Zamora's Medieval Treasures: San Pedro de la Nave, Part III: Welcome In!

San Pedro de la Nave.
Unless otherwise noted, all photos in this post by Jessica Knauss 2017. 

From afar, it's an unassuming building, and if you notice it at all, you might wonder why it's been set a little apart from the town of El Campillo. As you get closer, you see that this is not the same brickwork as the rest of the town. This is San Pedro de la Nave!

Even when it was built, the stones were extraordinary. They aren't local stones, meaning this building was costly to put together. In this picture, along the top left eave, you can see corbels placed there in Romanesque times (the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries), when the church was already hundreds of years old and in need of repair.

The first impression of the inside is of warmth, in the golden color of the stone (which never had colored paint, as near as anyone can tell), and in the way the multiple horseshoe arches embrace your view. San Pedro's floor plan is a Latin cross, like a plus sign, and the spaces are highly compartmentalized, with little communication between the main nave and side apses. We're looking toward the main chapel here, and from this spot, there's no indication of anything beyond the main tunnel. The lateral areas could have been sacristies, chapter houses, or cells where monks lived. Yes, in those tiny spaces. (Find pictures in previous posts.)

Looking back toward the entrance, you can appreciate the way the light illuminated the main altar on sunny days and the wooden ceiling, a practical solution to unstable Visigothic vaulting. The original vaulted ceilings are thought to have collapsed not long after they were built, and would've been replaced with a wooden ceiling much like the one we see today.

Above, you can see that the central dome is made of bricks. The 1930s restorers wanted to differentiate their work from the stone that had survived so many centuries.

Glancing to the sides, you begin to appreciate the work of two different artists, one who tended toward the Classical and one with a more progressive Visigothic style.

Electric lighting was added recently. The blackness near the floor is the result of fires that were lit for lighting and warmth during San Pedro's long period of obscurity. 

The first artist was "old-fashioned," meaning that he took his inspiration from the sculptors who had gone directly before him, and limited his repertoire to plants and more abstract motifs that are highly symbolic of the church's relationship with churchgoers. The second sculptor is responsible for four of the column capitals, which have human and animal figures as well as symbolic vegetable motifs. Both artists were influenced by Byzantine art and had probably seen an illustrated copy of an early commentary on the Apocalypse.

One of the biggest surprises about the columns is that they aren't structurally necessary: they don't support anything. The arches are supported in the walls. What compelled someone to put superfluous columns in such an otherwise austere space? Looking closer, we sense a highly didactic function.

Photo by José Pablo Palencia 2017 

Here, on the first column near the door on the right, we see the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac. God's hand appears out of a cloud in the sky on the left to stop him, and the fat ram, the replacement sacrifice, appears on the right between skinny bushes. The altar is labeled as such—ALTARE—and is complete with tinder for burning the offering. A legend above the scene describes it just in case the meaning slipped the monks' minds. No detail is left out.

This is more than an important Bible story. The priests could've used this column to teach (and to remind themselves) of the way God sacrificed his son, Jesus, who also rose again from the sacrificial altar to save humankind.

The symbolism doesn't stop there. Above the capital, the cyma (capital-topper, basically) is decorated with bunches of grapes and long-necked birds. The grapes are a nod to consecrated wine—the blood of Christ—and the birds represent the human soul. They gnaw on the vines to show the human soul nourished by the blood of Christ.

San Pedro de la Nave is already extraordinary, and now you're telling me it harbors six imaginatively sculpted, unique column capitals that let us see into the Visigothic worldview? There are no words for this.

On the side, the capital shows St. Peter, the foundation of the Christian church, holding a book labeled as such—LIBER—and a cross to remind the viewer of his martyrdom.

The other side shows St. Paul, the first great traveler and proselytizer of the Christian world. He holds a book in the form of a scroll and his raised hand shows that he was a great teacher. The cyma extends back along the corner of the wall significantly, repeating its birds and vines, souls and blood, as needed.

Facing Abraham and Isaac, another decorative column teaches with a different story. 

