De El Escorial Research Articles

Jewish exegesis and a vernacular translation of the Hebrew Bible

San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Real Biblioteca, MS. I.i.8 (=E8) and MS. I.i.6 (=E6) are complementary parts of an almost complete Bible, translated from Latin, and transmitting a Castilian version likely produced in the first half of the thirteenth century. Unlike the remaining books in this two-volume Bible, the Psalter’s heading indicates that the Psalms were translated from Hebrew, by Hermannus Allemanus, a scholar of German origin who took part in the projects sponsored by King Alfonso X. Both the attribution of the translation and its dependence on a Hebrew source have never convinced scholars entirely. In spite of the fact that the literature on the topic is vast, and that the text of the Psalter and its glosses have sparked renewed interest in recent years, the challenge of identifying Hebrew exegetical sources that might have influenced the translation has remained largely unaddressed. This article takes up that challenge and aims to contribute to furthering our understanding of the bearing of the Jewish medieval exegetical tradition on this translation of the Bible.

Assessment of the Historical Gardens and Buildings Lighting Interaction through Virtual Reality: The Case of Casita de Arriba de El Escorial

Green areas and parks are places where people’s quality of life improves, places of recreation and relaxation, in which to carry out various social activities. Among these, the historic gardens represent the union between green areas and historic architecture. Light is considered one of the main factors influencing the perception of such spaces at night; therefore, lighting solutions should be properly balanced. Immersive virtual reality is a tool that allows for lighting design management from different viewpoints. This study investigates how the lighting of a monumental garden affects people’s perception of its architecture at night. With this aim, a detailed 3D model of the western part of Escorial’s monumental complex in Spain was built in DIALux evo 11 and Unreal Engine 4.27 and used to propose six different lighting scenarios. Participants viewed the scenarios through a head-mounted display and provided subjective feedback on the perceived light strength of the environment and architecture. Results highlight that illuminating surrounding areas affects the environment and building perception, as well as the order in which elements capture observer attention. In particular, lit elements between the observer and the façade can reduce façade importance.

Traduir a l’edat mitjana: el repte d’editar la Legenda aurea de Jacobus de Voragine en català

The Catalan translation of the Legenda Aurea by Jacobus de Voragine has been considered by Meyer and by Corominesas a version very close to its Latin model. However, a review of the preserved manuscripts allows us to note remarkabledifferences from the Latin model as well as among the Catalan manuscripts. In this work we take as a basis the manuscriptE (ms. N-III-5, Madrid, Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial) to analyse structural, editorialand textual changes in the Catalan compilation: structural changes, such as those related to the arrangement of chapters;editorial changes, such as the deletion of extensive fragments in some chapters or the replacement of the version of achapter with another one other than that by Voragine; and textual changes, such as the variants that characterize the twobranches into which the translation evolves. These changes allow us to characterize the formation and the evolution of thiscompilation. We take as a point of reference manuscript E, representative of one of the two branches of the translation,in contrast with P (ms. Espagnol 44, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France), representative of the other. In E thereare important internal differences in the wording of each chapter and differences with respect to the other preservedmanuscripts. In some chapters, the wording of E is very different from that of P, with a less literal version of the Latin text,a wording that will serve as a model for the later print tradition. Editing this compilation based on manuscript E involvestaking into account the rest of the preserved manuscript evidence, as well as the Latin text, in addition to considering thechapters added in this manuscript.

