Saint-Martin-du-Canigou
Abbaye Saint-Martin du Canigou
Interesting facts
- The abbey stands at about 1,055 metres on the flank of Canigó, some 250 metres above the village of Casteil in the valley below.
- The first church was consecrated on 10 November 1009, and a second consecration after the building was enlarged followed in either 1014 or 1026.
- An earthquake on 2 February 1428 badly damaged the monastery and left the bell tower truncated.
- The lower church, dedicated to the Virgin, is so low and dark that its vaults rarely rise much above 3 metres.
- The upper church of Saint Martin is divided into three naves by monolithic stone columns carrying barrel vaults.
- The cloister was built in two stages: plain vaulted galleries in the early 11th century and an upper level with carved marble capitals in the late 12th.
- White marble capitals carved around 1170 show lions and confronted birds; several were tracked down in neighbouring villages after the Revolution and set back in place.
- After Guifred's death, a messenger carried a mortuary roll from monastery to monastery in 1051, collecting written prayers for the founder's soul.
- The cellist Pau Casals wrote an orchestral piece named after the abbey, Sant Martí del Canigó.
- The abbey was listed as a historic monument of France in 1889, and since 1988 it has been home to the Community of the Beatitudes.
Why it is worth it
Perched on a narrow rock spur high in the Pyrenees, Saint-Martin-du-Canigou is one of Europe's most dramatically sited monasteries. It was built between 1005 and 1009 by Guifred II, Count of Cerdanya and Conflent. The complex is unusual architecturally: two superimposed Romanesque churches, one dedicated to the Virgin and the other to Saint Martin, joined by an independent bell tower carved directly into the rock.
Tradition holds that Guifred built the abbey in atonement: during a campaign against Moorish raiders, he had entrusted command of his troops to his nephew Gentil, who engaged the enemy against orders, was routed, and fled to a church for sanctuary — where Guifred, finding him there, killed him in a fit of rage. This is legend rather than documented fact; no surviving charter mentions any such killing, and historians treat the story as later moralizing attached to a genuine act of monastic patronage. What is documented is that Guifred himself eventually retired to the monastery he had founded, taking vows there after abdicating his county in 1036 and dying as a monk around 1049.
The abbey was dissolved in 1783 and spent the 19th century as an abandoned ruin, stripped for building stone by local residents until its cloister capitals and furnishings had largely disappeared. Its revival began only in 1902, when Bishop Jules de Carsalade du Pont of Perpignan bought the ruins and launched a restoration meant to revive Catalan monastic and cultural identity; the work continued after his death in 1932, carried on for decades more by Father Bernard de Chabannes, who lived on the site for nearly forty years.
Getting there
39 km from Olot. Perpignan-Rivesaltes (Llabanère) Airport (PGF) is about 45 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The abbey of Saint-Martin-du-Canigou is a monastery built in 1009 in the Pyrenees of Northern Catalonia on Canigó mountain in present-day southern France near the Spanish border.
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