The society of past centuries, so repetitive in its rhythms, liked the extraordinary, both in terms of festivities and the marvelous. It is not uncommon to call the seventeenth century as miraculous, because of the great issue of amazing events that were related verbally, in letters and in printed sheets. Through some paintings and engravings we can see how some legendary events related to images and saints of Navarre were captured, as well as other representations of truly amazing events.

Three famous apparitions of Marian images in painting

Three paintings of the XVIII century give account of the imaginary around three Navarrese Marian advocations. For the Virgin of the Yoke of Arguedas, we have a mural painting in the dressing room of her sanctuary, work of José Eléizegui (1728). The finding of the Virgin of Villar de Corella is narrated in a canvas of the middle of the XVIII century and the arrival of the Virgin of the River in the waters of the Arga and her rescue by the prioress of the Augustinian Sisters of San Pedro, is narrated in another painting of the XVIII century retouched in 1832 and 1884. In the three examples the Marian images appear dressed with rich mantles, crowns, rostrillos and jewels, in diachronically surreal versions, if we think about the original medieval carvings and the chronologies of the appearances of the same ones. The protagonism of the authorities is patent in the three examples: of the regiments with their capes and golillas or valonas in the cases of Arguedas and Corella or of the very chapter of the cathedral of Pamplona in the arrival of Nuestra Señora del Río. Processional processions, naive landscapes and details of all subject help to read graphically the legendary stories. The legends of the immaterial heritage take materiality from the hand of these naive paintings of discreet quality, but with values of great iconographic and anthropological interest.

Around the saints: St. Veremundo, St. Michael of Aralar, St. Gregory Ostiense.

In all three cases, the legendary stories of their protagonists passed through the burins, gouges and brushes to the figurative arts in order to show before the eyes some singular prodigies of apparitions and miracles. In the case of St. Veremundo, his miracles freeing a demoniac, helping the needy and crippled, etc., appear in the polychrome reliefs of his Renaissance chest made between 1583 and 1584 by order of Abbot Antonio Comontes, as well as in an engraving, dated 1746, made by the discalced Carmelite friar José de San Juan de la Cruz.

Regarding San Miguel de Aralar, the first image of the legendary story of his appearance is an intaglio engraving of 1735, which has as its protagonist the image of San Miguel cruciferous, according to the vision of Teodosio de Goñi, who appears in the main part of the composition, freeing himself from his chains before the diabolical monster. Three other correlative scenes of the legend, in a kind of hagiography on paper, follow one another in the print, showing his meeting with the devil disguised as a hermit on the left, the parricide in the upper area and the meeting with his wife undoing the lie instilled by Satan in the knight, making him believe that his wife had been unfaithful. We know that these scenes, conveniently cut and retouched, were reused to illustrate the legend of Teodosio de Goñi and the archangel in the famous book by Father Burgui, published in Pamplona in 1774. Of the 1735 engraving we only know of a couple of copies, one of them illuminated. The fact of having cut out and reused a plate is very significant about the life of the matrices with which the engravings were made and their later use, not only with retallados, but with real fragmentations of the plates.

The story of San Miguel de Aralar is repeated in another print whose plate was opened in Rome by Miguel Sorelló in 1749. However, it would be the passage of the apparition to Don Teodosio that was repeated in other engravings and lithographs, as well as in various paintings such as those of the parish of Iturmendi or the sacristy of Larraga, the latter made by Diego Díaz del Valle in 1803 and studied by Igor Cacho.

Finally, we will refer to the particular history of San Gregorio Ostiense, who was said to be the bishop of Ostia and librarian of Rome, sent to these lands in the time of King García of Nájera, to put an end to a plague, dying in Logroño on May 9, 1044. His corpse was placed on a mule, and the animal was released, because the deceased bishop had ordered it to be buried where the horse fell for the third time and died. The fall and death occurred in Piñava, jurisdiction of Sorlada, which is where the sanctuary is located. These last two scenes are not missing in the reliefs of the great baroque façade of the basilica, in the drum of the dome of the sanctuary itself, in the engraving of Carlos Casanova (1737) and in some lithographs.

The Estellan legend of the bishop of Patrás in Estella

The painting that adorns and shows with its images the legend about the arrival of the bishop of Patrás to Estella, carrying the scapula of San Andrés, dates from the third quarter of the 17th century and hangs on the walls of the chapel of San Andrés in the parish of San Pedro de la Rúa in Estella. It is not a Navarrese work, but imported, possibly from Madrid or Seville, most likely on the initiative of the Marquise of Cortes. For the canvas and others dedicated to San Andrés of the same origin, Vicente Frías made the frames with golden cards in 1699, while José García proceeded to clean them. The painting that narrates the event of the bishop's burial and the invention of his body with the finding of the relics of St. Andrew, has its literary source in written texts and oral tradition, collected among others by Baltasar de Lezáun y Andía in the Historical Memoirs of Estella (1710), preserved in the National Library Services . Because of the parallelism between image and text and the interest of the latter, we transcribe some of the paragraphs of the tenth chapter of the manuscript:

