Cathedral of Jaca: An Early Romanesque Cathedral in Spain
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
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- Medium
- Country
- Spain
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Crown of Aragon, Spanish
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Cathedral
On this page23 sections
History
The Cathedral of Jaca is a Romanesque cathedral dedicated to Saint Peter in Spain. Built for the newly established Diocese of Jaca during the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, it is one of the earliest and most characteristic Romanesque buildings in the country. Romanesque architecture is the medieval style associated with thick masonry, semicircular arches, basilical plans, and sculptural decoration on portals and capitals.
Jaca as a royal and episcopal center
Jaca became a royal residence in 1054 and received a town charter from King Sancho Ramírez in 1077. It served as the capital of the Kingdom of Aragon from 1077 to 1096. These political changes, together with Jaca’s elevation as an episcopal seat, created the need for a cathedral suited to the town’s new status.
Sancho Ramírez initiated the cathedral after travelling to Rome in 1068 and drawing closer politically and religiously to the papacy. The pope granted Jaca an episcopal seat, reinforcing the relationship between the emerging kingdom of Aragon and the papacy. The cathedral’s sculpture is associated both with the early formation of an independent Spanish Romanesque style and with the artistic culture of the pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela, known collectively as the Camino de Santiago.
Construction and the medieval diocese
The chronology of construction remains debated. The building is generally placed in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries, with 1077 to 1130 often given as its main construction period. One proposed first phase dates from 1077 to 1082, during Sancho Ramírez’s reign and the episcopate of his brother García. A second phase is placed between 1104 and 1130, during the reign of Alfonso I and the episcopate of Esteban of Huesca. Other proposals connect the earliest work with the mid-eleventh century, date its beginning to 1085, or place the building in the reign of Ramiro I. The architect is unknown.
Before its establishment at Jaca, the episcopal institution had been based at Sásabe, Siresa, and San Juan de la Peña. After Huesca was conquered in 1096, Pope Urban II restored the episcopal seat to Huesca while allowing the bishop to retain both the Jaca and Huesca sees. This arrangement lasted until 1571, when the bishopric of Huesca-Jaca was divided into the separate dioceses of Huesca, Jaca, and Barbastro.
The cathedral chapter belonged to the Order of Saint Augustine, a Catholic order whose members traditionally followed a communal life based on the rule attributed to Saint Augustine. A cloister, chapter house, refectory, dormitory, and other communal buildings were added progressively. Much of this complex was demolished in the sixteenth century after the chapter came to consist of priests who lived separately.
Earlier religious and funerary institutions
The open area before the western entrance had been occupied since the Roman period, as burials discovered there demonstrate. It continued as an inhabited area and cemetery during the Visigothic monarchy and may also have contained a Christian church.
A monastery dedicated to Saint Peter existed at Jaca in the tenth century. When the cathedral was built nearby in the late eleventh century, the older institution became known as San Pedro el Viejo. It lost its religious community but continued as a church open to worshippers. Its surroundings remained a cemetery until the fifteenth century, and its buildings came under the authority of the cathedral chapter. Government authorities ordered its demolition in 1837.
Fire, rebuilding, and Renaissance renewal
During the fifteenth century, the cathedral and its dependencies were in a ruinous condition. The original wooden roofs contributed to repeated fires, including a major conflagration in 1447. The surviving replacement vaults belong to the rebuilding that followed. The Romanesque choir was demolished in 1514 and replaced by a Renaissance choir occupying the third and fourth bays of the central nave, counted from the presbytery, the part of the church surrounding the main altar and traditionally reserved for the clergy.
The lateral nave vaults were begun in 1520. From 1598, the central nave was vaulted in a campaign lasting six years. Although these works took place during the Renaissance, the vaults were designed in the Late Gothic manner. The central vault was built by Juan Bescós, an architect and sculptor from Zaragoza, for 6,300 Jaqués pounds, paid by Francisco de Hervás, a canon of Zaragoza Cathedral.
