The heart has been a secular and universal symbol of tenderness, affection, passion, divine love and love of neighbor and, at the same time, emblem of moral and emotional life. Since the sixteenth century, it has been considered not only as the seat, but above all the agent of affection, so that in that century of the Renaissance it was adopted, in general terms, as a symbol of love. In our western civilization, in addition to being the soul receptacle and the place where feelings are located, it has also been considered the cradle of intuition (intuition), wisdom and the spiritual universe.

It is a symbol of charity and an attribute of Venus, of patience, friendship and righteousness. The personification of charity, as a matron breastfeeding children or protecting them, was sometimes accompanied by a flaming heart that speaks per se of the internship of this theological virtue. Among its pejorative meanings, it should be noted that it appears with the allegory of envy, as a woman who gnaws her heart.

During the Middle Ages, average, it was widely believed that the bodies of those buried inside churches benefited more from the liturgical services celebrated in them and, therefore, attained divine forgiveness sooner. This is why the tombs closest to the altar were more valuable than those further away. Prominent figures left orders in their wills for their entrails to be sent to the shrines of their devotion, such as sample the heart of Charles II in Ujué. As is well known, the monarch, following the tradition of the Capetos, ordered that his body be eviscerated and his entrails deposited in different shrines. His heart arrived at the shrine in January 1387. In 1404, Charles III had an oak box made to preserve the viscera.

The sub-prior of Roncesvalles noted, at the beginning of the XVII century: "I note here an antiquity: that the kings of France and Navarre and many other princes kept a custom and it was that, when they had just died, they embalmed the bodies, especially when they had to be taken far away for burial and they distributed the heart and entrails, taking them to the churches where the deceased had more devotion..., in which masses and other suffrages were celebrated for the souls on the day they were transferred or deposited". It includes, among other examples, what happened with Queen Joanna, wife of Charles II, who died in 1374, buried in Saint Denis, whose heart went to the Pamplona church and her entrails to Roncesvalles.

plenary session of the Executive Council In the 17th century, Bishop Palafox ordered that, after his death, his chest be opened and a silver plate with the names of Jesus, Joseph and Mary on one side and St. Peter, St. John the Evangelist and St. John the Baptist on the other be nailed to his heart. The piece, designed by the bishop, was made by silversmith José Martínez in 1659 and appeared in the exhumation of his body in 2011.

In the Age of Enlightenment, the bishop of Baztan origin Juan Castorena y Ursúa (†1733) arranged in his will, in New Spain, to send parts of his body to the convent of the Conception of Agreda in the following clause: "Iten I order that my last and deliberate will that, open my body, the heart, language and upper brain or brains, for being the offices and organization in which the soul united to the body exercises its thoughts, words and deeds".

The devotion to the Heart of Jesus and its diffusion in 18th century Spain, promoted by the Society of Jesus, is an indisputable fact. The first representations of the topic, of wide intellectual elaboration, were single prints or illustrations that accompanied books of famous Jesuits, who were in the orbit of the great manager of the cult, Saint Margaret Mary of Alacoque. From the engraved examples, numerous representations of the sacred viscera were captured in painting and sculpture, until the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, and the determination of the Sacred Congregation of Rites to prohibit its exhibition for worship on the altars. It was then when an iconography, which had been widely developed in Spain throughout the second third of the 18th century, became obsolete.

The diffusion and cult had spread in France through the multiplication of its images, the publication of books, the erection of temples and congregations. It arrived in Spain at the beginning of the decade of the thirties of the XVIII century, thanks to a handful of Jesuits, headed by Father Bernardo de Hoyos together with a group constituted by Fathers Loyola, Cardaveraz, Calatayud, Peñalosa and Idiáquez, very active in Navarre, especially in the missions development .

Despite the destruction of much of that iconography, eighteenth-century examples have been preserved in Corella, Pamplona, Sesma, Tudela, Cintruénigo... etc. Always with a glowing heart, evoking divinity and light, the flames of love; a cross as a sign of salvation; the crown of thorns of suffering and humiliation and, finally, the wound that recalls the treasure of redemption, which opens the heart to make its gifts available to the faithful: the merit of Christ's death, the forgiveness of sins and the spiritual riches of the Church. The few copies preserved form an interesting set, if we take into account that Don Manuel de Roda y Arrieta, considered as the great promoter of the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain, advised to eliminate all that with the argument of "erasing the report of these people and their superstitions".

Some saints are accompanied by a flaming heart or a heart surmounted by a cross, as a particular attribute of ardent love or devotion to the passion of Christ or to his heart. Among them, we will mention Saints Augustine, Anthony of Padua, Benedict of Palermo, Cajetan, Philip Neri, Francis Xavier, Francis de Sales, Ignatius of Antioch, Leander, Paul of the Cross, Polycarp, Thomas the Apostle, Bridget, Catherine of Siena, Clare of Montefalco, Gertrude, Joan of Chantal, Magdalene of Pazzi, Margaret of Alacoque and Teresa of Jesus.

In the patrimony of Navarre, some stand out, such as St. Augustine, St. Francis Xavier and St. Teresa. To a lesser extent, St. Gertrude, St. Clare of Montefalco and almost as an exception, St. Ignatius of Antioch. Ordinarily, the heart, a fortiori if it appears inflamed, alludes to mystical rapture.

