Cultural heritage, as a faithful historical expression of historical facts and contexts, presents unequivocal material and immaterial testimonies about the consequences of wars, plagues and other public calamities. Huge factories that were begun with great enthusiasm, among which the parish church of San Pedro de Viana stands out, were interrupted and never finished according to their original plans, due to the great plague of the mid-14th century.

In this partnership, we will dwell on some examples of Marian invocations and saints who were the object of vows by towns and cities, in the context of great historical epidemics. Times, in part, like the days in which we are living, in which humanity was bewildered, everything was entrusted to Divine Providence and to the intercession of the Virgin and of the healing saints.

Along with the great devotional icons, the simple people did not hesitate, in the face of those deadly contagions, to hoard medals, scapulars, detentes and other amulets to avoid contagion, as we analyzed in a article in this same newspaper of December 7, 2018.
 

Vows around protective images

Most of our towns and cities, when illness came, turned their gaze to the venerable icons in which they had placed their trust for centuries. The invocation to the different invocations of the Virgin and to the saints, in those transcendental moments of illness and death, was reflected in texts and images. From the Middle Ages onwards, the municipal authorities made vows to the saints, which were translated into promises to keep their feasts, in gratitude for the favors received. They were very frequent and some towns made several, as happened in Pamplona or Sangüesa, with eight and six vows, respectively. Processions and penitential prayers with the images of the patron saints are documented repeatedly, since the 16th century, in internship all the towns of Navarre on the occasion of plagues, wars, famines and droughts.

The case of St. Sebastian, as an advocate against the plague, is very illustrative, as is that of St. Roch, especially since his canonization in 1584. The origin of St. Sebastian's protection against the plague dates back to the year 680, when he freed Rome from a great epidemic, a fact reported by Paul Deacon in his Historia Longobardorum. At the time, it should be remembered that the plague coincided with a rain of arrows, both in classical sources - passage from the Iliad in which Apollo unleashes the plague with the shot of his arrow - and in biblical sources (Psalms 7 and 64). The Golden Legend contributed decisively to the diffusion of his cult and iconography.  

One of the first documented vows to Saint Sebastian in Navarre is that of Olite (1413), as a result of the plague of that year. It was accompanied by the protective rite consisting of surrounding the perimeter of the town with a wick or blessed wick. 

Some of those vows crystallized in the patronage of some localities. In Tafalla, the legendary miracle of the beret of 1426 made his cult grow, and numerous donations came through his confraternity. Its famous stone image is attributed to the sculptor Johan Lome and for its realization, in 1422, the royal secretary Sancho de Navaz left an order. The annual echo of the vow of Tafalla was linked to the procession of the walls, since, as in Olite, the perimeter of its walls was surrounded by a roll of wax carried on a platform. The devotional act was recovered in 1885, on the occasion of the cholera epidemic, adding five arrobas of wax to the wax roll, which was depleted, so that it would reach its original length.

In Sangüesa, in 1543, the vow was already celebrated before the great plagues of 1566 and 1599. The town council appointed the preacher of the feast and the annual procession was attended by all the guilds. 

The board of trustees of Saint Anne on Tudela had its origin in a municipal agreement in 1530, after the city got rid of a plague, when its aldermen "took a vow to perpetually keep and celebrate the feast of Lady Saint Anne every year in perpetuity with a very solemn and devout procession and carrying in the procession the holy image of Lady Saint Anne with the illuminations that seem to the mayors and aldermen ...".

Pamplona suffered a great plague epidemic in 1599. Among the measures taken were those of subject religious. The municipal authorities undertook to keep abstinence on the eves of Saint Sebastian and Saint Fermin and the flag of the city of Pamplona and the veneras of its aldermen recall the Cinco Llagas procession, carried out at the request of a Franciscan layman from Calahorra, by means of which the capital of Navarre was freed from the scourge.

