Els Pares Paüls

Església de Sant Sever i Sant Vicenç de Paül
Built: 1884-1886
Founded: 1884
Function: Parish church; chapel of religious community
Address: Provença 210

A beautiful example of neo-gothic ecclesiastical design in Barcelona, the Chapel of St. Vincent de Paul was part of a complex built in the Eixample district between 1884-1886 as a chapel for the Congregation of the Mission, founded by St. Vincent de Paul. It was designed by architect Camil Oliveras Gensana, the official architect of the Barcelona City Council and a colleague of Antoni Gaudí, who worked with Gaudí on a number of buildings around the city.

Still run today by Vincentian priests, the chapel and the surrounding structure were designed to host popular missions, visiting preachers, help those discerning vocations, and provide spiritual direction to Barcelona’s newest and expanding neighborhood.

As the area grew in population the Archdiocese became concerned about the need for more parishes in the neighborhood. In 1969, on request from then then-Archbishop, the order asked that the chapel be raised to the level of a parish church, and agreed to turn over part of their facilities for use as parish offices and classrooms for Catholic education purposes. The new parish was named St. Severus and St. Vincent de Paul, after Barcelona’s martyred 4th century bishop and the founder of the Congregation of the Mission.

Unfortunately I cannot find a good shot of the interior, but here is the facade:

Sant Genís dels Agudells

Església de Sant Genís dels Agudells
Built: Before 931 A.D., with later additions
Founded: Before 931 A.D.
Function: Parish church
Address: Saldes 3

The church of St. Genesius in the Horta/Vall d’Hebrón neighborhood is one of the oldest continuously operating churches in what is now the much larger city of Barcelona. During the Moorish conquests, the tiny settlement of Horta was a safe haven for Christians fleeing up into the mountains around Barcelona to escape attacks by the Muslims. It is known that the first parish church in what later became the village of Horta, a building named for St. John the Baptist, was in existence by around 910 A.D. The first documentary evidence for the church of Sant Genís dates to 931 A.D., when Bishop Theodoric (ruled 904-937 A.D.) came up from Barcelona to consecrate the completed building. In 1028 A.D. it was raised to the level of a parish.

In the 11th century, and again in the 13th century, the church was significantly expanded, although many architectural elements from the pre-Romanesque and the Romanesque-era expansion have been preserved in the present building. In 1396 Pope Benedict XIII made the parish a dependent of the Hieronymite Monastery of Saint Jerome nearby, which stood from 1393 until it was closed in 1835. More building reforms were completed in 1671.

By 1770 due to monastic decline, the Archdiocese re-assumed the task of appointing pastors to the parish. Like most ecclesiastical buildings in Barcelona, the church suffered significant damage to its interior during the Civil War, but it has since been restored and remains in active use today. The parish cemetery next door is of particular interest, since it is the only remaining church burial ground in the city, as all burials now take place in the large city cemetery located on Montjuich, in the SW quadrant of Barcelona.

A sad incident occurred at the parish during the Civil War. A number of nuns attached to the parish were rounded up and executed by the Leftists on July 23, 1936. This was described by the lone survivor of the massacre, Sister Joaquina Miquel:

We were stopped for being nuns. Mother Mercedes confessed
clearly that we were religious educators, and the gang boss led us to
a house where there were many men, all armed. They pretended to shoot
us (…). We passed through some very bad times; sometimes they
pointed rifles at us, other times they threatened us with blows strong
enough to crack a skull, others so oppressing us to the extent that we
could not even breathe…

At nine o’clock that night we forced into a truck to drive us at high
speed to a field situated along a highway. There they had us get down
from the truck…Many bullets were rained down on us…and when we all
fell to the ground, they withdrew and left us. I saw that Mother
Mercedes was in such a bad state that I took her head in my
lap…being so tall and having received the hail of bullets while
standing, she was completely riddled and cried loudly, praying the
“Our Father” and to Jesus, Mary and Joseph; I could do nothing more
than recommend she keep her voice down in case the Reds came back
again.

What I had feared came to pass, because a single man came back in a
car and when he saw that we were still alive he took out his gun and
shot, hitting Mother Mercedes again; I had laid down and played dead
when I heard the car returning. Another Franciscan sister who was in
our group of nuns did not die, at least not then, and she fled (she
died some hours later in the Hospital Clinic); I wanted to flee with
her, but I refused to leave Mother Mercedes while she was still
alive…She died in much peace and before I left her I arranged her
garments to make sure she was covered modestly. She looked like an
angel of sorrow. We were shot around 10:00 the night of Thursday,
July 23, and Mother Mercedes died at 2:00 in the morning.

