The Monastery at Montserrat
04 September 2015 | Cala Castell
Myra Rowling
Must mention the wonderful weather change. As in 2012 in Sardinia, 31 August was hot, the sun burning and the water temperature high. Come 1 September, both the air and water temperature dropped noticeably. It is hard for an Australian to believe that the summer can go so quickly. But the cool change and rain were most welcome.
The day after visiting the Golden Triangle we drove to the Benedictine monastery and abbey in the mountains called Montserrat (serrated mountain). It was built in the 11th century on top of a most beautiful, blue, cardboard cut-out mountain, topped with myriad Blue Mountains Three Sisters type of rock formations, over 4000 feet high. We had to catch a rack railway up to the monastery and could have gone to the very peak in an almost vertical funicular.
Pilgrims and tourists were everywhere. The basilica was absolutely packed for the 1 pm mass. We joined a very long, slow queue to file past the Black Madonna and child high on a throne above the altar. It is a wooden statue from the 12th century whose varnish has oxidised and candle smoke has made black. Lee and I touched the golden orb in her hand. We aren't sure what that meant, but we felt we should do it as thousand of others in the queue did. The pilgrims lit candles after that and gathered water from a tap. The altar and sanctuary were totally golden and the stained glass windows so beautiful.
The monastery had to be rebuilt after the French attack in 1811, and was repopulated by monks in 1844. Some 22 Montserrat monks died during the Spanish Civil War and their remains are in the crypt. The abbey helped maintain Catalan culture during the Franco years. One sculpture in the forecourt of the basilica is of Garth's name sake, St Ignatius Loyola, the patron saint of soldiers, who recuperated from a war wound at Montserrat in 1522 and decided there to give up his soldiering to work for the Lord.
The highlight for me was the art gallery and museum. Much to my delight, hanging in pride of place, was a Caravaggio painting, St Jerome Meditating. Other paintings were by Tiepolo, El Greco, a good collection of Impressionists, and Picasso's Old Fisherman and An Altar Boy, done when he was 14 and 15 years old. The museum part had a good collection of ancient artefacts from Cyprus, Mesopotamia, The Holy Land, Egypt, classical Greece and Rome. ( It is the first time I have seen the face of an Egyptian mummy.) There was also a gallery of Slavic and Byzantine icons, which might help explain the large number of Russian tourists. And lastly a huge collection of Catalan paintings, including Picasso, Miro and Salvador Dali. And again Sean Scully is represented.