A new sacristy with a ribbed vault was built in 1562, and numerous chapels were added or remodeled during the sixteenth century. A ribbed vault is supported by intersecting structural ribs. This renewal was prompted by the need to repair the old building, the wish of wealthy Jaca families to establish chapels for social and funerary patronage, and the renewed prosperity of the separate Diocese of Jaca after 1571.
Baroque and later transformations
The Romanesque cloister was demolished in the seventeenth century and replaced by the present cloister. The Chapel of Saint Orosia was also added during the seventeenth century, becoming the cathedral’s principal Baroque feature. An altar dedicated to Saint Orosia already existed by 1578, when Pope Gregory XIII granted a plenary indulgence for funeral masses celebrated there.
In 1790 and 1791, the central Romanesque apse was destroyed and the presbytery enlarged, partly to address moisture problems. The new space received a dome on pendentives, structural surfaces that allow a dome to rest over a square or rectangular area. Manuel Bayeu painted the dome and surrounding walls in 1792. His work includes scenes from the life of Saint Peter, the apotheosis of the Trinity, and the virtues of Faith, Hope, Charity, and Temperance.
Nineteenth-century work took place during a period affected by the Peninsular War, the Carlist Wars, and revolutionary episodes. The church was whitewashed, its organ was repaired in 1859, the Chapel of Saint Orosia was repainted in 1860, and the small porch was restored in 1864. The main and lateral areas were repaved between 1865 and 1868.
In 1919, the chapter choir and organ were moved from the center of the central nave to the enlarged presbytery. This cleared the main interior view, although the organ’s position reduced its sonority and obscured some of Bayeu’s paintings. The organ began as a Renaissance instrument, was transformed into a Baroque instrument in 1703, converted to a Romantic form in 1870, and restored in 2018.
The cathedral and its historic fabric were declared a Spanish cultural monument in the monument category of Bien de Interés Cultural on 3 June 1931, under registration RI-51-0000627. It also forms part of a World Heritage site associated with the pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela. The relics of Voto and Felix, traditionally regarded as founders of the monastery of San Juan de la Peña, are venerated in the cathedral.
Remains
Romanesque plan and structure
Built of dressed stone, the cathedral retains a Romanesque basilical configuration despite its later alterations. Its rectangular plan contains three aisles, each divided into five bays. The central nave is both wider and higher than the side aisles, and measures approximately 28.30 by 9 metres. Its supports alternate between two pairs of columns and three pairs of cruciform piers with attached columns. These carry five semicircular arches.
The transept, the crosswise arm of a church, rises higher than the nave but does not extend beyond the combined width of the three aisles. At the crossing, where nave and transept meet, a square space changes into an octagon through squinches, structural devices that convert a square space for dome support. A Romanesque dome reinforced by four semicircular arches covers the crossing. Small schematic tetramorphs, symbolic representations of the four evangelists, appear as corbels at the bases of the squinches.
The three aisles originally ended in semicircular apses with quarter-sphere vaults. The southern apse of the Epistle aisle survives most completely. Its exterior carries the characteristic Jaqués checkerboard ornament as a horizontal band, while ball motifs appear on the interior supports. These patterns became distinctive features of Romanesque architecture along the pilgrimage route to Santiago. The northern apse has been externally obscured or altered by the addition of a house, and the central apse was replaced when the presbytery was enlarged.
Western entrance and sculpture
Romanesque porch and Chrismon
The principal entrance occupies the west wall at the foot of the central nave. Its spacious Romanesque porch extends the nave outward by two bays through two large vaults and rises to connect visually with the nave. The western tympanum contains an unusually large and finely carved Chrismon, a monogram of Christ’s name, flanked by two lions. Latin inscriptions refer to the Trinity, forgiveness, the defeat of death, and the rejection of sinful pleasures.
The imagery has been interpreted as expressing an alliance between the Aragonese monarchy and the papacy. Another interpretation understands the lions as representations of Christ. The lion on the spectator’s left has a closed mouth and protects a man grasping a serpent. The opposite lion bares its teeth and tramples a bear and a basilisk. The principal inscription is accompanied by texts associated with the lions and by a further inscription on the lintel.
Portal columns and capitals
The western portal is enclosed by six archivolts, or successive arched bands, formed with fillets and toruses. They rest on two pairs of columns with four capitals, three figurative and one decorated with acanthus leaves. One column is visibly worn by the traditional practice of pilgrims placing their hands on it, a practice comparable to the worn column at the Pórtico de la Gloria in Santiago de Compostela.
Southern entrance and civic standard
South portal and porch
A second entrance opens through the south wall toward Cathedral Square. Its Romanesque tympanum was modified when a papal coat of arms, showing the tiara and the keys of Saint Peter, was added. The original Pantocrator, an image of Christ as universal ruler, was destroyed during the alteration. Representations of the evangelists Luke and Mark, shown as a bull and a lion, flank the tympanum.
The sixteenth-century southern porch reused Romanesque architectural sculpture from the cathedral. Its capitals depict Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of Isaac, Balaam and his donkey stopped by an angel, King David surrounded by eleven musicians, and the life and martyrdom of Pope Sixtus II. Other capitals carry vegetal designs and schematic human figures holding large birds.
Jaqués vara
A carved Jaqués vara is preserved on the southern wall. This medieval local standard of length measures approximately 77 to 77.2 centimetres. It served as the official reference for the market in Cathedral Square and was also used throughout Aragon.
Vaults, paintings, and sculpture
The central nave’s greater height permitted five windows to be opened on each side during the sixteenth-century vaulting campaign. The side aisles were covered shortly after 1520 with Late Gothic ribbed vaults, and the central nave received its vault from 1598. The current vaults of all three aisles are Late Gothic tracery vaults, replacing or completing an earlier roofing arrangement that was largely wooden.
The enlarged central apse is covered by a dome on pendentives. Bayeu’s paintings show episodes from Saint Peter’s life on the lateral walls, the Trinity in the dome, and four virtues in the pendentives. Across the cathedral, 28 capitals are distributed among the pillars, columns, walls, and presbytery. Their figurative, vegetal, and schematic subjects indicate the work of several sculptors or workshops. Romanesque capitals, corbels, and metopes include biblical scenes, fantastic figures, and representations of daily life. The earliest nude figures have a strongly antiquarian character, while later sculpture associated with the Master of Jaca is less antiquarian. Balls and Jaqués checkerboard ornament provide much of the geometric decoration on walls and bases.
The main altar retable is attributed to Juan de la Abadía and was painted at the end of the fifteenth century. A carved ivory crucifix on a book cover, made before 1085 and originally part of the cathedral’s furnishings, is now held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Chapels and funerary monuments
Chapel of Saint Anne
The cathedral contains twelve chapels. The Chapel of Saint Anne was built in the early sixteenth century for the racioneros, partly by adapting the western porch. It has a square plan and a Late Gothic ribbed vault. Its Hispano-Flemish Renaissance altarpiece is a polychromed wooden work showing Saint Anne with Mary and the Christ Child, flanked by painted panels of Saint Jerome and Saint Helena. Gothic carved canopies were restored in 2011. A life-size polychromed wooden crucifix nearby receives particular devotion.
Chapels of the Annunciation and Saint Sebastian
The Chapel of the Annunciation is recessed into the wall and has little depth, a segmental arch, and a narrow ribbed vault. Its small polychromed Renaissance wooden altarpiece is decorated with grotesques and shows the Last Supper, the Annunciation, the Virgin and Child, and the Calvary. It is attributed to the Aragonese master Pedro de Lasaosa, who belonged to the circle of the Florentine sculptor Juan de Moreto.
The Chapel of Saint Sebastian has a portal in the style associated with the Catholic Monarchs and a Baroque-tiled dado. Its principal altarpiece contains a poorly preserved Baroque canvas of the saint’s martyrdom. A smaller Baroque altarpiece contains an Assumption attributed to the Madrid school of Vicente Carducho.
Chapel of Saint Michael
Juan de Lasala Santa Fe and his wife, Juana Bonet, commissioned the Chapel of Saint Michael, which was built between 1523 and 1526. Its monumental Renaissance entrance, approximately 10 metres high, takes the form of a triumphal arch. It includes sculptures of Saints Christopher, Roch, Paul, and Joseph, medallions of the four evangelists, an oculus, and tritons.
