Spanish Nativity

The Ermita of Tolomato

The 18th century maps we call upon for much of our knowledge of the layout of St Augustine, including the location of the “Pueblo de Indios de Tolomato,” the Indian Village at Tolomato, often label the building there as an “ermita.”  In fact, the word “ermita” turns up all over our early maps.  Below is the description from the 1763 de la Puente Map of the “Ermita de Piedra” at Tolomato. It is often translated “hermitage,” but was it?  Were there really hermits scattered all over early St Augustine?

Highly unlikely, since the word “ermita” had by then come to mean simply a chapel usually located in some place outside of town to make religious services more available to the population that lived around there, or occasionally to house a shrine and be the focus for particular devotions.   Usually an ermita did not have a resident priest, and was often served not by the priest of the nearest parish, but by a member of a nearby religious order.   In the case of the ermitas in St Augustine, this would have meant a Franciscan from the Convento de San Francisco, now the St. Francis Barracks. 

Above we see the depiction of the ermita at Tolomato on the 1763 map.  The chapels that were built for the Indian towns or missions were often referred to as “ermitas” on the maps, although an “ermita” back in the Old World generally did not provide full parochial services (such as baptisms, funeral masses,  etc.). However, we can assume that the mission chapels did so. Tolomato had a doctrinario, that is, a friar who was the regular spiritual shepherd of the little group of mostly Guale Indians, and thus Tolomato must have been considered a doctrina, or a settled Christian Indian village with regular instruction, prayers, and religious activities.  A doctrina often had a resident priest, although in the case of Tolomato, since the Convento was so close, we don’t know whether the friars actually lived in the village or not.

But what was the origin of the “ermita” as a concept?  A couple of years ago, spending time in La Rioja, the winegrowing region of Northern Spain, I saw this in action.  In the photo below is a bluff filled with caves, which were very probably what the first ermitas looked like. Except that there would have been a genuine hermit living there, descending from his cave only occasionally to get water or food and once in a while, to attend prayers with the other hermits who had settled in the area.

Monasticism came to Spain very early, from the deserts of Egypt, and early monasticism was “eremitical,” that is, based on a collection of hermits living in some proximity but not really having a community life.  The word “eremitical” comes from the Greek word erēmia, “desert,”  and the English words “hermit” and “hermitage” refer to this tradition of living alone in the desert.  Below we see the cave of San Millán, a 6th century hermit in La Rioja.

 

But as time went by, the hermits began to develop a more regular community life and community prayer.  Rules were written to govern their lives together, with one of the very first ones being the Rule of St Augustine, written by St Augustine in the 5th century.  As more hermits accepted the rule, they built permanent structures, such as the building we see below, San Millán de Suso (the “upper” San Millan), built high on the mountain next to the hermit’s then abandoned cave.

Eventually, they built huge monasteries to accommodate hundreds of monks for a cycle of regular prayers, chant and study.  Below is San Millán de Yuso, the “lower” San Millán , built down in the valley when the group of hermits turned into a “cenobitical” community, a term coming from the Greek words meaning “common life.”

 

And of course, towns grew around the monasteries.  This photo shows us the town cemetery.

So we can see that the ermitas of San Agustin were far removed from the origins of the term.  And now we generally translate the word as chapel or even church, which was how the structures at the mission village sites were described by the English when they in turn began to make their maps of Florida after their installation in 1764. 

A New Year, a New Look and a New View

For the last couple of years, I have been so busy with the Tolomato Cemetery Preservation Association, a group founded here in St Augustine for the preservation of an historic cemetery, that the Spanish Nativity blog and website have both suffered near-abandonment. And because there is no belenista activity here in Florida, and in fact, very little in the United States in general, I have often found myself without a topic on those rare occasions when I did have time to write. On top of that, I had another blog, Towers of Avila, which I had created primarily to share art-related items found during trips to Spain or Latin America but which made me feel rather guilty because it received even less attention. I think my last post on that blog was around Christmas…of 2012. 

The Varela Chapel at Tolomato Cemetery

But on a recent trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico, the obvious solution came to me: Combine the two, thereby relieving me of bad-blog-mother guilt, on the one hand, and providing readers with a broader stream of information. So while the “new blog” will still be named Spanish Nativity, it will also, as its subtitle says, look at Spanish art and arts in general. In keeping with the Nativity Scene theme, much of the art will tend to be early art and most of that will be religious art. 

