Monserrat

THE queerest freak of nature in Spain, and perhaps in Europe, is Monserrat, the convent mountain on the east coast, about thirty miles from Barcelona. Goethe refers to it in the second part of Faust, where we read: —

It is not generally supposed that the devil, whose office it is to destroy, ever created anything, but if he should try his hand at a landscape the result would be something like Monserrat. Whether he would fill its almost inaccessible caves and the holes in the rocks with hermits is a question for the theologians. That he resisted the establishment there of one of the greatest convents of the Middle Ages, I presume there is no doubt, and that he sees with chagrin the one hundred thousand pilgrims annually crowding to its broken shrines is taken for granted. It is not probable, however, with his Mephistophelean sympathy with the " progress of the age,” that he is disturbed by the curiosity-hunters, who have, to use his own language, “ a devil of a time ” in getting there, or by the thrifty spirit which makes a little money out of the desire to see its sacred places and buy pious souvenirs.

We took the rail from Barcelona to Zaragoza, one day early in June, and rode a couple of hours to the little station of Monistrol. The country is broken into low hills and sharp ravines, and although it is absolutely barren of grass and ragged in aspect, it is much better cultivated than most parts of Spain, and presents an appearance of industrious agriculture. By contrast to the thriftlessness elsewhere, it is a paradise of verdure, and when its nakedness is covered by the vines is far from being unpleasing. From the station, where the road runs along an upland slope, we looked down upon the river Llobregat and its valley. There, at the very base of the mountain, lies the straggling village of Monistrol, with its old stone bridge and high, quaint, dilapidated buildings.

Out of this valley rises the scarped, gashed, and flamboyant mountain, as by a tour de force, thrust up, with almost perpendicular sides, into the air nearly four thousand feet. It is said to have a circumference at its base of about twenty-four miles. It springs out of the valley an irregular, unique, independent mass of rock, with little verdure apparently, and glowing in the afternoon light with a dull reddish color. I do not know whether it was really thrown up in some prehistoric spasm of nature, or whether its peculiar form is owing to gradual degradation and decay ; but it looks like a molten mass spouted from a solid base into fantastic, contorted, and twisted flames, freaky shapes of fire caught and solidified into pointing fingers, towers, pinnacles, beacons, and writhing attitudes of stone. Another mountain so airy, grotesque, and flame-like does not exist. It cannot be anything else than nature from the devil’s point of view, and it might well suggest the idea that it is a veritable piece of the infernal landscape flung up here as a curiosity and a warning. This mass of rock is rent by a deep gash on the east side. That this appalling cleft was not there originally, but was formed by a convulsion at the moment of the crucifixion in Palestine, I have only the authority of the monkish writers, who have made this mountain of miracles a subject of deep scientific study. There is this confirmation of the theory: that nobody except the monks can tell when the chasm was made. And there is this, further, to be said : that but for this gash, this ragged ravine, there would have been no place for the convent, and only the poorest sort of shelter for the hermits.

A lumbering omnibus-diligence was waiting at the Monistrol station to take passengers up the mountain. These are sociable conveyances in Spain, having some of the uses and none of the conveniences of railway palace and dining-room cars. Into the interior were jammed nurses, babies, soldiers, priests, and peasants ; all talking and chattering, all eating or nursing, all sweltering and half stifled in the clouds of dust that enveloped the coach. It is the fashion in Spain, when one eats his luncheon or dinner in a public conveyance, to offer of his food and drink to his fellow-travelers ; it would be very uncivil not to do this. It is the fashion, also, to decline to take it; so that Spain is the land that combines extreme generosity with the least expense. No doubt both the generosity and the economy are genuine. It does one good in his soul to be liberal in the offer of his bread and boiled meat (left from the soup eaten at home) and sour wine to his companions, and they are all put in good humor by declining. We secured places on the driver’s seat in front, where we had the full benefit of the dust, and were deprived of the sustenance contained in the garlic-laden air of the interior. We dashed along at a fine rate down into the valley, and clattered into the town with a good deal of importance; but that was the end of our liveliness. Thenceforward, for four mortal hours, we dragged up the side of the mountain at what seemed to be about the rate of movement of a glacier. The town of Monistrol is picturesque at a distance, and unsightly close at hand. Its tall houses, with recessed balconies the width of the front on each story, are piled one above another in shabby disorder, on the steep sides of the river and up the hill. These balconies, which appear to be the living and lounging places of the families, are screened from the sun by curtains of matting, and are gay with garments of all colors and all styles of wear. Before beginning the ascent the diligence halted at a friendly little posada, with a flower-garden, where lively and pretty girls served the passengers with such refreshments as they called for. The road climbing the mountain — like nearly all the roads in Spain, where the government has thought it worth while to make any—is splendidly built. It is carried up the mountain side, along ledges and precipices, in a series of gradually ascending loops and curves, constantly doubling on itself, and going a distance of two miles to make a quarter of a mile ascent. Lately, trees — figs, maples, cherries, pines, and aspens — have been planted along this broad highway, so that in a few years its sun-beaten travelers will enjoy a much-needed shade. All the ravines about which the road coils like an interminable serpent are terraced, and carefully cultivated and set with vines.

