Santa Margarida la Reial

Monestir de Santa Margarida la Reial
Founded: 1599
Function: Monastic church
Address: Pomaret 34

Visitors to this quiet, out-of-the-way convent of Capuchin nuns may not be aware that this is the third location for the Poor Clares of St. Margaret, who have had some travels over the years. Their case is similar to that of many of the religious orders in Barcelona who started out in the old city, and ended up scattered about all over the new. In this case, the Order was formally founded in 1599 and established in the old city; moved north into the new city in the 19th century; and moved further north in the 20th.

The Venerable Àngela Margarida Prat Serafi was born in 1543 in Manresa, a city not far from Barcelona, into a poor but large peasant family. She moved to Barcelona to obtain work as a housemaid, and eventually married a man who physically and emotionally abused her to such a degree that her own parish priest tried unsuccessfully to intervene. She gave birth to three children, only one of whom survived to adulthood – a girl who became a Franciscan sister.

After the death of her husband in 1582, “Mother Serafina”, as she came to be known, began to sew and embroider to pay for herself and her family, and became increasingly devout, trying to discern whether she had a vocation. She developed friendships with the Capuchin Friars, who became her spiritual directors, and with their guidance she eventually opened a primary school. Over time, she came into contact with other women of poor background like herself, who were attracted to the strict interpretation of the Rule of St. Clare, and they gradually formed what by 1593 had become the nucleus of a monastic community. Unfortunately, because they were all poor women, they did not have the dowry funds necessary to properly form a Capuchin Order and obtain a building to use for a convent.

When Philip III became king of Spain upon the death of his father Philip II in 1598, he arranged to marry his cousin Margaret of Austria the following year. Following their wedding in the city of Valencia, the couple made a royal progress, visiting many of the important cities of their kingdom, and stopped in Barcelona. One of the ladies-in-waiting to Queen Margaret, a noblewoman also named Margaret, had heard tell of the piety of Mother Serafina, and arranged to meet her.

She was so taken by what she heard, that Mother Serafina was presented to the King and Queen and the nobles of the court during their stay in Barcelona. They too were taken with Mother Serafina’s piety, and particularly the new Queen who shared the name “Margaret” with her. The royals promised to help arrange the foundation of the convent, and through these connections both the order and the convent have since borne the title “la Reial” to indicate their royal favor.

With the assistance of the Crown and the Barcelona city council, the group received formal recognition from the Papal Nuncio as Capuchin Nuns, and they were able to purchase a house located near the Dominican Convent of Our Lady of the Angels. This location quickly became too small, and renovations and expansion had to begin. So not long after moving in, in 1601 they temporarily moved to quarters at Santa Maria de Montalegre – a location which I have recently written about – before its conversion into a seminary for the Archdiocese.

While at their temporary digs, Mother Serafina was made the abbess of the convent, and in 1602 the original group of nuns received their first novices. Among these novices was Blessed Maria Àngela Astorc (beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1982), who herself went on to found numerous convents and write extensively on spiritual matters. The Capuchin nuns were able to move back to the newly completed convent in 1604. Mother Serafina herself died in 1608 in the second convent she had founded, in her home town of Manresa, and was buried there. She was declared Venerable by Pope Pius XI in 1933.

The nuns remained at the original convent site until 1881, when they were merged with their sister house from Mataró, and moved to a new, much larger location in the north end of the city known as Sant Gervasi. They remained at this location until 1909, when their convent was burned down by Leftists during the “Tragic Week” uprisings, and the sisters had to flee. Rather than rebuild at this site, the nuns sold the land for construction of the beautiful Galvany Market, which still stands today, and they themselves moved to a new location further north in Sant Gervasi. [Unfortunately, I cannot find any information at this point on the design or interior of the current convent.]

