Montserrat – Catalonia’s heart
Travelers arriving with all over the world in Barcelona, primarily rushing to the majestic cathedral and the famous Creation of Antonio Gaudi – the temple of the Holy Family. But for me no less attractive neighborhood of Barcelona, and, first of all, the town of Manresa with a nearby Montserrat. What reminds this name "Simpical post-Soviet worker"? Well, Spanish singer Kabal Montserrat. Someone remembers Montserrat Island in the Caribbean Sea. But for the Catalaced Montserrat – the same thing that for us Optina deserts or Trinity-Sergiyev Lavra.
How the usual European is getting to Montserrat? He goes to the near travel agency and buys "tour", The price of which includes all services – transport, excursions, food, hotel accommodation. our pilgrims, to whose number I do not have. They should be "The bearer prechitra" – reveal.
First of all, how to get to Montserrat? Barcelona Pride – Central Station, built to the 1992 Olympic Games. Throughout the city, walking there and make sure that the station is great – this is the XXI century: from here SUPEREXPRESSES TO MADRID. But we need in early Middle Ages. True, there is a small bus station nearby, from where it is early in the morning you can go to Montserrat. However, we were late and, as they say, "train has already left".
But the search for the search is narrowed. At the station reported that electric trains often go to Montserrat Square, and we, tired, but encouraged, delight there. It is almost near, but no station can be seen. On one side of the square, the amphitheater "Mobility chassal", where courageous bullers under the roar of the cable killer kill defenseless animals. On the contrary – Industrial exhibition pavilions. Accidentally notice a small sign with a railroad emblem, reinforced with underground transition. It turns out that trains go to Montserrat right from under the square.
Railway ticket office announcements about how to get to the monastery, written in six European languages - a kind of evidence of the world famous glory of Montester Montserrat. The next day, early in the morning, we go down again in the dungeon and take the casting tickets.
The suburban train pops out from the tunnel on the outskirts of Barcelona, and orange groves and small well-groomed fields begin to gligrate the wagon. One of our predecessors, whose path also took place in these places in 1881, wrote: "Catalon and Stone will turn into bread", – says the proverb, against which no one will argue who saw on what wild cliffs are small spaces, fenced and supported by stone walls, sown wheat".
Here little has changed since that time: in the mountains, it is especially not unfolded with new buildings. But what happened to the eye of another compatriot – and.Pavlovsky, who spent in the press under the pseudonym "Yakovlev", Which in 1885 followed Barcelona on the same railway track, but towards us: "The stone town of Manresa flashed alone; It is located an amphitheater on the slope of the mountain, and his houses, flat roofs (Terrados) impress that they are sticking to each other without any intervals".
And then the observational traveler leads a kind of ethnographic sketch: "Menresian residents are famous for hardworking (there are very good cloths) and traditional devotion to Karl VII. A rich manufacturer and the last worker – all dressed in the same way: the red Frigian cap will be lowered onto the forehead and shine on the right side, narrow trousers to the knees, dark stockings and linen Espadrinñas on the legs. Faces wide, shaved and energetic; This is the characteristic type of Catalan".
Today, such appals are no longer seen: our eyelids smoothes national differences. But time is powerless in front of mountain arrays, which, like a hundred and millions of years ago, take up on the horizon. Just 50 kilometers from Barcelona, right in the midst of the surrounding plain, surprising the eye, Mount Montserrat rises with a strangely uncapped vertex. Literallying from Catalan This name means "Pepped mountain", that it is impossible to better fit her appearance.
The train stopped across from this mountain, and pilgrims from different countries fell on the peer, combined with a cable car station. To the abode, you can now climb the car on the cable car. His movement is agreed with the schedule, so there is no time to contempted the wondrous landscape. However, our our predecessor had worse. Pavlovsky was awakened by a neighbor of the coupe, who dragged him for the sleeve, senoming: "Senor, Senor, you wake up Montserrat!" "I jumped to my feet and rushed to the window, "writes the author. – The ascending Sun illuminated the green skates of the southern pyrenees and extensive, also green, the valley at which the train was raced. To the right, a huge fantastic city with columns, towers, cones and pyramids who merged with heaven. It is difficult to believe that this is a simple game of nature, and not the work of the giants that built the wonderful castles and temples at the impregnable grief".
From the depths of the centuries to us reached the legend that Montserrat is obliged to its strange configuration angels who, with the help of a gold saw, wanted to turn the mountain into the palace for the Mother of God. But there are other legends among the Catalans, in which the pagan beliefs and narration of the times of Christianization of this region are bizarrectically intertwined. Wagner’s operas brought the glory to the ancient German myths, and Catalan, no less amazing, but less known.
