2023-05-13 05:59:37
On April 30 of last year, the exhibition was inaugurated Saint Peter of Rhodes, the immortal goal. Photographs and photographers (19th-21st centuries)an exhibition, installed in the Sala de Llevant of the same monument and which can still be visited, which proposed an emotional journey fromabout seventy photographs, many of them unpublished, about this Empordà symbol. The catalog has now been edited, which includes texts and images that capture details unknown to experts.
Historian Sònia Masmartí explains that much emphasis has always been placed on the Middle Ages, “a period of splendor” for the monument, while “its recent history is very unknown” and in addition remains surrounded under an aura of myth “with discovered treasures and travelers who had passed through”. This has led Masmartí and the archaeologist Anna Maria Puig, two of the curators of the exhibition, to immerse themselves in the past of Sant Pere de Rodes. They have done this by investigating the press of the time, carefully reading the juicy old articles of Ampurdán, La Publicitat or Empordà Federal, among others.
Many of the extracted data have been used to write the first part of the book, a historical introduction that starts from the moment when the monks left the monastery, at the end of the 18th century, until 1999 when the restoration works were inaugurated.
From those early days, they have had to stretch the thread of the chronicles of the travelers who visited it and who explained what they saw, what they felt. In the texts, which are combined with the oldest photographs they have found and which marry perfectly with what is narrated, the predominant feeling was the pain of seeing that imposing place of worship languish in a pitiful state. The correspondent in the article “From Palau Sabardera”, published in The strugglein 1897, writes: «That the fame of the same proclaimed by the thousands of excursionists who have visited and still visit every day those deserted and solitary mansions, are a pale and weak shadow before the admirable vision of reality».
O The Newspaper of Girona1888, evokes desolation and abandonment: «Upon entering its enclosure, our plants stepped on recent rubble, while a flock of swifts hid in the crypt in fear and the rumor of a stone landing on the ground reached our ears.o».
Those hikers, with an adventurous spirit, also stand out the silence and solitude of the place. Many of them came from Barcelona and hired local guides to “lead them to the monastery”. “It was like a romantic adventure and it affects everyone and hits them hard”, admits the historian.
It is also the time of the lootingof vandalism, of looting that, initially, arose “from a hatred towards that feudal lord who had exploited them for centuries”.
This led to the antiquities trade. “Some went there with teams of shovels to dismantle parts in order to sell them in a premeditated way”, says Masmartí who remembers how, in the thirties of the 19th century, an estate in La Selva hired some laborers to dismantle the portal and sell it -the. At that time, the community was already settled in Figueres.
At the end of the 19th century, the first voices emerged calling for the monument, then still owned by the Dukes of Medinaceli, to be recovered.
Throughout the 20th century, popular movements from the surrounding towns grow: “The population is looking for intellectuals to defend Sant Pere de Rodes, to call on the government to save it; it is the people’s struggle and it is very exciting to see all the people who have worked hard to prevent it from continuing to fall.”
In the second part of the book, the images of the photographers of the exhibition are reproduced, in large format, which, in addition, served as an advertisement. Thus, the volume includes other photographs by unknown and amateur portraitists who captured the soul of the monastery at different times of its existence.
With patience, they followed the footprints, going from house to house, requesting from the descendants those images never seen and kept at the bottom of a drawer. “They are very high-quality and unpublished photographs,” acknowledges Anna Maria Puig.
On this route, they also stopped at different municipal archives, such as those in Roses or Figueres, where they located more graphic material. These images, of great value, as Puig explains, “make it possible to demonstrate at what point the restoration works were carried out or the activities that took place there”. Moreover, observing them with a magnifying glass, they have revealed secrets. This is the case of a pictorial work in the church – some keys of Saint Peter and a papal miter – which they did not know.
The book has been published in the monographs of the Institute of Empordanese Studies with the support of the Department of Culture.
Of revenge and looting, in the museum
The monastery of Sant Pere de Rodes suffered initial looting as a result of anti-feudal revenge and, later, vandalism and antiquities trafficking. As a result, many individuals still retain fragments of the original body. The value is high, if we consider that recently the Generalitat acquired for 250,000 euros four 12th century sculptures that were part of the portal. After being exhibited at the Artur Ramon gallery in Barcelona, they have moved to the MNAC.
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