February 16, 2011

Course 

THE CATHEDRAL OF PAMPLONA. A VIEW FROM THE 21ST CENTURY

Chronological heterogeneity and functional identity in Spanish cathedrals. I

D. Germán Ramallo Asensio.
University of Murcia

Throughout the Catholic world, the cathedral has been the most important artistic and cultural expression of all times. The most imposing architecture was expressed in them and in the dominant style of the period in which it was erected. Likewise, the best examples of movable art, painting, sculpture or altarpieces, as well as organs and other elements that helped the cathedral to function better were and are kept in it. Undoubtedly, they were the maximum reference of the territory in which they were built: the main temple of the Diocese.

But equally, the cathedrals were a reflection of society, both in its religious and secular stratum and at the same time, guide spiritual and intellectual of it. People of the highest social and cultural level formed the cabildos. Influential bishops transmitted to the different seats the spirit that was defined in Rome. The nobility and even the monarch himself were involved in its maintenance and material enrichment, but also in fundamental decisions about spiritual, intellectual or political life that were debated and proposed there.

The issue of cathedrals in Spain is now 75, plus 5 co-cathedrals. However, this issue has been changing over time due to the creation of new dioceses or the suppression of others, and the granting of rank to pre-existing major churches that have become cathedrals or, in other cases, built anew in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Roughly speaking, we can see that those of older construction, or Romanesque, are located in the northern third of the Peninsula, north of the Duero, the first area to be reconquered. The Gothic, from the most classical to the Elizabethan, can be found in very good examples in the interior of Spain, up to the Tagus and in the south, in Andalusia and from the 16th century onwards, extraordinary Renaissance examples will be built, making them authentic monuments unique in Europe. This is, as is quite logical, the architectural style in which the temples were built was advancing in time at the same time as the Reconquest.

But this division into three imaginary strips only serves at a theoretical level, because in many cases the old buildings have been replaced by other more modern and monumental ones, such as the pre-Romanesque of Oviedo, by the current late Gothic, or the Romanesque of León, by the current classical Gothic example. Or we can also find in Seville a peculiar model of the 15th century Gothic, a time when the cathedrals of Palencia, Murcia, and Oviedo, among others, were also erected.