Commemorating a Providential Conquest in Valencia: The 9 October Feast

Abstract

From 1338 onwards, the inhabitants of late-medieval Valencia celebrated a feast every 9 October commemorating the entrance into the city of King James I’s forces on that day in 1238. It has been argued that this was essentially a spiritual display from its establishment in 1338 until the beginning of the fifteenth century. The present study delves deeper into the religious and political aims of the feast from its origins, framing the celebration within a broader Mediterranean context. The first part analyses the 9 October feast in relation to two medieval liturgies that also commemorated crusading victories against Islam: the “Feast of the Liberation of Jerusalem” and the “Feast of the Banner of Majorca”. The second part focuses on the combination of performance and images during the ceremony, leading to the conclusion that the 9 October procession had similar goals to those in Jerusalem and Majorca. Indeed, the ceremony intended to convey an interpretation of the conquest as the continuation of Biblical history because it visibly and orally aligned the capture of Valencia with divine will and the sacred Scriptures.

1. Introduction

From 1338 onwards, the inhabitants of late-medieval Valencia celebrated a feast every 9 October commemorating the entrance into the city of King James I’s forces on that day in 1238. Accounts from the Historical Municipal Archive of Valencia (Narbona 1997) and the Cathedral ceremonial book (Martí and Serra 2009) specify that the central act was a procession with the bishop at the head and featuring relics and monarchical symbols. Two institutions were in charge of the organization: the city government and the Church. The former announced the processional route through the streets of Valencia and the latter arranged liturgical functions, keeping vigil in Saint Denis’ Chapel in the Cathedral, officiating the morning mass, singing hymns and saying prayers in Saint George’s Church.

The 9 October feast was thus a civic commemoration that included certain liturgical ceremonies. Scholars such as Salvador Carreres (1925, pp. 4–5) and Rafael Narbona (1997, pp. 21–34; 2003, pp. 79–80, 175–77) have argued that it was essentially a religious display from its establishment in 1338 until the beginning of the 15th century. Narbona also accepted that the feast was linked to royal entries in symbolic terms: in commemorating the conquest of Valencia by King James I, the city government was signalling its loyalty to the monarchy (Narbona 1997, p. 28; 2011, pp. 449–50). That is why the royal banners were held by a “justícia” or criminal justice official during the procession. However, the 9 October ceremony was quite different from royal adventus ceremonies. There were no civic guilds mounting pageants in the streets, nor actors (e.g., angels, prophets, virtues, and vices) celebrating the coming of the king to Valencia as a New Jerusalem (Aliaga et al. 2007; Cárcel and García 2013; Kipling 1998, pp. 6–42). And none of the formal acts suggests that the Church or the city government sought to identify the king—represented by his banner—as Christ.

The present study delves deeper into the religious and political aims of the 9 October feast from its origins until ca. 1500. The liturgy is thus analysed as a religious act that also had mundane and practical consequences, and whose celebration can be framed within a broader Mediterranean context. Specifically, the 9 October feast is compared to the “Feast of the Liberation of Jerusalem” (c. 1105–1187 and 1228–1244) and the “Feast of the Banner of Majorca” (c. 1300–1500) in order to define the kind of ceremony that was held in each case. The comparison is based on the processional route.

Each of these processions commemorated a crusading victory, the Christian conquest of a city that had belonged to Muslims. The medieval chroniclers remembered these events as providential: “the Siege of Jerusalem” occurred thanks to miracles and divine assistance (Kohler 1900–1901b; Rubenstein 2014; John 2015, pp. 412–15; Russo 2017; Gaposchkin 2017, pp. 148–56); the battle for Majorca in 1229 took place with King James I’s forces invoking the Mother of God and Saint George fighting at the Christians’ side (Ferrando and Escartí 2010, pp. 188–89); and the battle of El Puig of 1237, leading up to the capture of Valencia in 1238, was successful due to the intervention of the Virgin and Saint George (Orcástegui 1986, p. 93). The fact that the three feasts commemorated similar events and that posterity perpetuated them as providential crusades does not mean that the entire ceremony was the same in the three cities. They each tailored the standard liturgical procession to the specific history as it played out in their particular urban environment (Mitchell 1999, pp. 88–89).

In Valencia, one of the characteristic traits of the Christian community was that it lived alongside the religion defeated in 1238: Islam. After the Christian conquest, King James I the Conqueror agreed to let Muslims live in that territory. Thenceforth, until the end of the 13th century, the Christian incomers were immersed in a “semipermanent crusade” against the indigenous population (Burns 1967, pp. 12–15; Torró 2006). Throughout the late Middle Ages, intercommunal relations fluctuated. The spirit of the crusade—or, in other words, of “holy war” (Flori 2003, pp. 344, 349)—was reformulated and complemented by other attitudes, ranging from a willingness to co-operate in mutually beneficial relationships (Meyerson 1991; English and Meyerson 2000; Catlos 2015) to unease, bigotry and rejection of the other (Benítez and García 2009). Despite the fact that the monarchy usually sought to protect the Mudejars, they were a constant threat at the border (Ferrer 1988) or as potential allies of the Islamic forces of Granada and north Africa (Díaz 1993, pp. 86–87). The Muslim were not assimilated (Torró 2012) and animosity towards them did not disappear, as proved by the outbreaks of violence against the Muslim quarters aimed at the physical eradication of the other (Ruzafa 1990; Ferrer 1988, pp. 25–26, 66). The celebration of the 9 October feast could be influenced by the state of this coexistence. As Narbona (1997, p. 24) notes, the feast dramatized the victory over Islam, recalling the conquest of Valencia as the working of divine providence.

