The Canigou stands out by itself, and that is why its majesty is so impressive. This is also true of Mont Ventoux in Provence, but how many tourists of the personally conducted order realize there are any mountains in Europe save the Alps and its kingly Mont Blanc—which they fondly but falsely believe is in Switzerland.
High above, as the pilgrims of to-day wind their way among the moss-grown rocks of the mountainside, rises the antique Romano-Byzantine tower and ruins of the old Abbey of Saint Martin.
Built perilously on a rocky peak, the abbey is a regular eagle’s nest in fact and fancy. In grandiose melancholy it sits and regards the sweeping plains of Roussillon as it did nearly a thousand years ago. The storms of winter, and the ravages incident to time have used it rather badly. It has been desecrated and pillaged, too, but all this has been stopped; and the abbey church has, with restoration and care, again taken its place among the noble religious monuments of France.
The Pilgrimage to St. Martin
At the beginning of the eleventh century the Comte de Cerdagne and Conflent, and his wife Guifred, gave this eerie site, at an altitude of considerably more than a thousand metres above the sea, to a community of Benedictine monks for the purpose of founding a monastery. Ten years later the Bishop Oliba, of Vic-d’Osona in Catalonia, consecrated the church and put it under the patronage of Saint Martin; and a Bull of Pope Sergius IV, dated 1011 and preserved in the Musée at Perpignan, confirmed the act and granted the institution the privilege of being known as a mitred abbey, bestowing on its governor the canonical title. It is this antique monastery which rises to-day from its ruins. It has been sadly robbed in times past of columns, capitals and keystones, and many a neighbouring farm-house bears evidence of having, in part, been built up from its ruins.
The yearly Catalan pilgrimage to St. Martin de Canigou and the services held in the ruined old abbey are two remarkably impressive sights. The soft, dulcet Catalan speech seems to lend itself readily to the mother tongue of Latin in all its purity. A Spanish poet of some generations ago, Jacinto Verdaguer—called the Mistral-espagnol—wrote a wonderfully vivid epic, “Canigou,” with, naturally, the old abbey in the centre of the stage.