L’Ermita de Santa Madrona

L’Ermita de Santa Madrona
Built: 1619
Founded: Before 1403
Function: Former monastic chapel
Address: Santa Madrona s/n

Originally, the city of Barcelona had two patron virgins from the time of the Roman persecutions: Saint Eulalia, who is buried in a spectacular sarcophagus in the crypt below the high altar of the Cathedral, and her contemporary Saint Madrona who, sadly, has now been almost forgotten. There was once an enormous Franciscan monastery dedicated to St. Madrona, “Madrona” was a common girl’s name in old record books, and her relics were part of elaborate processions. Now all that remains to her memory is a parish church in the old slum district, and very small chapel on the side of the mountain of Montjuich, where she used to live. It is the latter structure that this entry deals with.

Madrona was a young girl from the Roman colony of Barcino, who lived on Montjuch, the mountain which suddenly rises in the SW corner of the city and dips its toes in the Mediterranean. The story is that she was orphaned in her teens and turned to the new Christian community for assistance. Her uncle, not wanting his niece to come under the influence of this suspicious religion, adopted her and took her away to live with him in Thessalonica. This did no good, for Madrona became a Christian, and was martyred under the persecutions of Diocletian in around 300 A.D.

Her relics were mentioned as having been enshrined in a monastery dedicated to her in Thessalonica, where some scholars believe St. Madrona actually hailed from. They disappeared from there in 726, but reappeared again more than a century later and were brought to Barcelona in about 892 A.D., under miraculous circumstances. The original plan was to have them interred in Marseilles, but according to pious stories a series of storms blew the ship bearing her relics further and further westward, until they arrived in St. Madrona’s hometown of Barcelona.

The first documentary mention of a popular chapel dedicated to St. Madrona on the site of her former home comes from 1403, but it is certain that some structure existed here prior to this date. During its history the little building and its relics went through a number of hands, including the Augustinians, Benedictines, Capuchins, Franciscans, Servites, and others. In 1563, for example, the chapel was offered to the Capuchins as a base from which to found a monastery dedicated to the saint.

The relics of St. Madrona were originally kept in the little church, which was later augmented with a larger chapel and monastery, and were often brought out in procession to invoke the aid of the saint when war, pestilence, or other calamities threatened. In fact, there is mention of her relics bringing an end to crippling drought on five separate occasions, most recently in 1651. The custom was to take St. Madrona down from her mountain home to the Cathedral, where she would “visit” with St. Eulalia at the Cathedral, though in essence as a sort of captive. When the rains returned, she would be returned to her home up on Montjuich.

In the early 18th century after the convent and church (but not the chapel) on Montjuich were destroyed during wartime, the relics were temporarily moved to the Cathedral while a large new Capuchin convent dedicated to St. Madrona was built along the Ramblas in downtown Barcelona. This too, was later destroyed, in part during the Napoleonic wars, and then later virtually entirely as a result of Leftist insurrections in the 19th century. The spot which it occupied was eventually replaced with the public square known as the Plaça Reial.

In 1835 after the destruction of the Capuchin monastery, the relics of St. Madrona came into the custody first of the Church of St. Michael next to the city hall. When this church was demolished in order to expand the building, the relics were moved to a parish church dedicated to St. Madrona in the Poble Sec, the working-class district at the foot of Montjuich. (What happened to them subsequently will be treated in a later post dealing with that parish.)

In the late 19th/early 20th century, as Barcelona began to rediscover and appreciate its medieval past, many of the small hermitages in the hills around the outskirts of the city were still standing, albeit in various states of disrepair. The land surrounding the little chapel of St. Madrona was purchased by the Peris Mencheta family, whose head at the time was in charge of cultural affairs for the Barcelona City Council, and the building was restored in 1905. Today it is used primarily as a venue for baptisms and weddings, and is only open to the public on St. Madrona’s feast day of March 15th. In fact there is a saying in Catalan that the best of the sausages made during winter, and which are ready to eat in the spring after curing, are those eaten on her feast day.

