The Church of Santiago under a typically cloudy La Coruña sky
All photos in this post 2018 Jessica Knauss
I recently had the opportunity to visit La Coruña. I faced wind and rain (What did you expect? It's the coast of Galicia.) to investigate the Romanesque style at what was, in the European Middle Ages, the edge of the known world.
While in this seaworthy and fascinating corner of Spain, I learned about a Renaissance episode that drastically affected how we can appreciate La Coruña's medieval art. In 1589, the English besieged the city as a revenge for the Invincible Armada's attack in 1588. (Sore feelings even after soundly trouncing the Spanish navy and starting a long period of historical decline? How much reinforcement do you need, England?) The soldiers of La Coruña and its local citizens turned the English away, but before the siege, the city boasted five Romanesque churches and a monastery; when it was over, only two Romanesque churches remained in the city proper. (You can guess how I feel about his instance of history obliterating history.)
Santiago (Saint James the Apostle) is the oldest of the surviving church buildings, having been first constructed in the second half of the twelfth century in the same "Mateo" style as the Romanesque Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. The ground on which it stands has been hallowed for a very long time, perhaps as early as the tenth century.
This church was established as the beginning of the walking Camino (Santiago pilgrimage) for English pilgrims arriving in Galicia by sea. It was restored multiple times in the medieval era because of fire damage, which makes the structure a historical record in itself. Fortunately, the original apse area, as we see here, survived to display the particularities of Galician Romanesque for visitors today.
The outside of the apse has many delightful corbels. Here, a bearded man and a man pulling at his mouth.
Here, many different realistic animals, a miniature bestiary.
This building embodied the bond between the medieval Church and State. As late as 1521, this church had two towers: the surviving one here (this version constructed in 1607) with the bells and clock, and a second one that held munitions, archives, and other city government items the town hall didn't have room for. For more than one hundred years from the fourteenth century, the temple also served as the city council's meeting place.
The shortest street in La Coruña is found between Santiago's tower and the old consulate building, which has a Renaissance coat of arms and interesting Romanesque Resurrection, both taken from other, unknown sites.
The first thing I noticed about this lovely north doorway is that the door itself is square, as in other churches, but the door jamb has extra symmetrical decorative elements, giving the top an indented look I found repeated in the other two Romanesque churches I saw in La Coruña. The indentations are oxen heads, which in close proximity to the Lamb of God in the archway, represent the triumph of Good over Evil. The archway is better preserved than most other areas of this church and features many attractive flowers as well as the Lamb, both much in the "Mateo" style.
The front entrance displays features from different medieval styles, as well as evidence of where the other tower used to be. The pointed main arch and rose window are from the end of the fourteenth century, but still copy the much venerated "Mateo" style. Christ shows his wounds at the arch's apex, and the interior of the arch and the rain ledge are resplendent with seated angels.
It's only natural that the church of Santiago should sport an image of that saint at its entrance. However, the vast empty space around the horseman and the modern look of his boots are sure signs that something else originally occupied the space where Santiago now gallops in search of Moors to slay. This figure is indeed later than anything else we've seen so far, from the sixteenth century. His metal sword has had time to turn green in the Galician weather, giving him a lightsaber-y pizzazz.
A Gothic-style tomb has been cut out of the front wall.
On this side, the magnificent although eroded column capitals show twisting dragons (the Devil), an angel, and a scene that was popular in Romanesque times, Daniel in the lions' den. Although Daniel himself is mostly missing, four lions and the figure of Habakkuk accompanied by an angel make it unmistakable.
The plant-themed column capitals on the other side are finished off with a story that's not often seen in Galicia, but this blog's readers have seen before, also closely associated with Daniel in the lions' den: the sacrifice of Isaac. Abraham wields a sword, which an angel takes hold of to stop him turning toward Isaac, crouched and tied up behind him. Between the angel and Abraham, the sacrificial lamb ready to replace Isaac on the altar saves his life.