This paper is a recontextualization the 9 October feast, analysing the interplay between civic history and a providential mindset. The sources drawn upon are already published documents, and also some previously uncited ones, with a re-examination of the documentation on the ceremony from between 1338 and 1500, and especially the registers of Manuals de Consells and the “albarans” of Claveria Comuna in the Historical Municipal Archive of Valencia (the Arxiu Històric Municipal de Valencia; henceforth, the AHMV). The first part of the paper analyses the 9 October feast in relation to the “Feast of the Liberation of Jerusalem” and the “Feast of the Banner of Majorca”, taking into account the fact that they referred to the Christian refoundation of each city and were remembered as providential events. The article then turns to the feast itself, to show how its various elements –the route it took, the sermon preached and the images seen—commemorated and valorized the conquest of 1238. Lastly, a detail on the inclusion of the royal flag as a political element of the 9 October procession is emphasized.

2. Jerusalem, Majorca and Valencia

Gabriel Llompart wrote brief annotations about the origins of the commemorative ritual of the day of the Christian conquest of Majorca. He argued that the ceremony of the Feast of the Banner—a name by which it is still known today—coincided with the anniversary of the First Crusade; that is to say, with the capture of Jerusalem on 15 July 1099 by the Latins. “The coincidences are too evident to be considered arbitrary”, he said (Llompart 1980, p. 11). Indeed, both commemorations consisted of processions that started from the main temple, parading to the area of the city wall where the Christians had broken through. In both cases, the processions stopped at this part of the wall in order to listen to an evocative sermon about the conquest. Finally, they would return to the temple from which they had started. This close correlation pointed out by Father Llompart has not received much attention from historians.

Even if there is no document connecting the two celebrations at the western and eastern ends of the Mediterranean, the similarities between Majorca and Jerusalem can be plainly explained by the ceremonies. The parades moved, as has been said, to the key point of the wall: in Jerusalem, to the breach that the French opened in the northwest wall of the city on 15 July 1099; and in Majorca, to Saint Margaret’s gate, through which the Christians entered the city on 31 December 1229.

The chronology of the beginning and end of the commemoration of the conquest of Jerusalem is fairly precise. The 15 July celebration feast started to be solemnised almost immediately, and certainly before 1105, given the notes of the chroniclers of the crusades and the descriptions of the sacramentaries made at the Church of the Saint Sepulchre. It was no longer celebrated from 1187, when the city was conquered by the Mamelukes. However, the liturgy was re-established in 1228, and then quickly abandoned again after 1244 (John 2015, pp. 415–22; Gaposchkin 2017, pp. 139–40, 162–64). The preserved liturgical programme that talks about the feast of the “liberation of the holy city” gives an account of the rooted procession that set off at the Church of the Saint Sepulchre and went lauding and glorifying to the Templum Domini, where a station was made to hold a chanted mass. Then, it moved to the place where the city was taken, the northwest part of the wall. A cross on the top indicated the exact hole through which Godfrey of Bouillon’s forces entered. At this point a second station would be made and a sermon describing the First Crusade recited as a miraculous expedition whose outcome was determined by divine will. At the end, the parade went back to the Saint Sepulchre (Kohler 1900–1901a, pp. 427–29; Dondi 2004, pp. 64–66; Salvadó 2011, pp. 630–32; Folda 2012, p. 126; John 2015, pp. 425–28; Gaposchkin 2017, pp. 137–41).

The coincidences in the ritual described above suggest that this commemoration of the First Crusade could have influenced the “Feast of the Banner” in Majorca—either directly or indirectly. It has been argued that the celebration of the day of the conquest of Majorca dates back to the period of James I, though that is not certain because it is based on a report from after the death of the king.1 Other authors concur that the Majorcan commemoration can be traced back to the end of the 13th century. Nevertheless, the point is that we only have indirect testimony of the origins of the feast.2 The first documentary reference dates to the beginning of the 14th century (Alomar 1998, pp. 20, 68); however, it was not until 1358 that there were rough descriptions of the liturgy.3 The procession of the “Feast of the Banner” began when two groups, one made up of clergy—bishops, canons, priests, and other religious figures—and the other of horsemen, a standard bearer and foot soldiers, exited the Cathedral, parading through the streets of the city. Each group would follow a different route, before converging at Saint Anthony’s gate. They would go beyond the city wall, congregate in a nearby flatland—the Peiró—and there attend the “sermon of the conquest”. Besides the sermon, other elements of the ceremony would commemorate the providential intervention in the conquest of Majorca. The parade showed images of the Mother of God, even a Veronica, sang antiphonies in honour of the Virgin, and invoked Saint George at the station in front of Saint Anthony’s Church, where the altarpiece of St George of Pere Niçard and Rafel Mòger was preserved (Llompart 1980, p. 23; Alomar 1998, p. 47; Quintana 1998, pp. 49, 59–63). Thus, they commended themselves to the divinities who, according to James I’s chronicle, were decisive in the conquest of Majorca.4 Lastly, when they re-entered the city to go back to the Cathedral, the banner would be raised above Saint Margaret’s gate as the people sang a te deum; afterwards, the standard would be returned to the carrier’s hands.5 As was habitual in the solemnisation of certain festivities, the local council would take into consideration the aural factor and the arrangement of the urban setting. It hired musicians—in the first half of the 15th century numbering more than 40—and demanded that the streets of the procession be cleaned and decorated with branches of wattle and myrtle (Llompart 1980, pp. 18, 29–34).

