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Art, Travel and Culture: Leache, Navarra: a Romanesque precedent of the Universal Man of Da Vinci

Art, Travel and Culture: Leache, Navarra: a Romanesque precedent of the Universal Man of Da Vinci

September 2018 · 6 min read · Navarre

'Continuing with the language of hidden geometry, the pentalfa and the hexagram arise from the collective unconscious and speak in the language of dreams to the awakened consciousness. Their universal and timeless meaning makes them thresholds that communicate us with our deepest and authentic being.
[Xavier Musquera (1)]

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The language of dreams. Possibly, there has not been an era and an artistic style that best define it, such as the Middle Ages and what is perhaps, by far, its most widespread expressive mode: Romanesque. Xavier Musquera - an indefatigable friend and researcher, unfortunately deceased in December 2009 - was, I have no doubt, one of those lucky few - when not, romantic seekers - who knew better how to penetrate the universe of this millenary language we do reference, whose incombustible vehicle of expression, although it strikes to be precise, is none other than the symbol itself.
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Nor is there any doubt that Navarre, in the end, is also a fortunate land; a land that offers, either altogether or individually, a rich artistic variety and, in addition, symbolic, where its strategic situation possibly influenced in the past within the main pilgrimage routes of the Camino de Santiago.
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If the discovery of the remains of the Apostle supposed a spectacular revulsive for the commerce and the development of the cities, it was not less for the introduction, in an Iberian Peninsula practically dominated by the Muslim power, of knowledge, ideas and forms of expression, that they would achieve their maximum exponent in the global set of Art. An Art, eminently religious, that tried to imitate God, aspiring to perfection as a base model of sublimity and expression. To what extent was achieved, just take a look at many churches and cathedrals, to realize it.
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To reach such sublime levels, Magisters and stonemasons had no better option than to learn the language of God: the voice of the world, the voice of the symbol, Mathematics and Geometry. The power of Creation, complemented, in turn, by other disciplines, such as Music. It should not be strange, therefore, that medieval thought considered these places, especially cathedrals, as authentic universities where the stone manifested a deep knowledge, capable of making us mute nowadays.
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Leache, is a municipality located within the denominated Merindad de Sangüesa, in the southern slope of the Mountain range of Izco -relatively near Olleta and the Stop of Lerga-, and dista, approximately, about fifty kilometers of Pamplona, ​​capital of the Community Foral of Navarra. Its history, at least from August 1195, is linked to the Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, having been donated by one of the most charismatic kings in the history of Navarre: Sancho VII, nicknamed the Fort, to whom it is remembered, mainly, for having taken part in the decisive battle of the Navas de Tolosa - also called, Battle of the Three Kings -, which took place in July 1212.
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In fact, its sepulcher occupies a relevant place in the Chapel of San Agustín, attached to the cloister of the Collegiate Church of Santa María, in Roncesvalles, where the chains that it removed from the Miramamolín almohade store are also preserved, which, starting from Then, they began to form part of the Navarra coat of arms. The construction of the church of San Martín de Tours, located in the highest part of the town, is attributed to the hospitable ones, of which only the empty hollow of its plant and part of the wall that constituted its bulrush, reused at present, is conserved. as a fronton.
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In fact, the nearest house, located just opposite, was once the house and possibly also the hospital area of ​​these warrior monks, whose history took very different paths from the Templars, making them, in fact, receivers and heirs of many of their goods, once the order was suppressed at the beginning of the fourteenth century.
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There is still talk in the town, the old belief that there is a tunnel that would connect this house with the defenestrated church of San Martin, although, as in many other cases, they have to do with templars or hospitable, never found such. For the rest, not only the stone, priceless treasure of the time, but also many of the ornaments that in the late twelfth century should have made this a beautiful temple of some relevance, have run an unequal luck, spread among the houses of the town, the church of the Asunción and the Museum of Navarre.
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It is precisely in the church of Our Lady of the Assumption, too transformed throughout its long history, where they have gone to one or two of the main covers of the San Martín temple. The first one, blinded, has on its tympanum a chrismon and beautiful interlaced of possible Celtic connotations that, to judge by the remains of sand, must have remained buried for a long time, a detail that, as in the case of the west portal of the church vallisoletana of Santa María de Wamba, contributed at least to keep it in relative good condition.
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The second cover, the one that corresponds to the main entrance to the temple, also has a chrismon in the central part, showing on one of the sides, with all details, the magicum perpetuum or five-pointed star, which includes a human figurine in its center, comparable, in good measure, to the idea of ​​the universal man later used by Leonardo Da Vinci in his so-called work, the man of Vitrubio.
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This arcane symbol of perfection-let us not forget that its form has numerous antecedents in Nature-has been known by many names throughout history: pentagulum or pentaculum; signum Phytagoricum - because it represented his followers, the so-called Pythagoreans - and even also, in certain European environments, as was ventured in the previous entry, druid foot.
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Perhaps its presence in the tympanum of the main portico of access to a Christian temple is not so preposterous, as one might think a priori, and much less associative with the dark forces, as it has come to be considered in times of superstition and obscurantism, a once distorted and demonized its original representativeness, and has a relationship with that Pythagorean philosophy, under which it would represent the harmony of body and soul, constituting, on the other hand, an emblem of health. And its presence in a Christian temple indicates, as the great philosophers of antiquity thought, healthy men in corpore sano: healthy body and healthy mind.
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Notes:

(1) Xavier Musquera: 'Medieval Occultism', Editions Nowtilus, 1st edition, June 2009, page 233.

Vídeo relacionado:

AVISO: publicado en mi blog ARTE, MITOS Y ARQUETIPOS. Tanto el texto, como las fotografías, como el vídeo, una excepción de la música, reproducción bajo licencia de Youtube, hijo de mi exclusiva propiedad intelectual. La entrada original, donde se puede verificar la autoría de juancar347, puede encontrarla en la siguiente dirección: https: //artemitosyarquetipos.blogspot.com/2016/04/leache-un-precedente-romanico-del.html

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