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The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago: The Complete Cultural Handbook
The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago: The Complete Cultural Handbook
The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago: The Complete Cultural Handbook
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The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago: The Complete Cultural Handbook

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The road across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela in the northwest was one of the three major Christian pilgrimage routes during the Middle Ages, leading pilgrims to the resting place of the Apostle St. James. Today, the system of trails and roads that made up the old pilgrimage route is the most popular long-distance trail in Europe, winding from the heights of the Pyrenees to the gently rolling fields and woods of Galicia. Hundreds of thousands of modern-day pilgrims, art lovers, historians, and adventurers retrace the road today, traveling through a stunningly varied landscape which contains some of the most extraordinary art and architecture in the western world. For any visitor, the Road to Santiago is a treasure trove of historical sites, rustic Spanish villages, churches and cathedrals, and religious art.

To fully appreciate the riches of this unique route, look no further than The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago, a fascinating step-by-step guide to the cultural history of the Road for pilgrims, hikers, and armchair travelers alike. Organized geographically, the book covers aspects of the terrain, places of interest, history, artistic monuments, and each town and village's historical relationship to the pilgrimage.

The authors have led five student treks along the Road, studying the art, architecture, and cultural sites of the pilgrimage road from southern France to Compostela. Their lectures, based on twenty-five years of pilgrimage scholarship and fieldwork, were the starting point for this handbook.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 21, 2000
ISBN9781466825987
The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago: The Complete Cultural Handbook
Author

David M. Gitlitz

David Gitlitz and Linda Kay Davidson are professors at the University of Rhode Island. Each has written several books on Spanish culture, including Gitlitz's Secrecy and Deceit, an alternate selection of the History Book Club and winner of the 1996 National Jewish Book Award for Sephardic Studies and the 1997 Lucy B. Dawidowicz Prize for History. They are married and A Drizzle of Honey is the first book they have written together. They are also the authors of The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago.

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    The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago - David M. Gitlitz

    PART I

    The Road

    1 . BORDER → CANFRANC

    Route: Somport → Candanchú → Santa Cristina → Canfranc Estación → La Torreta → CANFRANC

    The central Pyrenees is a region of jutting peaks whose summits and upper slopes lie high above the tree lines. On the French side, north of the watershed axis, the valleys are wet, cold, and heavily forested. On the Spanish side, during the Pleistocene epoch massive glaciers scooped out U-shaped valleys perpendicular to the watershed divide, with lateral streams plummeting into the central valleys. The Spanish valleys drop rapidly into a much drier Mediterranean climate with markedly different vegetation: with each 200 m. of descent, 1 degree of mean annual temperature is gained, and several centimeters of annual precipitation are lost. The high valley walls all catch the winds and moisture and block the sunlight differentially, creating numerous microclimates. Overall, as you drop toward Jaca you will note a half dozen different ecosystems.

    Several types of oaks are found in the upper valleys. The slopes and edges of the valleys are dense with heath-type plants: gorse (spiny, low, evergreen shrubs with yellow flowers), bracken ferns, Spanish broom, and heather. Along the streambeds are willows and poplars, and in the lower valley are thick tangles of briar. From midvalley almost to Jaca are thickets of boxwood (boj; bojerales). You will also see increasing quantities of wild herbs, particularly lavender (lavanda) and thyme (tomillo).

    Along most of the descent, agricultural villages, spaced at 3- or 4-km. intervals, cling to small promontories or terraces that both offer protection and free up valuable bottomland for agriculture. The violent history of this region at the time the villages were established meant that there were almost no dispersed farmsteads. Instead, peasants clustered their homes and barns for protection and walked daily out to their fields. Most of the isolated buildings you will see are modern.

    e9781466825987_i0002.jpg

    e9781466825987_img_10040.gif Somport The Somport pass (Summus portus; 1,640 m.) has been the preferred Roman route across the central Pyrenees ever since Cato conquered the Jacetania tribes around Jaca in 195 B.C.E. This relatively easy corridor from Oloron, France, to Jaca has been favored by merchants, pilgrims, and invading armies over the centuries. In the 4th c. the Vandals invaded through this pass. A century later the Visigoths swept through. In the 8th c. ragtag bands of Christians defended these heights against the Muslim invaders from the south, struggling to keep them from spilling into France. The 16th-c. Hapsburg kings fortified the pass against anticipated French invasions, but these did not come until 1809, when Napoleon’s Mariscal Suchet swept through here on his way to occupy Jaca. When General Espoz y Mina finally ousted the French in 1814, they retreated along this same road. And modern bunkers from the time of the Civil War (see ch. 24) can still be seen along every pinch point leading up to the pass.

