Somport

Col du Somport

Camino Aragonés

HuescaAragón

Romance syncope of the Latin phrase Summum Portum ('the highest pass'), applied by Roman itineraries to distinguish this Pyrenean col —⁠1,640 metres, passable by cart⁠— from the lesser passes of neighbouring valleys. The name is documented as Summo Portu in the 9th century and evolves by agglutination into Sompuerto, Sompuert and finally Somport, preserving both elements fused into a single word.

Portus, in classical Latin, properly designated a sea or river port, but late Hispanic Latin extended the term to mountain passes by functional analogy —⁠both are points of entry and exit, places where transit is loaded and unloaded⁠—⁠. The formula Summum Portum, with superlative, distinguished the highest pass of a chain. The col was already called this in the 3rd century, when the Roman road between Caesaraugusta (Zaragoza) and Beneharno (Lescar) crossed it as a secondary route of the Empire. After the fall of the Pyrenean limes, Somport remained as one of the two main passes towards Aquitaine —⁠the other, Roncesvalles⁠—⁠. Charlemagne crossed it in 778 on his retreat to the French Pyrenees, and from the 11th century it consolidated as the canonical route of the Aragonese pilgrim. The hospital of Santa Cristina de Somport, founded at the end of the 11th century by royal initiative, came to be, according to the Codex Calixtinus, one of the three great hospitals of Christendom together with those of Jerusalem and the Great Saint Bernard.

Evolution of the name

  1. summum portum Latin before the 4th century
  2. Summo Portu medieval Latin 9th century
  3. Sompuerto / Somport medieval Aragonese from the 12th century

Reflections, to the letter

The border begins up high. At the col remain the ruins of the Romanesque hospital of Santa Cristina —⁠vestiges excavated from 1988⁠— and a stone marker that delimits Aragón from France. To the south the Aragón valley descends towards Canfranc; to the north the Aspe valley begins towards Oloron. In winter the pass is blocked by snow and the N-330 closes; the pilgrim who arrives in March still crosses stretches of old road under thirty centimetres of ice. The concrete bunker that watches over the col belongs to the P line, a Francoist fortification from 1944 against a hypothetical Allied invasion that never happened.

Languages of origin

Themes

Origin status

confirmed

Glossary

Agglutination
A process by which two or more separate words merge into a single one over time. Molina seca → Molinaseca, Pontem veteram → Pontevedra.
Hospital of Santa Cristina
Monastic hospital founded around 1080 at the summit of Somport by initiative of the kings of Aragón to receive pilgrims and victims of the Pyrenean pass. The Augustinian regular canonry administered it for six centuries. The Pilgrim's Guide of the Codex Calixtinus (c. 1140) cites it as one of the three great hospitals of Christendom, together with that of Jerusalem and that of the Great Saint Bernard. It was ruined after the 19th-century disentailment.
Phrase
A combination of words functioning as a single grammatical unit (noun + adjective, verb + object). In toponymy, phrases tend to agglutinate: Villanueva, Fuentespina, Molinaseca.
Roman road
A stone-paved Roman highway, part of the imperial communications network (Via Aquitana, Via Augusta, Iter ab Asturica); many such roads became medieval routes and, later, stretches of the Camino de Santiago.
Syncope
Loss of one or more phonemes from within a word.

Sources

  • Codex Calixtinus, libro V (Guía del Peregrino)
  • Ubieto Arteta, A. — Historia de Aragón

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Camino Aragonés

  1. ··· toward Santiago
  2. Atarés
  3. Jaca
  4. Aratorés
  5. Castiello de Jaca
  6. Villanúa
  7. Canfranc
  8. Somport