Here we can see the exterior of the little church:

And here is a 16th century altarpiece now located inside the chapel, depicting St. Madrona on the left, and her contemporary and co-patroness St. Eulalia on the right:

Santa Isabel d’Aragó i Sant Joaquim

Església de Santa Isabel d’Aragó i Sant Joaquim
Built: 1908-1917
Founded: 1901
Function: Parish church/monastic church
Address: Oblit 24

The present Church of St. Isabel of Aragon (also known as St. Isabel of Portugal) and St. Joachim is actually a blending of two religious foundations. St. Joachim, father of the Blessed Virgin Mary, was chosen as the patron of the sole monastic church built in Barcelona for the friars known as the Minims, a small but still-extant religious order founded by St. Francis de Paola in the 15th century. The friars arrived in Barcelona and obtained permission from the Archdiocese to found their monastery in 1901 in Horta-Guinardó, a working-class neighborhood in NE Barcelona which was already popularly devoted to St. Joachim. This made him the right choice for the patron of the Minims’ new home when the first rudimentary chapel opened to the public in 1902.

Work began on the present church in 1908, but construction was interrupted in 1909 when it was sacked and partially destroyed by the Leftists during one of their frequent anti-Catholic uprisings. The friars were able to return the following year, and had to start all over again; the church as it stands today was dedicated in 1917. During the Civil War in 1936 however, as happened all over the city, the church was again sacked by the Leftists and burnt, and three of the friars were murdered.

After the Civil War, as the Minims returned and began to re-build their friary, Barcelona experienced a population boom as thousands of immigrants from other parts of Spain arrived looking for work in the city’s port, factories, and manufacturing plants. Throughout the 1940′s, many new parishes were established throughout the city to deal with this influx of new parishioners. One such was that founded in 1946 dedicated to Isabel of Aragon, Queen of Portugal.

The parish originally had no fixed home, and the Minims Fathers allowed the parish the use of their church until a suitable location could be found. By 1949 the parish obtained a building for temporary use as a church not far away, until a proper building could be constructed. As matters turned out, this was never to be. In 1971 the parish moved to a new location on the lower floor of a building nearby, and remained there until 1991 when it was moved back to St. Joachim’s and the parish given into the care of the Minims.

Here we see the exterior of the church:

Here we see the interior, looking toward the sanctuary:

And here we see two of the side chapel altars:

L’Ajuda

Santuari de la Mare de Déu de l’Ajuda
Built: 1912-1916
Founded: 1516
Function: Shrine church
Address: Sant Pere Més Baix 18

The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Help is one of those teeny-tiny little off-the-beaten-track churches that one stumbles across when wandering through the old city in Barcelona. For many years it was associated with the very ancient convent of Sant Pere de les Puel.les, which stands nearby. Today it is a center for Franciscan spirituality in downtown Barcelona.

The earliest mention of a group of Barcelona citizens desiring to build a shrine to an image of Our Lady under this title dates from 1516, and the image of the Virgin which is honored by the members of the shrine dates from about this time. The local organization gathered together to try to address the needs of the poor, elderly, and suffering in the area, under the appropriate patronage of Our Lady of Help. The first actual building on the present site was not completed until 1546. This building, which unfortunately suffered from structural problems, was replaced with a second shrine in 1800.

In 1835 the little church with its revered image of the Virgin became home for a group of Capuchin Friars, when they returned to Spain following the expropriation of monastic land by the previous leftist Spanish government. In 1884, the Archdiocese decided to turn over administration of the shrine over to the Capuchins, who have held charge of the shrine ever since. This custodianship has not been without tragedies, however.

In 1909 the entire shrine and the friars’ rooms were burned down to the ground by Leftists, and the 500-year-old image of Our Lady received some minor damage. With the help of the Archdiocese and architect Bonaventura Bassegoda, the shrine was rebuilt by 1912. In 1936 the shrine was partially destroyed by the Leftists, again, who this time also managed to murder two of the Capuchin fathers.

