September 7

Global Seminars & Invited Speaker Series

CULTURAL HERITAGE IN THE RONCAL VALLEY
Secrets of Roncal's heritage: stones

José Ignacio Riezu Boj
University of Navarra

The lecture dealt with some aspects of the stone heritage of the Roncal Valley. To begin with, we reflected on the concept of cultural heritage and the need to know and catalog the heritage of the Roncal Valley in order to be able to protect and study it.

Live stones

The tour began by reviewing the evolution of the Roncal house and talking first of bordas, ranchos and casales as a reflection of the first stone buildings in Roncal. Then, a small description of the fundamental peculiarities of a house "subject" roncalesa of a floor has been realized emphasizing the following characteristics:

- Rectangular structure of exposed stone without plaster.

- Presence of plant leave, second floor and attic (sabayao).

- Gable roof, initially of shingles, with a large truncated cone-shaped chimney.

- Small windows (closed with wooden shutters), the oldest ones, ogival.

- Main door of the house with semicircular or pointed arch (pointed) oriented to the sun (south or east).

- Large wooden balconies or large sunrooms facing east or south.

- Isolated house, without sharing walls with other houses: presence of belenas or recarte.

Examples of this subject of houses that are being renovated or disappearing were shown, as well as their natural evolution towards two-story houses. As sample of the strong transformation that the localities of the valley are undergoing, a series of photographs were shown comparing what I called the 'urban landscape' of 100-50 years ago with the present day.

Next, a hypothesis of study was advanced in which an attempt was made to analyze the typology of some of the abbey houses in the villages of the Roncal valley. I have found three buildings in Roncal, Isaba and Uztarroz with a similar typology, which I believe were the old abbeys. Nowadays they are divided and form several particle dwellings, although they are still partly the parish dwelling, as in Roncal and Uztarroz. They are the houses of Zaragozano and the priest's house in Roncal, Casa Sansón in Isaba and Casa Arreaga and the priest's house in Uztarroz. The abbeys were the dwellings of the ecclesiastics (abbots and beneficiaries) who served in each town. In the 17th century, this service consisted of an abbot in each town, except for Burgui and Vidangoz which, depending on the abbot of Leyre and Roncesvalles respectively, had a vicar and a issue of beneficiaries that varied between 12 in Isaba and Burgui, 8 in Vidangoz, 6 in Uztarroz, Roncal and Garde, and 4 in Urzainqui. In total, taking into account also the rectors of Burdaspal and Navarzato, we can count up to 63 ecclesiastics working in the valley in need of shelter and house. The proposed buildings all have the following characteristics:

- They are works of great constructive volume and elongated structure.

- The main facade is built, in part, with very well carved ashlars.

- They have at least two large doors from entrance to the house. The Isaba building had, as can be seen in some photographs from the beginning of the 20th century, a previous arch of entrance that gave way to a kind of exterior patio in front of the house.

- Some seem to have had or still have a chapel, as in Roncal or Isaba.

Another subject of singular construction that we have dealt with are the towers in the Roncal valley. In the codex nº 268 of the National Historical file , graduate Compendial Apologetic History In Defense Of The Antiquity And Legality Of The Privileges Of Val De Roncal, by the Carmelite Friar Miguel Hualde, a native of Isaba, written around 1778, it says on page 41: "Of the aforementioned armory houses, three still survive in Ysaba, in the aforementioned new town of Burguiberri, with their towers and loopholes, and in other districts of the six that it contains, there are others that are lowered; in the town of Urzainqui there is another, which survives, as well as another in Roncal; and it is certain that in addition to these Armory houses there were also Castles in Burgui, Roncal, and Ysaba, where weapons were also deposited and kept for said purpose." These towers that the author calls "de Armería" served to "guard the weapons only for the inhabitants of the valley".

In some old photographs of Isaba the Uriz tower can still be clearly seen, but in Roncal and Urzainqui there were (in Urzanqui it collapsed and in Roncal it is very transformed) two buildings that were possibly towers. We refer to Casa Peruzainki in Urzainqui and Casa Soravilla in Roncal. Both reach a certain height and have machicolations finishing off the façade. Of the first one only the door and the first rows of the walls remain, and the second one is very reformed. As colophon to the topic of the towers, the hypothesis of the presence of watchtowers, with beacons, in three strategic points of Garde, Roncal and Urzainqui was exposed in a playful tone. The possibility of communication points between the Neighborhood of the Castle of Urzainqui and the Neighborhood of the Castle of Roncal was proposed (informants like Gabriel Salboch of Casa Organista of Urzainqui, Arturo Gale of Casa Indiano, and Isabel Sanz of Casa Martiguinda of Roncal, confirmed that both neighborhoods communicated visually years ago, but that the new woodland at the moment prevents it). The other proposed observation point is an area on the right bank of the river Esca, in front of the old monastery of San Martín (today the Enaquesa cheese factory), from which the Castle District of Roncal and the village of Garde can be perfectly seen. In support of this theory, it was shown the proposal of lines of communication between Burgui, Pintano Castle, Virgen de la Peña and Castillonuevo, by Iñaki Sagredo in his book Navarra Castillos que defendieron el reino (Navarre Castles that defended the kingdom).

core topic oven.