Here, for example, what tells the legend about one of the hermits, looking for privacy among the impregnable rocks of Montserrat. At Barcelona Count Vifred Volodya (IX in.) There was a daughter of Rikilda, in which the devil settled. During one of the seizures, the girl announced that he would not leave her anyhow on the order of the Montserrat Huan’s hermit. The graph on the same day went with her daughter in the mountains, found hermit and, despite his protests, left him a girl on the care, and left himself.
Then the devil started Huan and inspires him criminal thoughts. Long fastened a poor wilderness, but the temptation inspired by him was too large; He could not stand and fell into a sin with the maiden. Then to hide your crime, he killed Ricklide, cut off her head and the corpse hid in the cave. As soon as he did, as they mastered the horror and repentance. Wanting to chop hard sin, Juan went to Pope in Rome. He imposed a terrible punishment on him: he had to return to the cave and live, like a wild beast – on all fours, never straighten up, eat grass, not to pronounce words and not look at the sky, which insulted so hard – until While God will not forgive him.
Juan strictly performed all this. Many years later; Clothes covered by his nudity, thinned, the body covered thick hair, and he began to be like a wild beast. Years passed, and one day, Count Bethred went to hunt for a boar in the dense forests of Montserrat. Someone from his suits accidentally saw Juan and, thinking that this was a walled beast, caught him and gave her Mr. Count ordered to send a beast to Barcelona and put on a chain under the stairs in the palace. Citizen crowds came here to make a monster.
Once in the palace was a feast, and the guests were asked to enter this beast in the hall for entertainment. The owner fulfilled the request, and then a miracle was made: at that very moment, how the Huang appeared on the threshold, the five-month son of the count was thrown on the hands of his crumbles and, to the horror of the pouring, loudly said: "Stand, Juan, God forgive you!" Fear intensified when the guests saw that the beast got on his feet and crossed. Juan fell to the legs of the graph, told him his story and begged for forgiveness. He forgave her hermit, but wanted to know where the corpse of his beloved daughter rests to bury her in the Christian rite.
Another day, from Barcelona in Montserrat, a march with Juan and Vifred was departed at the head. When the procession approached the cave, where the murder was once perfect, the entrance appeared lively and healthy Ricklide. Only on her neck was visible by Scar as the proof of the crime of Juan.
Such is legend. It is also known from the history that for the first time in the documents on Montserrat, it is mentioned in 888, and in the 1025th Bishop Ripolsky Olib founded the monastery monastery at an altitude of 725 meters above sea level, almost on a sheer cliff. The Benedictins were settled here (members of the monastic order founded at the beginning of the 6th century Reverend Benedict Nursties). In the monastery, the statue of the Mother of Montserratskaya Mother of God. On the local legend, it was carved from the ebony with an evangelist bowl and brought to Spain by the apostle Peter. During a raider of Mavrov in the VIII century, the statue of the Blessed Virgin was covered in one of the numerous caves .
Since then, the glory of the monastery constantly grew. From all the ends of Spain, the ramomolers stripped here, attracted by the miraculous healing of Montserrat’s Mother of God and the beauty of these places. Counts of Barcelona, Kings Aragon, Navarre, Castile came here to worship and enriched the abode of generous donations. Gradually, Montserrat became a national treasury. The monastery had extensive landmarks, on which the fortress peasants worked.
And what did people actually come by serfdom and preferred the first part of the proverb "free will, and saved paradise"? They could easily get to the powerful and rich Barcelona, whose political importance was based on the privileges given to her Pedro II king in 1283. For her, every non-free person, having stayed by Barcelona for one year and one day, acquired freedom. But in fact, this period was not respected: it was enough to get to Barcelona to become a free person.
These were people simple, "Low" origin and we will return again to "high", Coronated Persons attending Montserrat Resident. In the summer of 1888, the Spanish Queen-Recents of Maria Cristina, who was located in Barcelona on the occasion of celebrations dedicated to the opening of the World Exhibition in this city. During the residence of the queen in Montserrat in her honor with a big celebration, a festive dinner was served.
In a few days, two of our compatriots went to the famous monastery – already mentioned and.Yakovlev, Correspondent "New Time" In Paris, and writer-publicist Konstantin Scalkovsky (1843-1906). Being a passionate traveler, he visited a number of European countries, as well as the United States of America, and in the Middle East. "A trip to the monastery, recently, in his difficulty, resembling a trip to Montenegro, now it was extremely eased and hesitated, "he writes. – For 12 peasters you get the right to drive back and forth, stay in the monastery hotel".
