Art, Travel and Culture: Villatuerta, traditions and votive offerings on the Santiago's RoadsteemCreated with Sketch.

in #art5 years ago (edited)

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'We are three Andalusians, a callus (wound) and a chicken with the motto: what you have, you have half left and half, you still have left, because in the Camino you will fall tears like fists. Good Way that we drovers are '(1).
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Some think that the small hermitage of San Miguel belongs to a pre-Romanesque style that, chronologically speaking, would place it, at least, between the 9th and 11th centuries. Most of its ornamental motifs, if not all, are currently exhibited in the Museum of Navarre, located in the emblematic town of Pamplona.
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The chapel is located on the outskirts of the town of Villatuerta, about eight kilometers from Estella, and among the qualities or characteristics of its surroundings, it is placed next to a small and beautiful Huerto de los Olivos.
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Because of the location of its main altar - attached to the apse - it is to be assumed that the liturgy was based on the ancient Mozarabic rite.
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With time, a second altar was added, in front of the previous one, a motive that is irrelevant, because both one altar and another constitute, today, inert custodians of another class of rites that, probably based on previous traditions, they could be defined, in the absence of a better denomination, as Rites and Customs of the Way.
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Traditionally, and within the itineraries of the Way of the Stars, there are places in which the pilgrim - it is possible that having forgotten the origin and sense of this ancestral custom - deposits a stone; Sometimes, this is accompanied by a message, usually based on the 'Personal Experience' that he is doing, and even gratitude for having arrived to that place and feeling strong and encouraged to continue, which is still a long way off.
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By Tradition, likewise, the place receiving these offerings of the Way, by antonomasia, is Fontcebadón, a village nowadays uninhabited, located in the environs of the Port of Monte Irago.
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At the top, where a simple wooden cross marks the divide between the Maragatería and the Bierzo, a small pyramid of stones indicates the passage of countless pilgrims who have stopped there over the centuries.
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Not having had the opportunity, at least up to the present moment, to visit this place (2), it consoles me to know, that deep down, there are other related places, like this thousand-year-old hermitage of San Miguel, where the pilgrim renews some traditions that , fortunately - unlike stretches and places on the Camino, currently disappeared - continue to be valid, constituting an interesting testimony, both graphic and cultural, which implies that it is possibly one of the oldest searches of Humanity: the own individual Transcendence.
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Notes, Bibliography and References:

(1) Words written on a simple sheet of paper, left on one of the two altars of the hermitage of San Miguel de Villatuerta, Navarra.
(2) To this day, I can say that I had the opportunity to travel that stretch of the Camino on its way through León, two years after this experience in Navarra. Also, I can affirm, that this section, is one of the toughest that the pilgrim has to travel and formerly, one of the most dangerous points, because apart from the physical hardness, the pilgrim also had to face the wolves and the numerous groups of raiders who camped there. Fortunately, it was a section well guarded by the knights of the Order of the Temple, who dominated the Bierzo especially, and part of the Maragatería, as shown by many of the castles that belonged to them, being the most relevant, those of Ponferrada and Cornatel.

NOTICE: Originally posted on my blog MEMORIES OF A PILGRIM. Both the text and the photographs are my exclusive intellectual property. The original entry, where you can verify the authorship of juancar347, can be found at the following address: https://jc347.blogspot.com/2011/05/tradiciones-y-exvotos-en-el-camino-de.html

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[Martial, latin poet]

Ars vtinam more Animvm qve effingere. Posses pulchrior in ter. Ris nvlla tabella foret.
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