The next topic discussed was the different signs found on the central voussoir or core topic of many doors in the valley. This is one of the most important places on the exterior of a house. In this place signs of protection of the house and its inhabitants are placed. It should be pointed out that the house in the Pyrenees is not the main building of its name, but all the land -and property, livestock, belongings, etc.- belonging to the owner, as well as all the inhabitants of the building. One of the most abundant graphemes in the Roncal keys is the monogram IHS, abbreviation of the name of Jesus. The great variety of cases found throughout the valley was shown. The presence in some cases of the double monogram IHS/XPS, abbreviation of the double name of Jesus and Christ, was also pointed out. We stopped at exhibition to show one of the most exquisite reliefs of the Roncal keystones, a double monogram located in the great main voussoir of the door of the old oven of Roncal. In it, in addition to the double abbreviation, we can see a registration underneath that probably names the artifice of the epigraph followed by the Latin locution "Me fecit".

Kitchen-ashtray Casa Mayo.

To conclude this chapter, a series of examples of what we have called 'ashtray-kitchens' were shown. They are Structures halfway between the primitive low stove and the modern economical stove. They are formed by two plates, generally of stone, the lower one, in frontal position, with the typical structure of an ashtray (receptacle to collect and keep the ash); and the upper one, in horizontal position and supported on the first one, which presents several holes where iron burners are inserted. They are Structures always placed taking advantage of a window opening to allow ventilation and the escape of smoke. Many of these primitive kitchens have ornamentation on the front plate with decorative symbols, as well as in some cases the name of the owner of the house and the date of construction. They are relatively abundant constructions in the Roncal valley and probably in the rest of the Pyrenean valleys of Navarre (their presence has been confirmed in the valleys of Salazar, Aezcoa, Arce and Burguete).

Stones of the dead

The second part of the exhibition was about tombstones. The first Christian burials were surrounding the churches, given the belief that the closer one was buried to the sacred, the easier it was to reach paradise. These burials were marked with stelae. In Navarre, and in the Roncal Valley in particular, a considerable number of them are preserved issue . The stelae of the Roncal valley were studied and catalogued by Tomás López Sellés, Casimiro Saralegui and José Cruchaga in an extensive work graduate "Piedras familiares y piedras de tumbas de Navarra" published in 1983 in Cuadernos de Etnología y Etnografía de Navarra ( nº 41-42). In the article, the authors study the stelae and engraved keystones of a series of Pyrenean valleys (Roncal, Salazar, Navascués, Romanzado, Urraul Bajo, part of the Alto and the Valdorba) and, among them, the Roncal valley. The work fieldwork on Roncal seems to have been carried out in 1965. The article describes 9 stelae in Roncal, 2 in Uztarroz, 2 in Urzainqui, 1 in Garde and 20 in Vidangoz. In recent years, the old cemetery of Roncal has been adapted to house, among other things, the stelae that were preserved in the parish. At present, in the old cemetery of Roncal there are at least 15 stelae or their fragments, placed in three different areas. Around a baptismal font there are 3 fragments, on the wall of the church 2 and regrouped at the back of the old cemetery, 9 stelae. There is also a small fragment of another stele embedded in the outer wall of the cemetery. In the exhibition a review of each of the Roncal stelae was made, stopping at a fragment of a Gothic stele. This stele has a very elaborated graphía and it was demonstrated for the first time the great similarity that maintains with other two better conserved steles and located in the interior of the parochial church of Urzainqui, the first one, and incrusted in a wall of Casa Seisea de Garde, the second one. The three present in the center a cross with short arms ending in arrows and on them three symbols resembling fleur-de-lis. In the two lower quarters are shown: on the left, the nomogram JHS, and on the right, XPS. The great similarity of these three stelae and three other inscriptions found in Urzainqui (stela-2) and Salvatierra de Esca (core topic and stela reused in a source) suggests the same author or workshop located in the area.

Stelae.

Next we studied two slabs with registration in the pavement of the parish church of Roncal under the altar of the Sacred Heart (old altar of San Urbicio). It is hypothesized with the possibility of being remains of the slabs that covered the encasing of the pavement of the church. For it several testimonies of testaments were shown where the burial inside the parochial church of San Esteban de Roncal was described.

Finally, an unpublished study of a tombstone found in the parish church of Santiago de Garde when the pavement was redone in 2009 was presented. It is a rectangular tombstone with a registration in Latin in the center. Above the registration there is a relief with two crossed bones and below the registration what looks like a relief of a miter and below two other crossed bones. The central epitaph reads: HAC SUNT IN FOSSA/BARTHOLOMEI PECATORIS OSSA, which translated means: "IN THIS PIT ARE THE BONES OF THE SINNER BARTOLOMEO". It is a Christian epitaph in Latin with formulas used since early Christian times, very widespread in the High Ages average. The tombstone of Garde seems to be copying literally the epitaph of St. Bede. The 7th century English saint (672-735) is buried in Durhan Cathedral and his epitaph is shrouded in legend: 'they tell that the workman who had to engrave the epitaph on his tomb did not know what to put, overwhelmed by the greatness of that man so wise and so holy; sleep came over him and he fell asleep; when he awoke, he found carved by angelic hands this sentence: Hac sunt in fossa/Bedae Venerabilis ossa ("In this tomb are/the bones of the Venerable Beda"). As can be seen, the first line coincides in its entirety with the Garde tombstone, while the second only differs in the name and the epithet given to the dead. Who could this Bartholomew have been? Analyzing the lists of abbots of the town of Garde listed in La Villa de Garde en el Valle de Roncal, a book written by its parish priest Javier Garriz in 1923, we can locate up to three abbots with that name, all three surnamed Gayarre: Bartolomé Gayarre (1628-1652), Bartolomé Gayarre (1653-1660) and Bartolomé Gayarre (1724-1752). We propose that one of these abbots is the addressee of this tombstone.