17 October

lecture series
PAMPLONA IN CONTEXT

The Episcopal Palace of Pamplona

Pilar Andueza
University of La Rioja

There is no doubt that in the history of the city of Pamplona there have been periods and milestones that have marked its urban development since Pompey founded it in 74 BC. The Pilgrim's Way to Santiago, the birth of the burgh of San Cernin or the town of San Nicolás, the War of Navarrería or the Privilege of the Union in 1423, were all reflected in the shaping of its urban spaces and medieval buildings, as was the conquest of Navarre, which led to the conversion of the capital of Navarre into a strong place with a constantly evolving defensive system throughout the Modern Age. To these moments, core topic , we must also add the 18th century, a vital century in which the urban and monumental renovation of the city took place. This took shape through the configuration final of some of its most important enclaves, such as the place del Castillo, the renovation of its houses, the construction of the chapels of San Fermín and the Virgen del Camino and, above all, the appearance of an outstanding Baroque domestic architecture, very scarce until then, built by a series of families as an image of their lineage and a projection of the power they had achieved. These magnificent buildings were joined by official and representative architecture, whose greatest exponents were the new Town Hall and the new Episcopal Palace. This whole process of transformation was completed with the provision of urban infrastructures, under the postulates of the Enlightenment, developed in the last decades of the century.

In the highest part of the Navarrería, around 1189 Sancho VI erected the Royal Palace of San Pedro, a building that his son Sancho el Fuerte ceded in 1198 to Bishop García Fernández. From then on there was a long period that lasted until the 16th century, during which the building was ceded from the mitre to the crown and vice versa on several occasions, giving rise to numerous disputes, confrontations and lawsuits over the use and ownership of the palace. After the conquest of Navarre, it became residency program for the viceroys, as witnessed by the presence of the Marquis of Cañete in 1539. As late as 1590, Bishop Rojas y Sandoval demanded its return from the hands of Philip II (IV of Navarre). To no avail. The confrontation ended definitively in 1598 when Viceroy Martín de Córdoba reformed the façade of the building with a purist aesthetic, placing an imperial coat of arms of Charles V brought from the ruined castle of the city. Practically at the same time, the bishops of Pamplona began to reside, on a rented basis, in the Casa del Condestable de Navarra, built in the mid-16th century by Luis de Beaumont, Count of Lerín, on the corner of Calle Mayor and Calle Jarauta. The prelates stayed there from 1590 to 1740.

In the Age of Enlightenment, the absence of a stable residency program for the bishops, together with the fact that they lived in a "borrowed and strange house", as well as in "bad and uncomfortable quarters", far from the cathedral, seemed sufficient reason to begin the construction of an episcopal palace. However, it was a mandate from Rome that was followed to begin construction. In fact, the bull of 28 March 1729 by Benedict XIII, in which he appointed Melchor Ángel Gutiérrez Vallejo as bishop, obliged him to erect a worthy residency program for the bishops of Pamplona, which was also to house the ecclesiastical court, prison and file . However, there was one major stumbling block: the financing of the building, initially estimated at 22,000 ducats, an amount that would eventually be far exceeded, reaching 37,000 ducats. To solve the problem, on 1 September 1731 Gutiérrez Vallejo signed an agreement with the clergy of Navarre and the chapter of Pamplona Cathedral in which the bishop obtained the commitment of the other parties to receive 14,000 pesos for the works, money to which would be added, apart from this agreement, other amounts from the parishes of Pamplona, Fuenterrabía, San Sebastián and Valdonsella. The new palace, which was to be located opposite the convent of La Merced, enclosing the seo's orchard, was to be connected to the cathedral through a gallery of arches and pillars parallel to the wall, the use of which, in connection with the protocol and the label, was determined in the aforementioned document.

Construction thus began on 4 October 1734. The death of the bishop in December, when the foundations had already been laid, brought the business project to a standstill, and it was not resumed until 1736 with the arrival of the new bishop, Francisco Ignacio Añoa y Busto, who took up residence in the building in 1740. The participation of the stonemason Miguel de Barreneche and Juan Miguel de Goyeneta in the works, of which little documentation has been preserved, has been confirmed, although we do not know the authorship of the traces.

Episcopal Palace of Pamplona, 1734-1740.

The building is a large cubic building mass, practically free-standing, articulated by a simple interior courtyard. It has three exterior façades and a fourth, simpler one, which opens onto the cathedral's garden. It has four levels, the two lower ones built in ashlar stone and the upper ones in brick, in keeping with the typical style of the average area of Navarre. It is finished off with an attic with a gallery of semicircular arches typical of the middle Ebro valley. Two of the façades have similar altarpiece doorways. Articulated by Doric columns on pedestals, they are lintelled doorways with a thick mixtilinear arch around which the episcopal symbols are placed: mitre, crozier and pectoral under a hood with its tassels. They are topped by a niche crowned by a semicircular pediment that houses the sculptures of San Fermín and San Saturnino. The ensemble is completed with vegetal finials and vases.

Episcopal Palace. Front cover.

Inside, it is worth mentioning the staircase, which follows a variant of the imperial staircase and offers interesting and even disconcerting games of perspectives, typical of the taste for Baroque scenography and theatricality, and the chapel, which was built by Bishop Gaspar Miranda y Argaiz in 1747. It is presided over by an altarpiece of rococo aesthetics that came from the gouges of José Pérez de Eulate and was gilded by Pedro Antonio de Rada. It houses the bultos of San Fermín, flanked by Saint Francis Xavier and Saint Ignatius of Loyola. It is finished off with an oval canvas of the Virgen del Sagrario de Toledo, a devotion staff of the prelate who came to Pamplona from the primate see where he was a doctoral candidate.