Montserrat Monastery, Catalonia, Spain
High in the saw-toothed mountain that gives Catalonia its symbol, hidden in the rock more than three thousand feet above the plain, there is a Benedictine monastery where the Black Madonna has been honored for nearly a thousand years. They call her La Moreneta — “the little dark one” — and she has presided over the soul of Catalonia through every century of its history.
La Moreneta of the Holy Mountain
Tradition says the image was carved by Saint Luke and brought to Spain by Saint Peter in the earliest days of the Church, hidden in a cave during the years of Moorish rule, and rediscovered around the year 880 by shepherds who saw a great light upon the mountain. Whatever the truth of the legend, the image we see today is a Romanesque carving from the twelfth century: a seated Madonna in dark wood, the Christ Child upon her knee, both crowned, both holding a sphere — the world entrusted to their care.
A small chapel stood on the mountain by the eleventh century. By the twelfth, a great Benedictine monastery had risen around it, founded under the patronage of the Abbot Oliba — a monastery that would become one of the spiritual capitals of medieval Spain. Saint Ignatius of Loyola laid down his sword before this Madonna in 1522, and from Montserrat began the journey that led him to found the Society of Jesus.
The face of the image is dark — not by paint but by centuries of candle smoke and incense and the patient touching of pilgrims. Catalonia has called her by her own affectionate name through every age: La Moreneta. Her sphere, polished smooth by countless hands, is touched by every pilgrim who climbs to her shrine.
The Sanctuary Today
The Monastery of Santa Maria de Montserrat is reached today by mountain railway and cable car as well as by foot. Some two million pilgrims a year come to climb to her sanctuary, to kneel in the basilica, and — in the moment that has become a Catalan rite — to hear the Escolania, one of the oldest boys’ choirs in Europe, sing the Salve Regina and the Virolai before the Black Madonna.
The Benedictine community keeps the daily round of prayer it has kept for nine centuries, broken only by the Spanish Civil War. The monastery preserves manuscripts, art, and the memory of a Catalonia that has often had to defend its language and faith. La Moreneta has watched it all from her throne in the rock.
A Prayer at Montserrat
Holy Mother of Montserrat,
La Moreneta of the holy mountain,
you who hold the sphere of the world
in your small dark hand —
teach us to climb.
Through the steep places, the cold winds, the unfamiliar paths,
let us come at last to the sanctuary of your love.
Mother of Catalonia, Mother of every pilgrim,
pray for us. Amen.
Live from Montserrat
The Benedictine community of Montserrat broadcasts the daily Mass and the prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours. The Escolania choir sings the Salve and the Virolai before La Moreneta each day at one o’clock — a moment beloved by Catalans for centuries.
Visit & Learn More
- Montserrat Monastery (official): www.montserratvisita.com/en
- Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_of_Montserrat
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