The Capuchins had entrusted the image of the Virgin to one of the local ladies who supported the shrine, and it was hidden away in her home until the end of the war when it was returned to its church and the building restored. In 1961, Our Lady Help of Help was proclaimed the Patroness of the Sant Pere district, where the shrine stands, and in 1998 a ceremony was held to mark her canonical coronation. The shrine is by no means luxurious, but in addition to celebrating the mass, it continues to serve as a site for lectures and discussions on Franciscan spirituality, as well as ministering to the needs of the Sant Pere district. In fact, because of the shrine’s members’ dedication to serving the needs of the poor, the shrine was awarded the city’s Gold Medal of Honor in 2004 for services to the community.

Here we can see a bit of the exterior of the shrine:

While I am glad that the shrine is still going, it will give you a sense of the destruction that went on during the Spanish Civil War to see what the chapel looked like before it was attacked by the Leftists:

And here is the window of Our Lady over the main entrance, which is one of the few remaining decorative elements from Bassegoda’s time:

Santa Maria de Vallvidrera

Església de Santa Maria de Vallvidrera
Built: 1540-1587
Founded: Before 987 A.D.
Function: Parish church
Address: Actor Morano 9

Up in the Collserola Mountains which ring the city of Barcelona, stands the late Gothic church of Santa Maria de Vallvidrera. As is true of many of the city’s churches, this parish is far older than the current structure which it occupies. The first documentary evidence for a parish community in the Vallvidrera district comes from 987 A.D., when an inventory lists a church that existed on the site as being a mission or satellite parish of the very ancient parish of Sant Cebrià (St. Cyprian) of Valldoreix, a town on the other side of the mountain range.

What is interesting is that there is some written mention as early as 1058 A.D. that this church was a basilica. This poses an interesting historical question: was the structure built in the style of a Roman basilica, or did it have an important religious significance or canonical distinction that caused people to refer to it as a basilica? The question will likely always remain unanswered, given the far-distant time period involved, the fact that Lefists burned many of the parish records in 1936, and the structure as it stood in the 11th century no longer exists.

By the 12th century there was a large enough population in the still-sparsely populated Vallvidrera district for the church to become independent of Valldoreix, and come under the direct jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of Barcelona. The community continued to worship in the old church until the structure became impractical. This was then torn down and replaced with a Gothic structure in the mid-to-late 16th century, which is the building that visitors see today.

During the 19th century with the arrival of the locomotive and better roads up into the mountains, the area became a popular place for wealthy city dwellers to build their weekend or summer houses. The higher altitudes and verdant vegetation provided a cooler place to spend the hot and humid Barcelona summers. The arrival of tramways and the construction of the nearby Basilica of Tibidabo also helped to being more residents into the area.

With the arrival of the Civil War in 1936, the church was trashed and burned by the Leftists, and among the losses were a number of very esteemed 17th century altarpieces that poor foresight had prevented from being moved to the National Museum on Montjuich, where they might have been saved. The church remained in disuse for over a decade afterward, before popular attention was drawn to the sad state of the building. It was subsequently partially restored and re-opened by the Archdiocese, and mass continues at the present with the assistance of the local Capuchin friars.

Sadly, I cannot find any good interior shots of the church, which has a beautiful combination of brick and stone tracery in the apse, but here is the exterior:

Sant Pacià

Església de Sant Pacià
Built: 1876-1881
Founded: 1850
Function: Parish church; former religious community/school
Address: Monges 21

St. Patrick, or Sant Pacià as he is known in Catalan, is a saint whose popularity around the world as a patron for churches is well-known; Barcelona is no exception. One of the more interesting aspects of this pretty church dedicated to St. Patrick, lavishly decorated both inside and out, is the fact that its floor mosaic and significant parts of the interior were designed by Catalonia’s great architect, Antoni Gaudí. Surprisingly, perhaps because it is not in the center of town, it is not very well-known, even among Gaudí aficionados.