Materiality and Language at El Escorial

Abstract David Bestué’s recent take on Philip II’s reification of centrality (El Escorial: Imperio y estómago, 2021) is an open contestation of the royal site’s conception—and later reception—as an immutable, transcendental edifice meant to “stop the entropy of physical processes.” Distancing himself from castizo evocations of El Escorial as “piedra lírica” (Ortega y Gasset) and “líneas puras” (Unamuno), Bestué guides us through the building’s secluded sewers, the granite quarries that nourished its construction, and its many scenes of fire and dereliction to dismantle the monastery’s value as purely symbolic permanence. As Bestué explains, his book functions “no como un acto más de significación, otra capa, sino como un corte.” This mechanistic notion of the written word as a device with which to shape abstraction back into physicality, however, is not a novel addition to the literature on El Escorial. This article revisits José de Sigüenza’s Fundación del monasterio de El Escorial (1605)—the most exhaustive and authoritative chronicle of its construction—as a reaction to the official representational apparatus of the building. Whereas the language of Philip II’s instructions allied with Juan de Herrera’s designs to project an immutability beyond space and time, Sigüenza, this article shows, enacts a ventriloquist mimicking of artisanal practice that vindicates process and local experience in conflict with the notion of a petrified center of empire. It also examines, as reverberations of these disparities, late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century appraisals of Sigüenza’s text that have projected the unblemished geometrical lines of the Escorial onto the friar’s writing. Its overall aim is to shed light on the lingering tensions around language, architecture, and place that characterize the most instrumentalized—and yet paradoxically dematerialized—of Iberian materialities.

Marco Polo, Le Devisement dou Monde: Version catalane (K), éd. critique par Irene Reginato. Textes Littéraires du Moyen Âge, 68. Série Textes catalans du Moyen Âge, 2. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2022, 927 pp.

The importance of investigating the broad range of manuscripts containing Marco Polo’s Le Devisement dou Monde would not need to be discussed in any particular way. The more effort is put into this task, the better will be our understanding of this most influential travelogue that changed the world in many ways. The Catalan version (K), the object of Irene Reginato’s impressive editorial and translation endeavor, has so far not yet received the full recognition that it deserves. It exists in three manuscripts, K (Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, or Ricc. 2048, here renamed as Kc, in Catalan), K1 (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, or BAV, Ott. Lat. 2207, here renamed Kf, in French), and K2 (Real Biblioteca de El Escorial, or Escorial Z.I.2; here renamed as Ka, in Aragonese), all of which can be identified as independent from each other. In her second chapter, Reginato establishes a stemma for them so that we can understand their relationship with each other. They all go back to an archetype lost today although they have rendered the text in their own respective language. Reginato offers detailed descriptions of each manuscript in the introduction and examines their relationship with each other.

Review: Philip II of Spain and the Architecture of Empire

Review: <i>Philip II of Spain and the Architecture of Empire</i>

A New Mnemonic for the Date of Easter

For obvious reasons, the need to determine the date of Easter each year with precision has occupied British clergy from Bede and before. One result was a proliferation of short mnemonic poems rendering a rule-of-thumb computus for this essential calculation.1 A New Index of Middle English Verse (NIMEV) lists twenty-three versions of these.2 Unsurprisingly, examples in Latin exist also, sometimes in combination with the verses in Middle English.3 MS Q.II.6, an almost unknown manuscript produced in East Anglia ca. 1320–1330, now in the Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de El Escorial in Spain, contains a Middle English Easter mnemonic thus far neither published nor cited. Only Lucy Freeman Sandler has discussed this manuscript, but as an art historian her chief concern was the many splendid images it contains.4 She does not mention the presence of the little mnemonic poem:

(2806) Proposal to conserve the name Cistus violaceus (Helianthemum violaceum) against C. racemosus (Cistaceae)

(2806) Proposal to conserve the name <i>Cistus violaceus</i> (<i>Helianthemum violaceum</i>) against <scp><i>C</i>. <i>racemosus</i></scp> (<i>Cistaceae</i>)

Dos fragmentos de «Ci nous dit» en una antigua encuadernación

&lt;p&gt;Abstract: The article reports the discovery of two small fragments of the Ci nous dit, a 14th-century French book of exempla, located in the binding of a manuscript of the Real Biblioteca de San Lorenzo de El Escorial. This allows us to assume that this collection of stories and anecdotes circulated in Castile in the Middle Ages. In addition, an evidence of its use is adduced by Pedro López de Ayala, San Vicente Ferrer and, perhaps, don Juan Manuel.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Keywords: Ci nous dit, Parchment Pieces, Medieval French Exemplary Literature, Reception in Medieval Castile.&lt;/p&gt;

