ABSTRACT
A feature of many monasteries, convents and hospitals founded in Spain during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is the incorporation of a private room for the house’s patron.1 These rooms provided an important and vital connection between the sacred space of the religious house and the religious devotions of the patron in supplying a place for prayerful observances. Often built with direct access to the altars and reliquary rooms in the religious house, such rooms thereby granted the patron privileged access to the most holy spaces within these foundations.2 Probably the most well-known examples of these apartments were the private quarters built for Charles V at the monastery of Yuste in 1548 and Philip II’s oratory which adjoined his bedroom, and overlooked the high altar, constructed at the Escorial.3 These rooms provided a place of retreat from the world, especially during key periods of religious observance or mourning, thereby establishing a place of lay devotion within the sacred space of the religious house. The Habsburg kings were, however, merely continuing a long Spanish tradition, which was emulated on a more modest scale by their wealthier subjects. The provision of private accommodation within religious houses had been customary for royalty,
* I am grateful for the comments of Constancio del Alamo, Priscilla Muller, Peter Brown and Antonio Feros, who all read early drafts of this paper. 1 F. Chueca Goitia, Casas reales en monasterios y conventos españoles (Bilbao, 1982), p.38, cites E.E. Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française (10 vols, Paris, 1875), I, pp. 264, 278, 305, who recognized this development in France and gave numerous examples of French kings staying in convents and monasteries. 2 P. Brown, ‘Enjoying the Saints in Late Antiquity’, in S. Lamia and E. Valdez del Álamo (eds), Decorations for the Holy Dead: Visual Embellishment on Tombs and Shrines of Saints (Brussels, 2002), pp. 3-17. 3 M. Ángel Zalama, ‘Carlos V, Juste y los jerónimos. Sobre la construcción del Aposento del emperador’, in El arte en las cortes de Carlos V y Felipe II. Actas de las IX jornadas de
bishops and the highest nobility since the eighth century in Spain, with certain religious orders being particularly favoured by patrons, most notably the Dominicans, Augustinians and Franciscans from the thirteenth century onwards, and the Jeronimites from the fifteenth century.4 During the reign of Charles V, ‘the reform of the laws and spiritual precepts’ of the military orders,5 in particular the Regla, the rule book for the Order of Santiago, led to a significant expansion in the construction of private rooms within monasteries. This development was due both to an increase in the numbers of nobles admitted to the military orders, and also to changes in the requirements for members of these orders. While these rooms had often in the past provided a place for private devotion, they became sacred spaces in which members of the nobility could fulfil their spiritual obligations for retreat and meditation, obligations that were tied to their observance of the written rules for spiritual behaviour. Usually built overlooking, or else behind, the altar, these private rooms allowed patrons a retreat from the conjugal bed during times of prescribed abstinence, as well as, in some cases, being a place for repentance. By providing ready access to the holiest parts of the church as well as accommodation for the elite members of society, these private rooms caused a further blurring of the boundaries between the sacred and the profane during the early modern period. Private oratories or chapels within a domestic setting were a relatively common feature of the homes of the Spanish elite during the late middle ages, as elsewhere in Europe. The construction of windows opening onto the church or private passageways, connecting domestic accommodation with an adjacent church, was also found in northern Europe.6 However, the requirement that, as part of a religious house’s obligation to a founding patron and his family, private rooms should be built within the monastic precincts, close to the church, or with a connecting passage, or pasadizo, to the church, was more peculiar to Spain.7 The incorporation of such pasadizos in monastic designs began in royal houses, but gradually spread to those of the aristocracy. The use of pasadizos to private chapels, linking palaces to churches, or to rooms in a church with access to or sight of the altar, provided entrance to a sacred space without allowing the lay person to be seen as they entered the church or monastery. An example of the use of such pasadizos is found at the monastery of Santa Creus, dating from c.1350. A series of
4 Ibid., pp. 38-40; S. Brindle, ‘Some Aspects of Religious Architecture in Castile, 14001550, with Special Reference to the Province of Burgos. A Study in Patronage’ (3 vols, unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1991), p. 31. 5 Francisco de los Cobos, Regla de la orden de la cavallería de señor Santiago del espada (Valladolid, 1527) [hereafter: Regla (1527)], f. iiii. See Joseph de Sigüenza, Tercera parte
