habitat rupestre.pdf - Società Friulana di Archeologia

EXCAVATED SHRINES IN THE IBERIAN PENINSULACRHIMA-CINP projectFig. 2 Monastery of San Juan de la PeñaFig. 3 Ermita de San Miguel in Presillas (Burgos)Fig. 4-5 The Church of Bobastro in Malaga: current status and reconstructionof the monastic complex by Puertas Tricas (2006)cavated settlements in Andalusia and the Spanish Levante (thearea comprising Valencia and Murcia), excavated religious architecturereached its climax in the Iberian Peninsula betweenthe 6 th and 11 th Centuries. It is the reflection of a social turmoil,with the continual warring and intellectual friction betweenthe Muslim and Christian cultures, which led to a religiousnessthat characterised that whole period and which resultedin two types of religious architecture that are particular to thePeninsula: the borderland shrines in the Christian areas to theNorth and the Mozarabic cave churches in the Muslim occupiedSouth.They are churches that are difficult to date with any precision.Nothing is known about their origins, as scarcely anyinformation about them has survived through to the presenttimes. Hypotheses about their origins range from the Visigothera prior to the Muslim invasion of the Peninsula in 711 whileanother is that they date from the late medieval period and arelinked to Christians recapturing and repopulating the territoriesrecovered from the Muslim occupation.Hermits, anchorites and monksIt is undoubtedly true that in Spain the Early Middle Ages,religiousness would have a strong influence. It searched forsalvation through the abandonment of all material possessions,advocating solitary or communal isolation, and theseare the origins of a number of shrines and holy grottos. A largenumber of these sites might well indeed have their origins inthe Visigoth era, but it would be during this new culturallyconfrontational period when the tendency to expand Christianreligiousness throughout the newly recaptured territories underwentconsiderable growth. They searched the outer limitsof the known world to isolate and purify themselves; isolatethemselves from a mundane world that they rejected, and inturn, preaching the Word to spread Christianity back into theterritories where it had died away some three or four centuriesearlier.So isolated anchorites inhabited naturally formed grottos orprimitive excavations made prior to the Muslim conquest. Orprimitive communities set up in the rough and rugged borderareas, excavating primitive churches and bare cells in theshelters and rocky outcrops, and digging their tombs amongstthe rocky necropolis. Looking for some kind of sanctificationthrough self sacrifice but as the lands were captured and societygrew, these began to gradually disappear.Only a number of these sites would survive, re-used to serveother purposes or turned into simple temples or parish churchesfor the new arrivals. And some of them, sanctified by thepresence of a Saint, formed the foundations of future churchesand monasteries. San Baudelio de Berlanga, a masterpieceamongst Spanish Pre-Romanesque pieces is an obvious andwonderful example. Beneath the shrine to San Baudelio, a masterpiecein 11 th Century Mozarabic architecture, is a naturallyformed cave which can be accessed through the south cornerof the chapel and which must have been used at some time asa dwelling by one of the hermits. Then there is the San Juande la Peña Monastery, a Romanesque Monastery dating from1026. Although it is not really an example in the true sense ofexcavated architecture, the San Juan de la Peña monastery isa perfect example of an architectural structure erected aboveshrine caves along the Camino de Santiago or the Way of SaintvolumeRicerca_OK_2012-11-15.indd 108 16/11/2012 15:02:02