The similarities between the “Feast of the Banner” and the ritual of the commemoration of the First Crusade in Jerusalem are numerous, as Llompart briefly indicated. The main ones are the points of reference of the procession, the recitation of a sermon about the main remarkable event, and the reiterative echo of the providential character of the recalled conquest.And if the “Feast of the Banner” preceded the celebration of 9 October, which ritual ceremonies were kept in the feast of the Christian conquest of Valencia on Saint Denis’ Day?Ramon Muntaner, author of one of the four great chronicles of the dynasty of Aragon, lived in Majorca at the end of the 13th century and later moved to Valencia, where he took part in local politics as an elected “jurat” or city governor in 1322 and 1328.6 It was he who encouraged the king of Aragon and honoured citizens of the city to order the celebration of the conquest of Valencia in a similar way to Majorca. However, he did not propose the solemnisation of 9 October but 28 September, because that was the day the Muslims gave up the city: “Per què suplicaria a mon senyor lo rei d’Aragó que fos de gràcia e de mercè sua que ordonen ab los prohòmens de la ciutat de València, que el dia de Sent Miquel tots anys se feés professó general en València per ànima del dit senyor rei, e Déus cresqués e melloràs tots temps los seus deixendents e els donàs victòria e honor sobre tots llurs enemics per ço con la ciutat fo presa la vespra de Sent Miquel per lo dit senyor rei en Jacme” (Soldevila 1971, p. 691) [“I would beg to my lord the king of Aragon that, for his grace and mercy, with the notable lords of the city of Valencia, command that on Michaelmas a general procession would be made in Valencia every year for the soul of the mentioned king, and may God grow up, raise and improve his offspring, and give them victory and honour above all his enemies since the city was captured by the mentioned King James I the day before Saint Michael.”].

Whether Muntaner’s suggestion was taken into account or not, the local council agreed on the annual celebration of 9 October in 1338, the year of the first centenary of the conquest. A procession was instituted as a public manifestation of gratitude to the divinity because James I incorporated the city in Christendom: “Highest lord James, of good memory, king of Aragon, captured and took from the infidels’ hands and bestowed it to the Christian faithful”. The public announcement of the feast included correspondingly ruthless rhetoric against Muslims: “Highest lord James, of good memory, king of Aragon, conquered and took from the following infidels the sect of the abhorrent Muhammad” (Carreres 1925, pp. 4–5; Narbona 1997, p. 23; 2003, p. 79; 2011, p. 447).7

On 9 October 1338, the parade set off from the Cathedral and went to the monastery of Saint Vincent, where a sermon was recited. In order to have access, the procession had to leave the city by Boatella gate, from where Saint Vincent had been dragged after undergoing torments.8 Unlike the Jerusalemite and Majorcan feasts, the procession could not march to the point at which the wall was broken because Valencia had not been assaulted in 1238; there was no final attack in which the forces broke through the medina. The monastery lay outside the city walls. That is why this particular urban setting could scarcely be expected to serve as the reference point for the commemorations of Majorca and Jerusalem.

The designation of the monastery of Saint Vincent as the destination of the first part of the route of the 9 October procession was particularly significative. At the end of his reign, James I recognised that the conquest of Valencia was due to the prayers he had made to Saint Vincent, the deacon of Huesca tormented in the age of Diocletian (Teixidor 1895, vol. 2, p. 272). Saint Vincent was declared patron of both the city and the kingdom, and throughout the 14th century, various processions stopped at the monastery (Hernández 1670, pp. 2–5, 9–10). It was no coincidence that the sanctuary guarding the Paleochristian Saint Vincent sepulchre (later rebuilt and widened) was the architectural proof the land belonged to the old Christians, a reason for keeping the royal banner of the conquest in the monastery after being held at the tower of Alí Bufat (Cruïlles 1876, pp. 323–29; Serra and Soriano 1993, pp. 47–48, 79; Narbona 1994, p. 237; 2003, p. 178).9

Nonetheless, the route of the festal procession was modified. It is documented below how, in the middle of the 14th century, the 9 October procession did not parade to the monastery of Saint Vincent, but instead went to Saint George’s Church, set within the city walls, in the parochial district of Saint Andrew: “la processó tro a Sent Jordi e puys tro a la seu de València” [“the procession up to Saint George and afterwards up to the Cathedral”].10 Figure 1 also proves that this modification of the itinerary was maintained throughout the Middle Ages.11 However, the specific year of this modification of the route cannot be determined because the registers of the Claveria Comuna, in which a record of the first years of the ceremony might have been left, started in 1351, when more than a decade had already passed from the agreement of the local council about the announcement of the first 9 October celebration.

In any case, it is worth highlighting that, in 1341, three years after the first 9 October celebration, the Council decided to announce a new solemnisation: Saint George’s day. This celebration commemorated the heavenly knight who interceded in the conquest of Valencia. The announcement of the festivity was eloquent: “Ara oiats que·us fan saber los jurats e los prohòmens de la ciutat que per lo senyor bisbe e per ells és estat ordenat que a present e en per tots temps la festa del benaventurat màrtir e cavaller de Déu sent Jordi sia colta e celebrada a reverència del dit cavaller sant, la qual festa serà dilluns primer vinent. Per què·us fan saber, per la present sol·lempnial crida, que null cristià o cristiana en lo dit dia e festa no gos tenir negun obrador ubert ne tenda parada per tal que la dita festa sia complidament colta e celebrada e que sia mercé e benignitat del Nostre Senyor Déu Jesucrist tot poderós, lo qual és vencedor de les batalles que do victòria a cristians contra los malvats sarrahins seguents la secta del abominable Mahomet” (AHMV, 3-IV-1341, Manuals de Consells A-4 fol. 40v)12 [“The ‘justícies’ and honoured men of the City let you know that they and the lord bishop have ordered that, henceforth and forever, the feast of the blessed martyr and knight of God Saint George be venerated and celebrated as a reverence of the mentioned holy knight, which will be made next Monday. For this subject let you know that in the mentioned day no Christian has any workshop opened nor shop prepared so that the alluded feast be fully venerated and celebrated, and that be mercy of Our Lord God Jesus Christ almighty, who is the winner in the battles that give victory to the Christians against the evil Saracens of the sect of the abominable Mahomet.”].

From what has been said, 9 October 1338 was the first time the feast was celebrated, and, some time between 1339 and 1351, the itinerary of the procession was modified to go by Saint George’s Church. This significant change in the route therefore coincided with the first celebration of the feast of the saint who appeared at the conquest. The coincidence between the 9 October and the Saint George feast was not only temporal, as both processions shared the same destination. Moreover, the announcement quoted implies that the two feasts shared a common ritual objective: thanking God for help in battles against the Muslims.

