During the central centuries of the Middle Ages
we witnessed the development of the Romanesque style:
the architectural school
that has left the greatest number of testaments
on the Iberian Peninsula.
Its appearance in the second half of the eleventh century
represented a genuine constructive phenomenon
that managed, in very little time, to fill the western world
with churches created according to certain shared principles.
This, therefore,
was the first international European art,
which would last two long centuries before giving way to the Gothic.
This religious art
incorporates the novelty of adding reliefs to walls,
providing rich repertoires of images such as the ones
we find in the French Abbey of Saint Foy of Conques.
Along with formal sacred representations,
we find startling images of hell
and an infinite collection of fantastical creatures.
The significance of some of these images
continues to provoke debate among specialists,
as we know this was a symbolic art,
intended to instruct the uneducated masses.
Romanesque art is thus spoken of as a kind of “Bible in stone”.
To the narration of the lives of the saints
added representations that brought feudal society to life,
where some prayed, others tilled the soil and yet others made war.
Both the quotidian scenes
and the fantastic figures demonstrate
that these reliefs did not only limit themselves
to relating Holy Scripture,
but that they also reflected the reality of their era.
Images of sinners also abound
in specific parts of the temple, such as the corbels.
Located on the exterior of the churches
and flattened by the weight of the roof,
the corbels were often populated
by those individuals excluded from the society of the time.
Thus, Romanesque sculpture
not only fulfilled the role of teaching religious doctrine,
but also served to praise and condemn
the social behaviours of the time.
Certain images confuse even the present-day spectator,
who finds more of an attempt at diversion
than moral teachings in these figures.
Yet throughout the European Romanesque
there are stubbornly repeated
representations of an apparently mocking nature,
such as obscene figures or faces with lolling tongues.
Their presence in such diverse locations
and across two centuries
shows us that they were intended to transmit a message,
this message being responsible for their diffusion.
The clerical supervision of the temple’s images
prevented the sculptors from enjoying any creative liberty,
placing their chisels firmly in the service of the Church.
The obscene figures represented the sins of the flesh
and their grotesque appearance
attempted to reflect their moral perdition.
For their part, the characters with the protruding tongues
portrayed the blasphemous and slanderous,
at times animalised by the very brutality attributed to them.
The writings of the era reflect the monks’ insistent censure
towards such behaviours,
allowing us to understand the significance of the images.
Among the many maleficent and heterodox characters
that inhabited the Romanesque temples,
we find figures directly related
to the context of the Crusades and the battle against Islam.
Some of these demonised individuals,
such as those we can see in this facade of Santa María de Uncastillo,
represent the religious enemy.
The Muslim dancers and the depictions of combat
are just some examples of this repertoire
that illustrates the interreligious environment of the time.
The representation of the Muslim in Romanesque art
is the central theme of a recent study entitled:
"The Imagined Enemy.
Spanish Romanesque Sculpture and the Fight against Islam".
Its author, Doctor Inés Monteira,
has dedicated more than a decade to analysing this question.
Romanesque sculpture
clearly reflects the context of the fight against Islam,
given that the primary promoters of Romanesque art
were also the protagonists behind the Crusades
and behind what we know as “La Reconquista”
that is, popes and monks, mainly,
the Church
and also the cristian kings from the Peninsula
and the lords, the local governors.
This explains why images of battles
began to inundate the walls of certain churches,
they represented most of the time
the fight between christians and muslims.
Throughout today the main part of the polychromies disappeared
and a huge number of reliefs are today deteriorated
I have been able to analyse many elements of these reliefs
allowing the identification of each side (Christians and Muslims).
Elements like attire weaponry of each party
both Christian and Muslims
and other important elements, like
the cross in the helmet od the Christian knight
connecting those images
with the sacralized war of that moment.
You also can find physical traits
attributed to each party that are very eloquent.
These images
were a valuable instrument of politico-religious propaganda:
they justified the war as holy by comparing the Christian knight
with saints and martyrs
that were also par of the decoration of the churches.
