Monastery of Sant Cugat del Vallès

Barcelona · Spain · Monastery

Monastery of Sant Cugat del Vallès — Barcelona · Spain · Monastery

In the middle of midnight mass in 1350 the abbot was cut down at the altar – the iron rooster on the roof crowed three times, the bells rang as far as Montserrat, and no grass grows on the killers' escape path.

In the monastery church of Sant Cugat del Vallès, fifteen kilometres from Barcelona, one of medieval Catalonia's most notorious murders was committed. During midnight mass on Christmas night 1350, the nobleman Berenguer de Saltells burst in with hired bandits and hacked Abbot Arnau de Biure to death before the altar, in front of the whole congregation – a bloody settling of an inheritance dispute. Legend says the iron rooster on the weathervane crowed three times at that instant, heard as far as Sant Llorenç del Munt and Montserrat, that the bells rang of their own accord, and that grass never grew again on the path the murderers fled along. The drama is still re-enacted every year in the play 'Pedra i Sang', and the abbot's restless spirit is said to walk the cloister at Christmas.

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Where is Monastery of Sant Cugat del Vallès located?

Monastery of Sant Cugat del Vallès is in Barcelona, Spain.

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Image: Enric · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons