RODA: THE MEDIEVAL BIBLE OF SANT PERE DE RODES

The Grandma in Sant Pere de Rodes

Today, The Grandma has visited the Monastery of Sant Pere de Rodes in El Port de la Selva. This monastery was witness of the creation of one of the most important and amazing manuscripts of the 11th century: The Rodes Bible, a wonderful work which you can see in the National Library in Paris.

The Rodes Bible is a manuscript written in the 11th Century. It was originally a book with 566 pages but, in the 18th Century, it was divided into four books. It was written on vellum, a parchment made of unborn animal skin. The preparation of the pages for writing is easy to see, with the page divided into three columns with spaces for the miniatures.

More information: Ajuntament del Port de la Selva

Miniatures. The Rodes Bible.

The Bible is written in Latin in the Carolingian script of the early 11th Century, combining titles and certain other phrases in other types of script. The handwriting of six different scribes can be identified. Many of the pages are illuminated, with illustrations occupying either a small section or the entire page, particularly in the books of the Old Testament.

There are three groups of miniatures -the initial capital letters, depictions of scenes and characters from the Bible, and representations of animals. Depending on the text that they accompany, they occupy one or two columns or the entire page. Just as in the case of the scribes, the work of different miniaturists can be discerned.

More information: Monastery of Sant Pere de Rodes

Normally, the writing was completed first and the scribe left a blank space for the monk who specialized in drawing the miniatures. However, this was not always the case throughout the entire book.

Miniatures. The Rodes Bible.

The miniatures of the Rodes Bible are a great source of knowledge about the medieval world of the Catalan earldoms. Although the clothes, gestures, furniture, soldiers' weapons and relationships between characters were supposed to depict the people and scenes from the ancient world, they are all taken from the everyday lives of 11th Century monks.

The Rodes Bible was written in the first quarter of the 11th Century in the Monastery of Santa Maria de Ripoll when Oliba was the abbot. Abbot Oliba commissioned three large-scale Bibles to be written and illustrated with miniatures. One of these Bibles was given as a gift ini an unfinished state to the Monastery of Sant Pere de Rodes, possibly to mark the ceremony of the consecration of the Monastery's church in 1022. 

More information: Monastery of Santa Maria de Ripoll

The Bible remained at the Monastery of Sant Pere de Rodes until it was stolen at the end of the 17th Century by the Duke of Noailles as part of the spoils of war. The Rodes bible was one of the manuscripts that formed part of the private collection of the Noailles family until it was purchased by Louis 15th along with 200 other manuscripts in 1749, to add to the french royal collections. Today, it is kept at the National Library in Paris.

Miniatures. The Rodes Bible.

Sant Pere de Rodes was a monastery of the Benedictine Order under which, among other duties, a compulsory daily period of reading was imposed. This required books which were obtained by copying them from other collections.

The term Scriptorium is used to refer to a room in monasteries set aside for writing. however, in medieval monasteries, scribes normally wrote at a small table in the cloisters or in their rooms. The word scriptoria refer to the written works produced in the monasteries rather than to a physucal place. A monastery's scriptorium is also associated with the existence of a library which, in many cases, was no more that a closer or trunk located in the cloister or in a passageway. In the case of Sant Pere de Rodes, it is known that an archive existed in which, among other books, there was a luxurious Bible which was stolen at the end of the 17th century.

The Monastery of Sant Pere de Rodes is one of the most important medieval monasteries in terms of Catalan Romanesque art. The monument that we see today is a set of building constructed between the 4th and 18th Centuries.

The Monastery's golden age was from the 10th to the 12th Century, a period in which it received several donations and lands from nobles, primaily from the Counts of Empúries, which great benefited the Monastery. 

The monks abandoned Sant Pere de Rodes in 1798 after a long period marked bad financial management, attacks from pirates and continuous wars with France.

More information: Bibliothèque Nationale de France

The notion that human life is sacred 

just because it is human life is medieval. 

Peter Singer

J.V.FOIX: THE AVANT-GARDE IN EL PORT DE LA SELVA

J.V.Foix in his home in El Port de la Selva

Today, The Grandma is in El Port de la Selva, a small town in l'Alt Empordà, where the poet Josep Vicenç Foix found inspiration for the most part of his poems. 

The town has a special route dedicated to J.V.Foix where you can follow his life and understand his poetry.

Josep Vicenç Foix i Mas (28 January 1893-29 January 1987) was a Catalan poet, writer, and essayist in Catalan. Born in Sarrià, Barcelona, Foix was a son of one of the best-known bakers in the whole city. He started his studies of Law, but left them after the second course at university. 

More information: Fundació J.V.Foix

From then, he worked in the familiar business as well as he read classic masterpieces of literature by authors such as Lord Byron, Dante Alighieri or Charles Baudelaire. Indeed, Foix never forbade the place where he had been born, not even when the Spanish Civil War ended. 

Some old memories in El Port de la Selva

Nonetheless, Foix always had been a liberal writer who introduced some avantgarde ideology in Catalonia.  

He usually signed his work by using the abbreviation J.V. Foix.