The similarities between the ceremony of 9 October and Saint George were so evident that the Cathedral ceremonial book says of the feast of Saint Denis: “Omnia sicut dictum est de Sancto Georgio” (Martí and Serra 2009, vol. 2, p. 286).13 Indeed, the succession of liturgical functions was identical. The day before the feast, a procession took place within the See and clergy kept vigil at Saint Denis or Saint George’s Chapel in the Cathedral. The following day, a morning mass was held and, afterwards, showing the relics of the respective saints (Saint Denis’ shinbone or Saint George’s arm), the procession paraded through the streets of the city, singing hymns and responsorial chants, before entering Saint George’s Church. The assembly offered a thanksgiving prayer there. Lastly, having come back from the Cathedral, a preacher recited a sermon.14

In this situation, common to both feasts, other elements typical of the staging of Valencian religious feasts have to be taken into account—namely, the instrumental music that accompanied the parade, the decoration of the city hall of Valencia, and the streets full of branches where the procession would pass.15 However, there was an element of the feasts of 9 October and Saint George that distinguished them from other public celebrations: the cult of the royal banner. The standard had to be brought out from the city hall since the town council was in charge of guarding it and defraying its costs.16 In order to make the standard more striking when displayed, it was accompanied by flowers and relics with images of Saint George or other heavenly personages.17 Thus, being singular in appearance and veneration, the standard itself acquired something akin to the character of a sacred relic, mostly because we know that it was blessed in the city Cathedral (Martí and Serra 2009, vol. 2, pp. 240, 286).18 In the end, the exhibition of the banner entailed the loyalty of the municipality to the Monarchy while symbolising the jurisdiction and political autonomy of the kingdom of Valencia (Narbona 1997, p. 28; 2011, p. 450; 2017, pp. 69–72).

All these similarities between the 9 October and Saint George feasts can be explained by the rooted legend of the involvement of Saint George in the conquest of the kingdom as a historically fictitious element that fostered civic cohesion between Christians (Werner 1970, p. 302; Narbona 1997, p. 29). The legend decisively characterised the conquest of Valencia as a providential fact detrimental to the Muslims. In the development of a ritual that recalled the providential victory against Islam, the solemnisation of the Valencian conquest and Saint George’s day thus had the same political objectives as the Jerusalem and Majorcan feasts.

The three feasts recycled memories through a liturgy arranged by the elites and designed to take root in the popular imagination. In the end, they became precious rituals through their annual celebration. In fact, the celebration of 9 October and Saint George was so important for the civic memory that the political institutions falsely argued that the origin of the ritual as an “antich e loable costum” [“old and praiseworthy custom”] dated back to the period of the conquest (Narbona 1996, p. 318, footnote 45; AHMV, October 1436, Manuals de Consells A-31, fols. 132v–133r; AHMV, 22 October 1453, Claveria Comuna J-67, fol. 10v). It was therefore through this pragmatic substitution at an urban scale that a collective consciousness arose above the foundational myth, due to the fact that the parade constituted a visible and concrete message, as opposed to, for example, chants in Latin that would not be understood by many individuals.

Over time, the day of the conquest acquired a key position in the sacred history of the people, and as a corollary, a new Christian geography of the city was proposed and set—considered necessary because of the Islamic architecture still visible: “Car com la ciutat sia encara quasi morisca, per la novitat de sa pressó, per tal vos cové vetlar que es repar en murs, e en valls, e en carreres e en places, en cases e en armes, en guisa que per tot hi apareixca ésser lo crestià regiment e les crestianes maneres” (Hauf 1983, p. 293; Falomir 1991; Serra 1991; García and Furió 2019) [“as the city still is almost Moorish, for the newness of the place you should look out for the reparation of walls, valleys, streets, squares, houses and arms so that everything gives the impression of being a Christian regime with a Christian aspect”].19

3. The Ceremony and the Images

The processional parade was not the only mnemonic element of the ritual of 9 October and Saint George that made the conquest of Valencia a landmark in sacred history. The entire ritual was more complex. The spectators could view certain images integrated into the ceremony. Most of the sculptures and paintings seen on the processional route were not specifically commissioned for contemplation in a public ritual; indeed, the majority were created before the solemnisation of 9 October and Saint George. The images entered the scenic context of the urban festivity in a latent state, waiting to be seen (Palazzo 2000, pp. 152–56; Fassler 1993). In the course of the liturgy, the work of art and its sensory and intellectual experience stressed the purpose of the ritual.

While the processional route of the feast varied throughout the 14th and 15th centuries, it always had the twin fixed reference points of the Cathedral and Saint George’s Church (Figure 1).20 The medieval procession of 9 October and Saint George’s would set off early in the morning from Palau gate, the eastern entrance to the Cathedral that faced Almoina square (Figure 2). The assemblage of churchmen would show the corresponding relics and all the gathered believers would carry candles in their hands (e.g., AHMV, 11 October 1436, Manuals de Consells A-31, fols. 132v–133r). The light of the day, so long as there was some, facilitated observation of the sculpted images at two heights on the façade of Palau gate that the viewers could see by lifting their heads. At the stop, on the stone of the modillions under the eaves overhanging the façade, there are heads of women and men wearing headdresses or crowns (Teixidor 1895, vol. 1, p. 230; Chabás 1899; Cid 1953). They seem to look laughingly at the passers-by below, who can hardly read the inscribed names that identify them. We do not know who was intended to be portrayed in these modillions created in the first period of the construction of the Cathedral (ca. 1262), even though the commissioners of the See have been considered (Serra 2018, p. 166). Neither do we know how, in the Middle Ages, they could be identified. Following a written tradition of the 15th century, they were recognised as the faces of the repopulating marriages of the city (Tomic 2009, pp. 235–36; Rubio 2012, p. 110). The second level, closer to the human eye, comprises the gate itself; specifically, by the capitals that sustain the archivolts showing scenes from Genesis and Exodus. Roque Chabás (1899) identified the passages of the Old Testament represented by each one of them and Amadeo Serra (2018, p. 148) argued that the selection of the Biblical episodes proposed a parallel between the promised land and Valencia. That is because the scenes of God promising the land to Abraham, the election of Israelite rulers and Moses receiving the Tablets of the Law (Gen. 15:18–21; Ex. 18:25–26; Ex. 31:18) symbolized the colonists settling the new Christian Kingdom of Valencia under the king’s legislation. In this sense, the Valencian inhabitants were defined as the chosen people. When the images were beheld in the first phase of the liturgy, the sculptures evoked the times of the conquest and the initial period of the institutional constitution of the new colonising society and, consequently, coincided with the purpose of the festivity.