Today "right to drive back and forth" to Montserrat worth exactly a thousand times more expensive. And about overnight in the monastery hotel will be quarreled. But modern pilgrims have a different advantage: thanks to the well-established transport system, pilgrimage can be made in one day.
At the entrance to the monastery – Parking for pilgrim buses, which are stubbornly climbed here on the mountain serpentine. We go to the square. Mary and, by passing the gallery of one of the monastery buildings, find out in a small courtyard. We have a richly decorated portal of medieval basilica. It was built and consecrated, by local standards, quite late – in 1592. And even earlier, one of the Montserratian statements, who heard about the discovery of the Columbus of America, expressed the desire to go with a brave Genoese to the shores of the New World.
It was the novice Bernard Boyl; He participated in the second expedition of Christopher Columbus, and when on November 11, 1493, the navigators opened one of the small Antilles Islands, he was named after this monaster – Montserrat.
Entering the temple inside, we examine the walls decorated with mosaics; Plots are dedicated to the history of the Montserrat Benedictine Resident. Pilgrims, falling here, as a rule, are surprised when they see here the crankshaft statue of Ignatia Loyola (1491-1556), the founder of another monastic order – Jesuit, called the name "Society IIUS". The nameplate placed nearby reports that it was at this place of Ignatius spent the night in the repentance of prayers and the next morning left his sword here. Spanish nobleman who fought with the French troops for the independence of his country, Ignatius (Igni) was injured in the siege of Pamona and had to say goodbye to military career.
It was not easy to be his way from the military to the monk. At the beginning of 1522, Ignatius decided to go with missionary goals in Palestine. To do this, he took a trip to Barcelona to sit on the ship going to the Holy Land. From his native town – Loyola – Ignatiy went to the south and, peroving Saragozu, arrived in Igualadu, from where Montserrat was already visible. In this town there were many workshops, where they made bags of coarse canvas. For pilgrimage in Jerusalem, he bought himself such a long bag, a staff, a flask and linen shoes on a rope sole. Tied shopping for the saddle and went to Montserrat.
Arriving in the monastery on March 22, Ignatius found a confessor there who confessed pilgrims. They were then the French monk about. John Sharones, who became his first spiritual father. Three days of Ignatius prepared for confession. March 24 at night he, unnoticed by all, died in "Painan" clothing – burlap, and removed clothes gave the poor. After that, he began his "Night guardian", Making this rite on his knees, then standing, not allowing himself to sit. According to an old custom "Night guardian", Preceded dedication to the knights, consisted of ablution, confession, communion, blessings and presenting the sword.
But in the soul of Ignatia, purified by his rehabilitation of sins, memories of the past chovement were amazingly. He handed his weapon, sword and dagger about. John so that he hung them as his offering in the chapel of the Mother of God, after Ignatius leaves the monastery.
From now on he considered himself dedicated to the Knights of the Queen of Heaven. With the dawn of Ignatius Loyola left the abode, having passed into the famous manmere, in a small town where he wanted to gather forces before a long journey.
There were tests of poverty and glory, ups and downs. But it all started in a quiet mountain abode. We know from Ignatia itself some details of his travel: "I brought the chastity of the chastity on the road to Montserrat".
According to the measured monastic routine of the day, an hour comes when pilgrims can worship the Montserrat of God’s Mother. Together with hundreds of pilgrims from different countries in Europe, slowly climb on the left side staircase to her statue placed in the altar part of the temple, highly over the throne. At some point, the entire temple interior opens from above, and after a few seconds, we appear in front of the Most Holy Virgin with the Boggladère, sitting on her knees. The honorable shrine is reliably protected from possible encroachments of fanatics and Herostratov: it can only be seen through a transparent durable glass, and only at the bottom of a small opening opens the right foot of the statue to which the manthmallians are applied with prayer.
Let’s go down on the right side staircase and pass through a small gallery on the Saint Mary Square. Here you can not hurry to get acquainted with the history of Montserrat Resident. In her history a lot of dramatic pages. In 1811, the Napoleonic army, invaded to Spain, destroyed the monastery. Treasures stored in church rhiznica ignited greed instincts. When the French entered Barcelona, the first sounds rang out in the mountains of Montserrat "Somaten", Coulder Catalans for the Protection of the Native Country. Soon all the rocks occupied armed peasants. Montserrat was strengthened by batteries, testers and mines, and the Benedictine monks, with a cross in one hand and a saber in another, became the head of the uprising.
