More “dissertation tourism”: Montserrat
When we were in Barcelona, I gave my traveling companion another chance to prove what a good sport he is, by dragging him on a day trip to the Benedictine monastery at Montserrat. Here, one day in the sixteenth century, St. Ignatius of Loyola almost threw himself into a hole in his room, because of his inability to stop writing his spiritual confessions. This was an important moment in the history of graphomania.
You may or may not be interested to learn that the earliest cases of graphomania (in the late Middle Ages) were associated with a neurosis called “scrupulosity,” which affected both saints (who couldn’t stop writing their confessions) and merchants (who couldn’t stop writing in their account books). Here is a short excerpt from my dissertation about how St. Ignatius almost threw himself into the hole in the floor.
St. Ignatius of Loyola reached Montserrat by riding for days on a mule; but today you can take a train from Barcelona to the foot of the mountain, and then ride a cable car to the top.
I should probably have done some more logistical research though, because it turns out that the original monastery, including Ignatius’s room (and its floor), was destroyed almost 200 years ago by Napoleon. You can’t go into the replica monastery, either, because it’s still in use by monks. You can, however, see Our Lady of Montserrat, one of the mysterious “Black Madonnas” of Catholic Europe.
Tags: dissertation, graphomania, Spain, St. Ignatius of Loyola