In 1916 began to collaborate with La Revista and started to be interested in avantgarde art. He worked among other publications like Trossos, La Cònsola (1919–1920) or La Publicitat (1923–1936), where he worked as an art director.

At the end of the Spanish Civil War, Foix returned to the familiar business, and let forgotten for some time his artistic purpose. 

More information: Mapa Literari J.V.Foix-El Port de la Selva

The Grandma in El Port de la Selva nowadays

He also compiled his total poetic work, and continued helping young artist related to avantgarde, between which Joan Brossa must be named.

On 25 May 1962, he became a member of Institut d'Estudis Catalans. 

He received many different awards during his life: la Medalla d'Or de la Generalitat de Catalunya in 1981 or el Premi d'Honor de les Lletres Catalanes in 1984 are some of them. 

In 1984, the Parliament of Catalonia proposed him for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Download Readings of J.V.Foix

J. V. Foix helped in 1985 to found again the students association Federació Nacional d'Estudiants de Catalunya (FNEC). He was named President de Honour of it. He died in 1987, and buried in Sarrià.

    Alone, I am eternal. A thousand-year old terrain
    entices me, what was strange is no longer strange,
    I was born to this place; desert without oasis.

J.V.Foix

CAP DE CREUS & SANT PERE DE RODES, HISTORIC STONES

Salvador Dalí

Cap de Creus is a peninsula and a headland located at the far northeast of Catalonia, some 25 kilometres south from the French border. The cape lies in the municipal area of Cadaqués, and the nearest large town is Figueres, capital of the Alt Empordà and birthplace of Salvador Dalí. Cap de Creus is the easternmost point of the Iberian Peninsula. The area is now a Natural Park.

The peninsula has an area of 190 square kilometres of an extraordinary landscape value; a windbeaten very rocky dry region, with almost no trees, in contrast with a seaside rich in minuscule creeks of deep blue sea to anchor. Mountains are the eastern foothills of the Pyrenees, the natural border between France and Spain. The region is frequently swept by awful north wind "tramontana" (beyond mountains) which has caused many naval disasters. Cadaqués is the most well-known village, home of artists and writers, with sophisticated atmosphere, near Port Lligat where Dalí built his home in a paradise small bay. (Dalí depicted the peninsula in his painting The Persistence of Memory.) El Port de la Selva, with a little fishing harbour, is less exploited, with good gastronomic recourses and pleasant terraces.

One legend tells that the Cap de Creus was hewn by Hercules.

More information: Dalí Theatre-Museum Figueres

Sant Pere de Rodes stands out at 500 metres (1,600 ft) of altitude, with views of the Cap and the Pyrenees. It is an 11th-century monastery whose first structures date from about 750 AD. It is a former Benedictine monastery. It is in the municipal area of El Port de la Selva in the province of Girona. It has been constructed in the side of the Verdera mountain below the ruins of the castle of Sant de Verdera that had provided protection for the monastery. It offers exceptional views over the bay of Llançà, to the north of Cap de Creus. Near the monastery Santa Creu de Rodes is the ruins of a medieval town, of which its pre-Romanesque-style church is the only remains dedicated to Saint Helena. The zone is plenty of Prehistoric ruins like dolmens and menhirs. This fact demonstrates the importance of this zone since the ancient ages.

Joseph de Ca'th Lon next to a dolmen

The true origin of the monastery is not known, which has given rise to speculation and legend; such as its foundation by monks who disembarked in the area with the remains of Saint Peter and other saints, to save them from the Barbarian hordes that invaded the Western Roman Empire. Once the danger had passed the Pope Boniface IV commanded them to construct a monastery.

The first documentation of the existence of the monastery dates 878, when it was mentioned as a simple monastery cell consecrated to Saint Peter, but it is not until 945 when an independent Benedictine monastery was founded, led by an abbot. Connected with the County of Empúries, it reached its maximum splendor between the 11th and 12th centuries until its final decay in the 17th century. Its increasing importance is reflected in its status as a point of pilgrimage.

In the 17th century it was sacked in several occasions and in 1793 was deserted by the Benedictine community, which was transferred to Vila-sacred and finally settled in Figueres in 1809, until it was dissolved.

The monastery was declared a national monument in 1930. In 1935 the first restoration work was initiated.

Joseph de Ca'th Lon pointing at the North

The buildings are constructed in terraces, given its location. Cloisters of 12th century form the central part of the complex. Around them the rest of constructions are distributed. The church, consecrated in the year 1022, is an example of Romanesque style; it has nave and two vaulted. These are bordered by a double column with capitals influenced by the Carolingian style. The double column support arches separating the nave from the aisles. Columns and pillars have been taken from a former Roman building. The nave ends with an arch leading to the apse, continued in the two aisles. Under the apse is a crypt. The church synthesizes a number of original styles including Carolingian, Romanesque and Roman. 

The monastery is considered one of the best examples of Romanesque architecture in Catalonia. In the western facade of the monastery is a 12th century square-shaped bell tower, influenced by the Lombard style from the previous century. To the side is a defensive tower, that was probably began in the 10th century but finished later after several modifications.

More information: MHCAT-Sant Pere de Rodes

Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.

 

Salvador Dalí