The covers of the transept

In the first decades of its existence, access to Santa María de Tudela was through the two doors opened in the arms of the transept. The oldest is the southern one. It consists of three columns on each side, supporting archivolts decorated with vegetal and geometric schemes (zigzag lines, rhomboidal grid, scrolls, palmettes, etc.) with a markedly flat treatment. It lacks a tympanum. The six capitals display New Testament stories, some evangelical and others based on the Acts of the Apostles, some of which extol the figure of St. Peter. Starting from the viewer's left, in the first one we see how Jesus Christ submission gives a great key to the prince of the apostles, a scene that visualizes the topic of the foundation of the Church. Then comes, in the second capital, a banquet under two arches. The presence of a prostrate young woman who brings her long hair to the feet of Jesus Christ leads us to think of the so-called anointing of Bethany, when Mary wiped with her hair the perfume of pure nard that she had just poured on the feet of the Master in gratitude for having raised her brother Lazarus from the dead. It could also be the supper in the house of the Pharisee Simon narrated by St. Luke, a passage that tells how a public sinner poured tears and perfume on the feet of Christ, kissed them and wiped them with her hair. The third capital presents St. Peter saved from drowning when, called by Jesus, he tried to walk on the waters of the Sea of Galilee. Beside him, three disciples are rowing in a boat.

The capitals on the right show, in the first place, the healing of the crippled man by St. Peter and St. John at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple of Jerusalem, described in the Acts of the Apostles. It is followed, with a good part of the sculpted surface lost, by the preaching that St. Peter then carried out in the portico called Solomon's Gate. The third capital has been interpreted by Marisa Melero as the dialogue of the priests of Jerusalem who finally decided to arrest both apostles for interrogation.

Although made in the same campaign, it has been observed that the capitals on the right show more quality than those on the left and that they denote greater proximity to the magnificent sculpture of the cloister, both in the compositions and in the treatment of the figures, the volumetry, the details of the clothing, etc. In those on the left, with more issue characters and, consequently, more variegated, it has been criticized the lower skill in the composition and treatment of the figures, which are less rounded and proportionate. Both have been dated to the last decade of the 12th century.

The northern door has a clearly different composition, since it was designed with slightly pointed arches and a tympanum without reliefs. The distribution of motifs is similar: three archivolts with vegetal and geometric designs on six historiated capitals. Those located on the east side, to the left of the viewer, are dedicated to the story of St. John the Baptist. The scene of Christ's baptism in the Jordan River, accompanied by an angel, is easily recognized in the interior; the central one, with the dance of Salome before King Herod and his companions seated at the banquet table, is more difficult to identify, due to the deterioration of the stone, and the exterior, in which currently only the decapitated head of the saint preserves the details of the original surface; the figures that flank it are very lost (they are the executioner, Salome and his mother Herodias). On the other side, the capitals on the right are dedicated to St. Martin: the interior one offers the most common scene of the saint's life, when he parted his cloak to attend to an almost naked poor man; in the central one, Jesus Christ, recognizable by the cruciform nimbus and flanked by praying angels, sample the fragment of the cloak that St. Martin had given him; on the exterior, a mitred bishop, that is, the protagonist saint, occupies the corner, accompanied by supplicants and acolytes. The figurative complement also includes a pair of corbels on each side supporting the tympanum. In the upper ones, pairs of men and lions were represented (in one the man tries to disquijar the beast, as Samson did, while in the other he holds it by a claw and by the shoulder). In the lower ones we see two characters, one seated and the other squatting, raising their hands as if they were holding something, in the manner of Atlanteans.

Also in this doorway the designs of scenes and the forms of the personages testify to a dependence on the capitals of the cloister. It has been considered slightly later than the southern one, so it has been dated to the early years of the 13th century.