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Copyright of Ámbitos: Revista de Estudios de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades is the property of Asociacion de Estudios de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Some forty years ago, by chance, the author's campaign of recording through drawings the earliest parts of the church of San Isidoro de Leon coincided with the exposure of the ground upon which that church rested, allowing observations of previous structures. Unfortunately, these observations, briefly noted in a postscript to an article of 1973, were not subsequently made public. San Isidoro has become an object of recent studies, and conclusions have been drawn that would not have been possible had the evidence uncovered by the removal of the floor been published. This article reports the drawings of the two campaigns, and the finds unexpectedly made visible in 1971. It also raises a methodological issue: observations published by myself and others that contradict the idea that the pantheon was erected in the middle of the eleventh century have in recent literature been ignored when an earlier date is favored. Finally, it questions the belief in a tradition of Spanish pantheons and treats skeptically the assumption that this tradition dictated the design of the so-called Pantheon of the Kings. The role of the Leonese palace may have been the more important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporaneous written evidence makes it clear that medieval rulers were aware of the impression that their dwellings caused and, indeed, that they took deliberate steps to reinforce the visual impact on the viewers. In this study, I will focus on some of the more extensive twelfth-century descriptions of two palaces from Christian lands of Iberia - one episcopal (Santiago de Compostela), one royal (Leon) - within an examination of the roles that these buildings played in buttressing their patrons' power. Two chronicles, the Historia Compostellana (c. 1100-40) and the Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris (c. 1145) present the rulers' palaces as an essential setting for their authority; these accounts are rounded out by hagiographical and literary sources, along with an archaeological analysis of some of the elements of the standing architecture. In addition to aiding in the study of a building through its multiple uses - both practical and symbolic - written descriptions allow us a glimpse of the meanings that medieval palaces had for their patrons and the viewing public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]