The perception of the monastery of Fitero up to the dawn of the 20th century

How did our ancestors see, judge and feel the architectural and cultural heritage they contemplated, and with what adjectives did they define and hear the great monuments referred to? These are questions about which we know little, but they are interesting for judging sensitivities, appreciations and evaluations from specific contexts.

Travel books, chronicles, sermons, reports of festivals, correspondence and other documents, together with the press, are a good source of information on the influence of fashions, changes in taste, the weight of history and the human reaction to monumentality or beauty.

On many occasions it was fashion that led to derogatory remarks about old works, judged to be out of date. In many licences to make new altarpieces, this circumstance can be seen between the lines, although it is true that the excuse for obtaining permission was the antiquity and old age of the works, in many cases medieval. On the other hand, when the relationship or the text is contemporary to the work being commented on, self-indulgence and exaggeration are very common tendencies. 

One of the most famous and intelligent abbots of the monastery of Fitero was Ignacio de Ibero from Pamplona, a deeply cultured man with a rich Library Services, who introduced the printing press to the abbey and had extensive knowledge and travels; he governed between 1592 and 1612. In a manuscript from 1610 preserved in the National Historical file , he wrote: "The church of the monastery is very sumptuous, it can serve as a cathedral, it was built at the expense of Don Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada". The comparison with a cathedral is something recurrent whenever someone wished to magnify what he was describing. Sumptuousness is to be equated with the magnificent, grand and costly.

In 1621, volume VII of the Benedictine chronicle of Father Antonio de Yepes, abbot, preacher, great worker and chronicler of the Congregation of St. Benedict of Valladolid since 1601, was published in Valladolid. In his allusion to the temple of Fitero, he states the following: "The church of this house is one of the largest, most beautiful and sumptuous that there are in many parts. It was the work of the archbishop of Toledo Don Rodrigo, who was from Navarre and fond of his land and more so of this house, where his ancestors and relatives had made singular benefits. Thus, the archbishop wanted to bury himself in it (drawing on the affection of the homeland and the great work he had done in the same church, in the main chapel, next to the Gospel, where this epitaph was placed: Sepulchrum Roderici Archiepiscopi Toletani...". On this occasion to the grandeur and sumptuousness, he adds the epithet of beautiful. The Dictionary of Authorities defines beautiful as "beautiful, well arranged, proportioned and adorned, of special grace and refinement", with which the monk added one more consideration to what was written a short time before by Abbot Ibero. It is possible that Father Yepes knew the abbey of Fitero, since the first of his works were published in the Navarrese monastery of Irache.

A little more descriptive sample the erudite abbot Fray Manuel de Calatayud in his Memoirs of the Monastery of Fitero, when he writes: "We know that the church of this monastery was built at the expense of Archbishop Don Rodrigo, which is a magnificent work. It is 319 feet in length and 36 in latitude ... The entire structure is made of carved stone so solid and solid that, in more than 550 years, it has never been defective in any part, nor is it recognisable as a worn stone". In addition to the measurements, two other ideas stand out: magnificence and durability. Regarding the former, it is well known that it was a concept recovered from the works of Aristotle, who considered it to be characteristic of public works, the image of the nobleman and characteristic of works dedicated to the gods. In the Counter-Reformation period, its meaning was used on numerous occasions and in all areas. As far as durability is concerned, it is something that must be related to the Vitruvian idea of firmitas, linked to these well-worked stones of good quality. 

A Cistercian, in this case not of the house, who knew the Bernardine monasteries in Spain, Father Tomás Muñiz, author of the Médula histórica cisterciense ( 1781), affirms that his church was the "most magnificent and sumptuous that existed at that time in Spain and that even today competes with many of our cathedrals". The adjectives are already familiar to us as they appear repeatedly in the other texts.

Cloister of the monastery, according to a drawing by M. Obiols Delgado, illustrating the work Navarra y Logroño by Pedro Madrazo (1886).

At the end of the 18th century, in 1799, another anonymous monk wrote a meticulous description of the town and monastery, which is preserved in the Royal Academy of History and transcribed by Faustino Menéndez-Pidal. There we read: "The construction of the monastery is regular and although it is spacious and very capable, it has no ostentatious works and only the church and the bookshop are magnificent. It has three naves, all of ashlar stone and Gothic architecture; it is, if not the largest, one of the largest in Navarre and it is tradition that it was a factory...". Once again, we find the concept of magnificent work, adding the word ostentation (worthy of being seen, according to the Diccionario de Autoridades) and, above all, the grade of Gothic work for the whole. The same considerations are found in the Diccionario geográfico-histórico de la Real Academia de la Historia of 1802.

The inventory drawn up following the disentailment of Mendizábal insists on the great capacity of the church, describing it as "one of the largest in the peninsula ... and it also includes a magnificent sacristy". The same document points out that, together with the cloisters, all its kitchen offices, oven, refectory, roofs, barns, stables, stables, guest house were of great capacity, as were its "excellent cellars of great magnitude for all kinds of wines".

The Bilbilitano jurisconsult and historian Vicente de Lafuente, in volume L of Sacred Spain (Madrid, 1866), wrote: "The church of the monastery was built by the famous archbishop of Toledo, Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada ...., although grandiose and with a long nave, it is of little ornamentation, B due to its severity. Today it serves as a parish church, and an annex to it, although it is very deteriorated and of less value than those of Veruela and other Cistercian monasteries". With his description of the austerity of the complex, he delved into the Cistercian charism.

A milestone among the nineteenth-century texts that were published was the edition by the writer and academic Pedro de Madrazo of his well-known three-volume monograph on Navarre and Logroño (1886), included in a large series covering other Spanish provinces. His text is mainly descriptive, but it served as guide for many scholars to learn about the monument and the history of the monastery.

We close these observations on the first Cistercian foundation on the Iberian Peninsula with the judgement written by Vicente Lampérez y Romea, one of the great historians of Spanish architecture, in 1905: "The architecture of the Cistercians did not produce anything so grandiose in Spain".