The Relationship of Two Iberian Cults: San Ginés de la Jara and Santiago de Compostela

THE RELATIONSHIP OF TWO IBERIAN CULTS: SAN GINÉS DE LA JARA AND SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA Jane E. Connolly University ofMiami In 1982, John K. Walsh called to the attention of literary scholars an extraordinary fifteenth-century text, the Vida e estoria del bien aventurado San Ginés de la Xara (Biblioteca Nacional Madrid 5880). The Vida de San Ginés provides striking testimony of hagiological creativity and syncretism. In it the third-century martyr St. Genesius of Aries is fused with hagiographie and epic motifs, producing San Ginés de la Jara, relative ofCharlemagne, devotee ofSt. James, protector ofCartagena and its environs, loyal patron of the Christians and Moors who serve him. The cult ofSan Ginés de laJara enjoyedconsiderablepopularityduring the Middle Ages and well into modern times. In the most thorough study to date of the cult and monastery dedicated to San Ginés, Juan Torres Fontes suggests that Alfonso X, desiring to Christianize and Europeanize the newly conquered southeast, established a monastery near Cabo de I am grateful to Andrew Beresford for his comments on an earlier version of this study. La corónica 36.2 (Spring 2008): 99-123 100Jane E. ConnollyLa coránica 36.2, 2008 Palos near Cartagena, perhaps where there had once been an Islamic religious center, under the direction of Augustinians from Cornelia de Confient in Pyrénées-Orientales, France (Torres Fontes 41-49).1 Although there is no firm evidence for a preexisting Islamic institution, San Ginés did find a following among both Christians and Muslims. The Vida de San Ginés recounts two miraculous healings performed by the saint for Moors from Granada, and the elaborate service to him rendered by one of these recipients, Abdaramel, and the King of Granada, Abencacin. Additionally, the final words of the Vida de San Ginés accentuate Ginés's dual patronage: "E éstos e otros milagros munchos podríamos contar, así de christianos como de moros".2 The association of the saint with an Islamic following was apparently so strong that they claimed him as their own, a thought that the hagiographer Fray Melchor de Huélamo found so ridiculous (or repugnant) that he felt he had to dispel it. In his Vida y milagros del glorioso confessor Sant Ginés de la Xara (Murcia 1607), Huélamo writes: No quiero passar en silencio, lo que no se puede oyr sin risa, y es, que las Moras Africanas, y Beberiscos que ay en Murcia y Carthagena, y por esta tierra (y aun en parte de Africa) tienen por cierto, que Sant Ginés fue de su tierra. Y aun dizen ellas que fue Morabito. Y como a tal le reverencian, y offrecen muy buenas limosnas y offrendas. Y muchas délias (como yo lo he visto) llevan en los cabos de sus tocas, por reliquia muy estimada, tierra de su santa casa, (quoted in Torres Fontes 45-46)3 1 Asensio Sáez contributes a personal and often poetic tribute to San Ginés, which unfortunately does not meet scholarly standards. He seems to draw heavily, if not solely, on Juan Torres Fontes, although this is uncertain as the book lacks any concrete bibliographic reference. Francisco Henares Díaz reviews the development ofthe cult of San Ginés from the Middle Ages through modern times. His study is valuable mostly for its extensive bibliographic references and for its consideration of the cult as a manifestation of popular religion. Julio Mas Garcia offers a brief overview of the legend, based primarily on Torres Fontes, and a complete description of the monastery and the hermitages. 2 Folio 37r. AU citations from the Vida de San Ginés are from my forthcoming edition. 3 E. Várela Hervías believes that Huélamo's Vida draws in part on notes based on the Vida de San Ginés made by Pedro Camarín in the late sixteenth The Relationship ofTwo Iberian Cults101 More than two centuries later, in 1740, the Franciscan Pablo Manuel Ortega would marvel at the magnitude of the Muslim devotion to the saint: Pero admira más el extremado afecto con que le veneran y obsequian hasta los moros, haci...