The slow, creeping movement of the diligence at length became so intolerable that several of the passengers dismounted, and walked on, reaching the monastery before it. As we rose, the capricious character of the mountain became more apparent. Great masses of rock overhung the road ; the walls were buttressed like artificial fortifications, and a range of tapering towers, not needles and spires, as in the dolomites and the pointes d’aiguilles at Chamouni, but bluntly and clumsily terminated, like fingers and thumbs, stood up in the air. At one point we passed beneath a partially isolated column that is held aloft exactly like a light-house. The mountain is longest from east to west, and the old monks fancied that it had the form of a gigantic ship, with its prow upheaved ; a mysterious vessel in which the Virgin Mary conducted her devotees — some of whom, however, suffered shipwreck, according to the legends — to the port of Salvation. It might as well be called a Noah’s ark, stranded in a dry time. The mountain in its formation and composition is of the utmost interest to geologists and mineralogists. A near inspection shows that the entire mass, ledges, walls, towers, and pinnacles, is composed of small round stones, of various colors, agglomerated into a sort of pudding-stone, a party-colored mosaic, reddish and greenish and grayish, and very beautiful when the sun strikes it. The mountain is also very rich, for the botanist, in plants and wild flowers.

After miles of weary curving and doubling the road sweeps along the north side of the mountain and enters the eastern cleft, in which the convent buildings and gardens are found. There was no sign of any habitation, or possible place for one, until we were actually in it. The ravine ends in a horseshoe curve, set about with perpendicular precipices and towers, the latter leaning towards each other in drunken confusion, pointing in various directions into the sky ; some the shape of monstrous tenpins, and one, which was my favorite, exactly the shape of a thumb with a distinctly accented nail. In this almost inaccessible spot, nobody except religious fanatics would ever have deemed it possible to obtain standing-room for extensive religious houses. But here, jammed into this crevice, frowned on by precipices all around, with a ragged, yawning gulf in front and below, extending down, down, to the far-off, dreamy valley, are the several houses of a vast monastery, a large church, buildings for laymen, a great restaurant, ruins of fine Gothic edifices destroyed by the everbarbarous French invaders, some cypresses, and some tiny garden spots. All these structures cluster about the head of the ravine, and rest on ledges over which the rocks hang in threatening attitudes. Standing in the courtyard of the church, about which are the high barracks of the “ religious,” and looking up to the beetling, impending crags and the blue heavens above the dark mass, one has a conception of the sublime daring of religious faith in the presence of forbidding and implacable nature. Round about, high up among the rocks, are the caves and the ruined stone huts of the old hermits.

It was near sundown when we reached this haven of rest and made a demand on its hospitality for the few days of our pilgrim sojourn. The monastery has a great history, into which it is no part of this paper to enter. It was suppressed over forty years ago, and is no longer of much importance as an active religious community ; it has less than a score of monks to occupy its vast barracks. But it is now, as it has been for ages, a thronged place of pilgrimage on account of its famed image of the Black Virgin. Many years ago extensive buildings were erected for the temporary accommodation of pilgrims and lay brothers, and in these strangers are hospitably assigned quarters for three days, or for nine days on special permission, without charge for lodging. But Spain is like other lands, where something is not given for nothing, and the stranger, at the end of his stay, is expected to put into the box of the custodian about as much as he would pay for lodgings at a good hotel, and as much more as his piety dictates.

