Horst Bredekamp

The superstes Resurrection, the Survival of Antiquity, and the Poetics of the Body in Romanesque Sculpture

In May 1105, Count Sancho Ramírez, the first-born son of King Ramiro I of Aragon, signed with his own hand the precious parchment that contains his testament. In that moment of reckoning, faced with the realization that human nature is brief and fragile (humana natura brevis et fragilis est), he may have reflected on the memories of a long and eventful life – one that had been marked in the beginning by travel and adventure, and defined, in the end, by piety and the call of duty.1 The child of an illegitimate union, he abandoned the kingdom in his youth to go to the “land of the moors” causing his father to stipulate in his first will (1059) that he would be disinherited if he failed to return to Aragon and “regain his love” and that of his younger brother of the same name, who would later reign as King Sancho Ramírez (r. 1064–1094). Having eventually found his way back to his homeland, he managed not only to repair his familial ties, but also to become an essential agent in the construction of the fledgling kingdom, actively participating in its political consolidation, and contributing to its monumental splendor through a committed labor of patronage in several religious foundations. He maintained a special spiritual connection with the Augustinian canons of the cathedral of Jaca, and with their bishop