¿Ausencia total o presencia velada del paisaje en la documentación pontificia medieval?

Résumé

It has always been said that in Papal privileges and bulls there is a premeditated absence of allusions to the landscape, because the canonical legislation, and strict norms of the Papal Chancery were very rigid and prohibited the presence of data of difficult, ambiguous or wrong interpretation. They only narrate dispassionately true events that the Chancery has known through the corresponding petition. However, with certain limitations, references to the landscape, especially the urban or architectural landscape, can actually be found in the litterae pontificiae. This paper analyses, on the one hand, the nature of Papal privileges and bulls in order to explain the said absence of specific data. On the other hand, it carefully studies the scarce mentions of the landscape in them. The landscape described in the Papal documents is classified into four classes: urban landscapes, where ,·constructions (cathedrals, hospitals, bridges...) play a special role; natural landscapes, with descriptions of dangerous, difficult, insalubrious or hilly settlements; fictitious landscapes, that appear in the prefaces of outstanding Papal documents, where some religious orders were metaphorically described by means of natural images; and finally, terrifying landscapes, such as the one resulting from the rage of the angry citizens of Burgos in 1310 against the French priests that the Pope had elected as prebendaries of the city cathedral. In some cases, those references are imposed by the selfsame content of the Papal letters; in others, by the text of the petition which was previously sent to Rome and the Papal document answered.