Art and Mystery on the Saint-Jacque’s Way: Duratón

In this 12th century temple, I found my ‘Romanesque Rosetta Stone’, metaphorically speaking.

Its mystery, its beauty, its perfection and, above all, the cryptic and varied theme of its sculptures, were the tip of the iceberg of a passion for Art in general and for Romanesque art in particular, which after many years have passed , continues to devour me, making me return, again and again, to the roads.

Located a short distance from the important and popular town of Sepúlveda, and in the immediate vicinity of that overwhelming natural space that was formerly known as the Duraton Desert and today simply as the Hoces of the Duraton River, we may have in this temple, the most example elegant and at the same time spectacular, if not all of the Romanesque of Segovia, yes at least how many temples make up the Villa and Tierra de Sepúlveda.

The town of Duratón, today is just a simple memory of that important medieval town, which had one of the most numerous and important towns on this side of the so-called Douro border: a river that separated the Christian lands from those occupied by the Muslims.

In fact, in the fields surrounding the church, which is under the invocation of Our Lady of the Assumption - a name that was generally given to some churches, perhaps because its previous invocation was not all the orthodox that was required - one of the most important medieval and Visigoth cemeteries of the Iberian Peninsula.

You can barely contemplate some stone sarcophagi, once the cold of winter leaves terrified and uncovered some fields irrigated by the blood of many cultures that settled on their side at time immemorial.

As an Asset of Cultural and Historical Artistic Interest, the temple of Our Lady of the Assumption is one of the recommended places for all those who staying in Sepúlveda or nearby, wishing to expand their cultural and passing knowledge, put into practice their photographic skills .

Its more than one hundred canecillos, its capitals and the succession of handmade elaborated metopes, make up a whole collection of stories, experiences and feelings of an era, the Middle Ages, which was far from being as dark as many historians want to make us think.

Its arcaded gallery, is a poem of splendor, waste of grace and genuine candor, supported by some capitals where we meet again with the main events of the New Testament, where there is no missing that eternal reference to the Epiphany, whose details are contained in numerous temples of the time, because not in vain was the Alpha, properly speaking, of Christianity.

Next to it, either through the canecillos or the metopes, we observe, however, an early incursion of the medieval stonecutters in the world of psychology, where the main myths of Classical Antiquity are present, not in vain they were models that, if we are to believe psychologists of recognized prestige, such as CG Jung, form an important and totally independent part of the Collective Unconscious of Humanity.

Of them, they attract powerfully the subliminal messages of supposed monsters that devoured sinners, according to the orthodox version, but that actually, and put to meditate on the subject, suggest rather the most important psychological struggle for the individual: that of knowing oneself and defeating the beast - the great snake, the dragon - that represents that place where, according to Goethe's Mephistopheles, the Mothers dwell. That is, the Unconscious.

If we add to this, in addition, its sculptural richness, where you can see curious representations, such as a dromedary, a strange four-wing angel or the typical allusions to music, made up of musicians and the dancer - usually the musician is a Elder character and the dancer a young and voluptuous woman, who suggest a metaphor of the experience and the vital force but unconscious of youth- we will have the opportunity, in addition to admiring an authentic work of Art, enjoy letting ourselves be carried away by some messages, which after However, they should not seem as absurd or incredible as they claim to make us believe.

NOTICE: Both the text and the accompanying photographs are my exclusive intellectual property.

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