'Incense longs to disappear in aroma,
The aroma return to incense.
The melody seeks to be linked to the rhythm,
While the rhythm is collected in melody.
The idea seeks your body in the form,
The way your freedom in the idea.
The infinite seeks the contact of infinity,
He finite his liberation in the infinite.
What drama exists between creation and destruction ...
This incessant swing between idea and form ?.
Limitation pursues freedom,
And freedom seeks rest in limitation. '
[Rabindranath Tagore]
I read this poem by Tagore, some months after my visit to Ribadavia. And believe it or not, the first thing that came to mind, were these weak embers that, judging by their characteristics and their beauty, should have constituted a whole poem where the rhythm was collected in the idea, the idea was made flesh in the form and the finite was liberated in the infinite. But the most painful, in the end, it does not stop being - and I continue with the impressions of the Tagorians - that terrible drama that always exists between creation and destruction.
It is difficult, tremendously difficult, to get an idea of how this conventual conception could have been in its origins, of which only a few pieces of painstaking elaboration and incalculable value survive.
In this regard we know, by references, that originally in the place -Francelos, located a little less than a kilometer from Ribadavia and currently, little more than a neighborhood outside the walls of this historic medieval city- there was a female religious community; and we know, moreover, that the monastery - which judging by the characteristics of the few surviving pieces, would have to be related to that magnificent Asturian art or pre-Romanesque -, was under the invocation of a controversial figure that raises today as much passion, as Once the orthodox ecclesiastical misogyny tried to denigrate and distort: Santa Maria Magdalena.
In fact, the Magdalene cult -like that of the Mother Goddess-, despite it was so popular, that it became necessary to resort to a primordial figure who, however, incredibly, given its importance, had remained until then in a more than discreet background: the Virgin Mary. The generalization of his cult, did not begin to spread and popularize, gradually replacing the places of worship of that other character, apparently so close also to Christ, and above all, the ancient shrines of the Great Mother Goddess, but from the 11th and 12th centuries, possibly coinciding with that particular moment, in which the Benedictine institutions were being relieved by the integration and growth of another religious order, reformist, split off from the former and innovative, whose views, mainly, meant a timely regression towards the main precepts of primitive Christianity: poverty, humility and austerity.
Precepts that, however, were not an obstacle so that in the numerous monasteries and monasteries that they occupied, modified or built, they gave a superb lesson of sacred architecture, in which the inalterable criteria of moderation, balance and proportion, bequeathed to posterity glories imperishable and worthy of admiration.
Whoever comes to Francelos looking for a place marked by five or more stars -which Michelin has not yet taken up the matter- in the numerous Romanesque guides distributed both in printed works and through this magnificent tool that is Internet, surely He will be very disappointed, seeing his dream of artistic greatness turned into wisps of smoke.
Now, whoever goes to bare chest, letting himself be carried away simply by his passion towards Art, and at least by his own intuition, will observe that in the details of those small surviving lattices, the hand of an authentic artist, who handled chisel and chisel with something more than skill and the need to earn a necessary wage: he treated with the love of a mother that stone embryo from which a creature without doubt, full of soul and vitality, would arise.
Also, observing those fragments that describe, judging by their details, several episodes of the life of Jesus, such as a probable escape to Egypt and a triumphal entry of Christ in Jerusalem on the back of an ass - it is still curious, that both kings as prophets used in Israel this animal, which in Egypt was dedicated to the figure of Seth, and probably was a reminder of the time of captivity and assimilation of certain symbols, necessary, as an alternative data, can be, likewise, remember some other weak fragments, of similar invoice, age and characteristics, that still, already hardly, can be appraised in other different places, like in the town of Quintana del Pino, at the foot of the highway that unites Burgos with Palencia and Santander, in whose church dedicated to the figure of San Sebastián, similar remains can be appreciated, although with different themes, one of which, by the details of the wolf devouring the mule or the horse, could be a reference also to another saint of great renown and tradition in Galicia: San Froilán.
Finally, note that it is significant, in addition, the current dedication of the small hermitage: San Xés or San Ginés, relatively modern and that, however, evokes, may intentionally, another of those peculiar saints, associated with ancient traditions, such as the Hindu jinas or the Islamic djinns that, after all, do not clash in one place, the eternal Galicia, where there are still many places where traditions survive the old myths of the Old Religion. San Xés, no doubt, is a place that is worthwhile, not only discover, but rediscover.
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NOTICE: originally published in my blog ROMÁNICA, ENIGMAS DEL ROMÁNICO ESPAÑOL. Both the text, photographs, and video (with the exception of music, reproduced under a YouTube license) are my exclusive intellectual property. The original entry can be found at the following address: https://juancar347-romanica.blogspot.com.es/2016/04/francelos-iglesia-de-san-xes-o-san-gines.html
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