Photo by José Pablo Palencia 2017 

The prophet Daniel throws his hands up in prayer in the middle of the lions in the den, but is miraculously untouched by them. Because of the Latin translation of the den as LACUM (lake), Daniel's story is not only another reference to Christ's Resurrection (both were saved from certain death—it's a metaphor, go with it), but also to the sacrament of baptism. Yes, here, Daniel's feet are submerged as in early baptism, and rather than eating him, the lions lap at the lake's water. Daniel's robes echo the ripples in the lake, and the purposefully imperfect symmetry of the space makes it, to me, an even higher artistic achievement.

Here, the cyma features birds more prominently, and each one picks directly at the grapes.

The left side shows the apostle Thomas, clearly labeled and holding a book that declares ENMANUEL ("God with us" according the King James Version).

Philip appears on the right side, holding over his head what's been described as a crown topped with a cross and fleurs de lis. The curls on the sides make it look like a ship to me.

Moving toward the altar, the two facing columns showcase elegant birds, perhaps peacocks, representing the soul in paradise. If these columns were supporting anything, it would be San Pedro de la Nave's dome, which represents heaven. Practical function and metaphor become inextricably linked when we consider that these four columns artistically represent some of the main supports of the Christian church.

This column is the only one whose base still clearly shows its original floral designs.

The cymas here feature apostolic faces, bunches of grapes, and pinecones, another representation of the church's relationship with the congregation.

The sides of these columns have large, serious faces. This one has a clear reference to Roman sun worship. It was not unusual to associate Christ with the sun in early Christianity because of the sacred space it occupied the Roman mind, and also because it sets and rises again every day. It is the ultimate representation of resurrection.

This unidentified presumed apostle is topped with a unique cyma: a lamb, with obvious symbolism.

When you're inside the lateral cells, it feels as if you can spy on everything going on in the nave.

And finally, we come to the main chapel. It would've been the only chapel in Visigothic times. As I mentioned in the previous post, parts of an excavated altar were reassembled to make the new altar table here. St. Peter (San Pedro) stands on a Visigothic column that was also recovered during the transfer excavations. The area is tiny and mostly closed off from the rest. Visigothic rituals were secret, not really for public consumption, so it didn't matter if the congregation could see what the priests were doing. The reduced size probably contributed to its being the best preserved part of the church. 

It's the only area that maintains its original Visigothic vaulting. 

Entering this space is a sacred experience, in spite of its reduced size, largely because of the decoration, which is more profuse here than anywhere else.

While most Spanish guides use the word "rough" to describe these works by the Classical artist, I find them delicate, precise, and harmonious.

Crosses, grapes, geometric designs, and sunbursts frame the windows and run along the walls to unify the space and please the eye even while making reference to the same foundational metaphors we've seen on the column capitals.

The columns supporting the triumphal arch are nearly identical in conception. Also the work of the Classical artist, their cymas show winding serpents (sin) with bunches of grapes (redemption). The central parts of the capitals show four empty archways, which represent the four rivers in heavenly Jerusalem and recall the four Gospels.

The columns are marble and very likely taken from a Roman construction.

On my first visit to San Pedro de la Nave, I had the luxury of being able to sit in the front pew and stare at and through the triumphal arch for an indeterminate amount of time. Time had become irrelevant as I was transported more than a thousand years into the past.

The last extraordinary and mysterious item inside San Pedro is this sundial. To the left of the triumphal arch, someone has carved the names of a few months. They're not very visible in this photo, but just under the Christ monogram, it reads +JANUARIUS Et DICEMBR  MAR, with many Roman numerals indicating liturgical hours in the next row, and beneath, FBRS ET NOEMBER with their numerals. The metal bar casts a shadow on the wall, and you would think the shadow would point to the month and hours corresponding to the correct time of year.

Here's where the mystery comes in: The calendar doesn't work. It's in utterly the wrong place. Scholars have wondered why the calendar was never finished. I think the carver stopped when he realized it wasn't going to work. It also occurs to me that this stone could be recycled from another site where the calendar did work as planned. It's a less simple explanation, but perhaps more likely, given early medieval people's enthusiasm for reusing and recycling any materials at hand.

I hope you found this tour of San Pedro de la Nave as dazzling as I did.

Zamora's Medieval Treasures: San Pedro de la Nave, Part II: The Ricobayo Threat

The previously flooded town of San Pedro de la Nave.
Photos in this post by Jessica Knauss 2017. 

