Sant Antoni Abat

Església de Sant Antoni Abat
Built: 1430-1445
Founded: 1430
Function: Former monastic church
Address: Sant Antoni Abat 61

The Monastery-Hospital of St. Anthony Abbott was founded in 1430 as a home for the Order of Hospitallers of St. Anthony, more commonly referred to in Catalonia as the “els Antonians”, who were canons regular of the Augustinians. Founded in Arles in 1095, the order spread throughout Europe to provide aid to pilgrims and care for the sick, particularly those suffering from leprosy. The Antonians arrived in Barcelona in the 15th century and built a large church, monastery, and hospital named for their patron saint.

After many years of declining numbers, in 1791 the Antonians were technically extinguished in Spain via a Papal Bull issued by Pius VI. Their hospitals were to be turned over to the local municipalities, and the few remaining Antonians were absorbed into other religious communities. However the Antonians in Barcelona managed to hang on until 1803, when the housing of lepers within city limits was banned by the government of Joseph Bonaparte.

The building was turned over to the Piarist brothers in 1806, who continued to use the hospital portion of the structure as a school. In 1906, during a Leftist uprising, the hospital, monastery, and church were damaged by fire. What the Leftists did not finish in 1906 they completed during the Civil War in 1936, when the rest of what remained was virtually entirely destroyed, and had to be torn down.

The Piarists came back after the war, and moved into a new monastery rebuilt on the ruins of the old. The old church was too far gone to save, but the original porch of the monastic church was retained, and used as the entrance for the commercial establishment which was built upon its ruins. Today its three grand Gothic arches, featuring sculptures of King Alfonso VI and his Queen Maria, rulers of Catalonia at the time the church was built, and part of the upper story are all that remains of what was once a very grand Gothic building.

Here we see the damage inflicted on the church by the Leftist anti-Catholic uprising in 1905:

Unfortunately the church was finished off by the Leftists thirty years later, and all that remains is the old entrance:

Àngel Custodi

Església del Sant Àngel Custodi de Barcelona
Built: 1854-1857
Founded: 1398
Function: Parish church; popular shrine
Address: Vilardell 50

In 1398 the redoubtable Catalan Saint Vincent Ferrer, Dominican theologian and fiery preacher, was arriving at the north gate of the fortified walls which surrounded the City of Barcelona. As he prepared to pass through the portal, he looked up and had a vision of an angel standing over the gate, holding a sword aloft in his right hand and carrying a crown in his left. “Angel of God, what are you doing here?” asked St. Vincent, in Catalan. “I am guarding Barcelona by order of The Most High,” replied the angel, also in Catalan.

This is a wonderful story, but unfortunately it is one which has been forgotten by many people in Barcelona. Now, it is rather something indeed for a city – which of course is not a human being and does not have an immortal soul – to have a guardian angel assigned to it personally by God Himself. So at the time this miracle occurred, it is no surprise that the tale of this vision captured the popular imagination in the city.

Devotion to the Holy Guardian Angel of Barcelona began immediately, and by 1466 a tiny but beautifully decorated chapel was erected inside the gateway itself. The gate was renamed as the “Portal de l’Àngel” or “Gate of the Angel”, as confirmed in an official edict from the city council. A stone statue of the Guardian Angel matching St. Vincent’s description of the vision was the centerpiece of the little shrine.

Every year on the Feast of the Guardian Angels, which happens to coincide with the beginning of pomegranate season, a fair was held atop the city walls in this location. Pomegranates were displayed and sold, indicating that it was now the appropriate time of year to eat them. It was the custom for expectant mothers to purchase a pomegranate – which was often featured in Christian iconography of the period, a fruit appearing in the hand of the Christ Child – and eat one. They would ask Barcelona’s Guardian Angel to protect their unborn child and help them have a safe delivery.

When the city walls were torn down in 1854, the image of Barcelona’s Guardian Angel was removed from its little chapel, and taken to the nearby church of Santa Anna for safekeeping. During this time, as was occurring all over the city because of the population explosion occurring in newly industrializing Barcelona, a new parish church was constructed in the Hostafranchs-Sants area in the western part of the city, at the foot of Montjuich, and named for the Holy Guardian Angel of Barcelona. The statue was moved from Santa Anna to its new home in 1857 as part of a grand religious procession, but not without protest. Many residents of the old city lamented the fact that the statue was being taken away from the site of the apparition, and were concerned that devotion to the miraculous apparition of the city’s Guardian Angel would decrease when it was no longer in its original location.

As one might expect, during the Civil War both the church and the statue of the Angel were burnt by the Leftists in one of their usual fits of anti-Catholicism. A replacement for the original statue was made, based more or less on extant photographs of the original. However popular sentiment is that the Angel was not very pleased about what happened, both with being moved from the site of the vision and also how the statue was treated, so although devotion to him has resumed it will never again be what it once was.

While the Gate of the Angel itself is no more, the street which replaced it (one of Barcelona’s most popular shopping streets) is still officially named “Avenue of the Gate of the Angel,” though usually shortened to simply “Portal de l’Àngel”, recalling the name of the gate itself. On the corner of this street and the Carrer Fontanella is the grand neo-Renaissance Bank of Spain, where the old gate used to stand. In a niche on the side of the bank, an observant eye will spot a more modern sculpture of the Guardian Angel of Barcelona. It was donated to the city by sculptor Ángel Ferrant Vázquez in 1948.

Unfortunately, I have not found any good photographs of the interior but here are some shots of the exterior:

This is an engraving of what the original chapel inside the city gate looked like in the 18th century:

Here we see an old photograph of the original statue in the parish church, before the Civil War:

and here we see the replacement in the present-day church:

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: