16 May

lecture series
EIGHT CENTURIES OF THE PRESENCE OF THE ORDER OF PREACHERS IN NAVARRA: FROM THE GOTHIC TO THE BAROQUE PERIOD

Saint Dominic of Estella and 13th century mendicant architecture

Javier Martínez de Aguirre
Complutense University of Madrid

Santo Domingo de Estella is not only the most important work of Navarre's medieval mendicant architecture, but also the most important Dominican convent among those preserved in the Iberian panorama of the 13th century.

Its founding process is well known to us thanks to the programs of study of José Goñi Gaztambide. The succession of documentary references allows us to follow its first steps between 1258 and 1289, the year in which 13,333 sueldos (13,333 salaries) owed from the order consigned in the will of Teobaldo II (1270) were delivered. The presence of the coat of arms of the king of Champagne is not test, therefore, of the execution of the whole factory during the life of the monarch, but of its realization with funds that he had destined for that purpose. The report of the convent attributed to the sovereign the church, sacristy, conference room capitular, infirmary, parlor, kitchen, inn and dormitory. In 1284 Philip the Handsome and Joanna I donated to the convent a site called Royal Baths and a tower so that the monks could use the stone "to expand the church", which certifies the succession of campaigns. The royal protection was followed by that of other promoters, especially the nobleman Spanish Nuño González de Lara (†1290), certain local burgesses and the council of Estella itself. In several places of the headwall, nave and gable, there are funerary chapels from the 13th to 15th centuries.

The lecture focused on two issues: first, the apparent conflict between the enormous dimensions of the conventual complex and the desire for humility that Dominican buildings of the founding period were supposed to manifest. The amplitude of the nave of the church (524 m2) contravenes the norms that in this respect had been agreed upon in the general chapter of Bologna (1228). The fact that it was a royal foundation could justify the size and, above all, the height of the building. The construction system employee, with a wooden roof over transversal stone arches, participated in the principle of avoiding vaults. It is a system employee previously used in other buildings in medieval Navarre, especially in palaces (such as the royal palace and the episcopal palace of Pamplona) and hospitals (for example, the Caritat and Itzandeguía in Roncesvalles). In the eyes of his contemporaries, the choice of such a simple system of covering, as well as the option for a not very careful rigging, could have transmitted the ideas of mediocrity and humility that the Dominican constitutions demanded(aedificia humilia et mediocria, as was still determined by the general chapter of 1258). Ornamentation is reduced to a minimum. This can be seen, for example, in the western doorway, which has six archivolts and chambrana on capitals and corbels decorated with repetitive friezes of individualized large leaves. Arches and colonnettes are formed by thin cylindrical beading without listels.

Convent of Santo Domingo de Estella

The second part of the lecture was dedicated to the distribution of the rooms. The rest of the convent's rooms were erected in accordance with the church: sacristy, loggia, conference room chapter house, dormitory, refectory, porter's lodge and cloister, which we know had galleries of which hardly any vestiges remain. The large rooms were covered with the same ligneous system, while the sacristy and the chapterhouse conference room received simple ribbed vaults, with ribbed molding and decoration in keystones and capitals typical of the radiant Gothic style. The spatial arrangement of all of them combined the usual patterns in monastic areas from the early medieval period with certain particularities conditioned by the orography (the refectory was located on the western flank, forming part of a huge double-height building) and by the usual planimetry in the mendicant monasteries (as can be seen in the similarities of the floor plan with Santo Domingo de Bolonia).

As for the distribution of spaces, it is worth drawing attention to the large church with a single nave, which seems to have had an intermediate separation, in the form of a tramezzo, between the "church of the friars" (eastern zone) and the "church of the laity" (western zone). The arrangement of doors and chapels suggests a solution that must not have been atypical in mendicant buildings, judging by the existence of the same distribution subject in San Francisco de Sangüesa, a work that shared chronology and promoter with Santo Domingo de Estella. This separation may have been altered in the 15th century, when the great tribune at the base, whose corbels we have preserved, was built. To access this choir loft, a door was opened from the upper cloister. In the church we also find elements typical of the radiant Gothic style, such as the large window at the front. Its conformation is very similar to that of the southern gable of the transept of the parish of San Miguel in the same town of Estella, which, together with certain similarities between other windows of Santo Domingo and those of the same chronological phase of San Pedro de la Rúa, suggests the intervention of a French architect hired in those years to direct the work on the large ecclesiastical buildings in different neighborhoods.   

The medieval mendicant buildings were threatened by various circumstances, which has hindered their conservation. In many cases, their location outside the walls led to their subsequent demolition and transfer to the interior. On other occasions, the simplicity of the factories was accompanied by a lesser solidity. In Spain, the disentailments of the 19th century were lethal. The withdrawal or inadequate uses meant a risk from which few factories were spared. Santo Domingo de Estella was fortunate to be protected at critical moments by the meritorious people of Estella who saved it from destruction. The restoration intervention of the Provincial Council of Navarre in the 1960s and its partial conversion for residential use have marked its destiny in recent decades. But its values as a cultural heritage make it worthy of greater attention by institutions or individuals, given its relevance in the panorama of medieval mendicant architecture in the peninsula.