MONSABRÉ, JACQUES-MARIE-LOUIS. - Celebrated Dominican orator, b. at Blois on 10 Dec. 1827, d. at Le Havre on 22 Feb. 1907. Of a jovial and ardent temperament, he soon came under the spell of the apostolic life of the Order of Friars Preachers, whose restoration in France was then
[at] the end of the 9th century a chapel dedicated to the Madonna which, definitively incorporated into Ripoll, was transformed into a monastery between 1023 and 1025 through the work of the abbot and bishop Oliba. Toward the end of the 11th century it belonged for some decades, together with Ripoll, to the monastic confederation of St-Victor of Marseilles as a simple priory. Independence from Ripoll was in fact not obtained until the time of the prior Giacomo de Vivers (1348-75). At this moment M. reached the highest degree of feudal power, being regarded by the kings of Aragon as "a State within their kingdom" (Peter III). During the Western Schism the monastery always remained on the side of the popes, despite the fluctuations of obedience that occurred in Catalonia. The last prior, Vincenzo de Ribes, was made a cardinal by Gregory XII, while Benedict XIII entered the monastery and elevated it to an abbey (1409), a dignity not obtained earlier for political reasons on the part of the sovereigns and economic reasons on the part of Ripoll.
In the 15th century several great abbots succeeded one another: Marco de Vilalba (1409-39), delegate to the Council of Constance, Antonio Pietro Ferrer (1450-71) and Giovanni de Peralta (1483-93). With Card. Giuliano della Rovere there was the only commendatory abbot (1472-83) who never lived in the monastery; to him, however, are owed several buildings, and the granting of numerous privileges during his pontificate. After a reform attempted at mid-century by Cassinese monks, and with the spiritual order flourishing through the work of the abbot de Peralta, the observance of the Congregation of Valladolid was introduced by royal authority (1493), through the well-known Garcia de Cisneros. A hermit of M., Bernardo Boil, accompanied in those years, as apostolic delegate, the ships of Columbus on the discovery of America; perhaps for this reason one of the first islands discovered was called Montserrat. Under Cisneros the monastery had a true school of mystics and ascetic writers, from which St. Ignatius himself drew profit, for there he weighed his spiritual arms in 1522. In 1499-1500 and 1518-26 the monastery possessed a famous printing press. During the 16th-17th centuries M. knew a great cultural splendor. The principal disciplines cultivated there were Sacred Scripture (Lloret, Capellades, Ricci), theology (Malvenda, Tàpies, Escaules), ascetics and mysticism (Ven. Cisneros, Ven. Chanon, Ven. Alfonso de Burgos, Garriga, Ven. Giuseppe di S. Benedetto, called "de les Llànties"), painting (G. Andrea Ricci, Barre), music, alongside the direction of the Escolania (which dates back to the 12th century; Marqués, Lopez, Cererols, Viola, Casanovas), classical letters (Brenach, Solà), history (Burgos, Montegut, Gener, Guerin, Ribas, Bragado) and physical sciences (Ametller, Castell). Especially notable in these centuries is the expansion of devotion to the Virgin of M. in many countries of central Europe and South America. There are many churches, including cathedrals and abbey churches, dedicated to her; in Italy alone, there are no fewer than 150 among altars, chapels and churches. Having surmounted not a few difficulties, due to the coexistence of Catalan and Castilian monks, who succeeded one another in the temporal abbatial regime, the monastery reached the beginning of the 19th century in splendor. The almost total destruction of the monastery in the fire caused by the Napoleonic troops in 1811, and the consequent spoliation, continued afterward by the government in 1835, ruined the work of centuries. In 1844 the community returned to the monastery after a forced exile of 9 years. It is due to the monastic ardor of the last abbots, and especially to Michele Muntadas (1865-85) and Antonio Marcet (1912-46), that, currently under the abbot Aurelio Escarré, the monastery has regained its ancient religious and cultural splendor. In the last Spanish civil war (1936-39) the monastery saw 23 of its monks killed by anarchist hatred. The holy icon of the Madonna (end of the 12th century, in polychrome wood), canonically crowned in 1881, was solemnly enthroned by the cardinal legate Arce in 1947, on the new precious throne, with silver lamps and mosaics offered by the Catalan devotees of the whole world.
From the 12th century onward, following the first miracles, attested in writing, the pilgrimages began, ever more numerous in the following centuries. In 1225 the Confraternity of the Madonna was instituted, which soon numbered bishops, kings and popes among its members (new regulations in 1445, 1881). Already in the 14th century the imagination, following popular piety, clothed its somewhat obscure origins with the most beautiful and poetic legends it could find. The poets of every age have sung its miracles and beauties, from the king of Castile Alfonso the Wise, in his Cantigas, to Lope de Vega, Verdaguer and Sagarra; although the connection with the legend of the Holy Grail, alluded to so many times apropos of Wagner's Parsifal, is not true. In the 17th-19th centuries one sees the Benedictine Congregation of M. extend into Austria, Bohemia and Brazil, as well as into Australia and the Philippine Islands. Nowadays the pilgrims who ascend annually to the Sanctuary not infrequently reach 500,000.
The church (basilica since 1881) is from the second half of the 16th century (interior decoration late 19th and 20th century); of the ancient one only the door with Romanesque sculptures remains (12th century). The bell tower is an old defense tower (14th-16th centuries); the Gothic cloister was made in the time of Card. Della Rovere (ca. 1480); the monastery dates from 1755 to 1764. In the vicinity (2 km.) the monastic church of S. Cecilia, consecrated in 957, still stands, with remains of contemporary wall paintings. Scattered over the mountain there are still several chapels, inhabited in another time by hermits; the oldest preserved are: S. Margherita (Visigothic, 8th or 9th century?), S. Paolo (11th and 12th centuries), S. Aciscio (within the present monastery, 11th and 13th centuries), S.ma Trinità (remains, 15th century).
The monastery possesses a library (ca. 170,000 vols., 1150 manuscripts, 400 incunabula, 30,000 fascicles), a musical archive (2000 mss.), an archive (5000 parchments, ca. 30,000 documents on Catalan monasteries), a picture gallery (more than 300 paintings: Perin del Vaga, Sassoferrato, il Francia, il Greco, van Dyck, Ricci, Morales, Bermejo, Berruguete, Catalan panels of the 15th century, moderns), an Egyptological and biblical museum and a printing press that publishes the following collections: the Bibbia de M., Catalan version and commentary (in 20 vols. of text and 10 of illustrations, Ubach, Obiols, Augé, Junqué, Riera, Bellet; in the course of publication), Analecta Montserratensia and Catalonia Monastica (historical collections; 7 and 2 vols. respectively), Mestres de l'Escolonia de Mont. (5 vols., Pujol), Místics de Mont., Biblioteca Monástica, Biblioteca Litúrgica, etc.
Bibliography13 works
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