San Miguel de Estella, Art and significance on the Way of Stars

The anthropologist and historian Julio Caro Baroja was not mistaken at all when he stated, flatly, that Estella is the capital of Navarrese Romanesque and an authentic historical and cultural landmark, which attracted the attention and interest of the pilgrims who following the so-called Way of the Stars or Way of the Milky Way, they were heading towards Santiago de Compostela, in what could well be called the momentous adventure of his life.

In fact, it is known that Estella, whose name in the Basque language responds to the poetic phoneme of Lizarra, was ordered to be built by García Ramírez, who was king and sovereign in those misty times of 12th century Navarre, in which the circumstances of the This period developed between the continuous skirmishes of the expanding Christian kingdoms and the containment of that other Spain invaded by the Muslims in the 7th century, which brought about the end of the Visigothic rule of the Iberian Peninsula.

With the roads open, generally based on the ancient communication routes in which even Roman engineers had put their signature on top of those other communication routes that dated back to the dawn of time, the work of Benedictines and Cistercians was compensated by the inclusion of numerous brotherhoods of stonemasons, mostly from France, who crossed the Pyrenees by Roncesvalles, developed an extraordinary work, leaving the mark of their industriousness and even innumerable keys of a heterodoxy not always understood, in the main points of pilgrimage.

Leaving aside the famous Collegiate Church of San Pedro de la Rúa, with its beautiful cloister, in whose church the mysterious Romanesque image of Our Lady of the O is venerated, next to which it is worth highlighting the pillar with a significant coiled serpent - symbol, which In addition, you will find the pilgrim in places as diverse and full of tradition, such as the baptismal font of Muros, in Gallaecian or the baptismal font of the church of San Miguel de Neila, in the superb foliage of the Burgos Sierra de la Demanda- one of the places artistic and cultural most surprising of Estella, it is located on the façade of its imposing Romanesque church of San Miguel.

Whoever is familiar with certain places on the Camino de Santiago, will observe, in the execution of his magnificent sculptures, the familiar hand of a mysterious and anonymous Magister Muri, known, interchangeably, as the Master of Agüero or San Juan de la Peña, for be these places in Huesca, above all, where an intense creative activity is recognized.

Within the New Testament theme of the ensemble, which makes this one of the most beautiful covers of Spanish Romanesque art, the eternal struggle between the Archangel Saint Michael and the Dragon stands out - whom Goethe referred to as the Old Serpent, the grandmother of the demon Mephistopheles- as well as the presence of the dreaded Guardians of the Threshold, who, located on the sides of the portico, seem to devour some unfortunate characters -a literal interpretation would turn them into sinners- which on a more psychological reading induces us to think of another type of a more sophisticated message, such as that adinferus descent or descent into hell, whose equivalence would be in that extraordinary and dangerous adventure of the journey inside each one, that is, of that immersion in the subconscious, which would follow the line of part of the teachings of Jesus Christ, when he said that of: know yourself.

Other unique scenes are the typical references to Adoration, both of the shepherds and of the enigmatic figures of the Three Wise Men from the East, as well as the presence of the Three Marys in the tomb, a more than possible make-up suggestion of the famous Three Mothers of the Celtic Tradition, still quite current at that time, especially among rural people and more remote in the rites and cultural myths of Antiquity, in the no less controversial figure of the Triple Goddess, who was attended by famous dramatists , like Shakespeare, in the figure of the Three Witches who met him and read fate to his unforgettable character, Macbeth.

In short, we could say that the façade of San Miguel de Estella, like the façades of countless other temples on the Way of the Stars, were conceived as authentic stone books, where faithful, travelers and pilgrims acquired different degrees of learning, depending on their state of inner evolution, but which undoubtedly constituted a very important part of that transcendental adventure, which are always the pilgrimage paths.

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