Here we see the exterior of the church:

here is the interior:

and here is the cemetery:

La Pompeia

Església-Monestir de la Mare de Déu del Roser de Pompeia
Built: 1905-1910
Founded: 1888
Function: Parish church; chapel of religious community
Address: Diagonal 450

The Capuchin Order, a reformed order of Franciscans, has had a presence in Barcelona for many centuries, as exemplified in having one section of the Ramblas named for a friary of theirs which once stood alongside the old city walls and which was torn down in the early 19th century. The particular church and the monastery featured here however, are dedicated to Our Lady of Pompeii, a title normally associated with the Dominicans, after devotion to the Virgin Mary under this title became popular among Barcelona’s bourgeois chattering classes. Situated close to the intersection of the Passeig de Gracia and the Diagonal, the two most prestigious commercial streets in the Eixample, Barcelona’s 19th century urban grid expansion, it was built by architect Enric Sagnier i Villavecchia, a favorite of the Barcelona Archdiocese during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Although the Capuchins had arrived at their new home from elsewhere in the city by 1888, the first stone of the present church was laid on the Feast of the Annunciation in 1905. It suffered some damage at this period due to the “Tragic Week”, in which many of Barcelona’s convents and monasteries were torched by angry Leftists. However the structure was far more severely damaged by Lefists during the Civil War, ruining most of the extravagant interior decoration. The only reason it was not completely demolished was that part of the complex was used by the Red Cross to provide blood transfusions on both sides.

Today the complex is still home to the Capuchin friars, as well as serving as the seat of the Capuchins for Catalonia and the Balearic Islands. Here we can see some views of the exterior of the church and the monastery:

And here are some shots of the interior, before and after the Civil War:

Sant Pere Nolasc

Església de Sant Pere Nolasc
Built: 1710-1746
Founded: 1704
Function: Parish church; monastic chapel
Address: Plaça Castella, 5

The Congregation of the Mission, a religious order founded by St. Vincent de Paul in 1624 and more commonly known as the Vincentians, arrived in Barcelona in 1704, and took up residence in the Raval district, traditionally the home of Barcelona’s immigrant communities and the urban poor. They named their community the Casa de Sant Sever, after St. Severus, Barcelona’s martyred 4th century bishop. The order continued to grow in size until 1808, when the buildings were appropriated by the French for use as a military hospital during the Napoleonic wars.

After Napoleon was defeated the Vincentians were able to return in a partial fashion, part of the complex having been turned by the authorities into a tobacco factory. In the early 1930′s the brothers were in such precipitous decline and the buildings in such a poor state, that they decided to sell them to the local authorities. Their former home was turned back into a military hospital, which it remained until 1940 when a new military hospital was built in the Vall d’Hebron district far outside the city center.

Unfortunately the Vincentians only had a short time to enjoy their new digs. In 1933 they built a new home for their community, close to Sant Pau del Camp, using the proceeds of the sale of the convent. However in 1936 this building was completely destroyed by the Leftists, as indeed was much of their old convent.

After the war the city razed the remains of the newer convent to create a public square, and the same fate befell most of the old establishment as well. Only the inner, earlier of the two large chapels which originally stood on the site, and part of the cloister were preserved. The existing chapel was built between 1710 and 1746 in a Baroque style, and dedicated to St. Severus and to St. Charles Borromeo. It features an enormous dome covered in a mosaic pattern of roof tiles, unusual for Barcelona church architecture, as well as twin bell towers at the entrance portico typical of the style of counter-reformation churches of the period.

After restoration, the chapel was turned over to the Mercedarians, who re-named the building in honor of their founder, Barcelona’s St. Peter Nolasco, and the church remains in their care today. Here we can see some shots of the exterior:

and here is the interior:

Sant Francesc de Sales

Església de Sant Francesc de Sales
Built: 1882-1885
Founded: 1874
Function: Parish church; former convent chapel
Address: Passeig de Sant Joan 88

The Eixample, the 19th century grid expansion of Barcelona that caused dozens of entirely new neighborhoods to spring up, created a serious need for more churches. New apartment buildings and houses were built to house a city that was already bursting at the seams, and many of these people would need somewhere nearby to go to mass. In addition, many of the religious orders arrived from other cities, and those which had previously been housed in the old city took advantage of the opportunity to move out into less cramped, more modern quarters. By doing so, they were able to expand their respective communities, inhabit better facilities, and provide for the spiritual needs of the influx of residents into these new districts.

One beautiful example of this is the Church of St. Francis de Sales on the Passeig de Sant Joan, one of the broad avenues leading up from the old city to the new. The church is considered the finest Neo-Gothic structure in the city, and the greatest example of the work of Joan Martorell i Montells, one of Gaudí’s teachers and an important influence on his pupil’s understanding of both surface treatment and interior space. Despite its Victorian uprightness, it anticipates in its decoration some of the wildness of Modernista decoration with which Gaudí and others would come to define late 19th and early 20th century Barcelona.