Inside, a barrel vault with geometric coffering contrasts with the contemporary Gothic vaults of the nave. The Renaissance altarpiece has grotesques, baluster columns, three streets, two levels, and an attic with the Calvary. Its images include Saint Michael spearing a demon, the Virgin and Child, Saint John the Baptist, Saint John the Evangelist, and two archangels, probably Gabriel and Raphael. Juan de Moreto the Florentine designed the portal and altarpiece with Gil Morlanes the Younger and Juan de Salas, while Juan Navarro supplied the polychromy. The ensemble was restored in 2004.
Chapel of Saint Jerome and the monument of Pedro Baguer
The Chapel of Saint Jerome occupies the Romanesque apse of the Gospel aisle. Its quarter-sphere vault and three bands of Jaqués checkerboard ornament survive, separated from the nave by a Romanesque iron grille. The Renaissance polychromed wooden altarpiece was made by Jorge of Flanders and painted by Pedro de San Pelay and Antón Claver. Dated 1573, it shows the penitent Saint Jerome with a lion, flanked by Saint John the Evangelist and Saint John the Baptist. Saint George and Saint Martin of Tours occupy the upper level.
The funerary monument of Bishop Pedro Baguer, made in the last third of the sixteenth century by Juan de Rigalte and Guillem Salbán, is a major work of Renaissance funerary architecture. Its tomb chest is decorated with the virtues Faith, Charity, Temperance, Justice, and Prudence. An alabaster effigy shows the bishop lying full-length with a crozier and mitre. Above it, an alabaster relief of the Assumption of the Virgin is surrounded by angels and framed by a semicircular arch. Prophets, Corinthian columns, the Baguer family arms, and the bishop’s arms complete the ensemble. Juan de Anchieta is credited with the prophets and the Assumption relief. The monument was restored in 2004.
Chapel of Saint Orosia
Built in the seventeenth century at the expense of the confraternity of Saint Orosia, the Chapel of Saint Orosia is a large transverse Baroque space with a rectangular plan and a dome on a drum supported by pendentives. Its gilded and polychromed altarpiece has Solomonic columns decorated with grape clusters, large volutes, Saint Orosia in the central niche, and a seated Saint John the Baptist above.
The dome depicts Saint Orosia’s triumphant arrival in heaven. Six wall scenes include her martyrdom, the reception of her relics by the Jaca chapter, the cutting of her hair by the Bishop of Huesca, extraordinary natural phenomena, protection against hail, the resurrection of a girl from Bohemia, and the healing of a blind man. Luis Muñoz painted these scenes in 1789, and the ensemble was restored in 1999.
Chapel of the Holy Trinity
The Chapel of the Holy Trinity was built in 1572 for the burial of the merchants Martín de Sarasa and Juana de Aranda. Its entrance has a classical semicircular arch with Corinthian columns, allegories of Charity and Temperance, putti, the Veronica, portraits possibly representing the founders, and a relief of the Virgin and Child by Juan de Anchieta. Part of the original polychromy survives.
The chapel has a square plan, a hemispherical dome resting on squinches, geometric coffering with central rosettes, and a lantern. Its sandstone altarpiece, made with a calcareous cement, shows the Visitation, the birth of Saint John the Baptist, and the Jews questioning Saint John. The central street represents the Trinity, flanked by a guardian angel and Saint Martin of Tours. The attic contains the Pietà, while the four evangelists appear above the architrave. Nicolás Jalón supplied the predominantly gilded polychromy. The ensemble was restored in 2002.
Cloister and painted heritage
The seventeenth-century cloister stands along the cathedral’s northern side and houses the Diocesan Museum of Jaca. The museum displays Romanesque wall paintings removed from churches in the Jaca region, including works from Navasa, Ruesta, and Bagués. In this setting, the cathedral’s own Romanesque fabric and the wider artistic heritage of its surrounding area are presented together.
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