Ex voto is a Latin expression that means fulfillment of a vow offered to a divinity or supernatural being, in gratitude for some favor received by virtue of a promise and in a language of symbolic exchange with the supraterrestrial.

As with the painted votive offerings, to which we dedicated a monograph last year (Chair de Patrimonio y Arte Navarro, 2023), there are some other types, which are difficult to classify, including figurines, legs, arms, eyes, weapons, crutches and other objects. Those that have been preserved are authentic testimonies of a lost religiosity. In the memory of the lucky ones and beneficiaries, there was room for the most disparate objects. Naturally, it was the great sanctuaries that treasured the most pieces of this subject.

The disappearance of painted votive offerings and other kinds of votive offerings is recorded by different testimonies. In Ujué it is Father Clavería who informs us in his monograph of 1919, that from the walls of the sanctuary hung diverse votive offerings, that gave faith of the favors obtained by intercession of the Virgin in numerous devotees. All of them would have been eliminated by decision of the parish priest Guillermo Lacunza, who was the parish priest until 1885.

The chains of the coat of arms of Navarre, which tradition affiliated with those of the Navas de Tolosa that Sancho el Fuerte tore from the palenque of Miramamolín, were shown as a true ex-voto in different parts of the Kingdom, especially in the collegiate church of Roncesvalles and the cathedral of Tudela, where they still appear on the main altarpiece.

In Roncesvalles the ivory cornets were displayed in a special place in the main chapel, the larger one of Roland and the smaller one of Oliberos. Next to them were two maces, the Durindana sword of Roland "which in these times the king of Spain has in his royal armory", according to sub-prior Huarte, and the stirrup of Archbishop Turpin. According to the aforementioned Huarte, at the beginning of the XVII century, those objects were visited by French gentlemen, ambassadors and other persons of rank that "make them come down and venerate them kissing them, and I have seen some of them cry with tenderness at the mere report and representation of such insignificant and ancient things".

In the holy chapel of Javier, a veritable dressing room of images, memories and iconography, there must have been no shortage of votive offerings of miracles performed by the saint. As testimony of them, some silver eyes and a small solid language of the same material have been preserved, with their particular history, linked to a relative of the aforementioned Don Antonio Idiáquez, who recovered his speech by special grace, through prayers to the patron saint of Navarre. For this reason, on September 25, 1766, Joaquín de Arteaga y Vozmediano, Marquis of Valmediano, resident in Guipúzcoa, his wife Micaela de Idiáquez, daughter of Count Antonio Idiáquez, his seven children and a nephew joined the brotherhood of the saint, based in Javier. On the silver language we find a registration which reads: "To the Great X^r A Ynnoc^e Mudo For the gift of language".

Famous sanctuaries also present votive offerings, such as the crutches of the Christ of Aibar, the ark of Saint Felicia in Labiano, or the miracles of the Christ of Olite, hung in 1773 and today, sadly, disappeared. Iribarren remembers the heart of Carlos II in Ujué, the chains that dragged in expiation of his parricide Don Teodosio, in Aralar, the iron ark and the chain of crickets of the miracle of the liberation of the captive in 1468.

In the collegiate church of Roncesvalles, we know, through Javier de Ibarra, that in the accounts of 1745 there is an entry in which the hospital canon noted the following: "Sixty reales spent on wages and refreshments to the men who from Usúrbil, brought on shoulders the corsair ship that Don Manuel de Aizpurúa, neighbor of Usúrbil, shipbuilder, has dedicated and given to the Church of this Royal House in attention to the special favors that he recognizes he owes to Our Lady of Roncesvalles, for having always succeeded in the shipbuilding, made with the materials bought from Roncesvalles, in the mountains of his property, called Iria and Andara. And admitted by the chapter, with its order, it has been placed in the Church, for memory and report of the favors owed to such a protector". The aforementioned mountains are next to the town of Usúrbil in Guipuzcoa and Manuel de Aizpurúa stood out as one of the great shipbuilders and interim Captain of the Guipúzcoa Shipyard since 1760. He worked for the Royal Guipuzcoan Company of Caracas between 1761 and 1779. For the rest, the documentation confirms the custom in the Basque Country of sending this subject of votive offerings and this is confirmed in great sanctuaries, such as Nuestra Señora de Itziar de Deva, Arrate de Eibar, Santo Cristo de Lezo or Santa Cruz de Motrico, among others.