The plague of 1649 had in Pamplona, as antidotes, countless pendants, like terracotta medals, with the crown of thorns and the nails of the passion on the front and the five wounds on the back. They were distributed by thousands from the Augustinian Recollect Nuns, at the initiative of their prioress, and again in 1676, at the request of Murcia and Cartagena. In plenary session of the Executive Council XVIII century they were required again due to the cattle plague of 1774.

The municipal conference proceedings , accounts of parishes and brotherhoods give good testimony of the extraordinary departures of so many images of great veneration due to cholera in the 19th century, mainly in 1833-1834, 1854-1855 and 1885. We will cite some examples. The Christ of the Shrine of Our Lady of Fair Love of the Holy Cross of Tudela, the Virgins of the Way of Pamplona, of the Yoke of Arguedas, of the Barda of Fitero, of the Romero of Cascante or that of the Villar of Corella, among many others, were the object of novenaries, transfers and great processions. We have detailed descriptions of the cults paid to that of the Villar, and in the cases of Tudela and Cascante in 1885 we have received very interesting photographs. One of them of October 4 in Tudela, after the celebration in the cathedral of a solemn mass of thanksgiving, to which different images of saints of the different hermitages and churches of the city were taken and another one of the neighbors of the Clarisas, dated October 28.

In Pamplona, the neighborhoods of La Rochapea and La Magdalena went to the Virgin of the River, both in 1855, with a solemn novena and procession, and in 1885, with a closed-door novena and procession. On both dates, according to the chronicles of the Augustinian Sisters of St. Peter, there were no deaths in both neighborhoods.

The image of greatest transcendence and fame in relation to the epidemic of 1885 was the Virgin of Cholera of Olite, an image of the Immaculate Conception by Luis Salvador Carmona (1749), patron saint of the city, which freed the people of Olite from the dreaded disease.
 

St. Francis Xavier, universal advocate against plague 

The Navarrese evocation of the plague in the most international sphere is linked to the figure of St. Francis Xavier, a special advocate against plagues in various parts of the world. In one of the stanzas of his popular "gozos", he sang: "The plague that the wind casts, you turn into healthy air". In this simple way, in the Novena of Grace, the thaumaturge Xavier was alluded to in relation to the great epidemics. Father Francisco Garcia in his well-known biography of the saint (1685) affirms: "What shall I say of the plagues that he has extinguished in various cities in one and the other world, purifying the air of the deaths that threatened its citizens, who chose him for patron saint, so that being under his protection, the contagion would respect them, and God would not punish them seeing them sponsored by St. Francis Xavier? "Next, he refers how, upon arriving in Malacca, the body of the apostle stopped the plague that afflicted the city and, in another chapter of the same book, he alludes to the end of the disease in Manar, a scene painted by Ciro Ferri and engraved in such a way that it was copied on canvases in Flanders, Italy, Spain and New Spain.

The events that took place in Naples in 1656 were widely spread throughout Europe and America, from the very moment they took place, thanks to the written and published accounts and the festivities that were celebrated in all their splendor. 

A summary of the facts refers that in the chapel of the saint in the Jesuits' Professed House there was and still is a canvas, work of Juan Bernardino Siciliano, that represents Javier kneeling praying before the Virgin with the Child, around which extraordinary events began to occur from 1653, when many people observed how the saint moved his eyes and changed the color of his countenance, sometimes pale, other times with a different color. For several days the event was repeated and the Jesuits even covered the image with a veil, but to no avail, because the prodigy could still be seen through it. Time passed and when the event was almost forgotten, in 1656, the city was devastated by the plague, described by Father Cassani as "cruel because of its ravages, cruel because of its contagiousness, cruel because of its irremediability and cruel because of the multitude of people whose throats were slit". The city entrusted itself to the Immaculate Conception, to Saint Gennaro and to Saint Rosalia, with the usual vows, prayers and multiple penitences. After not achieving its cessation, they remembered the mutation of Javier's face and turned to his intercession on June 12, with a citizen's vote appealing " to the sponsorship of St. Francis Xavier begging him, that just as he delivered with his prayers, still living, the island of Manar and after his death, with the smell of his bones, the city of Malacca in India, from the plague that afflicted it, and lately, a few years ago, the city of Malacca, in India, from the plague that afflicted it; and lately, a few years ago, to the city of Bologna from the same contagion, so that he may deign with his protection to free this city from the present epidemic". The text ended with the promise to erect monuments to the saint and to celebrate his feast with all pomp, taking him as co-patron together with St. Gennaro and taking an image of him from the Casa Profesa to the bishop's palace and from there to the treasury or tabernacle where the statues of the saints protectors of the city and all their relics were kept.

