Cathedral of the Sea

The two boys followed him down the side of the church, which was next to another cemetery, the fossar Menor.

“Would you like us to help you?” asked Arnau.

The man panted, then turned and smiled at them again.

“Thank you, my lad, but you had better not.”

Eventually, he bent down and deposited the stone on the ground. The boys stared at it, and Joanet went over to try to push it, but it did not move. At this, the man burst out laughing. Joanet smiled back at him.

“If it’s not a cathedral,” Arnau said, pointing to the tall octagonal columns, “what is it?”

“This is the new church that the La Ribera neighborhood is building in thanks and devotion to Our Lady the Virgin—”

Arnau gave a start.

“The Virgin Mary?” he interrupted the man, eyes opened wide.

“Of course, my lad,” the man replied, ruffling his hair. “The Virgin Mary, Our Lady of the Sea.”

“And ... where is the Virgin Mary?” Arnau asked again, staring at the church.

“In there, in that small building. But when we finish the new one, she will have the best church that the Virgin has ever had.”

In there! Arnau did not even hear the rest of what the man was saying. His Virgin was in there. All at once, a sound made them all look up: a flock of birds had flown out from the topmost scaffolding.

9

BARCELONA’S RIBERA DE Mar neighborhood, where the church in honor of the Virgin Mary was being built, had grown up as an outlying suburb of the Carolingian city, surrounded and protected by the old Roman walls. At the outset it was inhabited by fishermen, stevedores, and other humble workmen. It already had a small church, known as Santa Maria de las Arenas, raised on the spot where Saint Eulàlia was said to have been martyred in the year 303. This church got its name from the fact that it was built on Barcelona’s sandy shoreline, but the same process of sedimentation that had made the city’s ports unusable led to the church becoming separated from the sands of the coast, so that its name gradually lost its meaning. That was when it became known as Santa Maria de la Mar, because although the coast was no longer close by, all the men who made their living from the sea still worshipped there.

The passage of time, which had already robbed the tiny church of its sands, also forced the city to adopt fresh land outside the walls where the emerging middle classes could settle, now that there was no longer enough room for them inside the Roman walls. And of the three boundaries of Barcelona, the middle classes chose the eastern side, where the traffic to and from the port passed by. So it was that Calle de la Mar became home to the silversmiths; other streets got their names from the money changers, the cotton traders, the butchers and bakers, wine merchants and cheese-makers, the hat and sword makers, and the multitude of other artisans who came flocking there. A corn exchange was built, and it was here that foreign traders visiting the city were lodged. Plaza del Born, behind Santa Maria, was also constructed: jousts and tourneys were held there. And it was not merely the rich artisans who were attracted to the new Ribera neighborhood; many nobles chose to live there after the count of Barcelona, Ramon Berenguer IV, granted the seneschal Guillem Ramon de Montcada the lands that later gave rise to the street bearing his name, which began at Plaza del Born close to Santa Maria de la Mar, and was filled with huge, luxurious palaces.

When the Ribera de la Mar neighborhood turned into a rich, prosperous area, the old Romanesque church where the fishermen and others who lived from the sea went to worship their patron saint became too small and poor for the new inhabitants. However, the resources of the Barcelona church authorities and of the nobility were all poured into the rebuilding of the city’s cathedral.

United by their devotion to the Virgin, both rich and poor parishioners of Santa Maria de la Mar refused to be discouraged by this lack of official support. Their newly appointed archdeacon, Bernat Llull, asked permission from the ecclesiastical authorities to build what was intended to be the greatest monument to the Virgin Mary. Permission was granted.

So from the beginning, Santa Maria de la Mar church was built by and for the common people. This was made explicit by the first stone laid for the new building, which was placed exactly where the main altar was to be raised. Unlike other constructions, supported by the authorities, on this stone all that was carved was the coat of arms of the parish. This showed that the construction, and all rights pertaining to it, belonged solely and exclusively to the parishioners who had undertaken the task: the rich, with their money; the poor, with their work. From the moment the first stone had been laid, a group of the faithful and prominent men of the city known as the Twenty-Five met each year with the rector of the parish and an official notary to hand over the keys to the church for that year.