Imagine it's 1928 and you're a newly rediscovered pre-Romanesque treasure that happens to be on the banks of the Esla River. Yes, you are San Pedro de la Nave. In spite of a cave-in and some random additions, you still preserve the extraordinary remains of Visigothic sculpture and architecture. All of a sudden, after 1300 years of existence, you find yourself in the path of a reservoir project, about to be swallowed up by the rising waters of progress.

What do you do?

The bricks look haphazard, but they aren't. Just some of the sly smarts
of Visigothic architecture. Note the alabaster window, a recent addition. 

The Church of San Pedro de la Nave started out as the most important building in its area, the center of six small towns. Although it's not mentioned specifically in the historical record until 907, it's thought that it was the monastic center where Saint Valerio lived and did his saintly work in the seventh century because he describes it as the biggest and most luxurious of his time. When the area came under Muslim control, San Pedro slipped into obscurity. It seems there was never much money to do extensive construction work, a circumstance that saved San Pedro virtually intact for us today. In 1906, Don Manuel Gómez Moreno "discovered" the church for the modern era and it was declared a national monument in 1912.

Official tour guide Eva demonstrates how the bricks are held together.
They're basically stapled with wooden clamps.Those holes should be in the back.  

In the 1920s, engineers became interested in the area for its hydraulic power potential. They wanted to build a dam near the town of Ricobayo, which would create a reservoir in part of the Esla River, drowning all the small towns on its banks, and destroying San Pedro de la Nave. It had just come back into the spotlight and had recently gained a few defenders. Progress couldn't be stopped, however. Historical arguments could not prevent the building of the dam.

The original site of San Pedro de la Nave. Note the foundation stones. 

Luckily, there were enlightened people on both sides of the issue, and someone came up with the idea of moving the church, brick by brick, to a safer location. The builders of the dam paid for the move, which took two years and a lot of research, love, and guesswork. Gómez Moreno directed the project with architect Alejandro Ferrant Vázquez and the resulting monument is a lasting testament to their scholarship.

This Gothic bell gable was removed from the church
and is now used as part of the fencing around it. 

While they dismantled the church, the workers and scholars learned a lot about Visigothic building techniques. They made note of everything, and some Roman funerary stelae and fragments of an altar were found. Most of the treasures can be viewed in the Museum of Zamora, but the altar blocks were creatively rearranged in the new place to provide an altar for occasional services.

The new altar uses blocks discovered in the dismantling process. 

The stones look like you could knock
them over with a feather, but trust me,
they aren't budging! 

San Pedro de la Nave is now found two kilometers from where it originally stood in exactly the same north-south orientation as before. The original area was indeed flooded, but in recent years the water level has receded to the point that we can visit the church's original site without getting wet. Organic materials have washed away, but the sturdy stone structures of the entire town remain exactly where they were originally built.

Zamora's Medieval Treasures: San Pedro de la Nave, Part I - The Legend of the Saintly Ferryman and Woman

Photos in this post by Jessica Knauss 2017 

San Pedro de la Nave is a singular building in the unassuming town of El Campillo.

If you can think of something that would make a building unique, San Pedro de la Nave has it in spades. It's permitted to hold ceremonies according to the ancient Mozarabic ritual, it preserves rare pre-Romanesque Visigothic sculpture, it was threatened with being swallowed up by a reservoir, and it was moved brick by brick to a safe location. We'll delve into all that in future posts. Now, let's start with the harrowing story people have told over the centuries to explain the presence of a simple sarcophagus that became mysterious with time.

Written in the seventeenth century, at least several centuries after the events would've taken place, the story goes: Long, long ago, a young man—let’s call him Julián—lived in a town that would later be called San Pedro de la Nave on the River Esla with his beloved mother and father. Julián was a great hunter, providing all the game his family needed and then some, and things were just dandy. One day, Julián was tracking a deer. As he closed in, the deer abruptly turned around to look at him and spoke.

“Young Julián, you lead a good life in this fertile valley. But beware: one day, you will murder both of your beloved parents.”

Julián was shocked that the deer could speak at all. Given the extraordinary messenger, he had to believe the message. He laid down his bow and arrow right there and fled to Portugal (known as Lusitania at the time), thinking to evade the awful prophecy.

