Sant Benet de Bages

The Monastery of Sant Benet de Bages is a former Benedictine monastery, in the comarca of Bages, Catalonia, Spain. The Romanesque monastery was thoroughly restored at the beginning of the twentieth century by the Catalan architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch.HistoryThe monastery was founded about 950 by the noble Salla and his consort Ricarda, of the house of the viscounts of Osona. According to the founding legend, Salla traveled to Rome to have his institution authorized, and to have it depend directly on the Holy See, the usual method for preserving the community from interference from the bishop— in this case of Vic— in whose diocese it lay. The abbey church was consecrated 3 December 972, witnessed by a gathering of notables: Borrell II, Count of Barcelona, the bishops Frugifer of Vic, Guisad of Urgell and Pere of Barcelona, the viscount Guadald of Osona, and three of the four offspring of the recently deceased founder, his son Isarn and the sisters Quíxol and Ego, at the head of witnesses both laymen and priests, in a grand ceremonial recorded in the surviving act of consecration.