    The pass also channeled most pilgrim traffic until the 12th c., when Navarran and Basque bandits were brought under control, making the much easier pass to the west through Roncesvalles safe. For most pilgrims, both medieval and modern, the entry into Spain was an emotional experience, for it meant that they had left their old lives behind and had reached the land of the Apostle. The breathtaking view of snowcapped peaks from the pass didn’t hurt either.

    The pass is marked by the Ermita del Pilar, built in 1992, and a modern pedestal decorated with the cross of Santiago.

    At the border you are roughly 850 km. from Compostela.

    e9781466825987_img_10040.gif Candanchú (Camp d’Anjou). This was the camp established by the French Anjou dynasty that claimed sovereignty of the valley. At 1,560 m., today it thrives as a ski resort. Just below the town, on a spur of rock to the left of the highway, are scattered ruins of a castle erected early in the 13th c. for the protection of pilgrims. It was purchased by the king of Aragón in 1293 and abandoned in 1458. From the ruins you can see the glaciers of Candanchú and Rioseta. Look here, too, for Civil War bunkers.

    The reddish conglomerate and sandstone La Raca cliffs on the east wall of the valley are fragments of the mountains that preceded the Pyrenees some 300 million years ago. To the south are the so-called interior mountains, recrystalized calcium deposits of the Devonian period, twisted by tectonic forces and dissolved and eroded by water in a karstic action that has created many caves.

    e9781466825987_img_10040.gif Santa Cristina The 12th-c. Codex Calixtinus (see ch. 16) in 1140 lauded the hospice of Santa Cristina—often referred to generically as simply El Hospital—as one of the world’s 3 great pilgrim hospices:

    God has, in a most particular fashion, instituted in this world three columns greatly necessary for the support of his poor, that is to say, the hospice of Jerusalem, the hospice of Mount-Joux [a reference to San Bernardo, in the Swiss Alps], and the hospice of Santa Cristina on the Somport pass. [CC: Book V; trans. Melczer, 87]

    Tradition holds that the original hospice was built by 2 pilgrims lost in the snow who were led to shelter here by a white dove carrying a golden cross. Documents, on the other hand, show that its founding was due to the collaboration of 2 princes, King Sancho Ramírez of Aragón (who visited here in 1078) and Count Gastón IV of Bearne, who died in 1130 while fighting the Muslims. Donations poured in, so that by mid-13th c. Santa Cristina owned some 14 churches in France and another 30 in Aragón, including property in places as far afield as Tarazona, Calatayud, and Castejón. Numerous kings and popes contributed to its maintenance. In return, Santa Cristina maintained a network of smaller hospices in all of the neighboring mountain passes. They all offered lodging, food, pasturage for the pilgrims’ animals, an infirmary, and money-changing facilities.

    The hospice and priory of Santa Cristina prospered during the boom years of the pilgrimage. But in 1569 its community of monks was moved to Jaca at the request of the bishop, and in 1592 it was demolished and its stones used in building Jaca’s new fortifications. The community maintained a small shelter for pilgrims during the summers until the 1835 general desamortización. Excavations in 1987–9 to the southeast of the Fuente de los Frailes revealed Santa Cristina’s general ground plan, including a monastery, church, and a hospice measuring 25 x 13 m.

    Some 300 m. below the ruins are remnants of the Escarne Bridge, cited in documents dated 1586.

    On the left, 2 km. before Canfranc Estación at the Coll de Ladrones, are extensive late-19th-c. fortifications that incorporate a 1592 castle built as part of the defensive line anchored in Castiello de Jaca. The picturesque drawbridge and moat date from ca. 1900. By the bridge below the castle used to stand the Ermita de San Antón, completely demolished when the highway was built in 1888.

    e9781466825987_img_10040.gif Canfranc Estación A railroad connecting Spain and France through a great Pyrenean tunnel was projected in 1853. But engineering difficulties and politics, particularly the fear of invasion from the north, slowed the project, and actual work did not begin until 1904. The railroad was not inaugurated until 1928. Except for wartime, service continued from then until 1970, when an accident on the bridge of L’Estanguet put an end to scheduled international service. As we write, the tunnels are being reconditioned for modern use.

