February 1, 2012

Global Seminars & Invited Speaker Series

PAMPLONA AND SAN SATURNINO

Saint Saturninus, myth and reality

D. Roldán Jimeno Aranguren.
Public University of Navarra

When approaching the history of the saints of the first Christian centuries, two hagiographic levels are superimposed: one goal, fruit of the successive critical purification of the sources that has been carried out fundamentally from the XVI century and up to the present time, and another popular one, rooted in the local erudite and pietistic tradition, with the variants and additions that in each place have been configured throughout history on the nuclear hagiographic legend. This is what happens in Pamplona with the story of the life of Saint Saturninus.

The first part of the lecture will review the first sources that give account of the existence of the bishop from Toulouse, whose cult is recorded in Gaul in the second half of the third century. His Passio was known in Hispania in the same 5th century in which it was written, as a result of the expansion of the Visigothic monarchy to the Peninsula. The news of the life of Saint Saturninus were extended in Gaul during the following centuries, especially from the VI century, when his figure was magnified, altering his chronology and relating him personally with Saint John the Baptist and the apostle Saint Peter. The cult of San Saturnino in Pamplona dates from the last quarter of the 11th century, giving title to the parish that would give its name to the new Franciscan burgh founded in Pamplona during the reign of Sancho Ramírez (1076-1094), promoted by Bishop Pedro de Roda (1083-1115). The prelate of French origin would have been the architect of the dedication, due to his links with the abbey of Toulouse, a fact to which could be added the decisive repopulating contribution of the burgh from Provence, whose Occitan language left its mark on the denomination San Cernin. Around the same time, Pedro de Roda gave the parish church of Artajona to the Toulouse chapter of Saint-Sernin with all its real estate, tithes, first fruits and the episcopal rights over it (1084), thus beginning the priory of San Saturnino.

Secondly, we will deal with the legend of San Saturnino and San Fermín and their transfer to Pamplona. It is difficult to pinpoint the birth of the cult of San Fermín, since conference proceedings itself, of doubtful historicity, has generated a great historiographical controversy since modern times. The first reliable testimony of his cult can be placed in the French Picardy at the end of the VIII century. However, the first hagiographic testimony that places Saint Saturninus in the life of Saint Fermin corresponds to a manuscript of Amienese origin dated in the 10th or 11th century, composed of three parts. The legend incorporated new hagiographic elements until the 13th century, when it was included in the lectionary from the abbey of Saint-Martin-aux-Jumeaux, the breviary of Amiens and the Ordinarius Liber Ecclesiae Ambianensis. When the life of Saint Saturninus was collected by Jacopo de la Voragine in the Golden Legend of the 13th century, he did not mention the evangelization of the Vascons, and in the one dedicated to Saint Fermin, he mentioned Honesto, but not the bishop of Toulouse. Both biographies will have a transcendental importance because, from now on, the main hagiographers will not associate, except in specific occasions, the figures of Saturninus and Fermin, whose interweaving will be practically reduced to the Amienese and Navarrese authors.

Finally, the evolution of the legend in Pamplona, up to 1611, since it arrived in the Navarrese capital in 1186, was addressed.