16th-17th Century Nativity Scene at Las Carboneras in Madrid

This is in part because I am interested in it, but also simply because most pre-19^th century Spanish art, both in Spain and in its colonies and including popular art as well as fine art, was in fact religious art. As scholars have pointed out, there was very little market among Spaniards and Colonials for the paintings of nymphs and landscapes that sold so well in the rest of Europe. The result was that both the art of the Peninsula and the artistic skills that the Spanish brought to the New World and taught to the native peoples tended to be religious in nature. These arts were not only for the ecclesiastics or well-off families who could buy silver and gold church furnishings or commission splendid paintings of the Immaculate Conception or their favorite saint, but for the Spaniard who was busy making little clay figurines for a Nativity scene in his village or the santero in New Mexico who was painting a retablo (not an altar-piece, but a painting on a panel of board) or carving a bulto (statue) of San José. 

 18th Century Spanish Sanctuary Lamp at the Cathedral Basilica of St Augustine

Thus, we’ll be looking at new things in new places this year. We’ll discuss matters such as the inventory of church goods belonging to St Augustine, FL in 1763, interesting sites in Spain (I’m hoping to revisit Mallorca to see where some of the 18^th century Franciscan missionaries got their inspiration), and probably random discoveries from Mexico and the US Southwest and California. Oh – and Nativity Scenes. Those will certainly not be forgotten; for example, we’re going to look at Letizia Arbeteta’s work in restoring the symbolic aspect of the Spanish Nativity Scene through her use of 18^th century and earlier materials to recreate these beautiful and entirely different scenes.

NM Museum of Art … an 18th century Sta. Barbara by Miera y Pacheco

So my apologies to the Niño and to blog readers over the years for my neglect of this blog – and a request for special Epiphany blessings in starting it up again! 

  A Tiny New Mexico Nativity

Congreso Nacional Belenista in Alcalá de Henares

This year’s Congreso Nacional Belenista, the 51st such occasion, was held in Alcalá de Henares, a city famed for its connection with Cervantes, among many other things.  I’ve been extremely busy with Tolomato Cemetery back here in St Augustine – evidenced by my nearly complete lack of Nativity blog posts this year -  but I managed to get to the Congreso, which was, as always, interesting and a great occasion to renew old friendships.

I was particularly impressed this time by the large number of figuristas in the market that is a valuable feature of the conferences.

Montserrat Ribes had her always artistic, subtle figures.

 

The young man from Granada who produces beautiful clay figures of animals was a real discovery.  Below we see a few of his flocks of sheep, accompanied by some very goatish-looking goats.

 

There were also several figuristas from Andalucía , such as the Sucesores de Angel Martínez, who use these classic molds to make the well known scenes of Southern local life that are part of their belenes in that area.

 

These are only a few (in which my cellphone photos came out reasonably well) examples of the production of the many and varied sculptors there, and I found it really heartening to see how much new work is being done by contemporary figuristas.

Lluc and Its Nativities

It’s taken me a long time to get to this post, which is based on a trip made to Mallorca in April, but mejor tarde que nunca. I am in the process of redoing the Spanish Nativity website, sorely in need of updating, and resuming regular posts on this blog. I’ve also positioned the blog so that it appears not only on its own, but as a page on the website, something that will make it easier for me to update both at once.

But to get back to Lluc, a remarkable Marian shrine in the steep coastal mountains of Mallorca about 40 miles north of Palma de Mallorca. I set out for it encouraged by Dr. Elvira González, an archaeologist who lives and works in Palma and who had at one time worked at the museum in Lluc. She told me that its little museum had wonderful figures and paper Nativity scenes that reflected the distinctive Mallorcan tradition, and called ahead so that I could meet Padre Román Ballester, who is now retired but who had also been involved with the museum.  The shrine is now a retreat and pilgrimage center run since the 19th century by a religious order known as the Missionaries of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.  Click on the link above for more information in English.

Setting off in my rented car and guided through the misty mountains in a pouring rain by my GPS, I found my way up the narrow road leading to the shrine, which is housed in a very large 16^th century building that is home to the religious order in charge of the shrine and also to a wonderful children’s schola, Els Blauets, in my opinion even better than the schola of Montserrat. They sing a couple of times a day, but because of the severe weather and the need to return the rental car, I wasn’t able to be present at either time.

The island of Mallorca is famous mostly as a high-end and not so high end tourist destination, divided between the very wealthy who keep their enormous yachts in the harbor at Palma and the less well-heeled British and German travelers who fill the bars every evening. Despite this, Palma still maintains its own urban life and is a surprisingly interesting and pleasant city. The Cathedral is particularly interesting, and we’ll have a post on it sometime in the near future.

Once you leave Palma, you go into the depths of Mallorca, “Mallorca profunda,” as Elvira González said, and you are in an area that is somewhat rural or made up of smaller or larger towns. The Baleares were thought to be the tops of extinct volcanos, but are now considered to be products of a violent folding of the surface of the earth.  But however Mallorca was created, its central plain is ringed by crags and precipices that hold off the brunt of the often fierce Mediterranean, with its winds, rains and even typhoons.  Here we see part of Mallorca with Menorca in the distance.