Today the neighborhood of Sant Andreu de Palomar is home to some 50,000 people, and an important transportation center. However the surrounding area was sparsely populated until Barcelona’s industrial revolution dramatically increased the size of the local population. Subsequently, it was formally absorbed into Barcelona at the end of the 19th century, along with many other formerly far-flung corners of the city.

In 1850 the pastor of the local parish church, naturally enough dedicated to St. Andrew, asked two of his sisters – both members of the RJM’s or Religious of Jesus and Mary – to come from Lyons and found a convent and school to serve the needs of young girls in the expanding neighborhood. The school quickly outgrew its original location in the center of the burgeoning district, and in 1857 the sisters obtained some abandoned farmland to build a new, larger complex.

The present Neo-Gothic church was built by architect Joan Torras i Guardiola between 1876-1881. It is a stately building in and of itself, but what is particularly interesting to the armchair architect is its interior. The decoration of the church was one of the very first important commissions awarded to the young Gaudí in 1879 and completed by 1880, several years before he received his first residential commission (his “Casa Vicens” of 1883.) Gaudí was responsible for the complicated geometric design of the marble mosaic floor, as well as elements of the side chapels, the high altar, and the choir. It is no accident that Torras i Guardiola was one of Gaudí’s professors, and probably helped his young pupil to obtain the commission for the church decoration.

Less than a decade after the complex was finished, the sisters decided to move to another part of the city, and the complex was sold to the Marist Brothers, who had only recently arrived in Barcelona. The Marists continued the educational efforts of the school, which was now changed to admit only boys and young men, until a Leftist uprising in 1907. The brothers managed to escape before the entire complex was sacked and torched in a fit of anti-Catholic violence, but because of the costly extent of the damage they never returned.

The building then lay either abandoned or rented out as a storehouse for a number of years, until in 1923 the Archbishop decided to have the church restored and found a parish on the site. Masses resumed in 1924, and in 1929 the parish celebrated the construction of a new rectory and bell tower to replace those damaged during the 1907 revolt. Unfortunately, this was not the end of the church’s troubles.

In 1936 the church was confiscated by the Leftists at the start of the Civil War, and a number of the newly-restored interior elements were removed and stolen, burned, or otherwise destroyed. The church itself was turned into a public dining hall, but fortunately was not burned or vandalized, and did not suffer any structural damage. As a result, at the end of the war in 1939 it was able to resume parish life comparatively quickly.

Here we see some views of the exterior of the church:

Here is the interior, looking toward the high altar:

and here is some more of the Gaudí-designed marble mosaic:

Sant Miquel del Port

Església de Sant Miquel del Port
Built: 1753-1755
Founded: 1753
Function: Parish church
Address: Sant Miquel 39

When much of the Ribera neighborhood was demolished by Philip V following Barcelona’s backing the wrong horse in the Wars of the Spanish Succession, the forcibly uprooted residents moved into new quarters in what is now known as the Barceloneta or “Little Barcelona” neighborhood by the seaside. The area quickly became something of a working class slum, resembling the back streets of Southern Italian cities like Naples. In the midst of this, a new parish was created and a new Italianate Baroque was built, dedicated to the Archangel St. Michael. The denomination “Sant Miquel del Port”, i.e. “St. Michael-of-the-Port”, was to distinguish it from the other, late Gothic church of St. Michael which stood near Barcelona city hall until the mid-19th century.

Designed by a Spanish (rather than a Catalan) architect, Pedro Martín Cermeño, who was primarily a military engineer, the church was rapidly constructed between 1753 and 1755. Martín Cermeño’s basic design was heavily dependent on that of Jesuit churches such as Il Gesu in Rome. When built the military authorities had insisted that the church be low enough so as not to block the cannons from La Ciutadella firing at approaching ships in the harbor, and therefore there was only a small cupola on the original structure.