pasadizos connected the palace to a private oratory located above the lateral chapels on the epistle side of the church, allowing private access to the holy space.8 Another example might be the pasadizo connecting the palace of Doña Juana (1479-1555), mother of Charles V, to the adjacent church of San Antolín in Tordesillas where she attended Mass.9 Pasadizos were usually enclosed and thus maintained the invisibility of their aristocratic or royal patrons as they walked to and from the sacred spaces. In some cases, such as the rooms of the Duke of Lerma (1553-1625) in San Pablo, the rooms also opened through a screen to a family pantheon or familial tomb established within the monastery, creating a link between living and deceased patrons.10 However, the connection was not always intimate. In Medina de Rioseco (Valladolid), the Franciscan convent merely faced the palace of the Enríquez family, Almirantes of Castilla, whose family pantheon was in the main chapel.11 Pasadizos became architectural symbols of noble privilege in Spain and in particular for those nobles who had the protection of a military order, which granted them the right to build private rooms within churches of which they were patrons.12 Such a pasadizo provided a transitional passage, from a secular palace into a sacred space. Starting work in 1599, Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, Conde de Gondomar, built a pasadizo from his palace, the Casa del Sol to the nearby Benedictine monastery of San Benito in Valladolid.13 In the same city, the Duke of Lerma was building, by 29 August 1601, a pasadizo across the street from his palace to the corner of the religious house opposite.14 Yet it was an architectural feature that at times provoked opposition for its ostentatious display. A thinly veiled attack upon the pasadizo built by several nobles in Valladolid was made in 1602 by Fernández de Medrano, in a book dedicated to Lerma that criticized a pasadizo constructed across the street from his palace in Florence by Cosimo de’ 8 Ibid., p. 79. 9 M.Á. Zalama, ‘Juana I de Castilla y el Monasterio de Santa Clara de Tordesillas’, Reales Sitios 39 (2002), 14-27. 10 Chueca Goitia, Casas reales, p. 114. 11 About the military orders and funerary monuments, see M. Cortés Arrese (ed.), El Espacio de la muerte y el arte de las Órdenes Militares (Cuenca, 1999). 12 Chueca Goitia, Casas reales, p. 74; García de Medrano, La Regla y establecimiento de la cavallería de Santiago del espada. Con la historia del origen y principio della (Valladolid, 1603) [hereafter: Regla (1603)], f. 15v. The 1603 Regla summarized rules that had been in effect previously, and added new ones. This rule was among those already granted. 13 A description by Pinheiro da Veiga of the pasadizo erected for the baptism of Philip IV notes the grandeur of the structures, see J. Urrea, La Plaza de San Pablo, Escenario de la Corte (Valladolid, 2003), p. 31. Another contemporary pasadizo built by Cardinal Bernardo de Sandoval y Rojas in Toledo is described in Pedro de Herrera, Descripcion de la
Medici.15 The construction of pasadizos also often occurred in seignorial villages, where the isolation of a noble from curious eyes was of great importance, for instance in Medinaceli, where the Colegiata of Santa María de la Asunción, renovated in 1562, was connected to the ducal palace by a gallery.16 This particular construct of privilege became a hallmark of building practice, especially in the religious conjuntos built during the reigns of Philip II and his son, Philip III, where some nobles connected their palaces to several adjacent monastic foundations with pasadizos. The demands of patrons and their temporal world even intruded upon the enclosed sacred space of the convent in early modern Spain. The decoration of burial chapels with a family’s noble arms, the frequent practice of widows’ residence in convents without taking the veil, and the presence of secular apartments within convents together ‘blurred the ideal of a boundary separating the sacred from the secular’.17 However, the inclusion of private rooms for patrons within the walls of a monastery or convent, allowed nobles the ideal space to meet the sacred, and undertake contemplative prayer, spiritual reflection, and penance. While noble residence was, as we shall see, required at certain times in the liturgical year, it was not intended to be permanent.18 The importance of the private room in the life of a noble becomes readily apparent in the increase in monastic architecture built by nobles between 1520 and 1550, a trend which seems to have slowed under the reign of Philip II, and resumed again briefly under the reign of Philip III.19 Two factors directly influenced this widespread monastic building programme and its character: Charles V increased the number of people admitted to the military Order of Santiago, and he made changes to the requirements for the members of this Order which, amongst other things, emphasized the need for private rooms. Although private apartments had been included in some monastic buildings for centuries, their purpose, clearly stated and outlined by Charles V, suddenly affected a wider group of people.20 Upon acceding to the throne of Spain, Charles V began a systematic revision of the military orders, primarily the Orders of Santiago, Alcántara and Calatrava, 15 J. Fernández de Medrano, Republica mista (Madrid, 1602), p. 133. 16 I am grateful to Steven Brindle for this reference. 17 E. Lehfeldt, ‘Spatial Discipline and its Limits: Nuns and the Built Environment in Early Modern Spain’, in H. Hills (ed.), Architecture and the Politics of Gender in Early Modern Europe (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 140-41, 145. 18 Regla (1527), f. x. 19 Brindle, ‘Some Aspects of Religious Architecture in Castile’, II, p. 303. 20 The importance of the Order for architectural patronage has yet to be fully examined. Its undeniable influence has been recognized in a brief but seminal essay by J.J. Martín
