King Alfonso XI of Castile (1325-1350) was knighted in Compostela Isabel de Aragón (c. The encounter with the marvellous attracted the most modest and the nobility. In this framework of crisis, chaos and recuperation, peasants, bourgeois, soldiers, nobles and those I religious orders went on pilgrimage especially in the periods of truce, under the mantle of a cosmic vision which interpreted the Milky Way as a way of souls heading to Paradise. At the end of the XIV century, a period of economic expansion began and was developed in the following century. In the celebration of the Roman Holy Year of 1300, the Pope offered the pilgrims the Plenary Indulgence or the forgiveness of their sins. The most well-known example of this identification is the famous Romanic relief in the cloister of Santo Domingo de Silos (Burgos). That is why it was not infrequent in the scenes of the apparition of the risen Jesus to the disciples of Emaus to represent the Saviour as a pilgrim, with emblems of the Jacobean pilgrimage such as the leather pouch and the scallop shell. In the small medieval hospitals it was customary to offer wards with twelve beds, or six double beds, in remembrance of the twelve apostles of Jesus.įor the medieval mentality, the pilgrim was sent from heaven, therefore, he had to be considered and treated as if he were Jesus Christ. The monarchs founded a large number of hospitals on the Way, demonstrating the willingness of the Crown to exercise the Christian virtue of charity and serve God and Santiago as the patron saint of the kingdom. The closed context of re-use makes it very likely that such recycled pieces of parchment are in fact remnants of a pre-Reformation stock of manuscripts locally used.The majority of the hospital institutions for pilgrims and the poor were created through the donations contributed by religious communities, episcopal sees, noble families, high level clerics and, especially, kings. In addition to that, in the series of administrative registers of the parish, there are several fragments of mediaeval manuscripts, among them one copied in Carolingian minuscule, the rest of the ‘fragments collection’ containing the usual liturgical manuscripts from the 14th to 15th century. One highlight of this historical collection is the large number of original 16th-century bindings, many of them dated. While research into the discovery has only just started, Dincă explains that they have already made some exciting finds: Church tower where the collection was kept – Photo by Adinel C. The research team will now be working to match up the discovered books with those listed in the catalogue. Professor Dincă notes that a catalogue published in 1864 lists around 7,700 books held by the library, including dozens of early printed works by Protestant Reformers such as Martin Luther, John Calvin and Philip Melanchthon. These items may have been part of a much larger library collection within the church. The books were part of the church patrimony and were mostly kept (from a certain moment on) for their intrinsic value. Furthermore, older shelfmarks were following (with few exceptions) a clear order. This order doesn’t look like an improvisation and suggests that the collection was placed there at an earlier stage of development. When I first encountered the books, I immediately noticed the disposition of the volumes according to a certain historical typology: bibles and biblical texts, patristic, theology etc.
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