St. Augustine and the Augustinian Order in its different branches adopted the flaming heart with arrows, although belatedly, already in plenary session of the Executive Council XVII century. The biographers of the saint related the symbol to the famous text of his Confessions, which says: "You pierced my heart, O Lord, with the darts of your charity ..... With the sharp arrows of your love you animated me and with the burning fire of your charity you warmed my soul". The convents of Recoletas of Pamplona, Agustinas de San Pedro de Pamplona and Comendadoras de Puente la Reina keep sculptures and paintings where the saint shows, next to the model of the founder and the eagle, a big heart pierced by the arrows.

In the case of St. Teresa, the passage of her transverberation, which she herself narrates in the book of her life, gave rise to paintings and sculptures from topic, of which excellent examples are preserved in Navarre. More curious and rare are the representations of the Augustinian nun Clara de Montefalco (Commanders of Puente la Reina and Recollects of Pamplona), showing her heart with the emblems of the passion and a balance with three round and equal stones, distributed in the pans of a balance as a Trinitarian symbol). The figure of the heart of Saint Gertrude with the Child Jesus inside was common in the houses of the Benedictines (Corella, Estella, Lumbier), while Saint Ignatius of Antioch exhibiting his heart is found in a collateral of Fitero, having been commissioned by the Pamplona-born Fray Ignacio de Ibero, his abbot, in 1611, to commemorate his name day, at a time when the other great Ignatius, that of Loyola, had not yet ascended to the altars.

The importance of Navarre in the diffusion of the cult of the Sacred Heart meant that its champions (Margaret of Alacoque and St. Francis de Sales) were featured in an engraving of the Pamplona printing of Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, by Father Peñalosa, whose editio princeps appeared in Pamplona in 1734.

The particular sensitivity of the Discalced Carmelites and some of their spiritual practices and readings, made the heart appear in some of the paintings that they contemplated daily in their convents of Pamplona and Corella. In the former a huge canvas is preserved, which we attribute to Pedro de Rada (c. 1765) with the Virgin of Carmen with St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross carrying hearts, the former transverberated with the arrow and the latter with a surmounted cross.

In the convent of the capital of Navarre they could see the painted portrait of its foundress, Mother Catalina de Cristo, accompanied as iconographic attribute of a flaming heart, following an engraving of the same one, made in Rome in 1603 and paid for by the musician Francisco de Soto. In another painting representing the trial of Mother Leonor de la Misericordia, together with several saints, we find the aforementioned Catalina de Cristo, with the heart that identifies her.

Finally, another very interesting canvas portrays Mother Gregoria del Santísimo Sacramento (Garro y Javier), around 1670, with her entire community, before a sponsorship of the Virgin of Carmen with St. Joseph and St. Teresa, giving her burning heart, which can be related to the texts of Juan de Palafox and the "rosary of the heart", written by the prelate who had corresponded with the nuns.

The beginnings of the history of the Discalced Carmelite nuns of Araceli de Corella were marked by the actions of the Inquisition against their prioress, Sister Agueda de Luna, accused of following the doctrines of Miguel de Molinos. The nun died in the jails of the Inquisition of Logroño, in 1737, in the context of a Spain that liked extraordinary and celestial phenomena, although the news was not communicated until 1744. Among the proofs of accusation was an alleged portrait of Sister Agueda, painted by order of her confidant, Friar Juan de la Vega. Given the possibility that the painting was a portrait of Sister Agueda, the Inquisition took part in the matter, ordering the painting to be erased and the couplet to be destroyed. From the news of the historian of Carmen Descalzo, Silverio de Santa Teresa, we know that the painting was smeared with lime and could be one of the frescoes that, quite retouched, are preserved in the lower choir of the convent of Araceli, whose iconic content coincides with the description of the painting, of which we already gave an account when dealing with tolerated and forbidden images (DN, February 7, 2020).

Opposite this painting, the other composition by Araceli represents a Carmelite and the Divine Infant holding a chain with two joined hearts. A study of both paintings shows that they are adaptations for the Carmelite life of some emblems of a work very popular in the XVII and XVIII centuries, the Schola cordis of Benedicto Haefteno.

The heart wounded by an arrow was used in funeral rites as a sign of pain, but also of love and eternity. In those organized by the city council of Pamplona for Felipe V, the emblems painted on that occasion, were commissioned to Juan de Lacalle, in 1746. One of them depicted a heart, with two wings at the bottom, holding a hand, an image known to have been employee in the previous century, at the funerals of Philip IV. The Latin motto "Spiritus Domini rapuit Philipum actor" had also been used at the funeral of Philip IV. The two wings with the heart had been interpreted in plenary session of the Executive Council XVII century. The heart came to signify, once again, love and the wings, in addition to their allusion to elevation, lightness and quickness, were considered by some Seventist writers as "the two wings of the spiritual life: prayer and mortification".

Among the emblems of the funeral of Barbara de Braganza, in 1758, painted by Juan Antonio Logroño, under the supervision of Fray Miguel de Corella, we find one with two elephants and two hearts on flames of fire, which we reproduced in this same section (DN, September 18, 2020). The message glosses the love and conjugal fidelity that the royal marriage professed to each other, reflected both in the pair of elephants and in the hearts.

If we take into account some of the meanings of the heart, it will not surprise us that its shape has been chosen for jewelry designs, small cases, reliquaries, pendants and even amulets. From the most humble ones, in baked clay to ward off plagues, made by the Augustinian Recollect Nuns since the mid-17th century, to enameled or filigree and silver pieces to contain medallions, relics and small illuminated engravings. From the 18th century onwards, medals of the Heart of Jesus were also minted in this shape, some of which were very delicate.