Castus castor (the chaste beaver): some reflections on the iconography of the southern portal of Santa María de Uncastillo

• Bauer, Doron ^[1]
  1. [1] John Hopkins University
• Localización: Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, ISSN-e 1754-6567, ISSN 1754-6559, Vol. 1, Nº. 2, 2009, págs. 213-231
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo
• Resumen

  • The Romanesque church of Santa María de Uncastillo (Aragon) presents us with a rich and elaborate sculptural program. Particularly intriguing is the imagery of the southern portal’s archivolts. Avoiding repetition, each voussoir is carved with a unique depiction. Animals, hybrids, and fantastic creatures are dispersed among humans engaged in various activities. The apparent iconographic incoherence has led scholars to dismiss the archivolts’ imagery as mere drollery, or alternatively, to view it as a collective image of the community. None of the previous interpretations explained the relation of the archivolts’ imagery to the sacred substrate on which it resides – the church wall. In this article, I propose a new reading of a prominent portion of the archivolts’ imagery, namely, the central vertical axis of the archivolts. I argue that the four voussoirs that are aligned along this axis generate a reference to castration. Castration in the High Middle Ages was a double‐sided cultural phenomenon. On the one hand, castration was a common and institutionalized social practice, especially in twelfth‐century Aragon. On the other, castration and its outcome served as an important religious metaphor for chastity.