The monastery of Montserrat, so frequented by saints such as Ignatius of Loyola or Francis of Borja, remains one of the most celebrated religious places in Spain, the ark of beautiful legends and traditions.
Newsroom (November 15, 2021, 12:00 PM, Gaudium Press) In the same place where the monastery of Our Lady of Montserrat now rises, graceful and defiant, not far from the illustrious lands of Barcelona, more than a thousand years ago there lived an experienced hermit known as John Garín, a man dedicated to God, who lived in caves and grottoes in the heights of that mountain range.
Although silence and solitude punctuated the entire life of the saintly anchorite, his person would leap from anonymity to fame by a truly dramatic and unimaginable event.
On top of the mountain
The then Count of Barcelona, Wifredo[1], had a daughter, a girl of exceptional beauty, named Riquilda. When she was twelve years old, she showed unmistakable signs of diabolical possession. These signs drew the attention of the whole court, which incessantly appealed to certain men of God to free the young girl from the power of the evil one.
Neither prayers, nor exorcisms, nor long and interminable supplications succeeded in restoring health to the beautiful young woman. In such a bitter situation, it was generally agreed that the last person capable of obtaining Heaven’s favour would be the holy hermit who lived in penance in the high mountains of Montserrat.
The girl was taken to the hermit’s cave, where she was to remain for nine days to receive the exorcisms and prayers of Friar John. The result could not have been more positive: the devil finally left the innocent girl imprisoned.
Count Wifrido, wanting to definitively guarantee his daughter’s cure, wanted to leave her in the hermit’s company for a while, while he himself thanked the Blessed Virgin for the favor received. So the hermit and the girl remained alone on those high moors.
Through deep valleys
However, after not too long a time, the hermit lingered too much on the admiration of that innocent soul; attention that gradually made him run over all his religious convictions and completely fade away his good intentions, finally sinning with the young girl.
Overcome by his act, and for fear of further investigation, he beheaded the poor girl and buried her among the rocks and sands of the cave.
When John realized what had happened, horrified with himself, he fled immediately; no one knew what had happened, not even the Count himself. With the weight of his crime on his back, he wandered aimlessly along roads and paths, arriving, by some miracle, in Rome itself.
He decided to seek forgiveness for his sin: before the Vicar of Christ, he begged for absolution;[2] the Holy Father immediately granted his pardon at the price, however, of a hard penance: to return on his knees to the cave of the murder, looking only at the ground and living by fasting. Although it seemed impossible, the repentant sinner started the same hour on the road to Montserrat, a journey that lasted seven long years…
At the end of the papal mandate, the state of his body was truly pitiful… He looked more like an animal than a man when he finally laid eyes on his cave.
In the lands of Barcelona, Wifredo was still reigning. Hunting aficionado that he was, he greatly enjoyed the steep Montserrat mountains. On one of these hunts, some of his staff spotted a wild being lying half-dead at the bottom of a cave. As expected, Garín was taken, with extreme caution, and no less curiosity, to the count’s prison.
Exposed to the public as entertainment, the curious people paraded in front of the wretch’s cage in constant mockery and amusement.
One day, coinciding with the Count’s presence, a crowd of curious people gathered in front of the cage, including a woman with a three-month-old child. Just as the mother was passing in front of the savage, the child addressed the unrecognizable monk, to the general astonishment: “John Garin, God has forgiven you. Your penance is enough. Don’t sin again.
Back to the heights
Upon hearing the child speak, Wifredo approached; poor John Garín raised his eyes and, having regained his courage, confessed his sin to the count. The chronicle says that “only God Himself could appease the wrath of Wifredo,” who, overwhelmed by such a blow, could only say, “If God has forgiven you, what can I do?”
He then wanted to know all the details, and when the time for the “burial” came, he asked the monk to take him to the cave site.
The entire entourage accompanied them; as Wifredo shed the first tears on the young girl’s grave, he watched in amazement as the girl rose from under the sand and threw herself weeping into her father’s arms. His only words were a plea: that a monastery would be built there, and that she, by the miracle that had occurred, would be his first nun.
Thus, the glorious Monastery of Montserrat was built, a truly legendary place, full of miracles and remarkable events in the history of Spain, a Marian center and home to great saints. Even the poor monk, repentant, was from then on a great collaborator of the nuns of Montserrat, dying in the odour of sanctity.
Virgin of Montserrat
Later, another mystery came to further colour the legend about the ancient monastery: the devotion to the Virgin of Montserrat.
According to tradition, the image preserved there dates back to the apostolic era. Given the great influx of newcomers to the Church after Pentecost, St. Peter and the apostles found it necessary to create images of Christ and his Blessed Mother – still alive on earth – so that a precious legacy would not be lost.
It was decided that Nicodemus would be in charge of the images of Our Lord, while the evangelist St. Luke would be in charge of those of the Blessed Virgin Mary. By a thousand circumstances, one of these replicas of Mary’s physiognomy ended up in the distant lands of Spain, becoming one of the greatest treasures of local piety and religiosity.
These gems fill pages upon pages of Christian history, which can only be understood by those who know how to see the hand of God and the Blessed Virgin guiding its beautiful course.
By André Luiz Kleina
Translated, with adaptations, from:
BLÁSQUEZ, José Sendín. Enigmas, historias y leyendas religiosas. Madrid: BAC, 2004, p. 83-88.
[1] Wifredo reigned between the years 874 and 898.
[2] This pontiff, according to conjecture, would be Saint Adrian III (884-885).
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Compiled by Zephania Gangl