No enthusiasm was exhibited on our arrival, and there was no one to welcome us or to direct us. We were left on the pavement, where the diligence landed us with our luggage, utterly at a loss how to effect an entrance into any of the stone jails in sight. At length we were directed to the hospederia, where a civil brother in a black robe informed us that a lay brother would assign us quarters presently. The lay brother, when he appeared, hardly filled one’s idea of a brother, nor had he the neatness that one requires in a chamber-maid, which was his office with regard to our rooms, He showed me into a room in the plain stone building of Santa Theresa of Jesus, as the inscription over the door informed me, built early in the sixteenth century. The room was a dirty, whitewashed cell, with one window and a stone floor, and contained for furniture a narrow bedstead, a rickety, dirty washstand, a shaky chair, and a bit of mirror. To this ascetic den the brother brought sheets, a towel, and a jug of water, gave me the key of it, and set me up in housekeeping. When I had visited the restaurant and bought a fat tallow candle, I wanted nothing more that was to be obtained. The room was comfortable enough, but not calculated to win one to take up a permanent abode in it and abandon the luxury of the world. Yet when I opened the window, in the deepening twilight, and looked out, through the branches of a couple of tall trees that manage somehow to grow in that stony place, down the ravine lying in the shadow of the precipices, on further into the valley, hazy in a golden mist of early evening, and felt the cool air, not unladen with sweetness, blow up from below, and heard the faint and fainter bird twitterings and the hushed hum of a June night, I think that I experienced, in this high seclusion, something of that calm which hermits term the peace of God. Indeed, one could take his choice of emotions in this solitude, which witnessed strange antediluvian freaks, which was haunted by sylvan shapes in Roman times, where Venus was no doubt a goddess before Mary, which was a hunting ground of Goths and Saracens, where Charlemagne set up a shrine to Santa Cecilia in the eighth century, where the image of the Virgin wrought miracles in the ninth century, where Philip II. spent vast sums in building to the glory of God and himself, and where, in the chapel hard by, Ignatius Loyola spent a night in meditation before the shrine of the Virgin, on whose altar he laid his sword in the hours when he dedicated himself, her true knight, to the foundation of the Order of Jesus.

The hospitality of the brethren stops with shelter ; the pilgrim must go to the restaurant for his food. This is a “ Frenchy ” sort of establishment, not conducted on an ascetic regimen, and its flaunting presence here, together with the holy booth for the sale of photographs and superstitious trinkets, gives a sort of show appearance to this sacred place. It has become a pleasure resort, — pleasure of a chastened sort. The restaurant has three stories, like a graded school, in which the food served is graded to suit the purses of the pilgrims. The lower floor is rudely furnished, like the peasants’ dining-room in a posada ; the second is a little better ; the third has more pretensions to elegance. The traveler can begin below and eat himself upward into expensive meals, or he can begin at the top and drop down to economy as his purse fails. The natives probably get about as good food in the lowest room as strangers get in the highest. The traveler, however, will fare tolerably well there, and he will be served with that absolute indifference to whether he likes it or not that characterizes the proud caterers of noble Spain.

The glory of Monserrat is the image of the Virgin. It was this that built its monastery and church, drew countless treasure to the coffers of the fraternity for hundreds of years, and that still attracts annually tens of thousands of curious and devout pilgrims. The history of it is interesting, though original only in some points, for there is a monotonous sameness in all these monkish inventions. There was a great strife all through the Middle Ages, among convents and churches, for objects that should attract the pence and excite the piety of the devout, and many a church was built and gorgeously decorated by reason of its possession of some uncommonly attractive relic. Black images of the Virgin are common in Spain. A very popular one is the Virgin of the Pillar, at Zaragoza, over which the Cathedral El Pilar was erected to keep it safe and honor it. In this church is shown the alabaster pillar on which the Virgin stood when she descended to have an interview with Santiago. By reason of this special mark of the favor of the Virgin, Zaragoza claimed the primacy of Aragon. Upon the pillar stands a very ancient image of the Virgin ; it is small, and carved out of resinous and very black wood. The Virgin holds the Infant in one hand, and gathers her drapery in the other. The pillar, which is the object of passionate devotion to the people of Zaragoza, can be seen through a small orifice in the marble casing, but the spot in sight is much worn by the kisses of the faithful. Few Catholics visit the church without putting their lips to the sacred stone. In the old Cathedral of San Leo, in the same city, is a spot marked in the pavement where the Virgin stood and spoke to Canon Funes. Toledo, not to be outdone, has also a small image called the Great Queen, carved in black wood. In 711 it was saved from the infidel Saracens by an Englishman, who hid it in a vault. It is one of the treasures of the cathedral, which has also the stone slab on which the Virgin alighted when she conversed with San Ilefonso, who died in 617. To this circumstance Toledo owes its elevation to the primacy of Castile.

The image now at Monserrat has its origin in the love of the Virgin for the Catalanes, who saw with pity their grief at the favoritism shown the Aragonese in the possession of the Virgin of the Pillar. It was probably carved by St. Luke, — the first of the master woodcarvers,— and brought to Barcelona by St. Peter, in the year 50. When it was endangered by the Moorish invasion in 717, it was carried to this mountain, hid in a cave, and forgotten for a hundred and sixty-three years. In 880, some shepherds wandering over the mountain were attracted to the place of its concealment by heavenly lights. They informed Gondemar, Bishop of Vique, who repaired to the spot, and, guided by a sweet smell, discovered the image in a cave. This cave, over which is now erected a beautiful and exceedingly damp and bone-chilling chapel, where daily masses are said, is one of the chief places of pilgrimage. It lies on a narrow ledge deep down in the ravine, a mile or more from the monastery. Bishop Gondemar, rejoicing in his discovery, set out with a procession of clergy to bear the image over the mountain to his church in Manresa. When they had toiled up the ragged ravine, and reached a level ledge not far from where the monastery now stands, the Virgin obstinately refused to go any farther. As there was no reasoning with a graven image, it was placed on the spot where it wished to rest, and a rude chapel was built over it, in which it remained for one hundred and sixty years. A cross now marks the spot.

How did the Virgin indicate to the priests her refusal to go any farther? This is one of those skeptical questions which it is easy to ask, and somewhat difficult to answer. It is, however, a scientific fact that if you attempt to carry a wooden image over such a mountain as Monserrat there will come a point in the journey where the image becomes heavy, and apparently refuses to go on without a long rest.

A nunnery was afterwards founded here, which in 976 was converted into a Benedictine convent. In the year 1599 Philip II. dedicated the church which is the present home of the venerated image, where it shines in all the splendor of lace and jewelry high up in a recess above the high altar. Every day after midday mass the pilgrims are permitted to ascend, and adore it. The approach to it is through several apartments by flights of stairs. In the rear of the image is the Virgin’s waiting-room, a small chamber, from which the devotees pass round singly to the narrow platform in front of the image. The day of our ascent the chamber was crowded with a devout, or at least devoutly-seeming, throng: worshipers, travelers with notebooks and pencils, and artists. Each one in turn passed in front to gaze at or to kiss the object of the pilgrimage. Many a woman returned with moist eyes and deeply moved. The image itself is of black wood; of what sort the custodians are unable to say, but they declare that it is sweetly odorous and incorruptible. It is painted and finely gilded. The figure is seated, with the child in her lap, the latter holding a globe in his right hand. The position of both figures is stiff and archaic, but the face of the Virgin is well carved and pleasing.

In one of the rooms in the rear is the wardrobe of the Virgin, containing many sorts of raiment, rich and ornamented stuffs, the gifts of kings, princes, prelates, and wealthy devotees. Another large chamber contains the votive offerings, the most curious collection in Europe, and not unlike the shop of a thriftless pawnbroker. Those restored to health by touching the sacred image have deposited here whatever was precious to them, and many of the mementos speak the touching thankfulness of poverty. There are wretched pictures of sick-beds, shipwrecks, accidents of all sorts, and rescues ; pieces of lace, real and imitation ; crutches and canes ; an exploded musket; human hair of every color and degree of fineness, — one long and superb braid of glossy black, the wealth and pride of some grateful, and perhaps penitent, Spanish beauty ; swords, broken and hacked in service, and parade rapiers ; clothing of every description, — gowns of silk and woolen and cotton, underwear of nameless sorts, pantaloons and waistcoats too ragged for a beggar to covet, coats antiquated beyond all fashion plates ; hats and caps by the dozen, —hats old and bad, new and shining, hats of silk, of felt, and of straw, sombreros and wide-awakes, belonging to peasants, priests, sailors, and soldiers, all hung up out of gratitude, or weariness of the hat; wax images, without number, of babies, of heads, of arms, hips, bodies, and breasts ; bandages and supports; models of ships elaborately carved and rigged ; knapsacks; banners of embroidered silk, presented by cities, municipalities, and nobles. An offering that attracted as much attention as any was a lady’s necktie, a deft construction of blue ribbon and lace. I saw women looking longingly at it, and wondering, perhaps, how a girl could make up her mind to give up such a fresh and sweet thing.

We made, one day, the ascent of the mountain to the summit, to Monte San Geronimo, where was one of the hermit shrines. The severe climb requires an hour and a half ; it repays the trouble, as well for the extensive prospect as for the knowledge it gives of the structure of this fantastic mountain. The way lies up ledges and through ravines and valleys, variegated with sweet shrubs, wild flowers, and verdure, and enlivened with birds, under and around the bases of the detached columns of stone, some of which rise three hundred feet in the air, to the highest point, a bare field of rock. From this windy summit we peeped between the columns, leaning over the dizzy precipice, looking down fully two thousand feet to other ledges below. The prospect is very comprehensive and pleasing to those who enjoy panoramic and map-like views. On a clear day the white snow of the Pyrenees can be seen, the coast and Barcelona, and the Mediterranean and the Balearic Islands. We saw none of these objects in the hazy horizon. Beneath the overhanging rocks is a coffee-house where once the hermit’s hut stood, in which travelers shelter themselves from the wind, and partake of a beverage called coffee. It is a very wild and gloomy place, and abounds in curious rocky freaks. We were not alone. A company of chatty, and for Spaniards merry, pilgrims had arrived before us, who were much more impressed with the hardships of the way than with the magnificences and wonders of the mountain. I had the honor — I mention it because it gave a fleeting charm to the barren region — to assist a Spanish beauty, who was painfully picking her way up the rough ascent in satin slippers, and whose husband unsentimentally clung to the shelter of the hut. I carried her formidable fun, a weapon the Spanish woman never parts with, blow it high or low, and when I restored it, on our return from the thrilling expedition of a few rods, I could not have been thanked with more eloquent eyes, sweeter voice, and profounder bow if I had saved her life. How sweet, sometimes, it is to sacrifice one’s self for others !

Several hundred feet above the restaurant, in the face of the cliff, and accessible only by a narrow ledge not discernible from the road below, is the cave of Joan Gari. In this hole in the rock that excellent ancient hermit probably passed the last five years of his useful life, never stirring out of it, his few wants being supplied by charitable souls. I found that La Cueva de Gari, when I reached it, was an irregular cavity in the rock, perhaps twelve feet long and not so deep as long, and about four feet high. It is protected in front by a double iron grating four feet square. In it reposes a stone image of the holy man, life size, with a venerable beard. He lies reclining on one elbow, contemplating a skull, which has lost several of its teeth and is presumably his own, and a representation of the miraculous image of the Virgin and Child. The clasped hands rest upon an open book and beads, and a rude little cross is stuck in the rock before him. Behind him lies his wallet and his staff, a basket that perhaps once held the contributions of the charitable, and a broken water-jug. This primitive furniture is probably all that the apartment ever contained in the days when the entrance to the cave was thronged by devout spectators of a man’s ability to lie down on a bed of stone and straw for five years.

The story of Joan Gari is a testimony to the wonder-working power of the Monserrat image. It illustrates also the virtue of penitence, and throws light upon the candid answer of the lovely French catechumen, who, when she was asked, What is it necessary to do in order to repent ? replied, It is necessary to sin. I take the story as I find it in the authorized Historia de Monserrat, which I bought at the monastery.