The church was built to be the main chapel of a convent for the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary, founded by St. Francis de Sales and St. Jane de Chantal in France in 1610. In 1874 three sisters from the same Catalan haute-bourgeois family wanted to enter the convent of the Visitation Sisters in Madrid, where their favorite aunt was a member of that religious community. The sisters applied and were accepted to the convent. Unfortunately, the Left-leaning government of the time was trying to curb the powers of the monastic communities, and refused to allow any existing convents to admit new members.

As luck would have it, the family’s influential confessor Father Salvador Casañas (later Cardinal-Archbishop of Barcelona) agreed with the family and the Madrid nuns that this would be a golden opportunity to found a new house for the order in Barcelona. The Mother Superior of the Madrid convent gave permission for five of their sisters to move to Barcelona and help set up the new community. The girls’ mother offered a spacious house that she owned as a place to begin, until more appropriate accommodation could be located or built, and after some months of construction the nuns arrived from Madrid to help establish the new monastic community.

Upon their arrival in 1874 the Visitation sisters were aided by the Archbishop, the local Jesuits, and influential parish priests to get their foundation going. In the spring of 1875 the three sisters whose plight had brought about the foundation of the new community were admitted to the novitiate. They were soon followed by a number of other local women eager to join the order.

Land was purchased on the Passeig de Sant Joan that same year, and construction on the monastic complex began. The nuns were able to move into the monastery by 1878, but the church was not completed until 1885. During attacks by Leftists in 1909 and again during the Civil War in 1936, the nuns were forced to abandon the monastery, and the church was sacked.

The story of the community during the Civil War was particularly heart-wrenching. Bodies of the sisters who had been buried at the convent were taken out of their tombs by the Leftists, desecrated, and put on public display on the steps of the church like a sideshow attraction:

The sisters who had abandoned the convent went into hiding with friends and family members, to escape execution by firing squad or militia gangs. Subsequently an Italian military ship arrived in port in Barcelona and many of the sisters, along with other surviving priests and religious from other orders in the city who chose to leave, were escorted by Italian naval officers to the ship and were able to flee the rest of the Civil War. Over 800 priests and religious were taken to Genoa, and the Visitation Sisters were housed at a Visitation monastery there temporarily while accommodation could be found. Most were sent to Turin, but a few remained in Genoa or nearby.

Following the Civil War the sisters returned to Barcelona, but the decision was made not to return to the original convent given what had taken place there and the extent of the repairs needed. A new home was found further north in the Horta section of the city, and in 1942 the Marist Brothers took over the former convent. In 1950, the Marists turned the chapel over to the Archdiocese for use as a parish, which was named for St. Francis de Sales in honor of its historical association with the order he and St. Jane de Chantal had founded.

Santa Maria del Mar

Basilica-Església de Santa Maria del Mar
Built: 1329-1383
Founded: Before 998 A.D.
Function: Parish church; minor basilica
Address: Plaça de Santa Maria

The magnificent 14th century Basilica of Santa Maria del Mar is, without question, the finest Gothic church in Barcelona, a city resplendent with Gothic buildings. It has been celebrated since its construction by the faithful, architects, writers, and artists as a miracle of light, geometry, and tranquility for nearly 700 years. However, the history of the parish is much older, and just as interesting as the building itself.

Between 300 and 500 A.D., the site of the basilica was a Roman cemetery outside the city walls; vestiges of the catacombs and tombs were re-discovered in the 1960s during restoration work on the foundations of the present building. Barcelona’s patron saint, St. Eulalia, was buried here after her martyrdom in approximately 303 A.D. Following the legalization of Christianity, devotion to her grew and her relics were preserved in a succession of churches on the site until they were transferred to the Cathedral.

The first documentary evidence for a church on the site dedicated to St. Mary of the Sea dates from 998 A.D., though when this structure was built and what it looked like remains unknown. What is known is that in 1324, the idea for a new and larger church began to take hold. The cornerstone for the present building was laid on March 25, 1329, the Feast of the Annunciation, by King Alfons the Pious. In an extraordinary effort for its time, combining donations of time and treasure from all of the local guilds, parishioners, the crown, and the diocese, construction proceeded so quickly that the church came into regular use by 1350, and the final stone was laid on November 3, 1383, with the formal dedication mass taking place on the Feast of the Assumption the following year.

Because of the comparatively rapid time frame in which it was built, and because the 14th century marked the height of Barcelona’s empire, wealth, and artistic achievement during the Middle Ages, there is a remarkable architectural unity in the completed building. Most large Gothic churches throughout Europe took centuries to build, and often ended up in a hodgepodge of different styles. Because it only took 54 years to build Santa Maria del Mar, the end result is wonderfully harmonious, strongly influenced by the clean-lined, geometric Cistercian Gothic popular in France and in Northern Spain during this period.