    Canfranc Estación is a town built both by and for the railroad. Its great esplanade was created with earth removed from the railroad tunnel, and the river was rechanneled to permit the esplanade’s construction. The town’s population swelled in 1944 when a disastrous fire devastated the ancient village of Canfranc, further down the valley. The boom ended when the trains stopped running, and the imposing railroad station was left to crumble to ruin. In the last few years Canfranc Estación has found new life as a ski center.

    The reservoir and hydroelectric station below Canfranc Estación were built—largely by manual labor—from 1957 to 1971.

    Below Canfranc Estación the valley sides are composed of sedimentary rocks from a 100-million-year-old sea. Pressures from the lifting of the Pyrenees folded the rocks spectacularly. The imposing mountains to the left are Anayet (2,545 m.), La Moleta (2,576 m.), and Collarada (2,886 m.) To the right rises the Pico de Aspe (2,645 m.).

    e9781466825987_img_10040.gif La Torreta This picturesque castle, also called the Torre de Fusileros and the Torreta de Espelunca, is an 1876 fortification built on the site of 16th- and 18th-c. forts. On our last visit for the first time we found it open, splendidly restored to become the Centro de Información del Túnel de Somport.

    2. CANFRANC

    HISTORY

    Canfranc’s name derives from Campus Franci, the field of foreigners. As the first truly habitable place on the Spanish side of the pass, Canfranc developed into a market and travelers’ supply town. It was also a frontier control post, defending the entrance to Iberia and collecting road tolls, which in the early 11th c. Ramiro I donated to the Cathedral of Jaca. In the early 12th c. Alfonso el Batallador gave most of the town to Santa Cristina de Somport.

    Unfortunately, little remains of medieval Canfranc, for almost the entire village was destroyed in a disastrous fire in 1617. Another fire in 1944 destroyed most of what had been rebuilt, and many of the citizens relocated to Jaca or to Canfranc Estación.

    PILGRIMAGE

    For centuries Canfranc’s citizens rendered service to the Crown by keeping the Road open and assisting pilgrims rather than paying taxes, a privilege reconfirmed in 1440 by Queen María.

    Canfranc had a hospice from at least the 12th c., probably near the ruins of a Romanesque church, documented in 1095, near the south end of the village.

    MONUMENTS: 1. Mill. 2. Tower house. 3. Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción. 4. Iglesia de la Santisima Trinidad.

    1. Mill. On the left of the main street as you enter Canfranc, along the riverbank, are the ruins of an old mill. Across the street are the ruins of Canfanc’s small 16th-c. castle, erected over a much earlier tower house.

    2. Some remnants remain of another tower house in the center of town, probably the one built in 1341 by Pedro IV.

    3. Iglesia de Nuestra de la Asunción. Built late in the 12th c., the church was given in 1202 by Pedro II to the Priory of Santa Cristina of Somport. Its original vaulting was destroyed in the 1944 fire.

    4. Iglesia de la Santísima Trinidad. At the south end of town are the roofless ruins of a Gothic church built by a private citizen, Blasco de Les, ca. 1500. The interior has remnants of a Plateresque arch. Blasco also built a hospice here, of which nothing remains.

    3.CANFRANC → JACA

    Route: CANFRANC e9781466825987_img_10137.gif Villanúa e9781466825987_img_10137.gif Aruej e9781466825987_img_10137.gif Castiello de Jaca e9781466825987_img_10137.gif Puente de Torrijos e9781466825987_img_10137.gif JACA

    From Canfranc, the Road descends on the left bank of the Río Aragón. Past the cemetery you will cross a Romanesque bridge.

    Between Canfranc and Villanúa the geology of the valley changes. Now the rocks are marine sediments, sand and clay, slate and schist. These softer rocks permitted the glaciers to scoop out the deeper and wider valley that allows farming.

    Just before Villanúa, to the east of the road is a small 5,000-year-old dolmen. At the point where you can first see the concrete electric facility on top of the dam, it lies 50 m. to the left of the path, in the middle of a broad field, in a circle of briars. The site is 300 m. before the Cueva de Guixas.

    The Cueva de Guixas (Witches’ Cave) is one of many in the karst limestone formations near Villanúa. It was excavated in 1975, and human remains from 10,000 B.C.E to 300 C.E were discovered. If the entrance is locked, ask at the Ayuntamiento in Villanúa.

    e9781466825987_img_10040.gif Villanúa The town’s name derives from the fact that it was newly repopulated at the end of the 10th c. In 1097 Pedro I gave the town to the monastery of Santa Cruz de la Serós. The Romanesque bridge at the entrance to town, documented in 1175, was rebuilt in 1963. Near it are the ruins of a former hospice. The old part of Villanúa lies to the left of the river. The 13th-c. church of San Esteban reputedly has a Romanesque Virgin and an image of Santiago Peregrino, probably from the 15th c.

    Beyond Villanúa the valley opens up into a geologic formation called flysch, characterized by soft sandstone and lutita rocks from the middle Eocene epoch, easily folded by tectonic pressures. The valley contains lots of evidence of glaciation, from the scarring on the cliff sides to the piles of gravel in the riverbeds, deposited in ancient moraines.

    e9781466825987_img_10040.gif Aruej This tiny hamlet is private property. The 12th-c. church of San Vicente, round-apsed and barrel-vaulted, was recently restored by its owner, who added a family mausoleum near the bell wall. The hill to the west of the town, called Colina de Santiago, was the site of an earlier settlement here. The largest house in town, from the 15th c., has Renaissance windows and an 18th-c. balcony.

    The valley from here down is intensely farmed, with wheat in the flatter fields along the river and rye higher up. Most fields are left fallow every second year to replenish the soil. Some fields serve for grazing, and some for growing hay for the winter, a system known locally as de diente y de siega (for teeth and harvest). Since the 18th c., the valley has also raised potatoes. Stands of trees, especially oak, are left for firewood and making charcoal.

    e9781466825987_img_10040.gif Castiello de Jaca When you reach this village you have descended to 921 m. A town is mentioned here as early as 1042. The medieval town clings to a promontory both for defense and to leave the flat valley land for agriculture. The windows in these typical Pyrenean stone houses tend to be oriented toward the south, for warmth, with balconies that permit the oblique winter sun to enter, but that cast shade in the summer and that protect from winter rain and snow. Balconies which block summer sun but allow winter sun in have been rediscovered in this century as a technique to create passive solar houses. The 2 styles of chimneys, the truncated cones of Aragón and the square box chimneys of France, hint at the town’s hybrid origins. The bridge at the exit to town retains some medieval sections.

    The Romanesque church of San Miguel Arcángel, like most in the valley, has been extensively reformed. Most of what remains is 16th c. Inside reputedly is a silver chest with a number of saints’ relics that, according to local legend, were left by a pilgrim grateful for help received from townspeople. There is also a nice 1550 monstrance.

    e9781466825987_i0003.jpg To the right of Castiello de Jaca, up the Lubiere Valley, is the town of Borau, and beyond it the ermita of San Adrián de Sasabe, with remains of a 1100–04 church, once half buried by floods and then restored in 1962. Originally it probably had a cloister. Notable are its carved capitals and the Lombard-style blind arches of its apse. Though the church seems isolated, it served as the region’s cathedral in the 10th c. and produced 3 bishops. The remoteness of these lateral valleys reminds us of how beleaguered the Christian communities found themselves after the Muslim conquest, and what a stunning geographical and political advance the capture of Jaca was.

    e9781466825987_i0004.jpg Below Castiello, on the left bank of the Río Aragón where it is joined by the Río Ijuez and the Garcipollera Valley, are ruins of several ermitas. One is just past the railroad bridge on the road leading east into the Garcipollera Valley.

    e9781466825987_i0005.jpg Nine km. up the Garcipollera Valley is the important 1072 Romanesque monastery of Nuestra Señora de Iguacel, with richly decorated capitals, stunningly high unbuttressed walls, and remnants of 13th-c. mural painting.

    e9781466825987_img_10040.gif Puente de Torrijos On the left bank of the river, across the railroad tracks, are the ruins of the Convent of Claraso and its church of Santiago. Just past km. 648 is a medieval bridge over the Aragón, and past it the 18th-c. Ermita de San Cristóbal (1796), built over an earlier church funded by Francisco Villanúa, an ink maker from Jaca.

    Just outside Jaca, at the site of today’s Hospital de la Salud, was a medieval leprosarium (see ch. 27).

    As you approach Jaca you become aware that all of a sudden you are no longer hemmed in by the steep valley walls between which you have walked since descending from Somport. Jaca lies at the intersection of the narrow road to France and the broad, east-west road across Spain. It is the cork in the bottle. The first evidence of Jaca’s military importance, both ancient and current, is an army base that guards the northern approach to the city.

    4. BORDER → JACA

    Route: GABAS e9781466825987_img_10137.gif Portalet e9781466825987_img_10137.gif El Formigal e9781466825987_img_10137.gif SALLENT e9781466825987_img_10137.gif Lanuza e9781466825987_img_10137.gif Escarilla e9781466825987_img_10137.gif Panticosa e9781466825987_img_10137.gif Hoz de Jaca e9781466825987_img_10137.gif BIESCAS e9781466825987_img_10137.gif Oliván e9781466825987_img_10137.gif Senegüé e9781466825987_img_10137.gif SABIÑÁNIGO e9781466825987_img_10137.gif Sasal e9781466825987_img_10137.gif Jarlata e9781466825987_img_10137.gif Frauca e9781466825987_img_10137.gif Navasilla e9781466825987_img_10137.gif Navasa e9781466825987_img_10137.gif Ulle e9781466825987_img_10137.gif Barós e9781466825987_img_10137.gif JACA

    e9781466825987_img_10040.gif GABAS The last French town before the Portalet pass contains a 12th-c. Ermita de Santiago with modern additions based on medieval pilgrimage iconography. A man named Guillermo founded a hospice—long vanished—that once belonged to the monastery of Santa Cristina de Somport.

    e9781466825987_img_10040.gif Portalet The old pass of Portalet, 1,794 m. high, lies 2 km. east of the current highway and runs through a narrow, marshy mountain valley. At the center it is possible to find nearly adjoining rivulets running in opposite directions: north to France and the Gave River, and south to Spain, where they form the Río Gállego.

    At the border you are roughly 880 km. from Compostela.

    As you descend toward Sabiñánigo you will pass through several distinct geological and ecological zones. (1) From Portalet to Sallent: the axial ridge. The rocks are granite, composed of quartz, feldspar, and mica. Some are a compact caliza negra, a dense gray rock with veins of white. The jagged peaks and spongelike meadows harbor a variety of hardy low alpine plants, but almost no trees or shrubs. (2) From Sallent to Santa Elena: the sierras interiores. The gray rocks, frequently fine-grained in texture, contain tiny fossils of Cretacean marine microorganisms. The upper slopes are bare: the lower are thickly shrubbed. The valley is V-shaped, and its floor now sustains some minimal agriculture, but before the ski industry, local folk mainly herded sheep. (3) From Santa Elena to Senegüé: flysch formation. Here the rocks are softer, often composed of many fragments and pebbles cemented together with lime, and the glaciers have scooped out a U-shaped, broad valley, suitable for grain farming. (4) From Senegüé to Sabiñánigo: margas. These fine gray compacted sands line the east-west valley that stretches from Sabiñánigo nearly to Yesa. The valley floor is alluvial fans, washed from the surrounding hills. Fertile gently sloping fields alternate with deeply eroded gulleys.

    e9781466825987_img_10040.gif El Formigal This modern ski resort has a small late-10th-c. church transported from the nearby village of Basarán. A modern replica of the church tower of Larrede has been added to it.

    e9781466825987_img_10040.gif SALLENT A Roman bridge crosses the Río Gállego in the center of Sallent. During the Middle Ages, Santa Cristina de Somport also owned much of this town.

