Sant Pau del Camp (; ) is a church and former monastery in
Barcelona
Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...
,
Catalonia
Catalonia (; ca, Catalunya ; Aranese Occitan: ''Catalonha'' ; es, Cataluña ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a '' nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy.
Most of the territory (except the Val d'Aran) lies on the no ...
,
Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = '' Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, ...
. While the monastery now stands within the
El Raval
El Raval () is a neighborhood in the ''Ciutat Vella'' district of Barcelona, the capital city of Catalonia. The neighborhood, especially the part closest to the old port, was formerly (informally) known as ''Barri Xinès'' or ''Barrio Chino'', mea ...
district in central Barcelona, it once stood outside the city (before 14th century); its rural location gave the church its name.
History
There are no sources about the monastery's origins, it is generally thought that it was founded by count
Wilfred II of Barcelona, whose funerary inscription was found within the monastery in 1596. The monastery is documented from 977; in 985 it was sacked and destroyed by the Muslim troops of
al-Mansur Ibn Abi Aamir.
[''A Privilege of Pope Alexander III for Sant Pau Del Camp (Barcelona)'', Paul Freedman, 255-256. ]
Restorations were begun in 1096, through donations from Geribert Guitard and Rotlendis,
and a new monastic community arrived. In 1117, Sant Pau became a priory of the monastery of
Sant Cugat.
[Calvin B. Kendall, ''The Allegory of the Church: Romanesque Portals and Their Verse Inscriptions'', (University of Toronto Press, 1998), 119.] By the 13th, a new cloister, church and monastic quarters were built.
In 1377, the monastery consisted of a prior and eight monks, which declined in the 15th century to consist of three monks.
An initial monastic meeting for the Terragona province occurred in 1577 and such meetings would continue from 1594 to 1835.
The monks were removed upon the secularization of monasteries by the Spanish government in 1835.
It was declared a National Monument in 1879.
Architecture
The
Romanesque monastery has a small cloister, built in the 13th century. It features lobular arcades supported by double columns, whose capitals are decorated by biblical and daily life scenes, animals, monsters and vegetable motifs. The abbots' house was built in the 13th-14th and early 18th century.
The church is on the
Greek cross plan
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
, with a single aisle. It has a transept with three apses, and the interior is covered by
barrel vault
A barrel vault, also known as a tunnel vault, wagon vault or wagonhead vault, is an architectural element formed by the extrusion of a single curve (or pair of curves, in the case of a pointed barrel vault) along a given distance. The curves are ...
s. The entrance doorway has two columns with ancient marble
Visigoth
The Visigoths (; la, Visigothi, Wisigothi, Vesi, Visi, Wesi, Wisi) were an early Germanic people who, along with the Ostrogoths, constituted the two major political entities of the Goths within the Roman Empire in late antiquity, or what is kn ...
ic capitals, while in the tympanum is depicted Christ in Majesty with Saints Paul and Peter.
The
chapter house
A chapter house or chapterhouse is a building or room that is part of a cathedral, monastery or collegiate church in which meetings are held. When attached to a cathedral, the cathedral chapter meets there. In monasteries, the whole commun ...
(14th century) houses the tomb of the supposed founder of the monastery, Wilfred II.
See also
*
History of medieval Arabic and Western European domes
The early domes of the Middle Ages, particularly in those areas recently under Byzantine control, were an extension of earlier Roman architecture. The domed church architecture of Italy from the sixth to the eighth centuries followed that of the ...
Notes
References
*''A Privilege of Pope Alexander III for Sant Pau Del Camp (Barcelona)'', Paul Freedman, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae, Vol. 31 (1993).
*Calvin B. Kendall, ''The Allegory of the Church: Romanesque Portals and Their Verse Inscriptions'', University of Toronto Press, 1998.
*
External links
Images, informations and curiosities about the monastery
{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Paul Of The Countryside
13th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in Spain
Pau del Camp
Monasteries in Catalonia
El Raval
Christian monasteries established in the 9th century
Romanesque architecture in Barcelona