In Portugal, Julián made his fortune as a warrior. (The legend doesn’t specify what side he fought for. Whoever wrote the legend down probably had no idea who was fighting whom when Julián would’ve lived. The only thing he could be sure of was that it was on the Iberian Peninsula, so of course there was some kind of war.) 

Julián was rewarded for his valor with marriage to the lovely Castilian noblewoman Basilisa. (Castile wouldn’t really have existed when Julián and Basilisa were alive, but to the seventeenth-century writer, Castile probably seemed eternal.)

Basilisa and Julián made a lovely home together, but there was another couple who wasn’t happy: Julián’s parents had been wondering where their son went and why for many years at this point. They went in search of him, and happened to find his home and bride when he was away doing important Lusitanian things. 

Basilisa was a good daughter-in-law and gave Julián’s parents an unforgettable welcome. When they admitted to being exhausted from their long and worried journey, Basilisa offered them her own nuptial bed to rest in.

While her guests took their siesta, Basilisa went to church to pray. Of course that was the moment Julián came home to find two people in a bed where at most he would expect to find one: his wife, waiting for him. Julián believed Basilisa was dallying with another man, and slew both sleepers.

Basilisa walked in the door to find the horrifying sight of her mother- and father-in-law dead and explained the guests to her husband. Julián was devastated—I could’ve told him he couldn’t escape the prophecy so easily—and decided to do penance for his (totally unintended and studiously avoided) crime back in his hometown of San Pedro.

He and Basilisa set up a free service ferrying pilgrims across the River Esla so they could safely arrive at the holy sites they were aiming for. The couple did this successfully for years and earned quite the holy reputation. Finally one day, when Julián was an old man, he glimpsed someone on the opposite side of the river who needed a ferry during a severe storm.

When he made it across the dangerous river, Julián found that the pilgrim was a leper. Nonetheless, he offered the pilgrim his own bed in which to warm up and wait out the storm. Suddenly, the leper became a beautiful angel.

“Julián, your penance is complete. Your sin is redeemed. You will enjoy the rewards of Heaven. Go in peace.”

  

Julián and Basilisa lived out their final days feeling very blessed. That’s who’s supposed to be at rest in this tomb.

Nevermind that it’s not a tomb, but a sarcophagus, where bodies were placed until such time as only bones remained. A sarcophagus is no one’s final resting place. Just try to tell that to someone writing a thousand years after this building came into being, though.

If you think this story is remarkable, just wait for the real saga of San Pedro de la Nave, in the next posts. 

Zamora's Medieval Treasures: San Cipriano

All photos in this post by Jessica Knauss 

Zamora has more than twenty Romanesque churches. This is extraordinary because, although the Romanesque style was vastly popular all over Europe in its heyday, over time people tended to dismantle the buildings from the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries in favor of Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, and even more modern ways of building.

In contrast to the Gothic style, the Romanesque might seem a little heavy, clumsy, or stiff. I'm here to say that, particularly in Zamora, the Romanesque style permitted a lot of fun artistic expression. Each of its surviving Romanesque churches has its own personality. I plan to visit them all and share the best with you here.

We'll start with San Cipriano because there's something mysteriously appealing about this church. When you come up on it from the public library or the parador nearby, it exerts a pull on you. Even the locals must feel it, because San Cipriano's plaza is a popular hangout among people of all ages. I wonder if they appreciate that this church shows up in the historical record for the first time in 1159.

Its bell tower, which used to form part of the defenses in the town wall, is pleasingly proportioned and visible from many prime spots in the city. Look for the stork nest in the corner. The stones that make up the church exterior have exquisite reddish accents, and the windows and doors display iconography worthy of any museum--and that's just the outside!

In this window, between two columns with floral capitals, two of the three Marys are portrayed next to the holy sepulcher with an angel and a sleeping solider. On the right, Abraham sacrifices Isaac. How do these themes go together? God's sparing of Isaac was interpreted during this time period as foretelling Jesus' sacrifice and resurrection. Both were placed upon a literal or metaphorical sacrificial altar, and both rose up from it again.

