November 8, 2007

Global Seminars & Invited Speaker Series

NEW VIEWS ON THE CATHEDRAL OF PAMPLONA

The arts at the service of the liturgy, power and celebration in the Ancient Regime in Pamplona Cathedral.

D. Ricardo Fernández Gracia.
Chair of Navarrese Heritage and Art

Times and tastes have transformed the great monumental ensembles, both externally and externally, for purely aesthetic reasons, but also for reasons of use and function. 

In the case of the cathedral of Pamplona, its stony walls began to be "dressed" with altarpieces and images, especially from the end of the 16th century and throughout the following two centuries. The phenomenon gained strength in plenary session of the Executive Council Baroque, an aesthetic that integrates the artistic specialties merging them into a whole, while trying to capture the individual through the senses, always more vulnerable than the intellect. 

The integrated arts became a vehicle for the transmission of doctrine and power in a sphere that transcended the temple itself, because in addition to being a cathedral or the place where the bishop's Chair is located, the Pamplona cathedral was governed by a chapter of regular life, not very accommodating to bishops with reinforced authority, in the midst of the Catholic Reformation. In addition, the regiment of the city and the political organs of the Kingdom celebrated in its interior the great ceremonies and festivities, sublime expression of how much shapes the culture of the Baroque. Oaths of princes, proclamations, obsequies and rogations, requested by Habsburgs and Bourbons, were held in the first diocesan temple.

Among the great religious festivals we must mention the ratification of the board of trustees of San Francisco Javier by the Cortes in 1624 and the immaculist vote of the institutions of the kingdom in 1621, in addition to countless rogations with the images of San Fermin or the Virgen del Sagrario requested by the city council and organized by the town council, not without friction, disagreements and frequent lawsuits for preferences and precedence, so usual in the society of the Ancien Régime.

To all this must be added the application of a new liturgy, emanating from the Tridentine dispositions that caused the old particular breviaries to be abandoned in favor of the Roman Ritual of St. Pius V, something that happened around 1585, and that the old choir rules, codified in the first half of the 15th century, based on practices that had been customary in the cathedral since at least the 14th century, were replaced by new ones, written in 1598, following those of the Primate Cathedral of Toledo. The last manager of this last mutation was none other than Bishop Antonio Zapata, who governed the destinies of the bishopric between 1596 and 1600, leaving an everlasting mark on the cathedral with the construction of the sacristy, the main altarpiece and the silver platforms for the Corpus Christi, works of Herrerian imprint, in tune with the tastes of the court. The fact that Zapata was a canon of Toledo was fundamental, both in the choice of some themes of the main altarpiece in Pamplona related to San Ildefonso, as well as in the establishment of the new choir regulations.

Most of the works undertaken in those centuries are linked to the names of some canons, especially some priors and the archdeacons of the Table and the Chamber, the two richest dignities and therefore with greater possibilities to allocate some surplus amounts of their incomes to the consumption of artistic goods.

TEXTS