Protection was carried out with unprecedented persistence: three times the Catalan were expelled from Montserrat, the rocks were devoted to the corpses, the monastery was destroyed and looted. But as soon as the French were removed, believing that the eagle nest was destroyed, as the tops of the Catalan peasants flashed again, and the resistance continued with a new force. The victims of the French, taking the last time Montserrat, were placed in different ends of the monastery of the barrel with gunpowder and blew them. This explosion separated echo 30 kilometers in the district.
But how it sometimes happens, not so much was dangerous an enemy external as inner. And indeed, after the departure of Napoleonic troops, restoration work began to boil, but in a few years the church in Spain was persecuted by the state. In 1835, laws were adopted, significantly limited monastic life in different fields; The economic basis of the life of the abode was undermined. It was touched upon the brotherhood of Montserrat. Owners were forced to leave their native nest, the monastery was empty. Only in 1844 began the influx of the Inok in the abode, after which the revival of monastic buildings began in 1858.
On the dizzying trails climb the mountains, and the Montserrat insidual in front of us is visible as on the palm. Pilgrims visiting the monastery seek to get to that ledge, where you can see the surroundings for tens of kilometers in the district. The sun in Zenith, the rocks are hung up with her height, and we decide to climb east above. At the foot of the peak of St. Jerome, raising at a height of 1235 meters, a worldly bustle does not disturb pilgrims. This unique mining education extends 10 kilometers long and five width.
However, it’s time to descend down. We are going to the monastic courtyard again to visit the Chapel of the Mother of God, which the architect of Villar-and-Carmona erected here in 1876-1884 with the participation of the then young Antonio Gaudi. On the central stained glass of the chapel, you can see the image of St. George, which is considered here by the patron of Catalonia. It is noteworthy that subsequently, Gaudi appealed to Montserrat again in his work. The construction of a cathedral in Barcelona was already in full swing, but in 1906, along with other famous Catalan architects, Gaudi took part in monumental design, and, more precisely, an incarnation in stone, in Montserrat Mount, the ideas of the secrecy of the resurrection.
To accommodate the monument, he chose a turn of the road, followed by a wall with a bas-relief of the resurrection, in front of which a sculptural group of three Gospel Mari was installed on the lawn with wild flowers. It was Gaudi who offered to lay out on the slope of Montserrat Giant coat of arms of Catalonia from multicolor ceramics, capable of measuring with mountain peaks of the ridge. It was Gaudi who wanted a huge bell in the gorge between the scolig protrusions of the same mountain.
You can tell a long time about the current position of the monastery, its famous grumps and stalactitic caves, but turn to his spiritual wealth. The monastery does not happen without the library; The collection of the same printed and handwritten materials of Montserrat is one of the unique. In its foundations – 250 thousand volumes, 400 Incunabul, 220 Egyptian papyrus and 200 manuscripts, and in the archive – 6 thousand parchments, 10 thousand handwritten documents. It is impossible not to say that the first printed machine on which two German printers worked, appeared in Montserrat already in 1490, that is, less than 50 years after its invention, Gutenberg. Special mention is worthy manuscript "Libre Vermell", Writing and illustrated over two more than two centuries (with x1u by hu1 century)
Significant interest are materials on history, geography, astronomy, music. Music and singing traditions of Montserrat go back to the times of the Middle Ages. By 1223 refers to the monastic chronicle "singing boys", which were trained by local statements. In 1844, after the return of the monks to his abode, this tradition was continued, and now the Choir of the Montserrat Monastery boys is known not only in Spain, but also beyond.
Daily at the hour of the day, young singers perform in the chassis of chants, including – "Salve, Regina" ("Save, queen") – Favorite songs of seafarers of the Mediterranean. Writes about this tradition and our inquisitive traveler. According to K.Scalkovsky, "These singing – pupils of the Missionary College, obliged to educate wild (Indians – approx. Red.) in Spanish colonies. Their person 40; Monks in the monastery 16 or 17. The public does not see them, they are locked in their monastery to avoid temptation, and there is something to be seduced than, because the monastery is visited annually more than 60,000 Bogomolers, most advantage of women".