In 1863 the port church was expanded in order to meet the needs of the rapidly increasing local population. At the same time, because of the closure and demolition of the nearby Citadel, there was no further need for cannon-based height restrictions on quayside buildings. The parish was thus finally able to raise a proper campanile over their church in the course of their remodeling.

Like the city’s other Baroque churches, Sant Miquel was torched by the Leftists in 1936, which ruined the interior decoration. The statues on the facade were also toppled, including the central image of St. Michael, and were finally replaced in the 1990′s. The figure of St. Michael in particular has been criticized by many for looking like a modern bodybuilder. Today, the Feast of St. Michael on September 29th remains the date of the major street festival for Barceloneta, when the neighborhood participates in revelry in the large square in front of the church.

Here we see the exterior of the church, during the day and in the evening:

and also when the square is decorated for Catalonia’s National Day, La Diada:

here we see the new statue of St. Michael on the facade:

and here are some shots of the interior:

Església de la Ciutadella

Església de Sant Felix Africanus
Built: 1717-1728
Founded: 1715
Function: Military parish church
Address: Sardenya 21

More commonly known as the “Church of the Citadel”, the 18th century Church of Saint Felix Africanus is the parish church of the armed forces in Barcelona. It falls under the jurisdictional control not of the Barcelona Archdiocese, but rather of the Spanish military Archdiocese. Despite its long history, it is not a structure that has, in general, a particular fondness among most Barcelonans.

The church, also known as the “Capilla Castrense” or “Military Chapel”, was originally part of the gigantic Ciutadella or “Citadel”. This was a star-shaped fortress that Philip V, the first Bourbon king of Spain, commissioned upon his victory over Barcelona in the Wars of the Spanish Succession on September 11, 1714. The completed citadel was the largest fortress in Europe, and an indication of how much the Bourbons loathed the Catalans for having supported the Habsburgs; naturally, Philip wanted to keep them from re-asserting their autonomy or independence from Spain.

The present-day church was the military chapel of the Spanish troops garrisoned in Barcelona. Like the rest of the buildings of the citadel, the chapel was designed in a somewhat heavy, imposing Baroque style under the direction of George Prosper Van Verboom, a Flemish military engineer in the service of Philip V. Verboom took a personal interest in the design of the entire complex, as indeed he had in the bombing of the city into submission. Although his design for the chapel was never fully executed, as Verboom planned to add additional radiating chapels and pavilions for ceremonial purposes to the structure, what stands today is arguably the only Northern European Baroque building in Barcelona – a city which does not have a significant amount of Baroque architecture, and most of that which does exist having being based on Southern European models.

One of the most controversial aspects of Verboom’s design for the citadel was the demolition of a significant part of the old Ribera district, home of Barcelona’s fishermen since Roman times, and of which the Basilica of Santa Maria del Mar was the religious center. Most of the residents were forcibly moved into what rapidly became the high-rise slums of the district known as Barceloneta, down by the city harbor. De-population of the surrounding areas of the city quickly followed, and Barcelona proper was shut up inside the city walls for the next 150 years to stagnate, until the coming of the industrial revolution and less regressive Spanish governments.

After Barcelona opened the old city walls, it took almost ten years to clear away the remains of the old citadel, so massive were Verboom’s structures. The only parts of the complex left standing were the chapel, the governor’s palace (now a technical school), and the arsenal, which is now the home of Catalonia’s parliament. Surrounding these buildings the city fathers commissioned a vast, beautiful city park along the lines of Central Park in Manhattan, which features numerous gardens, fountains (including one of Gaudí’s earliest works), an Arc de Triomphe, promenades, monuments, an artificial lake, the Natural History Museum, and the city zoo.

While still technically a military chapel in addition to being a parish, the church has become very popular for weddings as a result of its new Eden-like garden setting, and unusually ample parking in downtown Barcelona.

Here are some views of the exterior of the church:

and a detail of its very Northern European Baroque front doors:

as well as some shots of the interior: