February 26, 2014

Global Seminars & Invited Speaker Series

CONVENTUAL PAMPLONA

The Arts at the service of Pamplona's convent devotions

D. Ricardo Fernández Gracia.
Chairof Navarrese Heritage and Art

The reality of the convents in the social panorama of our towns and cities was a phenomenon hardly studied, because in addition to the architectural complexes and their rich material heritage, it is necessary to emphasize their role as elements that modulated the spirituality of their surroundings. It is in this last aspect where we must insist if we want to reconstruct in its integrity. Mentalities, devotions, spirituality must be seen in a global vision around images, canvases, sculptures, engravings that today transmit hardly any value from the point of view of the material heritage. It is also necessary to unite what they entailed with respect to the immaterial because they have been the focus and true protagonists of authentic social and religious phenomena.

Think of the importance of themes such as the Immaculate Conception or the Infancy of Christ in the 17th century, and the number of confraternities, vows, sermons, poetry and prose, contests, images and paintings to which both gave rise, particularly encouraged by the conventual world. Something similar happened in the XVIII century with the extension of the devotion to the Heart of Jesus, with a great protagonism of the Jesuits residing in the high school de la Anunciada of Pamplona who gathered first hand the example of the famous Father Bernardo Hoyos, namely Fathers Cardaveraz, Loyola, Calatayud and Idiáquez.

Regarding the cult of the Divine Infant, it is interesting to highlight a historical and sociological fact: the universalization and entrance of the Infant Jesus in the culture and popular piety. His images in different environments, with different techniques, transcend the strictly religious to be framed in a wider dimension: the cultural one.

In Pamplona, the particular devotions of each order, both in the Mariological aspect and in what refers to the particular saints of each one of them, is in tune with what happened in other Hispanic cities, always in relation to the baroque style with which the ordinary annual feasts and the extraordinary ones in relation to beatifications and canonizations were celebrated until recent times. Obviously there was an inflexion and enormous changes as a result of the nineteenth century Disentailment. As a consequence of it, many of the old devotions were, if not cornered, in the process of disappearing after a couple of generations. Others, more powerful, survived in other places to where they were transferred headlines and altarpieces of the convents that had disappeared. In any case, both the old and the more modern devotions have experienced in the last decades an unprecedented withdrawal . The collection of data of all subject, documentary, oral, printed and photographic is essential to recover that part of the history related to popular religiosity that is in danger of disappearing.

Along with the devotions proper to the orders, other particular devotions were developed in Pamplona, a Marian devotion around the Virgin of Las Maravillas of the Augustinian Recollect nuns and another with greater national projection about St. Joaquin. Both had as main protagonist and initiator of their cult a lay Carmelite brother, Brother Juan de Jesús San Joaquín (1590-1669), whose life became popular shortly after his death because it was printed in 1684, and since then until a century ago it has been reprinted time after time. 

Procession of the Virgen de las Maravillas as she passes through Pamplona's place del Castillo. 1946
(Convent of Augustinian Recollect Nuns)

St. Joachim with the child Virgin. Castilian school. Second third of the XVII century
Convent of the Discalced Carmelites of Pamplona.

Stories full of marvelousness in both cases gave rise to Pamplona traditions around the two images venerated in recoletas and the Discalced Carmelites. The Virgen de las Maravillas with her legend spread mainly through numerous engravings, whose plates were opened since the 17th century, and the novenas, became very popular and was even venerated in Puebla de los Ángeles. Until a few decades ago the pregnant women of the city went to the conventual lathe to apply for the measures of the Virgin in silk as a true protective talisman in their state of good hope. Something similar happened with San Joaquin, whose devotion spread from Pamplona to peninsular lands, particularly Valencia, as a result of so many extraordinary events that are narrated in the life of the famous brother Juan de Jesus San Joaquin and especially as a result of the birth of the son of the viceroys of Navarre, the Count of Oropesa, Don Manuel Joaquín Octavio de Toledo, in 1644, one of the first to bear the name of the saint, and whose birth was perpetuated by Antonio de Solís in a comedy entitled Eurydice and Orpheus.

If the sculptures of San Joaquin and the Virgin of the Wonders are among the most outstanding in plastic art imported from Castile or the Court, others representing the Immaculate Conception, Santa Teresa or the Virgin of Carmen are not far behind. Among the first ones, the one made by Pereira stands out.