What most strikes visitors upon entering the building is the vast and austere interior space, beautifully lit by clerestory windows and supported only by slender octagonal columns; it is universally regarded as a marvel of engineering. Part of the reason for the cleanliness of the interior is that the church was burned, like many others, by the Leftists during the Spanish Civil War in 1936. The fire destroyed many of the altarpieces and statuary that had been placed in the church over the centuries, particularly during the Baroque and Neo-Gothic periods in the 18th and 19th centuries. The end result was, ironically enough, that Santa Maria del Mar emerged from the ashes more beautiful than she had been in years, stripped of well-intentioned but tacky frills and do-dads that did not suit her.

Here we can see some of the damage inflicted by the Leftists on Santa Maria del Mar during the Civil War:

The church was raised to the level of a minor basilica in 1923 by Pope Pius XI. Today it houses a vibrant parish, and the church is often used for concerts because of its marvelous acoustics. A fictionalized history of its construction by first-time novelist Ildefonso Falcones, entitled “The Cathedral of the Sea”, was a worldwide bestseller in 2007, selling more than 4 million copies, and there are talks underway about bringing the novel to the big screen.

Here we see several shots of the exterior:

And here are several of the interior:

Sant Agustí Vell

Convent de Sant Agustí
Built: 1349-1700
Founded: 1309
Function: Currently civic arts center; former monastic community
Address: Comerç 36

The presence of monastic communities following the Augustinian rule in Barcelona is supposedly very ancient. Admittedly, the further one goes back into local history and legend one finds the two somewhat inextricably intertwined. However it is often the case that legends have a significant basis in fact.

What we know for certain is that the important early Church father Saint Paulinus of Nola (354-431 A.D.), who was married to a Catalan lady and had land holdings in Catalonia, was ordained a priest in Barcelona on Christmas Day 393 A.D. by Lampius, the then-bishop of Barcelona. It is said that during the year or so he spent in Catalonia before returning to Italy (where he later became a bishop), he founded a community based along ideas adopted from his friend and contemporary Saint Augustine of Hippo. There is some documentary evidence that this proto-Augustinian community continued until the invasion of the Moors in the 8th century, and possibly survived it at the site of what is now the Romanesque church of Sant Pau del Camp, about which I have written previously.

Whatever their origin, it is formally documented that the Augustinians established a monastic community on Carrer del Comerç in Barcelona’s Borne district in 1309. This was close to the Basilica of Santa Maria del Mar, which was the original resting place of Saint Eulalia, Patron Saint of the City, who is now interred in the crypt of Barcelona’s Cathedral. The cornerstone for the church of the monastery, dedicated to Saint Augustine, was laid in 1349, but construction on the enormous complex continued until around 1700. During their residence in the Borne, the monks at Sant Agustí assisted in pastoral functions for the parishioners at Santa Maria del Mar.

For centuries as the monks of Sant Agustí Vell ministered to the poor in the neighborhood, they simultaneously fostered good relationships with the wealthy merchants who built their medieval townhouse palaces nearby. For example, in 1529 several of the monks died while caring for victims of the black plague, which had hit the city that year. This combination of good will and good geography allowed the monastery to grow quite rich, and to commission works such as the magnificent Altarpiece of St. Augustine by the great Catalan medieval painter Jaume Huguet, completed in 1486, and which is now housed in the National Museum of Catalan Art.

The church and much of the monastic complex were destroyed by massive shelling on the part of the Bourbons in 1714 during the Wars of the Spanish Succession, when the Catalans backed the losing Imperial Austrian House of Hapsburg. The new Bourbon King of Spain, the former Duke of Anjou, took the title Felipe V and ordered much of what remained of Sant Agustí demolished, so as to build a massive new citadel to keep Barcelona in check. The monks were forced to find new quarters in the Raval district, in the western part of the old city, and founded the Baroque complex of Sant Agustí Nou, whose church still stands.

The remains of the old complex, now known as Sant Agustí Vell or “Old St. Augustine’s”, including part of one side of the cloister and part of one of the lateral aisles of the church, were converted into a military barracks and storage depot. More recently, the city government took over the site and established the “Centre Cívic Convent Sant Agustí”. In addition to a bar/cafe, gallery and meeting rooms used by locals, it hosts a series of concerts, discussions, and exhibitions throughout the year. Over the past decade the site has become particularly well-known internationally for its biennial Festival of Electronic Music and Sound, featuring dozens of internationally-known digital artists, musicians and DJ’s.

Here is an engraving of what the old church looked like:

Here we see what is left of Sant Agustí Vell:

Here we can see the patio in front of the cloister set up for an evening performance:

And here are some panels of the Altarpiece of St. Augustine, painted by Jaume Huguet and his assistants for the High Altar of the monastic church between 1463-1486, and now housed at the National Museum of Catalan Art: