The Romanesque churches along de way of Saint James challenges and potential outcomes of an astronomy and culture project

Abstract

One of the longest pilgrimage routes in Medieval Europe was –and still is– the Camino de Santiago or the Way of Saint James, aka Jacobean route. The Romanesque style spread across the north of the Iberian Peninsula along this routeusing the main communication channels already in place among the Iberian Christian kingdoms. A multidisciplinary study of these churches that considerstheir orientations, the astral iconography or the existence of light and shadow effects, could not only shed light on the astronomical traditions related to the Way, but also on how it was employed to highlight the religiousness of the time. Further, the study of the orientations might reflect how the political shifts at the time influenced the religious sphere. We present here the tantalizing preliminary results of the project.To begin with, the orientation towards Easter sunrise seems to be a shared landmark for the epoch, not documented before. However,each kingdom retained its own peculiarities, accentuating some old customs, or creating new ones.Astral iconography seems to highlight certain aspects of the religious sphere, while the underway 3D modelling of churches appears as a promising tool to verify whether illumination events inside the churches were sought from the start of construction or whetherthey appeared and were signified afterwards.