The hermitage of St. Jacques de Calahors is but little frequented. It has a poor desolate chapel with rude images of the Virgin and St. James, and an altar to St. Antich, probably some Spanish saint. If any one wishes to live in poverty and undisturbed solitude, he could find no more suitable place than the wild, desolate region of which St. Jacques is the culminating point.
“Never was spot more sadly meet
For lonely prayer and hermit feet.”
The hermitage of La Trinité is known to have existed in the ninth century. Think of that! A thousand years of prayer in this sacred desert! What fruits of immortal life from this obscure region! The present chapel is of the twelfth century. Here is a curious crucifix known as the Santa Majestad, said to have come down from the age of Charlemagne. It is in great veneration, and sung in quaint Catalan Goigs perhaps as ancient as the image itself. The Christ is clothed in a long tunic that allows only the hands and feet and head to be seen. He is fastened to the cross by four nails, and around the head project long rays. There are several of these singular crucifixes in the Pyrénées Orientales, and we remember seeing a similar one at Naples, clad in its long crimson tunic.
The chapel is surmounted by three crosses, of which the central one is the highest. Behind rises a peak, on which stands the old donjon of Belpuig that dates at least from the thirteenth century. La Trinité is very popular in this pastoral region, and on St. Peter’s day and Trinity Sunday the mountains ring with the Goigs of the shepherds and herdsmen.
One of the most picturesque hermitages in the valley of the Tet, and certainly the most popular, is Notre Dame de Font Romieu, a mountain solitude surrounded by pines, delightful in summer, but so snowy in winter that the chapel is closed to the public about the middle of November, and scarcely opened again till spring. But in the summer it is open night and day, that the shepherds may come here at any hour they are at leisure. The actual chapel is of the seventeenth century, but it is on the site of one much older, built to receive the Virgin found here in 1113. This venerated statue is kept at Odello the greater part of the year. On Trinity Sunday it is brought here in solemn procession and left for a few months, when it is carried back with equal pomp. On these days there are five or six thousand pilgrims. The Virgin and Child are crowned and clothed in rich garments, so their faces alone are visible, but they are evidently very ancient. The fountain that, according to the Goigs, sprang up where the statue was discovered is beneath the high altar, and the water is conveyed by pipes beneath the pavement of the chapel to the court, where the pilgrims go to drink. It is remarkably pure and cool. One pipe extends to a private room, where there is a large reservoir, twelve feet square, made of a single block of granite, for the purpose of bathing. This tank is inscribed: Fons salutis Maria. Those who come here to bathe first say the rosary before a statue of the Virgin at one end of the room, after which they walk several times around the reservoir, praying Our Lady de la Salud as they go. A short distance from the hermitage is another fountain, called St. Jean.
One peculiarity about the chapel is that one-half of it is higher than the rest. You traverse part of the nave, and then ascend seven steps to the remainder, into which open the side chapels and the sanctuary. The retablo of the high altar is covered with bas-reliefs of the life of the Blessed Virgin, which, as well as the other sculptures, were done by Suñer, an artist of the seventeenth century from Manresa, Spain. The walls are covered with an infinite number of ex-votos, such as crutches, long tresses of hair, rude pictures of the Virgin invoked in time of danger, etc. The whole edifice is rich with gilding and sculpture, and, when filled with lights and flowers on great festivals, is quite dazzling. Over one of the altars in a niche is an old painting of San Ildefonso of Toledo receiving the Santa Casulla from the hands of the Virgin. We love to find this great servant of Mary in her churches—him who seemed clothed with her virtues as with the garment she gave him, and who is never weary of dwelling on her exalted mission. “Lo, by means of this Virgin the whole earth is filled with the glory of God!” exclaims he. The Mass here on his festival is obligatory for the parish of Odello.
Near the church is a still higher eminence, to which you ascend by a path winding around the mount with the Stations of the Cross up the sad, funereal way, terminating in a Calvary with the uplifted image of Him who alone can heal the serpent’s wounds that filled our souls with death.
The buildings at Font Romieu are quite extensive. There is a hostelry with a gallery of eleven arcades in front, where meals are prepared and rooms furnished those who wish to make a retreat. During the summer not a day passes without visitors. But the great day of the year is the patronal festival on the 8th of September, when the people of all the neighboring valleys come here, displaying a variety of physiognomy and costume hardly to be found elsewhere. Sometimes they amount to ten or twelve thousand. From the earliest dawn you can see them flocking in from every quarter, in the costume of their own valley, praying aloud or singing sacred hymns. As soon as they come in sight of the Calvary they fall on their knees to salute the uplifted Image so powerful to save, and again at the sight of the holy chapel. They hear Mass, go to Holy Communion, and, after completing their devotions, they scatter over the green to eat their lunch, when the whole scene assumes the aspect of a rural festival full of innocent gayety. Venders of fruit, cakes, and all kinds of wares, secular and holy, fasten themselves upon you with amusing pertinacity, while wandering musicians, in hopes of a few sous, begin to play on various rustic instruments—the flageolet, oboes, and perchance, at a proper distance from the holy chapel, the tambourine and bag-pipe.
Meanwhile, Goigs succeed each other all day long in the chapel, sung by peasants to rude mountain airs quite in harmony with the words and place. Every valley awaits its turn to sing its hymn before the Holy Mother of God.