Lluc means “Lucas” in Mallorquín, a variant of Catalán, and was the name of a young boy in the 12^th or 13^th century who found a statue of the Virgin, holding the Child, in a stream that came down from the very top of the mountain. When he and a local priest brought the statue to a church in another location, the statue disappeared and turned up again in the stream - twice. So it was decided that Our Lady wished to be honored in this place and a chapel was built next to the stream, later to be replaced by the large monastery that is on the site today (which has been expanded over the centuries).

The image is a 13th century statue of carved alabaster, with the typical Gothic S-curve, is dark in color and this image of the Virgin is known on Mallorca as “La Moreneta.”  Its provenance is unknown, although Spanish sculptors and artists were very active during that period and were influenced by trends from other parts of the Continent, particularly France.  When it was cleaned in the 19th century, it appears that its arms had been broken at some point, and when it was restored, it was done in a way that would have been typical of a 13th century Virgin. That is, she is pointing at the Child, who is holding a book.

How the statue turned up in the stream is unknown, but Our Lady frequently appeared around water-sources, oak-trees and other things that had been of significance to pre-Christian peoples or that were of special importance to the people of that time. Mallorca has very limited natural water supplies, depending mostly on precipitation. While the advent of desalinization plants has now made it possible to supply the cities and the tourist populations, water – particularly a steadily flowing source – was important to people on this island.

So you are seeing a very typical and beautiful Gothic sculpture of Nuestra Señora, holding El Niño – and in the next post, we’ll go on to discuss the rich and beautiful Mallorcan Nativity tradition that descended from this stream high in the crags out in the Mediterranean.

Wirjiet

This post deals with a sculptural tradition that is neither Spanish nor Nativity related, but since it has been months since I last posted here – because of the demands of the Tolomato Cemetery Preservation Association and its blog – I am simply going to go for it because I think it’s interesting.

On a recent visit to the island of Malta during Holy Week, I was mystified to see banners and signs all over Valetta, and in fact any place I went on the island, advertising something called a “Wirja”  (pronounced wier-ya). It turned out that in Maltese, “wirja” simply means exhibition: but what an exhibition! The photo below is a wirja in a private home in the city of Birkirkara on Malta.

 

Malta has a long and rich tradition of Passion figures and dioramas, and these are the substance of the “wirja.” (The plural is “wirjiet,” hence the title of this article.)

 

The dioramas are generally staged in an elaborately decorated room or a space carved out of a larger room with a sort of tent of wall hangings, a cloth ceiling, and panels behind the dioramas. These are usually placed on a long “U” made out of narrow tables or shelves, and on average measured about 18” deep by 24” wide, although more space was left around them for the supplementary items that had to be displayed with each scene.

 

 

Above is the wirja of the well-known collector and builder Angelo Fenech, who creates this spectacular scene every year in the living room of his sister in law, Teresa.  His scenes include more than 500 figures. 

 

In fact, the wirja you see above has another theme: it is actually a model of the interior of a church in Mdina, and the spaces that hold the dioramas evoke the side chapels of the church.  Malta has a great tradition of Holy Week processions, similar to that of Spain, and, as in Spain, the processional floats are often kept in the side chapels outside of Holy Week.  So you will see life-size or larger figures in the churches that are the same as the tiny figures in the Passion dioramas.   Below, Veronica holds out her veil.

 

 

There are usually 14 or 15 scenes, representing many of the scenes familiar to us from the Stations of the Cross but starting with the Agony in the Garden or sometimes from the Last Supper.  Sometimes the Last Supper appeared elsewhere, in a prominent location, in the chain of scenes, because the Maltese have a very profound Eucharistic devotion, as evidenced by this real Altar of Repose for Holy Thursday/Good Friday in a church in Valetta.

 

Some of the dioramas are enclosed, but most of them are placed on beautiful hand-crafted wooden boxes that served as small platforms for the figures.  In addition to the figures themselves, there are miniature symbolic articles included with each “Station,” such as a tiny rooster to indicate Peter’s denial of the Lord, miniature dice and instruments of the Passion, etc.  The figures below, from Angelo Fenech’s wirja, are about 7”-8”  inches high.

 

Many of the figures are made by sculptors on the small Maltese island of Gozo (pronounced Go-djo) and are sold in shops in Valetta or bought directly from the artists by the individuals, parishes or associations that set up the wirjiet.   The Valetta store below, Saulus, sells Passion figures and accoutrements.