When dealing with the construction of the Shrine of Our Lady of Fair Love roncalesa of Our Lady of Zuberoa in Garde, Javier Gárriz affirms in his monograph that in the sponsorship of the same one Don Felipe de Atocha y Maisterra stood out, born in Garde on April 30, 1612 and died in San Sebastián in 1668. According to the same author in one of the trips of the mentioned one by the sea, "either when returning from the Indies, where he must have gone like other relatives in search of fame and fortune, sailing with his own ships, or perhaps returning from Naples, where the owners of the palace of Atocha had properties, some pirates came out to meeting who, trying to steal what he was carrying, began to shoot against his ships a rain of bullets. Then he, moved by his great devotion to Our Lady of Zuberoa, offered her, if he got out of that distressing situation, half of the wealth he was carrying there; so, having managed to escape alive from that imminent danger, thanks to the protection so visible of the Blessed Virgin, as soon as he arrived home, he faithfully fulfilled his promise. And since by that time the primitive basilica would perhaps be in bad condition ..., he could not have given a better employment tothat substantial donation than by building the beautiful basilica from scratch".

As a perennial testimony of the happy result that had that dangerous adventure, Mr. Atocha placed a votive offering, which currently hangs on the wall on the side of the Gospel, and consists of a very strong rope, which seems to have served as a boat mooring, in which is embedded a cannonball of regular caliber".

There is no shortage of institutional flags, especially military flags, in cathedrals and temples. In the sanctuary of Musquilda de Ochagavía a very worn flag of the knights of Malta was conserved in 1775, that according to the legend would have offered Carlos de Lizarazu at the beginning of the XVII century, after having invoked to the Virgin before a great danger in a naval battle with the Turkish fleet. In the cathedral of Pamplona were preserved until 1926, on both sides of the Virgin of the Good News, two other flags that Alejandro Aranda has studied, one with the cross of Burgundy of the Regiment of Line of Valençai (1815-1818) and another with the necklace of the Golden Fleece, belonging to the colonel of the 2nd Light Battalion of Volunteers of Catalonia (1812-1815). Both are preserved in the Army Museum. In 1832 the Regiment of Zaragoza offered its old flags, which were placed precisely on the pillar of Wayside Cross of the main nave, in front of the altar of San Gregorio.

Iribarren gives news of other votive offerings. Among them, the chain with open crickets in the chapel of Santo Cristo de Peña, which belonged to a captive of Oran who was freed of legs and hands, after invoking Christ; the key to the fortress of Pomblin in Milan, brought to the cathedral of Tudela by Don Carlos de Eza, in 1545, or the 1860 bell of Villar de Corella, cast with the bronze of a cannon in the capture of Tetuan.

The panoply of knives, pistols and blunderbusses of San Martin de Unx, remember the submission by several quarrelsome neighbors as a result of a mission statement at the end of the XIX century. The fact must be put in relation to a tradition in which the missionaries insisted, as the same father Pedro de Calatayud that, in 1731, in a preaching in his native Tafalla to which people of more than fifty towns attended, a huge amount of swords, daggers, daggers, cacheteros, pistols, blunderbusses, and even guitars were collected. With all those objects, the city council decided to make a large trophy "as sample eloquent of the fruit obtained in the mission statement".

The key of the fortress of Pomblin in Milan that hangs, as an ex-voto, in the cathedral of the capital of La Ribera. The governor of that castle, Carlos de Eza, brought it in 1545 as a souvenir of the defense of that place and had it hung in the arch of his chapel of San Juan in the then collegiate church of his native Tudela.

Of the candle of the Shrine of Our Lady of Fair Love of Santa Quiteria de Tudela, the learned Juan Antonio Fernández recalls the following: "In 1693 María Clara Arróniz y Marsellá, 24 years old, being in bed late at night, was insulted (acometida) of such vehement rage that taking a lighted candle and making a very strong air, carried by the fervent devotion she had to St. Quiteria, she found herself at the door of the Shrine of Our Lady of Fair Love, and without noticing anyone who opened it, nor the candle going out, she was able to enter and pray to the saint to free her from that rage, and in report of this prodigious fact that object is preserved there".

José María Iribarren echoes the story of the shearing or bell of the Shrine of Our Lady of Fair Love of the Virgin of Castejón, collecting the story of the work of Father José María Castillo, according to which that image appeared in a hawthorn tree, like a rose and dressed in the mountain style and with sandals, which "had its own livestock, composed of cows offered by the devotees. And a shepherd having stolen the bell of the cow that guided another cow of his, he went and what did she do? He entered on the same day of the feast in the temple, and going forward to the main altar, he threw the stolen bell that is still preserved, and returned to the field without hurting anyone". In spite of including this story the mentioned father Castillo, in the chapter graduate "Navarre by Santa Maria or Apostles and Crucifixes", we do not believe that this story refers to the locality of Castejon of Navarre.

Next to the sanctuary of Nuestra Señora del Villar de Corella, there is a bell cast and dated 1869, with the cannon captured in Tetuán by General Joaquín Morales de Rada and the artillery captain Gaspar Goñi.