Joan Gari was a hermit of Monserrat in the ninth century, who had a great repute for sanctity and purity and devotion to Santa Cecilia. Naturally, Joan Gari prided himself upon his sanctity, and God determined to put it to proof. There reigned at that time at Barcelona, Count Wilfredo el Velloso, the father of a beautiful and charming daughter, who, for the secret purposes of the divine will, was afflicted with a malign spirit, which, it was declared, would not depart out of her and leave her in health except at the mandate of Joan Gari. And it was necessary that the maiden should seek the holy man alone in the mountain where he abode. Count Wilfredo, moved by his affection and against all the dictates of prudence, consented to this pilgrimage of his blooming daughter. She departed to the mountain, and never returned. Many years elapsed before her fate was known to the count. The hermit had received her, dishonored her, murdered her to conceal his crime, and buried her body in a crevice in the rocks. Overcome at last by remorse, Joan Gari threw himself at the feet of the image of the Virgin, and begged her pity and help. In order to get an indulgence for his sins he made a journey to Rome, and the Pope absolved him on condition that he should expiate his crime by becoming a beast like Nebuchadnezzar and roaming about on all fours. This Gari did faithfully for six years, crawling about among the rocks on his hands and knees, exposed to the elements, foraging for his food like an animal in the thickets, until he became a hairy, unmentionable monster of the forest. One day in the year 894, Count Wilfredo, with a troop of attendants, went forth to hunt in the wilds of Monserrat. His companions, beating about in the wilderness, routed out a nondescript monster, who permitted himself to be taken alive into the presence of Count Wilfredo. The count was much amused with this capture, and determined to take him as a trophy to Barcelona, whither Gari was nothing loath to go, as he was determined to suffer in silence all the punishment that God and the count might inflict. He was taken to Barcelona, and exhibited as a real monster of the forest. And there God at last saw and accepted the penitence of Gari. One day, when the count had a great feast, he ordered the monster to be brought into the banquethall, in order to entertain his guests with the uncouth curiosity. But lo! while they made merry over him at the feast, God spoke out of the heavens, and said, “ Arise, Joan Gari! God has pardoned thy sins.” All heard the voice, but could hardly believe what they heard. But Gari, emboldened by the heavenly aid, arose and stood upright, and prostrating himself at the feet of the count confessed all. And Count Wilfredo, who declared that it did not become him to withhold a forgiveness that God had granted, pardoned him on condition that he should lead them to the grave of the murdered girl. This Gari did, and when they stood by the grave of his victim, lo ! grace succeeded grace. Requilda awoke from her long and tranquil sleep in the arms of Mary the Mother of God, and rose up radiant, and kissed her wondering father. Like a true woman as she was, her first petition to her father was that he should forgive her destroyer, and the next, was that she should be permitted to consecrate herself to the service of the Holy Virgin, at this very shrine, in the shadow of which she had been dishonored, murdered, buried, and resurrected after a sleep of seven years. So Requilda became a nun, and Joan Gari crawled, I suppose, into his hole, where he ended a life which diffuses a sanctity over all this region. Whether he is, as I have read, the most beautiful exemplar of all the virtues, the reader must judge. It seems to me that he missed some of them. What they were his image is perhaps intended to represent him as inquiring, in his phrenological attitude of studying his own skull.

It is a very soothing and peaceful place to sojourn in, this secluded nook in the mountain. One is lifted up above the world, which is nevertheless in sight, and protected without any sense of being imprisoned. It adds something to the feeling of repose that one can look so far down the ravine, off over the widening valley, and out upon a great expanse of country, which he knows is humming with life, no sound of which reaches him in his secure retreat. If one is in search of a good solid solitude, let him come and dwell here. An air of quiet reigns. All the visitors, pilgrims, and curiosity-hunters do not seem to break it. The ruins, the halfneglected gardens, the gaunt old monastery with its rows of factory-like windows, the antiquated houses of entertainment, the big church hanging over the precipice, the savage rocks, the gashed ravines, the fantastic towers that lean in the background, would subdue the most jaunty spirit; and yet it is not a melancholy place. The birds like it, the flowers bloom there with tender grace, the air is fresh and inspiring. The few friars who glide about the courts and occasionally show themselves at a window, the servants who keep the place in order, the little colony that has gathered there to serve the public, scarcely disturb the ancient quiet. I fancy that the atmosphere of monkish reticence and silence still remains. It is one of the few spots left in the world where a scholar might sit down, undisturbed by any suggestions of an uneasy age, and compose such interminable theological tomes as those that slumber in its libraries, which nobody can read.

Charles Dudley Warner.