March 5, 2014

Global Seminars & Invited Speaker Series

CONVENTUAL PAMPLONA

"They do not found their houses if it is not in cities...". The conventual Pamplona of the Modern Age

Mr. José Javier Azanza López.
Chair of Navarrese Heritage and Art

The lecture first addressed the reasons that led the religious orders to establish their convent in Pamplona, within the urban character of the conventual foundations of the Modern Age that allows us to define the phenomenon of the "Church in the city", already noted by authors of the time as Damasio de Frias.

Once Pamplona was chosen as the city in which to plant the convent, a matter of great interest is the conventual urban planning, which leads us to answer the question of who is responsible for the choice of the location within the city. In very few cases does it correspond to the religious orders. On the contrary, many times the location is conditioned by the land given by the founder or benefactor of the convent; on other occasions, it is the civil authorities who determine the site; finally, it can be the monarch who gives land of royal property for the erection of the convent.

Convent of Augustinian Recollect Nuns. Facade

In the Pamplona area, the convents are located either outside or inside the walls of the city, in both cases with their advantages and disadvantages. In the case of the convents outside the walls, they enjoy a larger area of land as they are not as limited as those inside the walls; on the other hand, such a location makes the apostolic work of the religious orders (in the case of the male orders) more difficult, poses problems for the building and its inhabitants as it is built close to the banks of the Arga River, and is subject to military needs in the case of a first-rate fortress like Pamplona ( place ). In the case of the convents within the walls, such a location facilitates their catechetical mission statement ; nevertheless, they are not exempt from difficulties in the form of lack of space, civil service examination of the parishes and other religious communities previously installed in the city, and even strategic-military ones.
 

Church of the convent of Augustinian Recollect Nuns. Interior

After answering why and where to found in Pamplona, a third question raises the question of how these microcities are built. In it we analyze aspects related to the construction process, among which are: the intervention of the patron or promoter in the same; the authorship of the designs, either at position of an architect of recognized prestige, or at position of a tracist friar; and the figure of the latter, who knows both the specific charism of each order and the architectural theory of the time, so that they are those who are best able to design a building that meets the needs of the religious community.

Finally, we analyze the conventual architecture of Pamplona, which manifests a classicist seal that echoes the spirit of the Counter-Reformation and adopts models from the Escorial and courtly periods with interpretations according to the orders. Among the different buildings that make up these complexes, the greatest architectural concerns centered on churches and cloisters: the former, with their longitudinal Latin cross plan, their choirs and tribunes on the inside, and their façade as a distinguishing and differentiating element on the outside, sometimes opening an atrium or compass that creates its own urban space within the city, as in the convent of the Augustinian Recollect nuns; the latter, in their double mission statement functional, as an organizing element of the rest of the rooms, and symbolic, being considered a sacred place in whose center the spatial coordinates intersect, a point indicated by a well or source.

Church of the Discalced Carmelites. Facade

Church of the Discalced Carmelites. Interior