Here we can see some pictures of the damage to the 2nd convent, as a result of the Leftist uprising; note the black streaks on the facade from the fires:

Here we see the exterior of the convent today; this is the third building to house the sisters:

And here is a portrait of Mother Serafina, which now hangs in Manresa City Hall; unfortunately her tomb was opened and her body destroyed during the 1909 Leftist uprising:

Santa Maria de Montalegre

Església de Santa Maria de Montalegre
Built: 1888-1902
Founded: 1362
Function: Parish church; former monastic church
Address: Valldonzella, 13

While the present building is fairly new by Barcelona standards, there has been a church dedicated to Our Lady of Montalegre (“Mountjoy”) on this site for nearly 700 years. The Order of Canonesses of St. Mary of Montalegre was founded around a hermitage dedicated to Our Lady of Joy (“Alegre”) about the year 1100 in Tiana, a town some miles outside of Barcelona. As they community grew in size, the nuns were eventually able to build a priory near the town, which was completed by 1265.

Thanks to the generosity of a benefactor, in the 1362 the nuns were given land just outside of the then-city walls of Barcelona, and built a new priory to Our Lady of Montalegre there. The order continued to grow, and absorbed the sisters from two other priories into their numbers. Unfortunately, as happened with a number of religious orders during the Renaissance, the Canonesses eventually became somewhat lax in their following of the Augustinian Rule they had adopted at their founding.

As part of the reforms implemented after the Council of Trent, the Archdiocese came down rather harshly on the nuns, who refused to follow the rules of the cloister required by their rule. In 1573 then-Archbishop Martinez de Villar banned the entry of new women to the novitiate of the Order; this effectively sealed its fate. The Order was officially dissolved in 1593 by order of Pope Clement VIII.

In 1598 the old buildings of the monastery were converted for use by the Archdiocese as a seminary, a role which they continued to play until the premises grew too small and a new seminary was built in 1772. The complex then mouldered until the beginning of the 19th century, when it was sold to the municipal government and converted for use as the city’s House of Charity, or municipal almshouse. It continued to serve this purpose until 1957, when the city moved these facilities to a new location.

The old medieval church at the monastery, which was in a poor state of preservation, was torn down and replaced with the present structure; this was completed in 1902. As was too often the case, the Leftists got their hands on the church during the Civil War in 1936, and although the building itself was not harmed, any artwork that the Lefties could get their hands on, they destroyed. Restoration began in 1940, and the interior of the church was restored to much of its original beauty.

After the city had moved their charitable functions to another part of the city, the complex once again had lost its purpose and maintenance began to be deferred. The municipal government then gave the church back to the Archdiocese, which began to seek for a new tenant for the building. It found this in Opus Dei, who were given possession of the building in 1967 and inaugurated new restoration efforts.

Unfortunately I cannot find a good photo of the exterior at this point, but it has quite a lovely interior:

The high altar has a stunningly decorated baldachin:

Here is the image of Our Lady of Montalegre which is enthroned above and behind the high altar:

…although an amazing survival is the original exterior facade image of Our Lady of Montalegre, dating from the 14th or 15th century, which is still located outside on the facade of the building:

Mare de Déu de Núria

Església de la Mare de Déu de Núria
Built: 1886-1897
Founded: 1885
Function: Parish church; former monastic chapel
Address: Bon Pastor 7

This very pretty church is dedicated to Our Lady of Núria, and visitors to Barcelona will become accustomed to seeing and hearing the name Núria almost as frequently as they do “Montserrat” or “Mercedes”, other Catalan titles of the Blessed Mother as honored at the Benedictine Abbey of Montserrat or at the Basilica of Our Lady of Mercy in Barcelona. Núria is a valley located in the Catalan Pyrenees, where legend says that St. Giles first established a shrine to the Virgin Mary in around 700 A.D. Her shrine in Núria still houses the Romanesque sculpture of the Madonna and Child which has been honored there for nearly 1000 years, and so understandably the name Núria for girls is particularly popular among families with connections to this region of Catalonia.

The convent chapel was built for the nuns of an order known as Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, more commonly known as the Good Shepherd Sisters, founded in the 19th century by St. Mary Eufrasia. This was a reform of the Order of Our Lady of Charity founded by St. Jean Eudes in the 17th century, which was somewhat disorganized in having no central authority in the form of a mother house at the time, in order to administer the members of the order. The sisters were particularly concerned with care for the poor, especially women and young people who might be easily exploited by society.

