HERMITAGES IN THE PYRÉNÉES ORIENTALES.
I.
“Let man return to God the same way in which he turned from him; and as the love of created beauty made him lose sight of the Creator, so let the beauty of the creature lead him back to the beauty of the Creator.”—St. Isidore of Seville.
Let others who visit the magnificent range of the Pyrenees tell of the grandeur of the scenery and the beneficence of the mineral waters; let them recount the days of border warfare, when Christian and Saracen fought in the narrow passes, and Charlemagne, and Roland, and all the mighty peers awoke the echoes of the mountains; we will seek out the traces of those unlaurelled and, for the most part, nameless heroes who overcame the world and ended their days in the lonely caves and cells that are to be found all along the chain from the Mediterranean Sea to the Bay of Biscay. Many towns and villages of southwestern France owe their origin to some such cell. The hermit at first only built one large enough for himself, in which he set up a cross and rude statue of the Virgin. Other souls, longing for solitude, came to knock at his door. The cell was enlarged. An oratory was erected. People came to pray therein and bring their offerings. The oratory grew into a chapel. The hermitage became a monastery, around which families gradually took shelter, and the hamlet thus formed sometimes grew into a town. Lombez, St. Papoul, St. Sever, and many other places owe their origin to some poor hermit. The names of a few of these holy anchorites are still glorious in these mountains, like those of St. Orens, St. Savin, and St. Aventin, but most of them are hidden as their lives were, and as they desired them to be. Many of the chapels connected with their cells have acquired a local celebrity and are frequented by the people of the neighboring villages. This is a natural tribute to the memory of the saintly men to whom their fathers used to come when in need of prayer or spiritual counsel. The influence of such men on the rural population around was incalculable, with their lessons of the lowly virtues enforced by constant example. Sometimes not only the peasant but the neighboring lord would come with his Dic mihi verbum, and go away with new views of life and its great aims. King Perceforest, in his lessons to his knights, said: “I have graven on my memory what a hermit a long time ago said to me by way of admonition—that should I possess as much of the earth as Alexander, as much wisdom as Solomon, and as much valor as the brave Hector of Troy, pride alone, if it reigned in my bosom, would outweigh all these advantages.”
Many of these hermitages and oratories are
“Umbrageous grots and caves
Of cool recess”
that have been consecrated to religious purposes from the first introduction of Christianity. In the valley of the Neste is one of these grottoes, to which you ascend by steps hewn in the cliff. The opening is to the west, and the altar, cut out of the live rock, is turned duly to the east, where the perpetual Oblation was first offered. The sacred stone of sacrifice has been carefully preserved. There is a similar cave near Argelés also with its altar to the east.
Whether cave or cell, these hermitages are nearly all remarkable not only for their solitude but for the beauty of their situation. Sometimes they are in a fertile valley amid whispering leaves and wild flowers that give out sweet thoughts with their odors; sometimes ’mid the deep umbrage of the green hillside, vocal with birds, perchance the nightingale that
“Shuns the noise of folly,