On both sides of the door, angels with scrolls create that signature Coruñan shape. Below them, we have additional figures, elongating the indentations. These have both been carved in a Gothic style that harks back to "Mateo" to beautiful effect. The figure on the left is Santiago, bearded and with a pilgrim's walking stick. The younger beardless man on the right is probably Saint John, pointing to the gospel he wrote. A closer look reveals that his head has been replaced, as the angle is slightly uncomfortable and the stone a different color. As it still successfully copies the "Mateo" style, albeit with Gothic waves in his hair, it was probably replaced no later than the fifteenth century.
From the inside, Santiago and John appear to float over the street even as they guard the entrance.
Gazing toward the main altar, Santiago reminded me of San Cipriano in my Zamora. Like that temple, it used to have three parallel naves that were turned into a single large nave in Gothic times to create the sense of spaciousness so favored in that artistic period.
The church features many seventeenth-century burials, of which this is the most striking example. This noble lady and her husband are portrayed as praying figures, both with their heads turned drastically to face the altar of their devotion.
This life-sized Saint James survived the medieval fires in the apse and has been moved to the foot of the church, where I stand for perspective. I'd seen a photo of this image before I arrived, and was pleasantly surprised by the presence it exuded because of its size.
The stained glass in the rose windows was placed at the turn of the twentieth century but blends in harmoniously with the medieval architecture.
In the well-preserved side chapel, a figure of the Virgin Mary, pregnant with the Son of God, is venerated. Such figures are often called Our Lady of the O, because of the surprised reaction they illicit.
Lest we forget the whole point of this building, these column capitals remind us of Santiago and his pilgrimage with the symbolic shell.
Santiago is a well-lit place to hang out in the evening.
Lords of all we survey at the top of Allariz
All photos in this post 2018 Jessica Knauss unless otherwise specified.
"I didn't even know Alfonso X had a wife," said a Spanish friend of mine the other day.
Of course he had a wife—he was the king and needed legitimate heirs. But while Alfonso X, one of the obsessions of my life, is known to everyone in modern Spain, you don't hear much about his bride, Violante.
While I was studying for my PhD, I heard of a famous scholar of Spanish history who thought of writing Violante's biography. He soon learned why none exists: there just isn't enough information about her to fill a book.
"The Castle," a rocky outcrop at the top of Allariz
Violante (a modernized version of this name is Yolanda) was a princess of Aragón, daughter of Jaume the Conqueror and Violante of Hungary. Some sources claim that she married Alfonso when she was only ten years old. Papers were drawn up in 1246, and there may even have been a ceremony, but the marriage was probably not consummated until after she had her first menses.
The lack of information about Violante in a court where it seemed everything was written down, and the existence of two or three bastard-providing lovers of the king, have led some scholars to believe that the marriage was not happy. However, Violante and Alfonso had eleven children together, a number that seems above and beyond strict duty.
Violante in a thirteenth-century manuscript, Tumbo de Touxos Outos.
Another presumed portrait, from the Libro de ajedrez, is in this blog's banner.
Wikimedia Commons
The most lovely evidence that the marriage had tenderness and strength appears in the Cantigas de Santa Maria. Cantiga 345 is full of politics and war, but in the pertinent lines, King Alfonso has a dream that wakes him up. He turns to Queen Violante, who is in the bed next to him, exactly where a beloved spouse should be. Would the Cantigas composers mention this detail if it were false? What reason could they have to make up something like that? What's more, when Alfonso describes his dream to his bedmate, she responds that she's had the same dream. The same dream! That kind of thing is soulmate territory. The king and queen stay together, taking necessary action and celebrating the happy results together, through to the end of the song.
I knew only two other facts about Queen Violante.
One, during the emotionally taxing confusion over who should inherit the kingdom when Alfonso's and Violante's firstborn son was killed in battle in 1275, the queen fled back to Aragón with her two young grandchildren, who stood to gain under Alfonso X's new laws. She eventually returned to court and must've made some kind of peace with her husband and second son, although nothing much more is said about her.
Typical Galician grain storage at the entrance to Allariz
Second, she survived Alfonso X by many years. He died in 1284 and Violante passed away in 1300. The main event recorded about her widowhood was that she founded a convent in the town of Allariz in what is now the province of Ourense in the region of Galicia.