Father Sanvítores, under the pseudonym of Matías de Peralta (1665), refers to personal healings of a miraculous nature with his images, with the oil from the lamp in his chapel, through his invocation and even with the apparition of Xavier himself. The plague was disappearing and the authorities and neighborhoods of Naples asked the Pope, together with a letter from the General of the Jesuits, for the confirmation of board of trustees, something that was obtained and widely celebrated. 

Among the cities that achieved the extinction of the plague through the intercession of St. Francis Xavier are Manar, Malacca, Bologna (1630), Aquila and Parma (1656), Macerata (1658), Bruges (1666) and Durango in New Spain (1668), among others. 

A singular and truly important case is that of Bologna, immortalized in Guido Reni's canvas depicting the Madonna del Rosario with the patron saints of the city, preserved in its Pinacoteca. The adoption of the Xaverian board of trustees dates back to 1630, when the city managed to emerge from the scourge. The votive offering of the painting was commissioned to the aforementioned painter the following year and it shows the Virgin of the Rosary with the patron saints of the city: Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Saint Francis Xavier, Saint Proculus, Saint Petronius, Saint Francis Assisi, Saint Florianus and Saint Dominic. In Bologna itself an image of Xavier was venerated, described as "antica e miracolosa", in the room that the Navarrese saint occupied in that city, converted into a chapel, within the Jesuit high school . 

The special protection of the city of Cremona was evident in some prints and especially in the festivities for the canonization of St. Francis Borgia. For the latter reason and for having chosen Xavier as a special protector of the city, a huge central machine was built with four triumphal arches representing the four parts of the world. From the upper area, topped by a kind of pyramid with the monogram of the Society of Jesus and the flag of the city, hung banners of the following cities: Goa, Aquila, Parma, Piacenza, Turin, Manar, Naples, Bologna and Malacca, all of which were spared or helped by St. Francis Xavier in times of plague.

The first Jacobite in 1886, on Thanksgiving Day

The city of Pamplona, after getting rid of the morbid cholera of 1885, witnessed the organization of the massive pilgrimage of 12,000 Navarrese to Javier to give thanks to the saint, in 1886, after the foundation of the Archconfraternity of St. Francis Xavier in the parish of St. Augustine.

In August 1885, two cases of cholera were declared in the capital of Navarre. The parish priest of San Agustín, Don Modesto Pérez, stated his intention project to go on a pilgrimage to Javier if the city was spared from the contagion, as it was. That pilgrimage took place on March 4, 1886. The events began with a triduum, celebrated in the parish of St. Augustine and preached by the Jesuit Father Manuel Gil. On March 4, the pilgrims gathered in the cathedral, in the atrium the hymn of the pilgrimage was interpreted by the music band and the Orfeón Pamplonés, and the expedition departed from San Ignacio Street in horse-drawn carriages, carts, mules and donkeys. Some photographs left impressive snapshots of the event.

With the experience of the success of the pilgrimage, some years later, in 1896, the bishop announced another march to the sanctuary, in this case in atonement for the blasphemies, on the eve of the Cuban War, coinciding with the laying of the first stone of the new basilica. On this occasion there were between nine and ten thousand attendees. According to Father Escalada, the pilgrimages to the sanctuary increased, giving an account of some like those of the students of the high school of Tudela in 1911 or that of the Franciscan Tertiaries in 1915, when the restoration of the castle was already a fact.