Thanks to the centuries-old cultural traditions and the Benedictine community of the monastery, numbering about 80 people, in composition is unusual. Among the monks there are not only wonderful musicians, a whole school of bookanes, philologists and historians, not to mention the theologians, but even climbers and alpashers. The latter does not surprise anyone, because they do not get closed in the walls of the monastery, are well acquainted with the everyday life of Catalans and are ready to help when the need arises.
In the evening of participants "Tour" Available comfortable rooms with beautiful views from the windows. This is an additional source of income for the abode. "The monastery distributes the rooms, so to speak, according to the ranks; All of them are very modest, mattresses are packed with chips, pillows of wool, instead of a washbasin clay pot in the form of amphora, stearin candle thinner of our wax; But all this is very neat, – tells our correspondence guide Scalkovsky. – Nothing is paid for the apartment, for food it is necessary to contact the monastery hotel, where they feed relatively tolerable and at prices are not unnatural. There is no need for a lean food, of course, speech, since Dad allowed the Spaniards to keep posts for victory over the Turks at Lepant".
But now in Montserrat, only birds sing for free; The hotel is not affordable to us, so you have to go slowly to go to a small platform in front of the monastery, where the bus should go to Barcelona. We did not happen to admire the starry sky over Montserrat, but our countrymen enjoyed this unforgettable spectacle. In the travel notes of Scalkovsky read: "Such a pure sky, such bright stars I never saw, even under the tropics. In St. Petersburg, the audience does not suspect that there are so many stars in the sky. That would be where Pulkovsky astronomers go to watch, in Russia, in the observatory, it is necessary to play in the billiards in a vigorous anticipation of clear weather".
The bus with pilgrims carefully unfolds and slowly starts moving down the mountain serpentine. Our path is straight in Barcelona, without stopping, as it was in the XIX century.
However, back again in our era. In the list of the main historical years related to the life of the monastery and the tragedy of the new time. 1936 – the beginning of the Civil War in Spain; 1939 – the end of the war, when the monks again found the monastery, which was at the disposal of the Republican Catalan authorities. But after three years of troubled time, the decades of the endless night were reached, on which Spain, General Franco, when words "freedom", "democracy" and "Catalonia" were announced outside the law and in Montserrat were looking for asylum those who defended them.
Of course, the monks did not fight with a weapon mode in their hands, but the monastery became the center of the spiritual opposition of dictatorship. In the 1950s, in Catalonia, the movement of priests for the cultural autonomy of the region. It manifested itself, in particular, in the pronunciation of prayers and sermons in Catalan. Abbot Aureli M.Escarre, who headed the community of the Montserrat Monastery, courageously defended the rights of the local clergy, speaking against the regulatory shares of the Frankist authorities. He especially clearly expressed it in the sermon, pronounced on December 8, 1958. Censorship banned her publication, but the text was distributed by Catalonia in lists.
The same abbot a.Escarre in an interview with a newspaper "Mond" defended democracy, stressing that the Spanish state, which, although he calls himself a Christian, is not like that, for "does not obey the basic principles of Christianity". The then Prof. Church Top wanted to undergo.Escarre Ostracism, but in its support 407 prominent representatives of the Catalan clergy. The same priests sent their bishops a collective letter in which they said that the church should be "free from all piping and political compromise".
So the quiet and measured life of the Montserrat monastery was shaking political and national passions. On the morning of December 22, 1963 "hooligans" (familiar to us handwriting!) Attacle the house of Abbot in Barcelona and set fire to him. On the same day, thousands of people passed by the house of Abbat, proclaimed slogans in honor of Catalonia, peace and freedom. I note that in those years, the Soviet seal wrote about this, without suspecting that in almost 30 years Russia will face the same problems.
In the following years, Montserrat Monastery was still the center of spiritual resistance to the totalitarian regime. And at the end of 1970, the monastery of Montserrat was adopted by a manifestized, compiled by almost three of the prominent actors, writers, artists, architects, publishers. This document contained the requirement to return civil liberties to the Spaniards.
As it is easy to notice, there were similar processes in our countries, but the Catalans were ahead of our human rights defenders in something – in terms of time and in time. And they confronted not to the Kremlin generalssimus, and Spanish. Soviet would erase them into camp dust. Almost all signed this manifesta underwent various kinds of persecution, some were arrested, but none of them renounced ideas expressed.
Today, political passions do not reach the former heat. After the death of Franco, Catalonia received autonomy, and today it will not come to the head in the mountain monastery, secret gatherings. But still for the Catalaced Montserrat – not just a monastery. Located approximately in the center of his native land, this lonely, not similar to any other mountain with its unusual history and modern reality remains an eternal symbol of Catalonia.