    The ca. 1525 late Gothic church of La Asunción bears the coat of arms of Juan de Lanuza, the Aragonese royal official who paid for its construction. It has a beautiful starred vault. The 1537 Plateresque retablo was painted by Martín García and Antonio de Plasencia, followers of Pedro de Aponte, who was active in Aragón in the early 16th c. Typical of his Mannerist school are bright contrasting colors, a tendency toward chiaroscuro, and interesting background anecdotes. The contract for this retablo specified the iconography that the artists were to paint: the Crucifixion, Annunciation, Nativity, Epiphany, Resurrection, Ascension; Pentecost, Dormition, and Saints Benito and Bernardo.

    An intricate gold late Gothic processional cross is to the left of the altar. To the right is the small chapel of La Virgen de las Nieves, patroness of mountain climbers. Although this church’s interior has been thoroughly reformed, it preserves some Renaissance carving in this chapel: note the siren—half woman, half fish—and the floor-level rabbit.

    A disastrous mudslide near Salient on Aug. 7, 1996, killed more than 70 campers.

    e9781466825987_img_10040.gif Lanuza The 1897 church of El Salvador replaced an earlier structure. It was sacked during the 1936–9 Civil War (see ch. 24), and the few surviving pieces are in the Jaca museum. In 1975, when the reservoir was built, this entire town was expropriated and its 145 inhabitants relocated. The town is now being reconditioned for tourist purposes.

    e9781466825987_img_10040.gif Escarilla The Romanesque church of Escarilla has disappeared, though tradition recalls that it was decorated with scallop shells. The modern parish of San Joaquín has a nice Baroque retablo dedicated to San Sebastián.

    From Escarilla you can follow the highway along the right side of the reservoir. We recommend the left side, through the yuppie ski town of El Pueyo de Jaca and through deep forests along the side of the reservoir. This road climbs 200 m. to Hoz de Jaca, from which there are spectacular views west toward the Peña Telera (2,764 m.) and east toward the Peña Blanca (2,556 m.), both snow-covered during much of the year. The town’s small stone church dates from the 17th or 18th c.

    Three km. past the reservoir, on the left bank of the Gállego, are the ermita and fort of Santa Elena.

    e9781466825987_i0006.jpg Local legend holds anachronistically that a Roman Christian, Santa Elena, fleeing the Moors, hid in a small cave near here. Her refuge was concealed by a spider web, miraculously woven for her protection: Donde la araña tejió, Elena se escondió [Where the spider wove, Elena hid].

    Although an ermita stood here since at least the 13th c., the current structure dates from the 16th–18th c. Three hundred m. down the hill to the right, after crossing the bridge over the gorge, is a small megalithic dolmen.

    e9781466825987_i0007.jpg These megalithic (meaning big stone) single-chamber tombs, called dolmens, were commonly formed of series of upright monoliths capped with large horizontal slabs, frequently with an entrance tunnel leading to a circular chamber. They were built between the 4th and 2nd millennia B.C.E, and are found all over western Europe, including the British Isles, and all over Spain, with their highest concentrations in Brittany and Galicia.

    e9781466825987_img_10040.gif BIESCAS Biescas is divided by the Río Gállego into the right-bank barrio of El Salvador and the left-bank San Pedro, named for their churches. A bridge has joined them since Roman times, although the current bridge is modern. The town was almost totally destroyed by fire in 1936 during the Civil War, although a few old buildings remain. Notable are the 16th-c. mansion of the Acín family, called La Torraza, in the San Pedro district, and the slightly more modern Casa de Pepe Estaún, in El Salvador, with an interesting carving of a two-tailed siren.

    e9781466825987_img_9679.gif San Pedro. The church supersedes one destroyed in the 1936–9 Civil War.

    e9781466825987_img_9679.gif San Salvador. Only the 12th-c. apse survived the recent Civil War. Inside is a 16th-c. silver processional cross.

    e9781466825987_i0008.jpg The village of Gavín, some 2 km. east on Highway 220, was totally destroyed in the 1936-39 Civil War. There are ruins of a 12th-c. church; nearby, to the north of the paved road, is the tower of the 10th-and-11th-c. Ermita de San Bartolomé, formerly part of the monastery of San Pelayo de Gavin, with well-preserved horseshoe arches and interesting capitals.

    e9781466825987_img_10040.gif Oliván The region around Oliván was the center of mozárabe immigration in the 10th–12th c.

