Cugullo – Where is it?

[Bert45]

If you google 'cugullo' you won't get many results. I got 470. One of the more interesting ones comes from this site: https://www.caminodesantiago.me/com...lo-ruins-ancient-hospital-de-peregrinos.1980/
As you will see, it claims to be the name of an ancient hospital for pilgrims south-west of Villamayor de Monjardín. [The Facebook photo is no use at all.] I believe that I have taken a couple of photos of the same ruins, from much further away and from a different angle. In the far distance, way beyond the ruins, there is a building that I have positively identified as the Basílica San Gregorio Ostiense (on the horizon). Using that as a reference and some guesswork as to my position, I found what I believe is the location of the building on Google Maps. However, GM identifies it as the Ermita de San Vicente. I have to say that the building in Peter Aubury's photo and in mine looks more like a farm building than the ruins of a hospital or ermita, but I could be wrong. The losarcos.es page describes the ermita: It has a single rectangular nave, with a molded cornice that runs along its entire perimeter, covered by a modern low ceiling; It also has a high choir at the foot, on a lowered arch, which still retains its baroque wooden balustrade ... (there's more). But this sounds a lot better than the ruins in Peter's photo, or mine, or what can be seen on Streetview.
So, are Cugullo and the Ermita de San Vicente two different buildings, or two names for the same building? The photos below are the same, just that I've cropped one to try to show the Basilica and the ruins a bit more clearly.

 

[Theatregal]

I believe that this is the building (Ermita de San Vicente) in your photo - after Villamajor de Monjardin and before Los Arcos. I researched it some time ago. I took this photo in September 2012. I haven't found "Cugullo" in anything I've read in reference to this building.

YÁNIZ

--> INFORMACIÓN GENERAL Ubicación El despoblado de Yániz estuvo dentro del término municipal de Los Arcos, en el camino que...

despobladosnavarra.blogspot.com

 

[Bert45]

Thanks, Theatregal. I can see the buttress in my photo corresponding to that in your photo and the one in the blogspot. All I need to know now is where is Cugullo? Does it even exist? Does Brierley mention it?

 

[Theatregal]

Interesting! Yes - Brierley does mention Cugullo!

 

[Kathar1na]

If you google 'cugullo' you won't get many results. I got 470.

There are a lot more and more relevant Google Search results than merely these 470.

It is often best to refine an initial Google search and make it more targeted based on the first search result. For example google for Igúzquiza Cogullo or Cogullo Navarra. Internet search machines are dumb and one needs to be more clever and more imaginative than they are. Even a simple change such as googling for Iguzquiza Cogullo instead of Igúzquiza Cogullo will provide a couple of hundred more results. With all this, one can create new combinations, perhaps try Cogullo encomienda.

Or try searches with various known (or even just plausible) spellings of the name, such as Cucuillo and Goguyllo but be attentive when you read, for example, that [translated from Spanish] Arturo Campión confounds Cocullo and Cogullo. According to him, other documents clearly refer to Guguyllo. A character of the Navarreria, cited in the poem of Aneliers, is called Simeno de Cucuyllo. Campión derives Cucuyllo-Guguyllo-Euguillo-Eugillor or Euguylloz. This claim does not appear to be very convincing to us.

Post on the forum when such preliminary searches do not bring results. When it comes to historical accuracy and information value, do not put too much faith in Camino guidebooks and readers who copy a few lines from them or in information provided by tourism offices. Brierley's chosen orthography of Cugullo for this location where there once was one of the many small medieval hostels for poor people and pilgrims is unfortunate. Not surprisingly, it got picked up by his readers. See Camino de Cogullo for a list of post-medieval spellings for the same location, among them Cugullo.

Cogullo is no more. It has ceased to be for at least 700 years. It got abandoned in the Middle Ages and lives on only as a toponym. See for example José Javier Uranga, Notas sober topónimos navarros medievales.

 

[Kathar1na]

Further targeted googling reveals a surprise, and perhaps we can even find some kind of a lesson in it all: There are a number of Camino pilgrims from various parts of the globe such as Melbourne and Missouri, some of them confessed Brierley guidebook readers, who report on their websites and blogs that they walked past and actually saw the ruins of this ancient pilgrim hospital in recent years. Wow, what paranormal powers they must have, or is this the Camino providing for those who are lucky ?

Another pilgrim took a photo of the corresponding note posted by the association of the Friends of Irache (see screenshot below). I strongly suspect that she or he knows Spanish and could read what it says: that one walks in the vicinity of the vanished ancient pilgrim hospital. It may not even be known where exactly its walls once stood.

The location of the note, however, is known: You can check it out on the pilgrim's Wikiloc entry.

 

[Kathar1na]

Some further news, perhaps even a correction, with thanks to our very own @caminka who does know a thing or two about the medieval past of the Ways of Saint James and the traces they left for us.

If you google 'cugullo' you won't get many results. I got 470. One of the more interesting ones comes from this site: https://www.caminodesantiago.me/com...lo-ruins-ancient-hospital-de-peregrinos.1980/

The linked photo in the forum's media gallery does not show the ruins of an ancient hospital de peregrinos. Perhaps it is an abandoned farmhouse or an agricultural shed, possibly for raising pigs or storing grain?

@caminka identifies, on Wikiloc, a pile of masonry a few hundred meters further along the way as the former pilgrim hospital of Cugullo although without indicating a documentary source.

I don't remember that I took note of any of this. You can view it in Google Earth; use a high resolution screen for viewing.

 

[Bert45]

I see that Brierley does not call any ruins 'Cugullo', he merely states that we pass the site of Cugullo. If there is nothing to see above ground, how would anybody know that they are passing the site of Cugullo? What use, then, is Brierley's 'information'? I also thought that the ruins in Peter Aubury's photo and in mine look more like 'an abandoned farmhouse or an agricultural shed, possibly for raising pigs or storing grain' rather than an ermita or hospital. But I can also see that Peter's building and mine are different. His has a modern white 'shed behind it, as in Kathar1na's top picture. His building has no buttress, whereas mine and the one in Theatregal's post (Yániz) does. So we have two buildings. Can I asume that the one with the buttress is the Ermita de San Vicente, even thoough the description paints a picture of a much more complete structure than that which actually stands.
I appreciate Kathar1na's efforts, but the limitations of my understanding of Spanish and of the intricacies of the internet prevent me taking this enquiry much further.

 

[C clearly]

If there is nothing to see above ground, how would anybody know that they are passing the site of Cugullo? What use, then, is Brierley's 'infromation'?

What use? Maybe none, except to provoke your question and this thread.