"About the year 1270 a bishop of the church of Patras in the Arcaya province of Greece (whose name is unknown) resolved to make a pilgrimage to Compostela to visit the tomb of St. James the Apostle and with the consent of the clergy of his church, he took the relic of the back of the Apostle St. Andrew, that with others he kept in the church of Patras in whose city the saint suffered martyrdom and placed the back in a wooden box with the intention of presenting it as a precious gift of his religious piety to the church of Santiago with the authentic testimonies that qualified the truth and extraction of the relic, he undertook his workshop and entering in this kingdom... he arrived in Estella and stayed in the hospital of San Nicolas that was then close to the parish church of San Pedro de la Rua, where he became seriously ill as a result of his long workshop executed on foot with extreme poverty, or by divine providence of heaven, and finally... he died without declaring his death, the saintly bishop died without declaring the treasure that was hidden with the dress next to his chest, and with it he was buried without any consideration for a poor pilgrim, if he did not order him to be buried with the dress (as it is said) in the cemetery of the church of San Pedro, at the root of the castle, and the rich treasure on his back was buried with the pilgrim bishop. The sky did not want to remain hidden and so the following night, the sacristan of the church noticed that a resplendent clarity was over the grave of the pilgrim and, admiring the novelty, he kept quiet in case it was an illusion of his fantasy and the second night he observed the same clarity with which, disillusioned of being something celestial, he reported to the clergy and parish of San Pedro, And when they all came to verify the miracle, on another night they recognized the same brightness and lights as the sacristan, and with such a prodigious motive, they dug the pilgrim's grave and uncovered his corpse, undressing him they found in his chest the holy relic with the testimonies placed in the reliquary or wooden box and in it some other relics. The relic is the whole shovel or bone of the back as it rises to the shoulder and at the top it has some red flesh that gives off some very soft fragrance that Ambrosio de Morales testifies that he saw and felt it. The wooden box or reliquary lined with a gilded bronze leaf with some holes at the ends, undoubtedly to wear it hanging from the neck with its cords, is also preserved, as well as the crosier, cruets and gloves".

All of the elements mentioned in the text: bishop as pilgrim, wooden box of the main relic, Estella hospital, burial, prodigy and invention of his body with the finding of the relic, crozier, cruets and glove appear in the seventeenth-century painting. The objects do not keep any fidelity with the medieval ones but they have been recreated following the uses of the time of the painting. A small tortoiseshell box with silver corners is added in the lower left zone, which must have been used to keep the "other relics" referred to in the text, a Novo-Hispanic work from the second half of the 17th century and with evident parallels with others conserved in the parishes of San Miguel and San Juan de Estella, the latter dated 1659. As it is known the primitive reliquary of San Andrés, donated in 1374 by Carlos II king of Navarre, was substituted by another one of baroque packaging in 1712 that is the one that was stolen in the robbery of 1979 together with other pieces, of which only the vases have been recovered.

Two falls in eighteenth-century votive offerings

The parish of Lerín has a curious ex-voto that narrates what happened to a young local boy who fell from the bell tower on the day of the Virgin of the Pilar in 1709 without the fatal consequences that such a fall would suggest. In its registration we read: "Pedro Yviricu yjo / de lazaro Yviricu y / Marta Moreno su /cedio que el mismo / dia de nuestra Seño / ra del Pilar estando / mirando los torors des /del alto de la tore ca / yo ciento i cinco pies / de alto: Y fue Nuestra / Señora servida de li / brarle de tan gran pe / ligro Y quedo sano y vu / eno. Alo de 1709". Such a prodigy made the feast of the Pilar and its cult gain greater momentum in the town, although the aforementioned Marian devotion had a brotherhood and altarpiece in the parish at that time.

The church of Santa María de Sangüesa preserves two enormous votive offerings, apparently paid for by the former archbishop of Burgos between 1764 and 1791 and son of the town, Don José Javier Ramírez de Arellano, to whom the written sources of the parish refer as "a special benefactor as he has accredited by jewels and rich alms". The authorship of Marcos Sasal for both paintings does not seem to hold up, given that this painter was active in 1842 and the canvases are from the last decades of the 18th century, unless there was a painter of the same name who was his father or uncle. It is also possible that the aforementioned artist proceeded to clean or restore them in the middle of the 19th century and that is where the attribution comes from. The first painting is dedicated to San Francisco Javier and the second has been studied in detail by Juan Cruz Labeaga. In it, the legendary miracle of a knight is related, who was saved from certain death, thanks to his invocation to the Virgin of Rocamador, because being cornered in the bridge of the mentioned locality, he threw himself to the river to avoid being captured, moment in which the patron saint of Sangüesa intervened saving his life. The painting represents the knight surrounded by his enemies on the bridge of Sangüesa getting ready to jump into the Aragón river. In the background he appears healthy, after invoking the Virgin. Also, a mountain is represented with a fortress that the legend wants to be the one of Lumbier. On the right side, the church of Santa María and the palace-castle of Sangüesa can be seen, and in a higher area, the knight dressed as a golilla devoutly giving thanks to the Virgin, who is wearing the rich mantle given to her by Archbishop Ramírez de Arellano in 1774.