founded in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.21 The order of Santiago was considered the richest of the three main Orders and it was regarded as the most historically important. There was a dramatic rise in membership under Charles V with 45 members invested between 1521 and 1525, 107 in 1526-30, and 136 in 1531-35.22 The background to this increase in membership was the Bull issued in 1523 by Pope Adrian IV, incorporating all the Orders into the Crown in perpetuity. This Bull set the stage for the reforms of the Order of Santiago, and its rulebook, published by Charles V in 1527. In the Regla, Charles V announced that he was going to ‘correct and amend’ the spiritual rules.23 The Regla, initially presented as a ‘spiritual rulebook’ had social and legal implications in Habsburg Spain, and although the order of Santiago was the most prestigious, each order had similar rules, set out in a handbook for members.24 The rules were ‘what they [the members of the Order] are obliged to do and accomplish, and what they have to guard, and from what abstain’.25 Thus, in the context of the 1527 reforms, the ‘fuero de caballeros’ or oath of knighthood – obedience, poverty and conjugal chastity – was the same for the three main orders.26 The spiritual rule followed by the Order of Santiago, and therefore the basis of its rulebook, was the rule of Saint Augustine. As described in the 1527 edition, spiritual and temporal rules for members of the order were set out in two volumes. The spiritual rules in the first volume were said to be the most important and mandated the building and maintenance of churches and monasteries; they also included explicit directions to members of the order to observe periods of 21 The Order of Santiago was formalized in 1170 when the first royal privilege for its existence was issued by Ferdinand I, king of Castile, León and Portugal. Antonio Ruiz de Morales y Molina, La Regla y establecimiento de la órden de la cauallería de Santiago del Espada, con la hystoria del origen y principio della (1565), ed. M.I. Viforcos Marinas and J. Paniagua Pérez (León, 1998) [hereafter: Regla (1565)], pp. 94-5. 22 L.P. Wright, ‘Military Orders in Sixteenth-and Seventeenth-Century Spanish Society: the Institutional Embodiment of a Historical Tradition’, P&P 43 (1969), 55. These figures reflect only the early part of the reign of Charles V; the numbers varied and were at their lowest point in the five-year period 1551-55, when Philip II ascended the throne and tightened the membership. Under Philip III the numbers were consistently more than 100 in each five-year period until, at the accession of Philip IV, the numbers skyrocketed to 515 in the first five years of his reign. 23 Wright, ‘Military Orders’, 35. See also Regla (1527), f. iii. 24 E. Postigo Castellanos, ‘Las Órdenes Militares de la monarquía Hispana. Modelos discursivos de los ss. XVI-XVIII’, in I.R. Izquierdo Benito and F. Ruiz Gómez (eds), Las Órdenes Militares en la península Ibérica (2 vols, Cuenca, 2000), II, pp. 1585-636. 25 Regla (1527), f. iii. 26 E. Postigo Castellanos, Honor y Privilegio en la Corona de Castilla: el Consejo de las Órdenes y los Caballeros de Hábito en el s. XVII (Soria, 1988), p. 43. See also Difiniciones
separation from the world in monasteries, emphasizing the retreat to sacred spaces, fasting and abstinence.27 The importance of Charles V’s reform of the rulebook for the Order cannot be underestimated. It had a direct impact on architecture. The Regla articulated the spiritual rules and norms of behaviour for the group of nobles who were permitted membership of the order, and set up a system of vigilance, the visitadores, who monitored compliance. By outlining the spiritual rules and aligning these with the maintenance and building of churches and monasteries, Charles V and his Habsburg descendants thrust the protection and creation of sacred space into the hands of the nobles. By 1603, the Regla enjoined that a tenth of a noble’s fortune should be given for repairs, ornamentation and maintenance of churches each year.28 The Regla thus gave weight and purpose to the sacred spaces constructed in Spain. Those among the members of the orders of Calatrava, Alcántara, or Santiago who benefited most from the king’s favour were able to build conjuntos (an architectural ensemble of buildings, usually arranged around a central plaza, and often connected by pasadizos), that most closely mirrored the requirements of the order as written in their rulebooks. As a reward for loyalty, Charles V expanded the membership of the Order of Santiago, which had previously been limited to a very few nobles. The expansion in membership was thus reflected in a sudden increase in the building of churches, convents and monasteries. The appearance of private rooms in monastic architecture built by nobles thus seems to escalate from the time of Charles V’s revisions to the rulebook in 1527.29 Patronage of religious foundations was not only expected and required of knights of the military orders like Santiago, it also documented a verifiable Old Christian pedigree. Family burial places within churches were frequently cited as ‘proof of nobility’, and nobility was the required pedigree for entry into the military orders.30 Against the background of the spectacular increase in the numbers of Masses for the dead during the sixteenth century, the Regla of 1603, which expanded upon the initial requirements of 1527, required knights to pay for thirty Masses every year.31 Each religious house was expected to pray for the souls of its founder, his descendents and family. For example, an agreement between the Duke of Lerma and the Dominicans of San Pablo arranged for Masses for the dead to be said and for payments to be made on St John’s day, in June, and at
27 Ibid., ff. viii verso, ix-x verso. 28 Regla (1603), ff. 152 ff. The Regla also mandates repairs, ornaments and gifts of books. 29 Ibid., ff. 15v, 152v.