Archaeometric case-study of tiles of different dates from the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial (Spain)

With the aim to contrast existing historical documentation with information provided by the own materials, an archeometric study of a representative set of tiles from the Monastery of El Escorial was undertaken. The ensemble, composed of 19 ceramic fragments, covers examples from the 16th and 17th century, either from Talavera or Toledo provenances, and was selected according to stylistic criteria. The goals of the study consisted in determining the average chemical composition of the ceramic body, its textural and microstructural characteristics, the crystalline phases to establish firing temperatures, also in studying these aspects in the enamel or glaze layer, as well as in identifying the chromophores for the coloring of the decorations. Conventional techniques such as binocular magnifying glass, XRF spectrometry, petrographic observation by thin-section, XRD, FESEM with EDS microanalysis and visible spectrophotometry were used. Resulting data indicated the use of calcareous clays for the body (22.0–25.5wt.% CaO), the presence of neoformed phases such as gehlenite, diopside and anortite which suggest a firing temperature between 950 and 1050°C approximately, lead-based glazes (∼25.0wt.% PbO on average) with SnO2-opacifier (∼57.0wt.% on average) and Co2+, Cu2+, Fe3+-ions and lead antimoniate for blue, green, brown and yellow decorative colors, respectively.

The Transparente in the Basilica of the Monastery of El Escorial

The presbytery of the basilica of the Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial is closed on its eastern side by a monumental altarpiece that, apparently, is attached to the thick outer perimeter wall. However, at the height of the lower section and behind it, there is a vaulted space that has not yet been studied, and whose main interest is its function as a Transparente. This architectural device, a precursor of other solutions used later during the Baroque period, allows the rays of the rising sun to be introduced directly into the tabernacle and onto the high altar through a window positioned for this purpose. Our study deals with the succession of vaulted and lintelled spaces, arches and windows that make it possible to achieve such a singular effect, together with other aspects related to the perception of the whole, and to the geometry of light.

La Biblioteca del Monasterio de El Escorial según algunos viajeros franceses del siglo XVIII

A partir de un corpus formado por los textos de Vayrac, Saint-Simon, Silhouette, Beaumarchais, Peyron, Bourgoing y Marcillac, publicados tras su estancia en España, este estudio analiza las descripciones y opiniones de dichos autores sobre la biblioteca de El Escorial. Los mencionados escritores franceses del Siglo de las Luces abordan numerosas facetas tales como la distribución y decoración del espacio, las características de los fondos allí conservados, el talante de los monjes al cuidado de la Laurentina, etc. Aunque no todos los viajeros son igual de detallistas y rigurosos a la hora de referirse a la biblioteca escurialense, sus testimonios son parejos en interés porque revelan las distintas perspectivas que desean transmitir a sus contemporáneos. This study is based on a corpus of texts by Vayrac, Saint-Simon, Silhouette, Beaumarchais, Peyron, Bourgoing, and Marcillac, which were published after their visit to Spain, and it analyses how these authors view and describe the Royal Laurentian Library of the monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial. These Age of Enlightenment authors tackle a wide range of aspects, among which the layout and decoration of the space, the features of the collection, or the attitude of the monks in charge of the works. While the travellers’ level of detail and rigour with regard to the library of El Escorial may vary, their accounts are nevertheless equally interesting since they reveal the different perspectives that they wish to convey to their contemporaries.

