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Coruña del Conde, Burgos: pilgrim graffiti in the Hermitage of Christ of San Sebastian

Coruña del Conde, Burgos: pilgrim graffiti in the Hermitage of Christ of San Sebastian

December 2018 · 5 min read · Castile and León

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'The world was for me a secret I wanted to unravel. Among the first sensations that I have memory of, are curiosity, serious investigation of the hidden laws of nature and a joy bordering on ecstasy when they were revealed to me ... '(1).
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Once recovered from the impression when observing an old reactor evolving next to the jagged walls of the castle, who goes to the Burgos population of Coruña del Conde and stops long enough to observe the details that make it little more than unique in its genre. the hermitage of the Christ of San Sebastian, it does not take long to experience the curious sensation of being realizing, in situ, a genuine journey through time.
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A journey, which begins in that chronology before Christ, having as protagonist a people, refined in theory but barbarous in eagerness for power and conquest that, subjugating people after people under the overwhelming impetus of the eagles of their legions, founded a city , Clunia, very close to here.
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Of that past glory, which today is considered a marvel - at least what remains - but that time covered with dust and forgotten for centuries, arose, mainly, the materials from which this hermitage is nourished. So, bearing this in mind, it should not be strange to observe that grotesque coexistence with which capitals and other rests of distinctly Roman nature, are wooed by other later relatives, although Romanesque, such as some corbels.
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And swinging between one another, perched on the symbolic panacea of ​​the paradigms, some curious pilgrim graffiti, which draws attention, with its anonymous touch of intentionality.
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Unlike the pilgrim graffiti observed in the church of Jaramillo Quemado, in the previous entry, the graffiti that abound in this curious hybrid hermitage of Coruña del Conde, have the cross as the main and intentional base, and are based, mainly , in three specific models: the Latin cross, simpler and abundant -localized, above all, in the east or apsidal zone-, the patriarchal cross and a Greek cross -of equal arms- whose ends make up, significantly, one of the symbols more complex and abundant of the Camino Jacobeo, the Rune of Life, more commonly known as pata de oca. These two types of crucifix graffiti are located, interestingly arranged, in the bases that make up the entrance portico to the temple.
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The cross, whose intersecting arms make up that primordial point or Axis Mundi over which space and time prevail and which, from a theoretical and comparative point of view, could be considered as an evolution of ancient Aryan and solar symbols, among them the swastika, also known as Thor's hammer. A symbolism, this one of the cross, in which are recycled, among others, concepts such as the solstices and equinoxes, indicated by the horizontal bar and the poles in the equator, indicated by the vertical bar (2).
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The leg of goose, Rune or Tree of life, model also of martyrial cross, characteristic of the so-called Rhenish Painful Christs of the XIV-XV centuries, whose two known cases in Spain -the Church of the Crucifix, of Puente la Reina and that of the church of Santa María del Camino, of Carrión de los Condes- are indisputably related to the most heterodox of medieval religious-military orders: the Order of the Temple. And, interestingly -to take into account as an anecdote-, it was the shape of the silver crucifix that Pope John Paul II always carried with him.
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Related also with the Temple, it was the patriarchal cross, also called Caravaca and with a very miraculous fame, and it was the form adopted by the Lignum Crucis that used this Order, being able to quote, among them, the one that is conserved, in the most inaccessible of the cases in Zamarramala, Segovia -which theoretically belonged to the Templars of the True Cross, whether or not they differ from the Sanjuanistas-, which is preserved in the Cathedral Museum of Astorga -which could have belonged to the Templars of Ponferrada- or the one that belonged to the Asturian parish of Santo Adriano de Tuñón, in Asturias, today disappeared in some unknown corner of the cathedral of San Salvador de Oviedo.
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Stand up or not the dust, since all opinions are free, what is indisputable is that, in the vast majority of cases, what we call as pilgrim graffiti, are far from being mere spontaneous manifestations of piety or devotion, and they carry a whole world of symbolic intentionality behind.

Notes, References and Bibliography:
(1) Mary W. Shelley: 'Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus', cession of Alianza Editorial, S.A. to Círculo de Lectores, S.A., 1995, page 49.
(2) Data obtained from the book by Juan Pedro Morin Bentejac and Jaime Cobreros Aguirre, 'The Initiatic Way of Santiago', Edificaciones 29, 1st edition, June 1976, page 77.

NOTICE: Originally published in my blog TRAS LAS HUELLAS DE LOS MEDIEVALES. Both the text and the photographs that accompany it are my exclusive property. The original entry, where you can check the authorship of juancar347, can be found at the following address: https://canterosmedievales.blogspot.com/2012/03/coruna-del-conde-graffitis-de-peregrino.html

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