I imagined Violante living out her days in the rainy gray weather of Celtic Galicia. For my birthday this year, I wanted to see the place where my fellow widow lived in constant sorrow after the love of her life left her all alone in the world.
Allariz's Praza Maior features the Romanesque
Church of Santiago, which Violante probably visited.
I've had help and company for many of my travels over the past year, for which I'm keenly grateful. But this trip had to be solo. All told, I spent more than two hours my first day in the capital of Ourense researching how to get to Allariz and back without my own car and what to see once I got there. I mention this because the character of any travel is influenced not by the destination, but by the journey.
I imagined Violante felt lonely even surrounded by a royal retinue when coming to settle in this green land. Although I was taking taxis, city buses, and intercity buses just as alone, I did it with a sense of accomplishment I could never have achieved from my shotgun position in a friend's car. Those bus rides were, in a way, the culmination of all my years of studying the Spanish language and the history of Spain.
The Galician flag blends in with the Galician sky at the top of Allariz
I arrived in Allariz—a big spa town, as it happened—before the convent museum was open, so I headed to what the locals call "The Castle." It was a huge rocky mound with no man-made structures except for a white and blue flag of the region of Galicia that waved stiffly in the strong breezes.
I felt like a queen at the top of that rock, looking down at valleys, so many green trees, and roads and houses. Would this have been enough after thirty-two years as the queen of an entire dynamic country? I inhaled the clear air, cool the way August mornings can be with their powerful gusts, and thought that yes, it could be plenty. I recognized the influence of my departed husband in that assessment, and wondered if Violante would ever have agreed.
Convent of Santa Clara, Allariz
That's why I made this trip: to learn more about Violante. The convent museum was just opening as I got there. It's enormous... and not very medieval.
Violante founded the convent in 1286 with her son, King Sancho IV, and decided to be buried here, but precisely because it was a royal convent, it had plenty of money to do complete overhauls with changing architectural tastes, and almost nothing of the original convent survives. A fire in the eighteenth century obliterated most of what would've been recognizably Gothic. This convent has the largest cloister in Galicia, but no visits are allowed.
Santa Clara with the Church of San Benito
I scoured the convent museum in search of what I'd come looking for. Many reliquaries and liturgical items were of fine artistic quality, but Baroque. Even the Gothic artwork on display was from after Violante's time. Then, in a room all by itself, this:
The Virgen Abridera (opening Virgin) was made in the thirteenth century from a single elephant tusk (not okay to do today—don't even think about it), at the behest of Queen Violante. When closed, it looks like a finely carved ivory of a Virgin and Child in the cheerful Gothic style of the thirteenth century.
Opened, it becomes a triptych showing Jesus's birth, his Ascension to Heaven, and how Mary was made the Queen of Heaven by her son.
The Nativity scene is flanked by an Annunciation in two parts, with Gabriel on the left and the Virgin on the right. On the left of the Ascension, the angel announces Jesus's Resurrection at the tomb, and on the right, Jesus appears as the Holy Spirit to the Apostles. Mary's coronation is flanked by angels holding candles.
The fine details, the remains of medieval paint, and the craftsmanship in the hingework display the highest quality and remind me of my favorite Gothic art, the illustrations of the Cantigas de Santa Maria.
The back of the sculpture shows how Mary's body adjusts to the curve of the tusk out of which she was carved.
This closeup of the right side shows its 3-D, wedge shape.
This sculpture had incredible presence. It told all its stories with joy and loving care. Through the ages, anyone who really looked at this ivory has probably been moved in a positive way. In the absence of many facts about Violante's life, I got a visceral feeling for her personality by appreciating one of her possessions.
The opening Virgin also seemed to me an apt metaphor for where I am with widowhood: It rips you open. What you find inside determines the quality of the rest of your life.
Neoclassical fountain in the convent plaza, Allariz
Most importantly, in Allariz I learned that the widowed queen did not stay at this convent for the rest of her life, the way I'd assumed. She lived where she was likely happiest, her home in Aragón. She was returning from a pilgrimage to Rome when she died in the Pyrenees mountain pass of Roncesvalles.
Good for her. Not shutting herself away, but going where she wanted and living in a way that brought her happiness? That's a widowhood example to follow.