 

 

The above photos were all taken this year (2013) on the island of Malta, some in Valetta and some in Birkirkara.  But wherever you go towards the end of Lent and during Holy Week, you will find these little works of art.  Below is a wirja of Passion dioramas built by a parish organization.

 

Dec 25, 2012

Well, this isn't Spanish, but it is a Nativity. I'm in London for Christmas this year, and I went looking for Nativity scenes. They were pretty scarce, unfortunately. I don't think the British have ever done that uniquely Mediterranean scene featuring the entire village of Bethlehem, but I would have expected a little more acknowledgement of the iconography of the season. Outside of the Catholic churches, the only places I saw nativity scenes were at a couple of Italian restaurants.

But here's a charming Nativity I saw in a church, the Brompton Oratory, after the splendid Mozart mass they did for Christmas morning. The little typical British animals in the front (a squirrel, a duck, something that may be a stoat?, a rabbit and a goose) look like something out of Wind in the Willows.

Jun 27, 2012

We've gotten all the way from Epiphany to Sts. Peter and Paul without a post. Tolomato Cemetery is taking up every spare moment of my time, but just so you don't think that I've given up Nativity scenes, here's a little something I saw in Madrid today.

I'm currently staying preparing to go back to the Camino de Santiago as an Hospitaleros, one of the depot welcomes the pilgrims, cleans the hostel, et cetera.

This shop is near the very famous church where the image of Jesus Nazareno is kept in between Holy Week processions. The church is run by Capuchin Franciscans, and so is the store. They have the usual Franciscan devotion to the Nativity. They sell figures year-round, although I imagine they have more as the Christmas season approaches.

I have been looking for a replacement for the Niño in our nativity scene at the Cathedral. Ours is a Hummel figure that is so odd-looking some people privately refer to it as

While the photograph is not very good, the figure that you see in it is a classic Spanish Niño from Olot, in Catalonia. This figure is 50 cm (meeting that it is for a set where the St. Joseph figure is 50 cm high).

I was seriously tempted to buy, but then I reminded myself that I could not take it on the Camino with me. But maybe next time…

Epiphany, aka Día de los Reyes

December 6 is the Feast of Epiphany, also often known as the Feast of the Three Kings or the Día de los Reyes, in Spanish.  While the Church in the US has unfortunately moved the celebration of the feast to the following Sunday, we all still know what day it really is.   So of course I had to go to the Mission Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche and put the Kings into my belén.  And here they are, from the Holy Land via Murcia.

 

Dog in the Manger?

When I was in New York for Christmas, I cruised through St Patrick’s Cathedral and visited their Nativity scene.  I had read earlier that the scene featured a large dog, and sure enough, there was a big dog looming behind the manger.  The rector of the Cathedral is apparently a dog-lover and was the one who placed it there. 

I have always had mixed feelings about dogs in Nativity scenes. If they are just there, as sheepdogs or incidental figures, fine; but I have seen a rather alarming tendency to highlight the dog in recent years.  Americans are positively goofy on the subject of dogs, and this seems to have spilled even into Christmas devotions.

You can see the dog in this picture, sitting behind the manger (which is still empty because the photo was taken before Christmas).  The figures are German, although I’m not sure about the dog, since it is a later addition.  It’s even bigger than the sheep and seems to be the most important figure in the scene.

 

 

Below is the Nativity scene at the Cathedral Basilica of St Augustine (as beautifully redone this year by Cathedral priest Fr. Jeff Johnson and John Breuer, member of the plant staff).  There is a dog in this one, too, but it’s a dog the way I think it should be, docilely accompanying a shepherd.  Because the dog is behind the shepherd, it’s a little hard to see. Focus on the kneeling shepherd in the foreground, and you can see the dog’s head just beyond his knee.

 

It’s a small, obedient dog, just the way it should be. Good doggie.

 

Barcelona Christmas Fairs

I’m back in the States now, but I’ll continue to post some of the belen highlights of my trip.  I spent most of my time in Madrid, but I went to visit a friend in Barcelona, riding on the wonderful AVE and getting there in 2 1/2 hours from Madrid.

Barcelona has two important Christmas fairs, one in front of the Sagrada Familia, and one in front of the Cathedral, downtown in the old part of  the city.  Below you see a stand in the plaza in front of the Sagrada Familia, selling mostly complementos (or accessories) for the scenes.

And here’s a view from the little terrace in front of the Cathedral. There were rows and rows of these stands, selling everything from moss and bark for building the scene to complementos and figures of all sizes.  I did notice that the clay figures are getting scarcer and scarcer. For reasons ranging from the fact that they are less fragile to the fact that they are cheaper, plastic and resin figures, cast and painted in Spain, are taking over the market.  I was able to buy some clay figures in both Madrid and Barcelona, but I fear that their days are numbered.