22 December 2009

Conference

Christmas in the Cathedral. Rites, festivities and art

D. Ricardo Fernández Gracia.
University of Navarra

The celebration of Christmas Eve in towns and cities was characterised by unbridled joy. The night had a certain risk of riots, both because of the abuse of alcoholic beverages and the presence of elements who took advantage of the event to show their particular protests. In that context, it is worth understanding a phrase repeated time and again in chronicles from all over subject, which always states: "There were a lot of people in the cathedral this evening.There were a lot of people in the cathedral tonight and there was no commotion".

The Matins of Christmas were one of the few that took place on the eve of the feast, along with those of some days of Holy Week. average The feast of Christmas had the category of "excelentísima" (most excellent) since the Middle Ages, equivalent to the festivities that would later be called double first class and with a ceremonial of six layers, with the same rank as Easter, Pentecost and the Assumption of the Virgin, the patron saint of the cathedral.

Along with Vespers, Matins on the evening of the 24th and the Midnight Mass, the feast of the Nativity was completed with the Mass of the Shepherds or Dawn Mass in the early morning of the 25th and the convent mass on the same day. The main altar was adorned with all its magnificence: flowers, candelabras and the silver busts of the co-patron saints of Navarre, Saint Ursula and Saint Mary Magdalene, and the image of the Virgin of the church was uncovered, as she was normally enclosed in her urn and under the curtain.

A second day of great celebration and merriment inside the cathedral was that of April Fool's Day. In the Pamplona cathedral, the feast of the Innocents was, par excellence, the day of that small community of children, in which they played a very special role. Some documents from the chapter's file give us an idea of how the most serious aspect of the feast took place: the liturgy.
 

"Miniature of the Adoration of the Kings".
Pamplona Cathedral Breviary. 1332
 

Of all the Christmas festivities, the one that still preserves some liturgical vestige of the rich secular tradition is that of the Epiphany. The solemnity of this day was magnified in Pamplona Cathedral, from the Middle Ages onwards average, by the presence of a Gothic sculptural group in the cloister and the relics of the Three Wise Men, which has a silver reliquary from the last quarter of the 16th century.

The liturgical texts of the time of Bishop Arnalt de Barbazán, both the Breviary of 1332 and the oldest liturgical guide of the diocese, include the feast of the Epiphany among those of the second category, specifically among those called "Principal", with a solemn rite, among which are also Ascension, Trinity, Corpus Christi, Saint John the Baptist, Purification, Annunciation, Dedication of the Cathedral, Saint Peter and Paul, Crown of Christ, Saint James, Saint Augustine, Nativity of the Virgin, Saint Michael, Saint Fermin, All Saints and Saint Martin. The Epiphany was therefore at an intermediate stage between the so-called "most excellent" ones (Christmas, Pentecost, Easter and the Assumption of the Virgin) and the magnas below them.

Relics, festivities and the sculptural group , carved around 1300 by Jacques Perut in the cloister, made up a unique celebration of which some of its ancient rites are still preserved, especially in the cloister procession with its statio before the Magi and the solemn sung advertisement of the advertisement of the annual festivities.

The oldest accounts of the feast of Epiphany give an account of another singularity of the festival in the Pamplona church, which consisted of the placing in the main chapel of a tomb or tumulus at report of the kings, which remained there throughout the octave. It was a small catafalque covered by a cloth that the chronicles call "the royal mantle", which we do not know if we should identify with a "rich red cloth of silk and velvet", used for the same purpose during the second half of the 19th century.

Jacques Perut. "Epiphany". Cloister of Pamplona Cathedral. 1300

position The lecture, organised by the association de Amigos de la Catedral de Pamplona and the Chair de Patrimonio y Arte Navarro, took place in the rococo sacristy of Pamplona Cathedral.