The Orientation of the Mozarabic Churches

Abstract

The Mozarabic churches raise a lot of dubious points, beginning with the own concept of Mozarabic, much discussed by the specialists. One of them is its orientation, which has some characteristics that differentiate it from other pre-Romanesque buildings. They maintain the general tendency of the orientation towards the sunrise, but they present greater dispersions than in other studied examples. There are a significant percentage of churches whose orientations do not correspond to any possible position of the solar ortho even an amazing case, such as the hermitage of Hérmedes of Cerrato, practically to the north, exceptional in the European early-medieval churches. Given the scarcity of specific studies on the orientation of the Mozarabic churches, the authors intend to analyze the orientations measured on a set of 49 Spanish and Portuguese churches. They are almost the only places where this architecture was built, except for some examples in the French Septimania, whose consideration presents doubts and that are not included in the database. It is about defining the day that they were oriented and the symbolic, liturgical or functional reasons of such orientation. For this purpose, a brief description of the necessary astronomical calculations will be made. We will also analyze some atypical cases of interest, very remarkable in this type of churches.