Aistra / Alma / Astrea / Aystar / Aystray / Haiztara

No entry found for Aistra / Haiztara in the Enciclopedia del románico [https://www.romanicodigital.com]. A former parish church, later rural chapel, in Aistra that could have been as early as 11thC is noted in Agustin Gomez Gomez (2000: 11, 87, etc.); the settlement is now abandoned. A local communication sent in March 2020 to BSI states that the chapel continued to be used for baptisms in living memory, long after it had ceased to be parochial. The only vessel inside the chapel now is a late font with part of the basin built into one of the walls; the font consists of a round not quite hemisperical basin with a ribbed underbowl, raised on a round fluted pedestal base and a round-to-square lower base; possibly 18th-century. No cover present. The odd thing about this font is that the village had been abandoned by the 16th century, but the chapel must have been maintained and/or renovated, as this font is later than the 16th century. There is documentation about the use of this chapel for baptisms well into the mid- and late-18th century in Elisa Garcia Reyes' El Camino de San Adrian (Guipuzcoa, Alava) en la Ruta Jacobea (Estudios de Arqueología alavesa (tomo XIV, p. 383ff), apparently because its patron saints were greatly venerated for their beneficial influence in cases of difficult pregnancies and births, noted in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum and in Rabanus Maurus. [NB: we have no information on the medieval fonts(s) here].