After Almoina square, the 9 October parade would head outside the city walls towards Saint Vincent’s monastery, for the reasons explained above: Saint Vincent became the Valencian martyr of Christendom par excellence, so his sanctuary, a cardinal reference for other processions, was highly valued by the monarchy. It should be highlighted that the north gate was the first access to the monastery the procession would reach. Its structural and decorative arrangement is similar to that of Palau gate in the Cathedral. The historiated capitals, placed under the impost decorated with vegetal motives, show the torments of the saint and his death attended by angels (Serra and Soriano 1992). These scenes that underscored the local history of Christendom became, by stylistic analogy, a visual complement to the figures on the façade of Palau gate. Nevertheless, this step was ephemeral because it might have only been incorporated for the first year of the 9 October celebration.

From the middle of the 14th century and during the whole late Middle Ages, Saint Denis and Saint George’s processions paraded from Almoina square to Saint George’s Church. The common destination commemorated “aquell gran benefici e honor que aquesta insigne república rehibé en lo temps que fon restituhida en poder de cristians migançant lo divinal adiutori intercedint·hi lo gloriós cavaller, strenu e màrtir singular monsenyer sant Jordi” (AHMV, 23 April 1481, Manuals de Consells A-42, fols. 104r–104v) [“that great benefice and honour that this notable community received at the time it was restored to Christian hands through divine help interceding for the glorious knight, strenuous and singular martyr monsignor Saint George”].

There is certainly little information about the medieval architecture of this church. Among historians, there is general confusion about the original project, since some of them wrongly relate it to the Church of the Saviour. If Father Teixidor’s conclusions are given credence, the temple was a mosque dedicated to Saint George in 1243, “the one that consumed time, and afterwards was built a major church with the chapel of Our Lady of the Victory, property of the Centenar de la Ploma civic militia” (Teixidor 1895, vol. 2, pp. 96–102).21 The fact that this executive body showed interest in the project was a sign of the special devotion that the city professed to the sacred knight (Rubio 2008, p. 139; Sáinz de la Maza 1990, pp. 167–80). Decades later, in 1401, the new building was consecrated at the request of the Centenar de la Ploma, a civic militia and brotherhood dedicated to Saint George (Gil 2019, p. 47). That is why the temple was used and managed by part of this brotherhood, although the church came under the jurisdiction of the military order of Saint Mary of Montesa. Indeed, the brotherhood also had the right to display images within the temple (Martínez 2018, p. 599).

The processions would go into this space on 9 October and Saint George’s day. The assembly would enter the temple and recite a habitual thanksgiving prayer to God and the Virgin, the two divinities to whom the victory of the conquest of Valencia was attributed (e.g., AHMV, 22 April 1435, Manuals de Consells A-30, fols. 275v–276r). It cannot be confirmed that the image of Our Lady of Victory of Saint Andrew’s Parish was in Saint George’s Church in the Middle Ages, as Ortí (1740, p. 51) claims.22 In any case, if Ortí i Mayor’s assertion was true, the sculptural image of the sitting Mother of God would be used in the framework of the commemorative festivities as an artifact recalling the decisive role of the Mother of God in the conquest of Valencia.

There is more evidence that the Centenar de la Ploma altarpiece of Saint George was intended for the major altar of Saint George’s Church (Gómez-Ferrer 2019, p. 162; Montero 2018, pp. 376–78). Having been painted around the same year as the consecration of the temple, the altarpiece stood out for its pictorial quality, scale and iconography (Kauffmann 1970; Serra 2002, pp. 24–33; Miquel 2011; García 2011, pp. 143–90; Aliaga 2013; Molina 2018, pp. 138–39). Moreover, the battle of El Puig aligned the bloody clash between the two armies—accompanied by the rawness of the saint’s torments at the lateral tables—with the participation of the countess, King James I, Saint George and a soldier of the Centenar de la Ploma (Figure 3). The latter three figures were reflected in the procession of the feast. Firstly, James I was recreated in the parade through the figure of the “justícia” official, who would carry the royal standard, wear a surcoat and ride a horse (Serra 2018, p. 165). Secondly, Saint George was invoked when the procession stopped at the church and also when the sacred relic of his arm was shown. This was familiar to the spectator (Martí and Serra 2009, vol. 2, pp. 115, 239–40)23 and could also be beheld in the image of the warrior-saint holding a sword stuck into the face of a Muslim. Lastly, the viewer was impelled to visually relate the altarpiece figure of the soldier of the Centenar de la Ploma with the members of this company who participated in the civic ceremonies from the first third of the 15th century (Narbona 2006, p. 317). Moreover, the members of the Centenar attended a banquet at the church every 23 April, Saint George’s day, to strengthen their fraternal bonds (Martínez 2018, p. 598). Hence, the pervasive replication of the altarpiece images in the parade promoted the remembrance of historical events in a theatrical sense.

On the central panel of the altarpiece, the enthroned Mother of God with the child and music-making angels cannot be separated from the gaze that reflects on the images in relation to the thanksgiving prayer (Figure 4). It is an extraordinary Marian image because of its iconographic singularity, showing the traditional Nursing Madonna as a Queen of Heaven enthroned by the coronation of angels, Christ and the Holy Ghost (Perpiñá 2013, p. 39; 2017, pp. 262–63). This complex and original combination of archetypes arose from a profound spirituality. In the same scene, the angels singing from a score, the musicians playing trumpets and recorder, and those making floral offerings with the cherubs under the throne of the Virgin, emphasise the heavenly atmosphere of the epiphany and seem to lead the spectator to be prepared for the chant that will be sung in the Heavenly Jerusalem at the end times (Perpiñá 2013, p. 40).

Contemplating this image—the largest of all, and integrated into the central panels—viewers could be expected to relate to the sensory effects of the liturgy: first at Saint George’s Church and then, during the parade, to responsorial chants, hymns, and prayers sung/recited in honour of God and the Virgin; to the instrumental musicians announcing the feast the day before and taking part in the ceremony, playing at the front; and also to the plants and flowers perfuming and adorning the streets of the city. The scene therefore embodied the religious sentiment of that synaesthesia and especially those chants and prayers thanking the divinity for the conquest of Valencia.24

Briefly stated, the magnificent images of Saint George’s altarpiece of the Centenar de la Ploma served the ritual. The polysemy of its visual rhetoric would have transformed the altarpiece into the most important artifact of the feasts of 9 October and Saint George. It is still surprising that, in this respect, the coincidences between the Valencian ritual and the Majorcan Feast of the Banner should be considered remarkable. For the commemoration of the day of the conquest in Majorca, there is also an altarpiece of Saint George, that of Pere Niçard i Rafel Mòger, housed in the church where the procession stopped to recite litanies invoking the holy knight (Quintana 1998, pp. 59–63; Alomar 1998, p. 42). The key here is that certain images of that altarpiece were related to the ritual of the Feast. The battle of Bab al-Kofol of the predella was the scene recreated in the commemoration: the Christian assault on the Medina of Mayurga led by James I and Saint George on 31 December 1229. Yet the pictorial detail that alluded more specifically to the commemorative ritual was on the royal banner at Saint Margaret’s gate. This raising of the emblem of the kings of Aragon above the site of the last battle of the conquest was a replica of the most remarkable event of the Feast of the Banner, according to which seamen held the banner aloft using a complex system of ropes (Llompart 1980, pp. 189–91; 2001; 2007, pp. 79–84; Gaita 2010, pp. 38–41). Finally, the central panel of the altarpiece linked Saint George with Majorcan popular devotions through a plausible representation of the landscape of the city; so rooting the saint in the city was both motive and purpose of the Feast of the Banner.

To return to the Valencian ritual: after having entered Saint George’s Church, the procession returned to the Cathedral and went in through the west portal of the transept, the gate of the Apostles. This gate was commissioned around the second quarter of the 14th century, possibly by Bishop Ramón Gastó and the Cathedral chapter (Rodrigo 2013). Even though the master builder of the Cathedral, Nicolau d’Ancona, was in the service of the construction and ornamentation of the see (Bérchez and Zaragozá 1996, pp. 10–13; Oñate 2012, p. 17; García 2020, pp. 82–85), it is thought that the creator of the gate was Aloi de Montbrai (Serra 2020, pp. 360–61). As with Palau, this gate was a point of reference for the religious processions; nevertheless, the gate of the Apostles was more pre-eminent within the urban setting because it was oriented towards the new civic centre of Valencia, configured around 1340—when the feasts of 9 October and Saint George were solemnised—and dominated by the façade of the see and the bulk of the city hall across the street (Serra 2004; Iborra 2012, pp. 145–55). Moreover, the Apostles’ gate was the main access point to the temple during certain ostentatious ceremonies held in the city, such as the Corpus Christi, royal and episcopal entrances, and the oath of royal and local officials (Serra 2020, pp. 362–65; Carrero 2014, pp. 364–65; Escartí and Ribera 2019, pp. 150, 250; Martí 1994, p. 50).

In this eminent setting of the portal, the French sculptures carried important visual significance. Open in the manner of an altarpiece, nothing implies that this was lost during the commemorative ceremony of the conquest. The apostles can be seen next to Saint Vincent, Saint Valery, Saint Lawrence and Pope Saint Sixtus in the alcove of the jambs; angel, saint, martyr, and prophetic figures in the archivolts; music-making angels in the tympanum,25 and David, Solomon, Abraham and Jacob in the gallery.

The set of sculptures is completed by figurative virtues, human allegories of the crafts and 28 heraldic shields—among them, those of the monarchy, the city and Bishop Ramón Gastó—engraved in the intrados of the portal and the pedestals above which the exempt sculptures lie (Rodrigo 2013). Thus, the urban itinerary of the 9 October and Saint George processions ended with a visual representation of Biblical characters announcing the arrival of the Messiah, of Christ’s followers witnessing his redemptive project, of local and primitive Christian saints, and of certain individuals and institutions from that Christian society.

This cycle of images helped to reaffirm one of the objectives of the commemorative celebrations mentioned above: the incorporation of the conquest of Valencia into sacred history. The linear story was also cyclical: God’s will to grant the Promised Land to the Chosen People was renewed by favouring the conquest of the territory of Valencia with the help of the divine messenger, Saint George: “Restituhida en poder de cristians migançant lo divinal adiutori intercedint·hi lo gloriós cavaller e màrtir singular monsenyer sant Jordi” (AHMV, 21 April 1481, Manuals de Consells A-42, fols. 149r–149v) [“Restored to Christian hands through divine help interceding for the glorious knight and martyr Saint George”].

Finally, the ceremony concluded with the “sermon of the conquest”, recited within the Cathedral.26 Today, no medieval sermon survives; indeed, the oldest one preserved dates from 1666 (Blai 1985; Castañeda 1927). Nonetheless, it seems reasonable to suppose that those sermons were based primarily on James I’s “Llibre dels feits” [The Book of Deeds]—as Pere Antoni Beuter did when the third centenary of the conquest was celebrated (Escartí 2012, p. 131)—or on the manuscripts that narrated the conquest of Valencia. Copies of these two texts were the property of the bishop or the council and were preserved at the Cathedral, the episcopal palace or the city hall.27 In the end, the “sermon of the conquest” was complemented by the display of James I’s weapons on one of the pillars of the major chapel of the Cathedral from 1416 (Figure 5) (Sanchis 1909, pp. 141–42).

