The Monastery of Sant Benet de Bages is a former Benedictine monastery, in the comarca

Comarques of Catalonia

This is a list of the comarques of Catalonia . A comarca is roughly equivalent to a US "county" or a UK "district". However, in the context of Catalonia, the term "county" can be a bit misleading, because in medieval Catalonia, the most important rulers were counts, notably the Counts of Barcelona...

 of Bages

Bages

Bages is a comarca in the center of Catalonia, Spain. It includes two subcomarques, el Moianès and el Lluçanès.Industries include the mining of potash at Súria and Sallent, and the manufacture of textiles along the rivers Llobregat and Cardener...

, Catalonia

Catalonia

Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...

, Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

. The Romanesque

Romanesque architecture

Romanesque architecture is an architectural style of Medieval Europe characterised by semi-circular arches. There is no consensus for the beginning date of the Romanesque architecture, with proposals ranging from the 6th to the 10th century. It developed in the 12th century into the Gothic style,...

 monastery was thoroughly restored at the beginning of the twentieth century by the Catalan architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch

Josep Puig i Cadafalch

Josep Puig i Cadafalch was a Spanish Catalan Modernista architect who designed many significant buildings in Barcelona...

.

History

The monastery was founded about 950 by the noble Salla and his consort Ricarda, of the house of the viscounts of Osona

Osona

County of Osona was one of the Catalan counties of the Marca Hispanica in the Early and High Middle Ages. It was based around the capital city of Vic and the corresponding diocese, whose territory was roughly the current comarca of Osona....

. According to the founding legend, Salla traveled to Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 to have his institution authorized, and to have it depend directly on the Holy See

Holy See

The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...

, the usual method for preserving the community from interference from the bishop— in this case of Vic— in whose diocese it lay. The abbey church was consecrated 3 December 972, witnessed by a gathering of notables: Borrell II, Count of Barcelona

Borrell II, Count of Barcelona

Borrell II was Count of Barcelona, Girona, and Ausona from 945 and Count of Urgell from 948.Borrell is first seen acting as count during the reign of his father Marquis Sunyer in 945 at the consecration of the nunnery church of Sant Pere de les Puelles in Barcelona, and succeeded Sunyer along with...

, the bishops Frugifer of Vic, Guisad of Urgell and Pere of Barcelona

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Barcelona

The Archdiocese of Barcelona is a Roman Catholic ecclesiastical territory in southeastern Spain and the metropolitan see of the ecclesiastical province of Barcelona which includes the suffragan dioceses of Sant Feliu de Llobregat and Terrassa....

, the viscount Guadald of Osona, and three of the four offspring of the recently deceased founder, his son Isarn and the sisters Quíxol and Ego, at the head of witnesses both laymen and priests, in a grand ceremonial recorded in the surviving act of consecration.
The community was dedicated to the Holy Trinity and to Benedict of Nursia

Benedict of Nursia

Saint Benedict of Nursia is a Christian saint, honored by the Roman Catholic Church as the patron saint of Europe and students.Benedict founded twelve communities for monks at Subiaco, about to the east of Rome, before moving to Monte Cassino in the mountains of southern Italy. There is no...

 (Sant Benét in Catalan

Catalan language

Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...

), founder of the order, and Peter

Saint Peter

Saint Peter or Simon Peter was an early Christian leader, who is featured prominently in the New Testament Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. The son of John or of Jonah and from the village of Bethsaida in the province of Galilee, his brother Andrew was also an apostle...

 and Andrew

Saint Andrew

Saint Andrew , called in the Orthodox tradition Prōtoklētos, or the First-called, is a Christian Apostle and the brother of Saint Peter. The name "Andrew" , like other Greek names, appears to have been common among the Jews from the 3rd or 2nd century BC. No Hebrew or Aramaic name is recorded for him...

, all guarantors of its future orthodoxy. The founder secured dispensations that the future abbot

Abbot

The word abbot, meaning father, is a title given to the head of a monastery in various traditions, including Christianity. The office may also be given as an honorary title to a clergyman who is not actually the head of a monastery...

s would be chosen from among their descendents, making the abbey a form of proprietary church

Proprietary church

During the Middle Ages, the proprietary church was a church, abbey or cloister built on private ground by a feudal lord, over which he retained proprietary interests, especially the right of what in English law is "advowson", that of nominating the ecclesiastic personnel...

, an agreement that would soon lead to disputes among the various branches of their lineage as to choice of abbots.

From 965, the abbey church held the supposed relics of Saint Valentine

Saint Valentine

Saint Valentine is the name of several martyred saints of ancient Rome. The name "Valentine", derived from valens , was popular in Late Antiquity...

, enclosed in a wooden reliquary

Reliquary

A reliquary is a container for relics. These may be the physical remains of saints, such as bones, pieces of clothing, or some object associated with saints or other religious figures...

 with plates of silver depicting miracles of Saint Valentine, which was rediscovered in 1863 in the church of Navarcles

Navarcles

Navarcles is a village in the province of Barcelona and autonomous community of Catalonia, Spain.-References:...

.

At the beginning of the eleventh century the monastery passed under the direction of the Abbey of Saint Peter of Tomeras at Narbonne

Narbonne

Narbonne is a commune in southern France in the Languedoc-Roussillon region. It lies from Paris in the Aude department, of which it is a sub-prefecture. Once a prosperous port, it is now located about from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea...

, from which the community freed itself in 1108. In 1125 Sant Benet de Bages suffered from an attack by moors

Moors

The description Moors has referred to several historic and modern populations of the Maghreb region who are predominately of Berber and Arab descent. They came to conquer and rule the Iberian Peninsula for nearly 800 years. At that time they were Muslim, although earlier the people had followed...

 that required a rebuilding, financed by local nobles who required in return the right to be buried in its consecrated ground.
The most splendid age of Sant Benet de Bages was in the fourteenth century, until the Black Death

Black Death

The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350. Of several competing theories, the dominant explanation for the Black Death is the plague theory, which attributes the outbreak to the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Thought to have...

 left the community with only two survivors, in a period that witnessed the beginning of its decline. On 9 November 1593, by order of Pope Clement VIII

Pope Clement VIII

Pope Clement VIII , born Ippolito Aldobrandini, was Pope from 30 January 1592 to 3 March 1605.-Cardinal:...

 the community passed under the direction of the Abbey of Montserrat, and remained so until it was suppressed in 1820, serving as a place of retirement for Montserrat's community of monks. By the "law of desamortización"

Ecclesiastical Confiscations of Mendizábal

The Ecclesiastical Confiscations of Mendizabal, more often referred to simply as La Desamortización, encompasses a set of decrees from 1835-1837 that resulted in the expropriation, and privatization, of monastic properties in Spain....

 of 1835, all religious orders in Spain were required to render up their possessions.

The crumbling ancient structure attracted the interest of intellectuals who organised visits to it in the late nineteenth century. The architect Puig i Cadafalch and the painter Ramon Casas encouraged the mother of Casas to buy the property in 1907; in 1910 it passed into the hands of Casas, who commissioned Puig i Cadafalch to restore it. Since 2000, when it was purchased from Casas' heirs it has belonged to Caixa Manresa (now CatalunyaCaixa

CatalunyaCaixa

CatalunyaCaixa is the trading name of Caixa d'Estalvis de Catalunya, Tarragona i Manresa, a Catalan savings bank with headquarters in Barcelona. It is the fourth largest savings bank in Spain in terms of consolidated assets, with €81.020 billions....

), a financial institution that has undertaken its maintenance.