    e9781466825987_i0009.jpg The Muslim conquest introduced a new ruling class, but for the most part did not uproot the resident Christian population, who continued to function as organized—if second-class–citizens of the Muslim states. Although with time many Christians converted, those who did not were called mustaribun, which the Christian dialect deformed to mozárabes. Sporadic pressures on the remaining Christian communities provoked violent response. In the 830s in Córdoba some Christians defied Islam, denounced Muhammad, and actively courted martyrdom, in part to bolster the faith of a Christian community increasingly given to the imitation of Islamic customs and to conversion and mixed marriage. The 850s produced some 50 martyrs, most of whom were instantly revered by the Christians as saints. This provoked even harsher reactions from the Muslim leadership, which in turn led many Mozarab families to seek refuge in the Christian north, particularly in remote mountainous regions like the Serrablo where they felt they would be safe.

    The Christian culture they brought with them was a blend of precanquest Visigothic customs, infused with a nostalgia for the happy times before 711, and a fondness for Islamic culture, including Islamic aesthetics. They also brought a tradition of monasticism and sparked the hermit movement that was so popular in the 9th- and 10th-c. Christian mountain states. They introduced the heresy of adoptionism: to refute Muslim claims that Christians worshiped 3 gods, Mozarabs insisted that Jesus was not divine but only the adopted son of God. They also brought their own liturgy, which some Christians in the northern states distrusted as alien, and perhaps heretical.

    Later Muslim rulers, particularly ’Abd-ar-Rahman III in Córdoba in the mid-10th c., treated their Christian taxpayers with great tolerance. But the invasions of fundamentalist Almoravids (1086) and Almohads (1147) sent new waves of Mozarab refugees streaming to the north.

    The 14 surviving churches nearby mix Visigothic, Spanish pre-Romanesque, French Romanesque, and Islamic techniques and motifs. Since Almanzor did not raid the valley, many of the earliest works remain. Several stylistic phases are discernible:

    ca. 950: small, rectangular, unadorned churches, none of which are on the Road;

    960-1000: horseshoe arches set into geometric frames (alfiz), with wood roofs, apses decorated with vertical rows of billets, and entrances through the south wall favoring doors with horseshoe arches (Busa, Larrede, and several others);

    1000-1025: no horseshoe arches, no alfices (Orós Bajo, and others);

    1025-1040: French influence in the strong bell towers and rounded apses decorated with Lombard-Catalán blind arches (Oliván, Susín, and others). All of these churches are notable for their absence of sculpted decoration, probably reflecting the Islamic culture’s ban on representing the human figure.

    e9781466825987_img_9679.gif Orós Bajo. 12th c., with one cruciform window in the Lombard style and another which seems to be 13th-c. Romanesque. The apse is decorated with a series of 7 arches on small columns.

    Across the valley to the west is the village of Escuer, and above, at 1,124 m., sit the ruins of its medieval castle.

    e9781466825987_img_9679.gif Oliván. The church windows have horseshoe arches. Blind arches and a frieze of cylindrical billets decorate the apse. The flat slate roof, typical of the region, is weighted against the winds by a central capping of large stones. The village, which like so many in the valley was crumbling into ruin as late at the 1970s, has been lovingly restored by its inhabitants.

    e9781466825987_i0010.jpg From Oliván a 2-hour side trail climbs to Susín, a hamlet (caserío) whose church has double horseshoe windows framed by an alfiz. The apse is decorated with blind arches and a frieze of billets. The rest of the church is largely 18th-c. The interior retains vestiges of 18th-c. mural painting. The Romanesque murals from its apse are now in the Jaca museum (ch. 5).

    e9781466825987_img_9679.gif San Juan de Busa. The Mozarabic church, which stands alone in the countryside halfway between Susín and Larrede, has suffered few changes over the centuries. Its rectangular nave is covered with a wood roof. The original door—now blocked in—has a horseshoe arch set into a low-relief squared alfiz.

    e9781466825987_img_9679.gif San Pedro de Larrede. Early 11th c., restored in 1935. Its horizontal lines balance perfectly with the verticality of its bell tower. Its entrance has a horseshoe arch framed by an alfiz. An alfiz also frames its windows. There are blind arches on its apse. The church is also notable inside for its barrel vault and 14th-c. baptismal font. Note the late medieval defensive tower on the hill east of the

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