Not broader than the sharp edge of a knife,
Adorn her lovely neck!”
The overjoyed count took his daughter back to Barcelona, where an immense crowd came to see her whom the great Madre de Dios had awakened from the sleep of death. One of the knights of the court, struck with her beauty, requested her hand in marriage, but Riquilda felt that after so strange a restoration to life, she ought to consecrate herself to God on the mount where the wonder had been accomplished.
Wifredo, who was a great builder of churches, determined to erect a magnificent convent on the mountain. Fray Juan worked on it with his own hands, and after its completion retired to a cave, where he penitently ended his days. The convent was peopled with nuns of noble birth, and Riquilda placed at their head. Eighty years after Count Borrell, who was now lord of Catalonia, fearful of a Saracen invasion, substituted monks and transferred the nuns to the royal foundation of Santa Maria de Ripoll.
This legend of a rude age, gross in some of its details, has been celebrated in several poems, one of which, still read and admired, takes a high place in Spanish literature. This is El Monserrate, by Cristóbal de Virues, a dramatic poet, who was a great favorite of Lope de Vega’s. Virues had served as a captain in the Spanish wars, and taken part in the battle of Lepanto. He belonged to an age when, as Mr. Ticknor says, many a soldier, after a life of excess, ended his days in a hermitage as rude and solitary as that of Garin.
The old counts of Barcelona made great donations to the convent of Montserrat, as well as the kings of Aragon after them. The monks were exempted from imposts and taxes, and made honorary citizens of Barcelona. They not only had possession of the mountain, but held feudal sway over several towns and lordships. The rule of St. Benedict is known to have been observed here in 987, when Prior Raymundo was at the head of the house. It was a dependence of the abbey of Ripoll until the fourteenth century, but on account of its miraculous Virgin, and the extraordinary history of its foundation, it at once acquired great celebrity, and not a day passed without numerous pilgrims. In the twelfth century there were so many that Don Jaime el Conquistador ordered all who went to the mountain to take with them the provisions necessary for their subsistence. These pilgrims, who were often from distant provinces, used to come with bare feet, sometimes with torches in their hands, or bearing heavy crosses, or scourging their bodies, or with a halter around their necks and manacles on their hands, as if they were criminals. And when the monks saw them coming in this manner, they went out to meet them, and released them from their vow by special authority from the pope, and brought them in before the holy image of the Mother of God, where their sighs and tears broke forth into piteous prayers.
These pilgrims had a kind of sacred character which prevented them from being cited before tribunals till they returned, except for crimes committed on the way, under a penalty of five hundred crowns. Leonora, the wife of Don Pedro el Catolico, was the first queen of Aragon to visit the sanctuary, and Don Pedro the Great the first king. The latter passed the night before the altar of Our Lady, imploring her aid against the French, who were invading Catalonia. Don Jaime and his wife Blanca came together and endowed the monastery, of which their son was then prior. Don Pedro el Ceremonioso came twice: on his way to the conquest of Majorca, and again at his return, when he presented a silver galley in thanksgiving for his success. Queen Violante, wife of Juan I., came here with bare feet, out of pure love for the Virgin, bringing with her rich gifts.
When Ferdinand the Catholic was nine years old his mother brought him to Montserrat and consecrated him to the Virgin. After the conquest of Granada he and Queen Isabella came here together, with Prince Juan, their son, Isabella, widow of Don Alonso of Portugal, Doña Juana, afterwards called la Loca, and others of the royal family. They brought with them the two young sons of the last king of Granada, who were baptized under the names of Juan and Fernando. In the retinue were the great Cardinal Mendoza and a number of prelates. On this or some other occasion their Catholic majesties presented two magnificent silver lamps to burn before Our Lady of Montserrat, and Queen Isabella gave twelve yards of green velvet, and two of brocade, to the sacristy.
It was about this time that thirteen monks from Montserrat were chosen to accompany Christopher Columbus in order to establish the faith in the new regions he might discover. At their head was Dom Bernardo Boil, a noble Catalonian, who was raised to the dignity of patriarch and papal legate. Columbus gave the name of Montserrat to an island he discovered in 1493, on account of the resemblance it bore to the holy mountain of Spain, and the first Christian church erected in America was called Nuestra Señora de Montserrat.
Charles V. came to Montserrat when nineteen years of age, accompanied by his tutor, Adrian of Utrecht, afterwards pope. They found the court full of soldiers, with lighted torches in their hands, and the Count Palatine at the head of an embassy to offer him the crown of Carlo Magno in the name of the electors of Germany. Charles went to prostrate himself at the feet of the Virgin, and the following day left for Barcelona, after giving the father abbot the title and privileges of Sacristan Mayor of the crown of Aragon. He subsequently bestowed many gifts on the abbey, and gave it rule over the town of Olessa and other places. He visited it repeatedly, and not only remained several days at a time, but is even said to have tried the monastic life he afterwards embraced in the convent of Yuste. The third time he came here was in 1533, and on Corpus Christi day he walked in the procession with the monks, carrying a lighted candle in his hand. He liked to pass such great solemnities in a monastery, contributing by his presence and generosity to the brilliancy of the festival. He always invoked Our Lady of Montserrat before engaging in battle, and attributed to her his victories. He was at Montserrat when he received notice of the discovery of Mexico by Hernando Cortes, and when he heard of one of his important victories over the Moors. And on St. Margaret’s day, 1535, the parish of Santa Maria del Mar at Barcelona sent a deputation of twelve persons to the mountain, habited as penitents, to pray for the success of the royal arms. They united with the monks and hermits in a devout procession around the cloister, and made such prevailing prayer at the altar of Our Lady that Charles V. that very day took possession of Tunis. When the emperor, in 1558, found he was dying, he called for the taper blessed on the altar of Montserrat, and holding it in one hand, with the crucifix that had been taken from the dead hand of his mother Juana in the other, this great monarch, who, as he acknowledged to his kinsman, St. Francis Borgia, had never, from the twenty-first year of his age, suffered a day to pass without devoting some part of it to mental prayer, now slept for ever in the Lord.