Recasting the Concept of the "Pilgrimage Church": The Case of San Isidoro De León

RECASTING THE CONCEPT OF THE "PILGRIMAGE CHURCH": THE CASE OF SAN ISIDORO DE LEÓN Thérèse Martin University ofArizona What makes a building a "pilgrimage church"? When Kenneth John Conant codified the "great churches of the pilgrimage roads" in 1959 (fig. 1), the definition applied exclusively to five Romanesque basilicas with continuous aisles leading from the west entrance that navigated through a projecting transept with absidioles and around an ambulatory at the east end with additional radiating chapels, continuing along the opposite aisle and terminating at thepoint ofdeparture, the west facade.1 1 Regardingthesebuildings (Saint-Martin de Tours, Saint-Marcialde Limoges, Sainte-Foy de Conques, Saint-Sernin de Toulouse, Santiago de Compostela), José Carlos Valle Pérez noted correctly that, "El prototipo, sin embargo, dada su acusada complejidad y su alto coste, tuvo una difusión muy reducida.... No es la única fórmula diseñada en la época para resolver los escollos con que se tenía que enfrentar un santuario con reliquias, receptor o meta, por tal motivo, de masas de fieles" (129). As JohnWilliams ("La arquitectura del camino de Santiago") reminds us, the idea of linking the phenomenon of pilgrimage to architecture began in the 1920s with Emile Mâle and Arthur Kingsley Porter. For the historiography of an association of pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago with architecture, see Williams ("La arquitectura del camino de Santiago") and Isidro Gonzalo Bango Torviso ("Las llamadas 'Iglesias de peregrinación'"). The present study does not La corónica 36.2 (Spring 2008): 165-89 166Thérèse MartinLa coránica 36.2, 2008 Fig. 1. Comparative ground plans of the great pilgrimage churches: 1. Saint-Martin de Tours; 2. Saint-Martial de Limoges; 3. Saint-Foy de Conques; 4. Saint-Sernin de Toulouse; 5. Santiago de Compostela (from Kenneth John Conant, Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture, 800 to 1200). Recasting the Concept ofthe "Pilgrimage Church"167 The same uninterrupted space was repeated at the gallery level, where a second-story aisle duplicated the layout of the lower one. The spaces were covered throughout by stone vaulting. Such a design was lauded for allowing the free circulation of pilgrims, but, as a singling out of just five buildings implies, most churches ofthe period that we now call Romanesque did not display all ofthese characteristics.2 In fact, as John Williams ("La arquitectura del camino de Santiago", 283) notes, none of these elements appeared in Spanish Romanesque architecture before the construction ofthe cathedral ofSantiago de Compostela (e. 1075-1130).3 We know that many churches built in the eleventh and twelfth centuries held important relics and attracted great numbers of pilgrims. I will use the basilica of San Isidoro in León (fig. 2) to examine the modern construct ofthe medieval "pilgrimage church" and to make the case that the reality was more flexible than our desire for neat categories generally allows. Far from originating as a site that sought to attract pilgrims, San Isidoro was initially the private chapel of the Leonese royal family. The church built in the middle of the eleventh century under the patronage ofFernando I (ruled 1037-1065) and his wife Sancha (died 1067) was first address the separate issue of sculpture associated with pilgrimage churches, as epitomized by the work of Marcel Durliat. 2 In fact, at Conques and Limoges the aisles are not continuous through the transept, which means that, ifwe were to apply these standards rigorously, our sampling of "true" pilgrimage churches would be reduced to just three. I do not doubt that all five basilicas were conceived with pilgrims in mind; their locations on the major roads described in the ca. 1135 Pilgrim's Guide in the Codex Calixtinus (Paula Gerson, et al.) confirm the architectural evidence. Bango Torviso ("El camino jacobeo y los espacios sagrados" and "Las llamadas 'Iglesias de peregrinación'") breaks down these churches into their component parts to argue that neither this group of buildings nor any other should be conceived of as "pilgrimage churches". He sees them rather as simply responding to the rich vocabulary ofRomanesque architecture and the necessities of a complex liturgy. 3 While some ninth-century Asturian structures may have included a small...