This encouraged enlistment in the Crusades
and the combat against Islam.
At the same time, the war was legitimate
before the entirety of the people
that suffered the casualties of their relatives.
These reliefs being part of the Church the house of God,
announced that the war was wanted by God.
The era of the Romanesque’s expansion,
between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries,
witnessed the dizzying advance
of the Christian conquest of the Iberian Peninsula.
As the front line advanced southwards,
new Romanesque temples were erected,
allowing, on one hand, consolidation of the territorial occupation
and, on the other,
symbolisation of Christianity’s triumph over Islam.
This process has traditionally been labelled the Reconquista,
despite the fact that this term is not altogether accurate
from a historical point of view.
The Visigoth people that dominated the Iberian Peninsula
at the time of the Muslim invasion, in 711,
had also come from afar.
The Hispano-Christian kingdoms
that began to conquer Islamic lands
from the eleventh century onwards were, in fact, constituted
long after the disappearance of the Visigoth kingdom,
and maintained no dynastic ties with the same,
even if they pretended so.
This is not a recovery literally.
The term “reconquest”, then, more accurately reflect
the ideology of the era’s Christian kings,
who hoped to present their territorial expansion
as the recovery of something that belonged to them
by fair inheritance.
The establishment of a common artistic style
in the temples of western Christianity
was a consequence of the Gregorian Reform,
a reform promoted by the papacy
that hoped to unify the ecclesiastical rite
in all the feudal kingdoms
and increase Rome’s power in the West.
The monastic order of Cluny
was a valuable tool at the service of the pope
for the introduction of Romanesque art
and the Roman Rite in Europe.
The Cluniac monks emerging in Burgundy
acquired enormous power during the Romanesque period,
and were the foremost advocates
of the construction of churches in this style.
They built abbeys along the Way of Saint James
and in other areas that would later be imitated
by the parishes of small towns.
The papacy was also particularly preoccupied
with waging the war against Islam.
The Islamic hegemony in the Iberian Peninsula
led Rome to demand that the Spanish kings
conquer Al-Andalus.
In 1064 Pope Alexander II summoned French horsemen
to head for and to take Barbastro,
offering indulgences in return;
namely the pardoning of the combatants’ sins.
Barbastro is considered as a forerunner to the Crusades,
which would later set forth for the Holy Land,
at the end of the eleventh century.
Cluny echoed this ideology that sanctified the war,
an ideology that found its greatest method of diffusion
in the stone of churches.
In Romanesque sculpture,
the Christian knight frequently bears the cross on his shield,
the emblem par excellence of the Crusades.
The Muslim’s shield generally presents a circular shape
and is decorated with arabesque motifs.
On other occasions,
the enemy of the faith carries an elongated shield,
but can be identified by other traits
such as the four crescent moons,
although the polychromy that one day covered these reliefs
has disappeared.
The soldiers’ weapons refer us to the reality of the era,
allowing us to identify the Christian and Islamic sides.
The sword, with its cruciform shape,
was considered a noble weapon, distinctive of the knight of God,
as was the lance.
We can read this in the chansons de geste of the time.
Epic literature also reveals that other arms
habitually employed by the fighters from Al-Andalus,
such as the axe and the mace, had highly negative connotations.
These orally transmitted narrations
qualify these instruments as ignoble weapons,
typical only of the “Saracen infidels”,
and today assist us in interpreting certain reliefs.
At times, the individuals armed with an axe also wear a turban,
and on occasions these instruments even bear demons,
in a clear attempt to identify the religious enemy with the Malign.
The same occurs with the bows and arrows,
weapons characteristic of the Al-Andalus fighters
that appear alongside them in sculptures
of the Muslim warriors.
The era’s papal documentation,
monastic texts and chronicles throw themselves
into the enshrinement of the religious war,
presented as a necessary undertaking
and as a battle between God and the Devil.
Both in these learned sources and in the chansons de geste
we can see the propagation of an anti-Islamic ideology,
which came to create a pejorative concept of the enemy.
