in the days following the placement of the Virgen del Camino (25-VIII-1776) we find four girls, one daughter of the Marquises of Vesolla. Since then, every year several girls and some boys were registered with the name, especially around the celebration of the famous octave.

In Estella something similar happened with the Virgin of Puy. The documentary catalog of the parish of San Juan de Estella, made by Don José María Lacarra, includes in the month of April of 1750 two entries in which for the first time the name of María Puy is given to the baptized Virgin. By the middle of the 18th century, the Basilica of El Puy was being endowed with important works such as the new altarpiece, the chapel, the sacristy and the organ, which speaks of milestones in the secular devotion of the people of Estella to the image. A last example will be the first four girls who in Fitero took the name of the patron saint, the Virgen de la Barda, on the occasion of the transfer of the image to its new chapel in 1918.