4. The King’s Banner, the Substituting Medium

The gules sticks in a golden field on James I’s shield at the Cathedral were the representation par excellence of the monarchy. This insignia recalled, or even stood for, the figure of the monarch of Aragon. The concept of identity in the medieval period was not related to an individual’s appearance, but to the social group they belonged to as an element of God’s plan (Martindale 1988, p. 19; Bedos-Rezak 2000, p. 1492; Givens 2005, pp. 105–33; Olariu 2009, p. 15; Perkinson 2009, pp. 85–90). Through this heraldic emblem, the monarchs of Aragon could be represented in any visual or artistic medium, and the festivities were no exception. For King Martin I’s entrance into Valencia in 1402, for example, the city council decided to include in the parade eight kings on horseback who were characterised with yellow and red trappings and surcoats. They brought bouquets and sceptres (Aliaga et al. 2007, pp. 34, 49, 67). Indeed, it was a generic characterisation that referred to the condition of monarchs. It could well have been an allusion to the Martin I’s predecessors or to the dynasty of Aragon, since the number eight is not arbitrary: it coincides with the number of kings that preceded him, from Alphonse the Chaste to Peter the Ceremonious. James I was one of the eight, and it might be supposed that the king would not be dressed in a particular way beyond the aforementioned clothing.

The banner with the gules sticks in a golden field was present for the urban parades of 9 October and Saint George. This flag distinguished the celebrations from other religious feasts celebrated in the city, such as Corpus Christi or Michaelmas. Thus, a receipt dated 24 December 1400, given on the grounds of the 9 October feast, stated: “per drap de lana reyal del qual ha cuberts los tabals e la cornamusa dels ministrers de la dita ciutat de manament e voler nostre” (AHMV, 24 December 1400, Claveria Comuna J-28, fol. 24r) [“for a royal cloth which has covered the drums and the bagpipes of the minstrels of the mentioned city ordered and wished by us”]. That is, the minstrels carried wind and percussion instruments that were decorated with fabrics in the colours of the royal flag. The fabrics on the drums and the bagpipes, as they were at the forefront of the procession or next to the flag, gave a particular visual character to the feast because they were of the same hue as the standard. However, the ornamentation of the instruments, recalling the monarchy, did not have the same symbolic significance as the central element of the ceremony: the royal standard. As an element of the ceremony, this required another interpretation beyond evoking the monarchy.

The royal standard would bring to mind the monarchy because the city council intended to convey loyalty to the institution in charge of the jurisdiction and autonomy of the city and the kingdom (Narbona 1997, p. 28). However, the standard might carry further connotations. From the point of view of medieval symbolic expression, based on Saint Augustine’s theory of the image, the symbol represented the king himself; it was a substituting medium of his authority (Boulnois 2008, p. 46).28 This view is thus reflected in various fragments of Ramon Muntaner’s chronicle (ca. 1325–1328), a book that served as open propaganda for the Aragon dynasty (Cingolani 2008, pp. 159–93; Sobré 1978, pp. 121–22). Perhaps the most enlightening example is an episode from Peter the Great’s reign, in which the Sicilian soldier Conrad Llança, before having to fight the ships of the king of Morocco, claimed: “Ben podets saber que el senyor rei d’Aragó és present ab nós en estes galees, que veus aquí lo seu estendard qui representa la sua persona. E així, que ell sia ab nós, la gràcia de Déu e d’ell nos aidarà e ens darà victòria” (Soldevila 1971, p. 683) [“You could well know that the Lord King of Aragon is present with us in these galleys, you can see here his standard which represents his person. And thus, as he is with us, God’s and his grace will help us and give us victory”].

The extract is unambiguous: the standard is the king himself, who will be decisive for the Christian victory. Another episode set in the context of fighting the Saracens narrates the substitution of the figure of James I by the royal flag: “Ah, Senyor, per què us plau que en aquest punt jo sia així despoderat? Ara tost, pus llevar no em pusc, isca tost la mia senyera e fèts portar mi en una anda entrò siam ab ells, que no em pens, pus que jo sia ab los malvats ne ells vegen l’anda on jo jaga” (Soldevila 1971, p. 689) [“Oh Lord, why do you find pleasure in my powerlessness? As I cannot get up, soon my flag will go there and take me to the place where they are so that may I be next to the villains without them noticing it”]. It was necessary, then, that the enemy saw the second symbolic body of the king rather than the weak and sickly one (Kantorowicz 1985; Marin 1981).

This paradigm of the royal representation prevailed in Valencia. Ramon Muntaner narrates the mourning in the city when James I passed away: “No hi romàs ric-hom, mainader ne cavaller, ciutadans, dones e donzelles, que tui anaven darrera la senyera e l’escut seu, e deu cavalls a qui hom havia tolta la coa” (Soldevila 1971, p. 690) [“there is no one, neither man-at-arms, knight, citizen, woman nor maid who did not follow the flag and the shield and ten horses with their tails cut”]. The expression of public mourning was clearly directed towards the royal regalia.

