Montserrat

Montserrat (Lat. Mons Serratus, so named from its saw-like outline), a mountain of Catalonia, in north-east Spain, 30 miles NW. of Barcelona. Its height is 4055 feet; and 'its outline,' says Ford, 'is most fantastic, consisting of cones, pyramids, buttresses, ninepins, sugar-loaves.' The pious Catalonians aver that it was thus shattered at the Crucifixion. Every rift and gorge is filled with box-trees, ivy, and other evergreens. From the topmost height the eye wanders over all Catalonia. The mountain, however, owes its celebrity to the Benedictine abbey built half-way up it, with its wonder-working image of the Virgin, and to the thirteen hermitages formerly perched like eagles' nests on almost inaccessible pinnacles. In 1811 the French, under Suchet, plundered the abbey, burned the library, shot the hermits, and hanged the monks (who had given shelter to their emigrant brethren at the Revolution). The place suffered still more in 1827, when it became the stronghold of the Carlist insurrection.