Muslims were classed as “devils”, “liars”,
“idolaters”, “fornicators” and “irrational animals”.
The defamation of Islam was thus extremely widespread
and manifested itself in images
that transferred the discourse from the authorities
to the unlettered populace,
transformed into a powerful stimulus for war.
In certain churches,
such as the French cathedral of Oloron-Sainte-Marie,
we find the image of the captive Muslim.
Situated on the trumeau of the entrance,
the infidel prisoner is shown as a living display
of the triumph over Islam.
The figure of the vanquished enemy
employs the model of the classical Atlas,
sustaining the weight of the religious building.
Literally crushed by the church,
the captive wears oriental attire
and gesticulates with the ugly expressions
that also characterise the Saracen in the chansons de geste.
The depiction of the conquered adversary
acts to personify the Christian triumph,
evidenced by the defeat and humiliation of the “false faith”.
These images reflect a historical reality,
given that the capturing of prisoners
was a common part of the warmaker’s spoils.
At the same time, however,
it symbolises the superiority of Christianity,
as it was believed none other than God conceded these victories.
Within the cathedral of Oloron we also find
several characteristic heads with Negroid features,
an image often repeated in Romanesque corbels.
Although the majority of those in Al-Andalus were,
in fact, locals converted to Islam,
the Almoravid armies
began to incorporate numerous Sub-Saharan soldiers.
This ethnic group, without a doubt,
caused a great impact in a society where the cohesion of the group
was based on the rejection of diversity.
The first known black people at that time
belonged to the Islamic side,
and their artistic representation,
with exaggerated and even caricatured traits,
allowed the portrayal of the religious enemy
as the counterpoint to the Christian,
highlighting physical differences
and assigning them demonic qualities,
as an evil nature was attributed to black skin.
The ideology of crusade also found a place in sacred images,
particularly in those of the warrior saints.
The apostle Santiago (Saint James), whose supposed relics
are venerated in Santiago de Compostela’s cathedral,
began to be depicted as an armed knight,
as he appears in a relief
that gives access to the cathedral’s treasury.
Various legends
relate how the apostle had miraculously appeared
in the midst of the battles against the moors,
to fight and attain victory for the Christian side.
Here lies the origin of the famous Saint James the Moor-slayer,
whose figure appears in innumerable Spanish churches
of later times.
Saint James can often be found crushing a Muslim beneath his mount,
with other knightly saints such as Saint George
also displayed in this manner on occasion.
The transformation of Saint James into the paradigm of the Reconquista
allowed the battle against Islam
to be perceived as a labour of holy men and as a contest desired by God.
We can thus verify that the papacy’s sacralisation of the war
led to a fusion of the figures of saint and warrior,
two entities entirely contrary in origin.
The most powerful argument
to convert the struggle against Islam
into a sacred mission, however,
consisted not only of sanctifying the crusading knights,
but also of demonizing the adversary.
The conflict was framed
as a strugggle waged in God's name against the Devil,
as he fight of God against the Demon, as the duel between good and evil.
It is expressed as such in the texts of the era
and so too we find it formulated in the images.
That’s why you often can see in Romanesque sculpture
alongside combat between knights,
or between soldiers dressed like the era s warriors,
other allegorical images, more symbolic,
in which a soldier bearing the cross on his shield
confronts a monster or a beast, or a dragon, frequently.
Sometimes is Samson fighting the lion
the one alongside the combat scenes.
These images offered
an allegorical interpretation of the struggle against Islam
and expressed specially
the spiritual dimension assigned to this religious war.
Muslims demonization causes,
subsequently, their “animalization” in art.
The famous Song of Roland,
the epic poem most recited
in the squares along the Camino de Santiago,
narrates Charlemagne’s dream
following Roland’s death at the hand of the Muslims.
The poem says:
"Then comes from the woods a great lion, full of fury,
arrogance and audacity, and challenging his very person,
attacks him.
Both roll body to body in the battle,
that Charles cannot determine
which of the two is above or below”.
Many representations of the time show the Cristian knights
fighting against lions, griffins and dragons,
all symbols of evil.
These images allow a further step towards
the consecration of the war,
linking victory over worldly enemies
with triumph over the devil.
Since its inception, Christian art
has represented the devil in animal form,
as the Book of Revelation describes it
as the ancient beast and the beast with seven heads.
The symbolic nature of the Romanesque image
allows it to refer both to the devil and to the sinners of the day
through the use of bestial representations,
and, in particular, through the image of “animalised” men.
Monastic texts insistently described
Muslims as a bestial people.
This accusation was defended
by indicating their lustful instincts
and the irrationality that led them to remain in a “false faith”.
In the epic poems,
the Saracens often took on a special deformity,
the degree of caricature being such
that their appearance belonged to the realms of the fantastic.
We find certain descriptions of Muslims as implausible
as that of Agolafre in the poem Fierabras,
with his eyes located on the back of his head
and whose ears are large enough to serve as an overcoat.
Other Muslims, as in the saga of the Chevalerie d Ogier,
are endowed with two mouths, two noses and four arms.
In this manner,
the Saracens carried their heresy drawn on their faces,
through features such as physical misfortune,
bestial traits or a range of other monstrous deformities.
The Poema de Fernán González explains perfectly
that ugliness was an attribute of moral dimensions,
indicating that the Muslims were:
“uglier than Satan with all his convent,
when he emerges from hell filthy and coal-blackened”.
Deformity, monstrosity and beastliness, then,
are tools for social and religious exclusion,
both in epic literature and Romanesque art.
This is a conceptual procedure
that allows the expression, in figurative terms,
of the subject’s moral degradation.
In this manner,
the attribution of a disagreeable countenance to certain collectives
aimed to reflect a corrupt and diabolical soul.
One of the animalised representations
of the Muslim in Romanesque art
is the archer-centaur.
On the battlefield,
the Al-Andalus combatants were compared with centaurs,
given their technique of mounting the horse with short stirrups,
known as “a la jineta”.
The great agility of these horsemen,
in such harmony with their mounts,
caused considerable losses on the Christian side,
as they could turn to fire their arrows
even as they retreated.
On the contrary, the Christians wore heavy armour and long stirrups,
meaning that they could only attack head-on.
Certain Romanesque centaurs
wear turbans or exhibit Negroid characteristics,
making their identification with the Muslims clear.
This mythological being also served to symbolise the sin
that Christians insistently related with Islam:
that of lust.
The mermaids and Tritons,
who in the Romanesque period symbolised the sins of the flesh,
also wore turbans from time to time,
portrayed as the lustful infidels
invented by the anti-Islamic ideology.
At times, the bird-bodied sirens
also appear in turbans or show Negroid features.
Although the animalisation of the Muslim in art and writing
had a metaphorical sense and was generally understood as such,
this approach fostered the growth of a powerful
xenophobic sentiment in society.
The mental procedure for these associations was,
in reality, very simple:
the exclusion of the religious community was equated with
the expulsion of the human race itself,
making a monster of all that did not embrace Christianity.
The wars waged between
Christians and Muslims throughout history
began precisely in the era of the Romanesque,
when the historical processes
known as the Reconquista and the Crusades commenced.
These military confrontations were based on an ideology
that became deeply rooted in the collective imaginary
and made territorial conquests possible.
The search for a common enemy
provided a powerful cohesive force for western Christianity,
contributing to its unity and its expansion.
The pejorative view of the Muslim
made popular in the central centuries of the Middle Ages
was far from any attempt to reflect reality.
It was common for the faithful who attended church
to never have seen a Muslim,
knowing them only through sermons and the images in the temple.
The Muslim we find in Romanesque sculpture, then,
is the product of the ideology of the age
and takes the form of a visual metaphor.
He is an imagined enemy and not a real entity:
a caricature created in the service of a war in God’s name.