BRINGING HERITAGE CLOSER. OLITE, ROYAL SEAT

August 27, 2007

Devotion and plastic arts in the XVII and XVIII centuries
D. Ricardo Fernández Gracia. Chair de Patrimonio y Arte Navarro.

The arrival of the 17th century coincided with the Counter-Reformation period and with a new meaning and contextualization of the religious image. Some of the cults that were widespread in the locality during the Age average gave way to others that were more in keeping with the new times, under the protection of devotions that arose in that context.

Everything related to the Immaculate Conception had special relevance. From the vow made by the municipal regiment in 1624, to the declaration as Patron Saint by the same municipal institution in 1643. Sermons, music, rogations, liturgies, fireworks and processions revolved around the immaculist representations that were not lacking in the different temples of the city, especially in the Franciscans who distinguished themselves, as a religious order, for maintaining positions of defense of the conceptionist mystery. The sculpture of the Immaculate Conception, known as the Virgin of Cholera, a gift from Doña Bernarda Munárriz in the middle of the 18th century and the work of Luis Salvador Carmona, the canvases of the Madrid school by Ezquerra (Poor Clares) and Castrejón (Franciscans), or the municipal veneration with the relief of the Conception next to the coat of arms of the city, are samples that speak "per se" of a deep-rooted devotion among the different social strata of Olite.

The component of the miracle could not be absent in that 17th century, dominated by the marvelous. A healing through the intercession of the image of the Crucified of Santa Maria, which took place in 1640, gave renewed impulses to that Gothic sculpture that received the honors of a new chapel of subject classicist, erected from 1767, with plans arrived from Madrid.

St. Peter, patron saint of the parish church of the town, would be venerated not only as an apostle, but also as the first Pope. For the new altarpiece of his temple a sculpture was chosen with the saint in his Chair, crowned by the tiara and with the keys in his hands, or what is the same with the signs of papal authority, in a context in which the Protestants had denied the primacy of Peter and from the Catholic orbit had reacted with the word and the images. A set of paintings by Vicente Berdusán (1683), with predesigned themes, accompany the prince of the apostles and give greater meaning to his presidency, as the head of the temple, in the altarpiece.

test Of the Eucharistic cult, the rich ceremonial preserved, as well as the magnificent ostensories arrived from the Indies, both to the Franciscans and to the parish of Santa María (currently preserved in the parish of San Saturnino de Pamplona), give good evidence of the Eucharistic cult.

Olite did not escape the particular "war" between Xavierists and Ferminists that shook the Kingdom of Navarre in the mid-seventeenth century, over the question of board of trustees. The positions of the chapter and the regiment varied in the face of the pressures exerted by the bishopric and the city council of Pamplona in favor of San Fermin. After the papal decision to declare them patrons "aeque patroni principales" (1657), the two parishes had representations of the Navarrese Jesuit saint.
Other devotions, such as that of St. Anton, had an important focus of diffusion in the convent of the Antonians, by means of holy cards of the protector of animals and against fire. The biography of San Antón, published in Pamplona in 1714 by Fray Manuel Liñán, gives a good account of unparalleled prodigies.