Metaphysics, Elemental Transformation, Medicine

Abstract The present article brings to the scholarly attention the Avicennian manuscript San Lorenzo de El Escorial (Madrid), Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, 621, by conveying a basic description of its codicological features and by locating it in the wider context of the connection metaphysics-medicine that the transmission of Avicenna’s magnum opus Kitāb al-Šifāʾ (Book of the Cure/Healing) displays. The manuscript at stake is the only extant, though incomplete, codex of the Ilāhiyyāt (Science of Divine Things) of Avicenna’s Šifāʾ presently known in the Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal), and one of the few codices of the Šifāʾ housed there. In its present state, it cumulates metaphysics and medicine, since it joins some excerpts of the Ilāhiyyāt with fragments of the commentaries on Avicenna’s Al-Qānūn fī l-ṭibb (Canon of Medicine) by Ibn al-Nafīs al-Qurašī (d. 687 H/1288) and by Quṭb al-Dīn al-Šīrāzī (634–719 H/1236–1311). The part of the commentary on Avicenna’s Canon by Ibn al-Nafīs al-Qurašī preserved in this manuscript contains a revealing critical quotation of a medical tenet which Avicenna discusses in the Šifāʾ; this criticism very likely represents an instance of the ‘rectification’ of Avicenna’s philosophical encyclopedia of which Ibn al-Nafīs is credited in historical sources. The example of the revision of Avicenna’s philosophy by Ibn al-Nafīs analyzed on the basis of this manuscript makes clear that physicians in the XIII century did not limit their familiarity with Avicenna’s works to the Canon of Medicine and the other medical works of Avicenna, but adopted some kind of all-encompassing approach to Avicenna’s oeuvre, which did not eschewed tackling critically also the Šifāʾ on the basis of a profound and extensive knowledge of the Šayḫ al-raʾīs’s philosophical masterpiece.

A general methodology for identifying the writer of codices. Application to the celebrated “twins”

In the present work, a method of general applicability is introduced for classifying a given set of ancient documents to their writer. A principal motive and, at the same time, a main result of this work was to test if two sets of documents preserving the Homeric Iliad have been written by the same hand or not. To achieve this, the authors have developed and/or improved two dedicated methods, which may be described very briefly as follows: the first method compares all realizations of the same alphabet symbol appearing in two documents and it offers related quantitative criteria. The second method aims at determining the ideal form(s) of each alphabet symbol the writer had in his/her mind when writing a document. In both methods, decision is made by means of novel statistical criteria. Application of this methodology furnished the following results in a fully quantitative manner: 1) all twenty-six (26) Byzantine codices kept at Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial or at the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice that have been studied, have been written by four (4) distinct writers only. 2) The codices written by each one of the four hands have been spotted with maximum likelihood and 3) the celebrated “twins” have indeed been written by the same hand. We once more emphasize that the approach introduced here may be immediately applied to classifying any set of documents to the distinct hands that have written them.

CIUDADES CORTESANAS AL SERVICIO DEL MONARCA: SAN LORENZO DE EL ESCORIAL Y LAS ACTUACIONES URBANAS DE CARLOS III

During the 18th century, the Bourbon dynasty materialized in the Royal Places the transformation of the court system, through the creation of new cities, close to its residences. Aranjuez, La Granja de San Ildefonso, San Lorenzo de El Escorial and El Pardo will be the subject of large-scale urban operations, strengthened during the reign of Carlos III. He will carry out a methodical program in order to organize and dignify the royal stays. However, in San Lorenzo, the King found an important problem that compared to the other cases it seemed insuperable: a religious community considered itself custody of the will of the founder king Felipe II. This is way, the community was contrary to urbanize the environment of the Monastery. The perseverance of the King, ruthless in his idea, will achieve the success in the Royal Decree of 1767 for the construction of houses on the Site.

El manuscrito del 'Cancionero de Baena' (PN1): Descripción codicológica y evolución histórica

The present article attempts to establish as accurately as possible the chronological trajectory of the unique codex of the Cancionero de Baena (PN1 in the Dutton nomenclature). It begins with a detailed examination of the codicological aspects of the manuscript, which serve to date its origin to around 1465. This origin, combined with the historical data, supports a conjecture that the manuscript probably belonged to Gonzalo de Beteta, an official of both Enrique IV and the Catholic Kings. It would have passed from him to his grandson, Jorge de Beteta y Cardenas, who gave it to the Real Biblioteca de El Escorial in 1576. The article then follows the vicissitudes of the manuscript from its disappearance from the Escorial at the beginning of the 19th c. until its sale in London in 1824 and its acquisition in 1836 by the Bibliotheque nationale de France, its current home. In passing, the article refutes the thesis that the manuscript would have belonged to the library of Isabel I in 1503 and would have been left by her, along with other books, to the Capilla Real of the cathedral of Granada, whence it would have passed to El Escorial.

A Manuscript of the Last Sultan of al-Andalus and the Fate of the Royal Library of the Nasrid Sultans at the Alhambra

AbstractThis article addresses the fate of the Royal Library of the Nasrid Sultans at the Alhambra. Several royal manuscripts once belonging to the Nasrid sultans of Granada survive to this day, despite having been thought burned by the cardinal Cisneros (d. 1517). One of the volumes is a personal manuscript of the last sultan of al-Andalus, Muḥammad XI (Boabdil; reigned 887–888/1482–1483, 892–897/1487–1492) and is currently held in the Royal Library of the Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial. This codex abounds with manuscript notes telling the story of its creation and its first owner, the Sultan, until it was incorporated into the current collection. The author examines its journey in the context of the Sultan’s life and the Nasrid manuscript and book culture, arguing that it was this ruler who moved the royal books out of the Alhambra to his place of exile in North Africa. The article is accompanied by an edition and translation of an ijāza given to Muḥammad XI by the mufti and khaṭīb of Granada al-Mawwāq (d. 897/1492). It is the sole surviving royal teaching certificate from the Nasrid period of Andalusi history.

Introduction to Discourse on Fever of Averroes

The 884th Arabic manuscript from the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial (Ms. DCCCLXXIX, according to Miquel Casiri´s cataloguing) contains in the folios 1ro-7ro and the folios 63vo-64vo two short treatises written by the great scholar from Cordova Ibn Rushd (Averroes) (1126-1198) on fever and its acute access. The first part (f.1ro to f.7ro), titled in Arabic Talkhīs Kitāb al-ḥummayyāt (Summary of fevers book), is a paraphrase of Galen´s De febris; and the second one (f.63vo to f.64vo) is a booklet that lacks a specific title and it possibly is the work called Masā’il fī-nawā’ib al-ḥumma (Questions about the acute access of fever) or Kalām fī-i‘tiqād zamān al-nūba (Speech on the acute bout of fever time). The present article is an approach to the study of these writings and provides the edition and the translation to English of some fragments as well as a brief introduction to the author and his main oeuvre.

Mantua y otras posibles cabeceras de ciudades romanas en el ámbito de la Comunidad de Madrid

This paper aims to revise the literary, epigraphical and archaeological evidence in order to identify the Roman towns in the current Comunidad de Madrid. It argues that Mantua was located in current Villamanta and that other civitatum capita might have been in La Dehesa de la Oliva (Patones), Collado Villalba or San Lorenzo de El Escorial.

UNDERGROUND SURVEYING: 16TH CENTURY CELLAR VAULTS IN THE GALERÍA DE CONVALECIENTES, MONASTERY OF SAN LORENZO DEL ESCORIAL

Abstract. Underground surveying of cellars, caves, and architectural spaces, is quite different from surveying on the surface. Researchers must deal with various challenges derived of the lack of natural light, low temperature, and humidity, but also with inaccessibility. But the essential problem in underground surveying is that of orientating the underground surveys to the surface surveys. For this purpose our methodology integrates different geomatic techniques, as the use of a scanner laser in order to obtain a 3D model, as well as classic topography, and GPS to locate accurately the control points according to the official reference frame of the Spanish Geodetic Network. The developed methodology is described and applied to the case study of the cellars of the Gallery of Convalescents (Galería de Convalecientes) in the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial. These cellars compose an outstanding series of interrelated singular complex spaces. Their study is particularly relevant because of the quality of the stonework, the geometry of the vaults and lunettes, and the stereotomy. The fact that these spaces were neither surveyed nor studied before, must be stressed. And our work will bring into light an important part of the 16th century Spanish architectural heritage. Finally, the INSPIRE Directive becomes an opportunity to integrate cultural heritage datasets into an interoperable framework, and to share and diffuse them as geographic information.