Three of the church's architects had the sculptors make portraits of them so everyone would know who made this: Ildefonso, Sancho, and Raimundo. An inscription inside indicates they also made the church of San Andrés in 1093.

These weathered fellows have been identified as the apostles James, Thomas, Peter, and Philip.

The southern entry has a lovely triple Romanesque archway that would be treasured anywhere else, but here is easily overlooked. Around the arch are many unique carvings from the original structure which were placed here during the 1975 retoration: an ironworker named Bermudo with memorial inscription on the left, St. Peter with his keys, a monogram of Christ, and on the right, the apocalyptic beast with seven heads.

A more customary theme in this region shows up on the other side of the door: Daniel in the lions' den. Daniel's story was interpreted as a parallel to the Resurrection in Visigothic times, and this is surely a carryover.

The eaves have many lovely corbels, some geometric, some abstractly floral, some monstrous, and here in the center, I think we can see a primitive Adam and Eve. Any of these could be restorations from 1975. As weathered as it is, I admire the checkerboard effect above them. It was a favorite pattern in the Zamoran Romanesque aesthetic.

In the interior, San Cipriano gives an impression of vastness, which was unusual for the Romanesque in general, but fairly common in the outsized style of Zamora. You can easily appreciate how it started out with three parallel apses and was cleared out to form one unified space in the thirteenth century.

Every time I see a baptismal font this old, I think of Mudarra in Seven Noble Knights. Can you imagine having to sit in one of these as an adult? And in winter? Brrr!!!

In this window, we stumble upon gorgeous remains of Gothic paint showing Christ in majesty. The theme was popular in Romanesque churches, but we can tell this painting is Gothic by the curves of its lines and the warmth of its facial expressions. It's rare to find even trace remnants of painting on stone sculpture, but when it's there, it reminds us that medieval tastes tended toward vibrant colors.

Even more amazingly, the column capitals in the chapels to the sides of the main altar also have evidence of paint. Starting on the left, we see the torments of Hell with bright red flames, a brown head, and the black limbs of scary hellhounds.

Opposite Hell, these abstract plant designs may well represent Paradise.

To the right of the main altar, one column is crowned with the death of Samson at the temple with warm paint colors in the background, complemented with a circular design on the column itself.

Facing Samson are a warrior, a bishop, and a man with a book. Some say this represents Solomon's judgment.

Behind the main altar, this Gothic painting looks as if it once represented the Annunciation, and the regal name "Alfonso" is clearly legible in the corner. The image venerated here is San Cipriano, created by Juan Ruiz de Zumeta in 1596 and painted in 1600 by the elder Alonso de Remesal, though records show the sculpture was freshened by sculptor José Cifuentes and painter José González in 1779.

Apparently, St. Cipriano was a magician in Classical times who converted to Christianity when he couldn't win the affections of a devout Christian lady for his client.

Four column capitals grace the main chapel. They've lost their paint, but still show vivid scenes. Here's Epiphany, when the Magi visited the newborn Jesus. Notice them carrying their gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

As in the side chapels, the main altar is framed by columns with opposite stories, as if to create a thematic balance between them. What's the opposite of the Epiphany? According to the medieval sculptors, it was Adam and Eve expelled from Paradise.

Behind the main archway, this mermaid represents sin, which is to be avoided because it's just as unnatural as a mermaid.

Across from the mermaid is a human figure. It's hard to tell whether it represents anyone in particular, but given its evil twin, this human probably represents purity or redemption from sin.

Call me crazy, but this is giving me interior design ideas. I'm never happier than when my surroundings are highly symbolic and full of medieval artistic effort.

Having inspected the details, the next thing you should do in San Cipriano is sit down on one of the pews and imagine the last 858 years never happened. What could these stones tell us about the people who lived, loved, and died here over the course of those centuries? Many a historical novel could start this way.

Leaving San Cipriano, you face the newest parts: nothing in this photo (other than the pews) was originally built later than the fourteenth century. At the left, you can see the opening to Cristóbal González de Fermosel's funerary chapel from the sixteenth century. I didn't go in there because the caretaker had just yelled at some other visitors for using flash photography and retreated in there to fume. Even with that modern disturbance, I was wistful about walking back outside into the real world. San Cipriano is a break from reality, and it's an exciting break full of stories.