Might we guess there was a similar kind of cult surrounding James I’s standard in the rituals of 9 October and Saint George? There was a key reference in the ceremony. Among the representations seen in the procession, the figure of the “justícia” official who carried the flag must have embodied the king of Aragon and, at the same time, James I in particular. This is not only due to the commemorative nature of the feast, but also to the visual analogy that spectators could establish between the battle of El Puig and Saint George’s altarpiece of the Centenar de la Ploma (Serra 2018, p. 165). Otherwise, a flag from 1459 had the new standard crowned by a winged dragon, a messianic symbol of the kings of Aragon that James I set in the altarpiece (Ivars 1926, pp. 66–112; Aurell 1990, pp. 351–53; Aurell 1997, pp. 135–42).29

From the same document detailing the payment for the flag, it can be inferred that the standard was a remarkable cult object in the processions of Saints Denis and George because of the high price paid by the city council and the ritual of benediction performed at the Cathedral.30 It was the central element of the ceremony, as in the Feast of the Banner, the Majorcan equivalent of 9 October, where the figure of the standard bearer similarly recalled and invoked James I. Indeed, during the feast of the conquest of Majorca, the “justícia” who carried the standard rode a horse and wore armour, gauntlets and a helmet with a crest depicting a winged dragon (Alomar 1998, pp. 20–22). This was a similar visual reference to that of Valencia, which elevated the memory of the Conqueror in relation to the capture of the city. Dispelling any doubts about which king was remembered on that day, Muntaner’s description thus recalls: “que tots anys, lo jorn de Sent Silvestre e de Santa Coloma, que fou presa Majorca per lo dit senyor rei, se fa professó general en la ciutat ab la senyera del dit senyor rei. En aquell dia preguen tuit per sa ànima, e totes les misses qui es canten en aquell dia per la ciutat e per tota la illa, se canten per ànima del dit senyor rei” (Soldevila 1971, pp. 690–91) [“That every year on Saint Silvester and Saint Coloma, when Majorca was captured by the mentioned lord king, a general procession is made in the city with the flag of the mentioned lord king. On that day, everyone prays for their souls, and all the sung masses over the city and the island are sung for the soul of the mentioned lord king”].

As a whole, then, everything points to the monarchy being recalled through the standard that alluded to James I. In the late Middle Ages, the colours of the standard representing him were related to his royal condition: the four gules sticks in a golden field, red and yellow, without blue (Viciano 2008). It is well established that the crowned blue stripe was introduced to the flag of Valencia in 1376 as a concession to Peter the Ceremonious, who thus rewarded the city’s loyalty to the monarchy during the war of the Two Peters (e.g., Fuster 1977, p. 13). Yet, as Pere Maria Orts (1979, pp. 85–110) expounds, even if the city was able to make use of this municipal flag in the 14th and 15th centuries, the one which was always exhibited in the public acts was the flag “of gold and fire”.

5. The 9 October Feast as a (Re)Presentation of the Conquest

Jeroni Sòria’s diary (1503–1559) describes in detail a part of the pageant that took place the day following the third centenary of the conquest: “On Thursday, 10 October 1538. The day after Saint Denis, they paraded from the Cathedral to Saint Vincent the Martyr’s gate, with all the banners of the craftsmen. Among these the carpenters rode a triumphal cart with four Roman pillars above, with a sky of brocade, and a man sitting in a chair dressed up to resemble King James I, of good memory, with many musicians, trumpets and trombones. And in front of him, in the mentioned cart, a white harness of war and many round shields and two donkeys that pulled from the carts and, in front of the mentioned cart, three knights, each one with his horse, had titles that said: one, Sir Guillem Ramon Blasco, the other one, Sir Blascó d’Aragó, and the other one, Monseigneur Bernat d’Entença–the latter carried the royal banner of the king–; with many pages before the knights and many arrested Moors and, then, the members of the Centenar de Sant Jordi de la Ploma and the banner of Valencia of the bat, which was carried by Monseigneur Pelegrí Català, criminal ‘justícia’ in this year, and the ‘justícies’ with him, with long tunics of red velvet and the wings lined with purple sateen, who were the following ones: firstly, Monseigneur Tomàs Roig, citizen; Monseigneur Agostí Joan Albert, citizen; Monseigneur Gaspar Antist, knight; Monseigneur Pedro Exarch, knight; Monseigneur Damià Ferrer, citizen; Monseigneur Jeroni Collar, citizen; the official auditor is Joan Garçia, citizen, who has been public notary for five years, and with them, the excellent Duke of Calabria, Sir Ferrando de Aragó, and viceroy of the kingdom of Valencia, and Sir Juan Lorens de Vilarasa, governor of Valencia. And when they arrived at Saint Vincent’s gate, before they crossed the gate, the banner was raised above the door and they lowered it on the outer side, and afterwards, the official criminal ‘justícia’ took it again and ended up going to Saint Vincent with all the mentioned people and, going back to Valencia, they raised the flag again over the gate and lowered it on the inner side, and the ‘justícia’ took it again and finished the parade at the Cathedral and from there each one went home to have dinner” (Sòria 1960, pp. 189–90).31

The pageant the day after 9 October 1538 was different from the medieval procession. King James I, the main nobles who participated in the conquest of the kingdom, and “many arrested Moors” were represented. The Centenar de la Ploma was paraded as the company that represented the military defence of the city. According to the visual narration of the battle of El Puig on the Saint George’s altarpiece, the Centenar de la Ploma took part in the remarkable event (Narbona 2006, pp. 317, 320; Lamarca 1838, p. 28).32 Therefore, recalling the conquest developed into a mimetic simulation. James I was re-embodied by a look-alike imitating the features of the king himself. The noblemen were identified by the names written on their backs. The Moors, possibly dressed up Christians, were exhibited as defeated and imprisoned, as indeed they were during the conquest.

It is clear that the visual parameters of the festive representation changed with the arrival of humanism. Moreover, the Habsburgs understood James I’s deed as a historic fact in the service of the rise of the Hispanic Empire (Narbona 2011, p. 454). Nevertheless, the pageant of 1538 cannot be explained solely by the actual historical moment. We must take into account its immediate predecessor, the medieval rituals of 9 October and Saint George, because in them, the conquest was also “re-presented”. In the Middle Ages, the main characters were not imitative; the recreation was performed, as in Jerusalem and Majorca, through other ceremonial elements. The points of reference of the ritual and the images represented the conquest both symbolically and factually. This is one way in which the allusions to the Promised Land of the Bible, to local Christianity and to the divine intervention of the Virgin and Saint George in the battle of El Puig might be interpreted. This is how the conquest is remembered as a providential crusade, remarkable in the sacred history of a religion that edged out Islam and claimed itself to be the only true faith.