In 1885 the convent was given episcopal permission to begin their foundation at a prime location in the Eixample, which at the time was the brand-new, expanding, district of the city of Barcelona. Construction of the Gothic Revival chapel and the convent began the following year, and due to various delays continued until 1897. The nuns remained in residence until the Civil War when, as happened all over Barcelona, they were forced to flee and the church was sacked by the Leftists.

After returning to their convent once Barcelona was taken by the Franquist forces in 1938, the nuns decided to find a new home elsewhere in the city. The Archdiocese then purchased the building and created a new parish dedicated to Our Lady of Núria to take over the site. Unfortunately, despite all of the work done to bring the chapel back to life after the Civil War, the almost-universal adoption of bad taste as a result of Vatican II caused much of the old decoration to be torn out, leaving an interior that seems somewhat at odds with the exterior, as shown in the photos below. My understanding from the parish website is that they are trying to address some of these issues as they are able.

Here we see the exterior of the church:

Here is a view of the interior as it was before Vatican II, probably in the 1950′s:

And here is how it looks today:

We can also look back towards the choir loft:

And here is the statue of Our Lady of Núria, a copy of the original Romanesque image at her shrine, which is enthroned above the main altar and seated on a silver throne:

Capella de La Mercè i Sant Pere

Capella de Nostra Senyora de La Mercè i Sant Pere Apóstol
Built: 1795-1798
Founded: 1795
Function: Private chapel; former convent-school chapel; former private family chapel
Address: Laforja 21

Those who are fans of the Traditional Latin mass oftentimes have a difficult task in trying to track down places in Barcelona where such masses are celebrated. The many churches, chapels, and monasteries throughout the city are often awe-inspiring because of their incredible age, beauty, or size, but in all of these places the celebration of the mass is almost always in Catalan, and sometimes in Castilian. Other than the occasional French, German, or Italian parish, both the Tridentine and Novus Ordo Latin mass are rather hard to find. All the more reason then, for pilgrims to Barcelona interested in this area to visit the beautiful little chapel featured in this post.

The little Baroque Chapel of Our Lady of Mercy and the Apostle St. Peter is a small but remarkable 18th century structure, tucked away in the Eixample district in mid-town Barcelona. It was originally a private chapel which stood within the estate of an important Barcelona family, in what was at that time a semi-rural area some miles outside of the old city walls. The construction of such chapels was not uncommon among the wealthier members of the Catalan bourgeoisie, and are still to be found in country houses throughout Catalonia. Nevertheless, this private structure is a remarkable architectural survival inside a bustling city.

With the expansion of the city northward outside of the old medieval walls in the mid-19th century, the building and the land on which it sits were sold to a religious order. The German nuns who occupied the site built a Catholic girls’ school, and used the chapel for their conventual and school needs. By the early 1960′s the school had run out of room and needed to move into larger quarters, and so the chapel was once again put up for sale.

This time the structure was purchased by the Federatio Internationalis Una Voce, or “Una Voce” Foundation, the Spanish arm of which was founded in Barcelona in 1964 to preserve the celebration of the Traditional Latin mass, as well as to encourage the singing of Gregorian Chant. In point of fact, the chapel can hold the claim to fame of never having celebrated any other form of the mass other than the Tridentine: the nuns had left while the Second Vatican Council was underway, and the chapel was mothballed until the Federation moved in. Subsequently the related Roma Aeterna Association was also founded in Barcelona, and chapters of Una Voce were established in other cities in Spain and Portugal. However this chapel remained the touchstone for this movement, which continues to grow in the Iberian Peninsula.

Both the low and high Tridentine mass continue to be celebrated here every Sunday, although the chapel is no longer associated with the Una Voce or Roma Aeterna organization. I have recently been informed by a member of Una Voce that the coverage is spotty, and the chapel may be on the market again, so those wanting to attend mass here will have to double-check with parish of St. Therese of the Little Flower nearby, which administers the building. Hopefully the building will not be sold to a secular buyer and then be deconsecrated. In the meantime, the priests of the FSSP have recently begun holding masses at the parish of Maria Reina in Pedralbes, which I have written about previously, which is a much larger venue.

Here we see an exterior shot of this charming chapel:

And here is the interior: