Cathedral of Santa Maria d’Urgell: A Romanesque Cathedral in La Seu d’Urgell
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History
The Cathedral of Santa Maria d’Urgell is a Romanesque Catholic cathedral and minor basilica in La Seu d’Urgell, Spain, dedicated to the Virgin Mary and serving as the seat of the Diocese of Urgell. A cathedral is the principal church of a diocese and the seat of its bishop, while a minor basilica is a church granted special honorary status by the Catholic Church. The present building was begun between 1116 and 1122 and is regarded as the only wholly Romanesque cathedral in Catalonia.
Early Diocese and Episcopal Relocation
The Christianization of the Roman city of Orgellia was traditionally attributed to a disciple of James the Greater. The Diocese of Urgell probably emerged between the Council of Tarragona in 516 and the Second Council of Toledo in 527, although its foundation is not documented. Its first episcopal church stood on a hill above the settlement.
In 793, a Muslim attack destroyed both the church and the city. The crisis coincided with the adoptionist controversy associated with Bishop Felix of Urgell, who held office from 781 to 799. Adoptionism was a theological dispute concerning the status of Christ. After this period of upheaval, the episcopal see moved down to the lower part of the settlement.
A new church was built in the plain, in the district known as vicus Urgelli. Bishop Sisebut consecrated the cathedral of Santa Maria del Vicus in 839 in the presence of Sunifred I, Count of Urgell and Cerdanya and father of Wilfred the Hairy. The surviving record of the consecration lists the churches and parishes belonging to the diocese, providing an outline of its organization at that time.
The Eleventh-Century Cathedral
The diocese grew through exchanges and donations connected with Borrell II, Count of Barcelona and Urgell, who lived from 927 to 992. Under Bishop Ermengol, who governed from 1010 to 1035, diocesan wealth supported an extensive building program. It included a new cathedral on the present site, the churches of Saint Peter and Saint Andrew and Saint Michael, and stone bridges over the Segre and Valira. The funds came from wealth acquired during the Christian conquest of Lower Urgell.
The settlement expanded around the episcopal center. A weekly market was recorded in 1029 and a fair in 1048. The district around the cathedral became known as vicus Sedes Urgelli, meaning the district of the See of Urgell, and this name gave La Seu d’Urgell its modern designation.
An earlier cathedral on the present site was consecrated on 22 October 1040. Bishop Ermengol built or substantially reworked it, and his successor, Bishop Eribau, completed and consecrated the work. It remains uncertain whether this church enlarged or replaced the ninth-century cathedral, although population growth probably made the earlier building too small.
The eleventh-century church contained an altar dedicated to Santa Maria and five further altars dedicated to Saint Stephen, the Holy Sepulchre, Saint Just, James the Greater, and Saint Ermengol. The dedication to Ermengol reflected his veneration as a saint soon after his death in 1035. Saint Ermengol later became the patron of the diocese, and his relics continued to receive veneration.
The Present Cathedral and Medieval Conflict
The present cathedral was begun under Bishop Odó between 1116 and 1122, during a prosperous period for the diocese. Work slowed after Odó’s death in 1122, then gained decisive momentum under Bishop Arnau de Preixens, who governed from 1167 to 1195.
In 1175, Arnau de Preixens contracted the master builder Ramon Llambard, also known as Raimundus Lambardus, to complete the church within seven years. His duties included closing the vaults, raising the bell towers above them, and completing the cimborium, a raised structure over the crossing that can provide light and architectural emphasis. The main commission was substantially fulfilled by 1182, when the bell tower of the principal facade had been raised. Llambard may have come from Italy, a possibility associated with the cathedral’s Lombard and other Italianizing features. He also took part in building the Basilica of San Michele in Pavia.
Construction ended late in the twelfth century when warfare and the siege and sack of La Seu d’Urgell in 1195 and 1196 weakened the clergy’s finances. The attackers included Arnau I of Castellbò and Ramon Roger I of Foix. During the assault, the cathedral served as the town’s principal place of refuge and defense. The building was never fully completed, although work continued on the cloister.
The unfinished state affected the towers and cimborium. In the fifteenth century, the sculptor Antoni Canet appears to have held the post of master of works around 1416, but his activity at Urgell was brief and seems to have been limited. Later Baroque additions altered the cathedral’s appearance before a major restoration began in 1918 under Bishop Joan Benlloch. During that campaign, the northern facade was recovered, and Josep Puig i Cadafalch removed the eighteenth-century neoclassical interior coating, which had been made with 50 tonnes of plaster.
Restoration and Episcopal Life
Further restoration took place between 1955 and 1974. Incomplete portions of the building were faced with stone, later additions were removed to recover the exterior appearance of the Romanesque church, and the interior was restored after the removal of the eighteenth-century plaster covering. Work in 1950 exposed the main facade bell tower, which had previously been concealed inside an older clock tower.
The cathedral complex was declared a historic-artistic monument in 1931. The cathedral is protected as a nationally important cultural property, and it received the title of minor basilica in 1905. The complex includes the cathedral, its cloister, Saint Michael’s Church, the Diocesan Museum of Urgell in the former Church of the Pietà and former Deanery House, and the Episcopal Palace behind them.
The cathedral’s musical chapel employed many chapel masters. Joan Brudieu, one of the major musicians of the Catalan Renaissance, served there for many years. Later masters included Marcià Albareda, Joan Arañés, Pau Marquès, Josep Pujolar, Isidre Serrada, Jaume Forcada, Gabriel Argany, Josep Forto, Francesc Andreu, Maurici Espona, Jaume Balius, and Bru Pagueras. The position was vacant in 1707 and 1708, and the holder is unknown for 1691 to 1697.
Saint Ermengol’s cult also shaped the cathedral’s later religious life. The former Chapel of the Holy Cross was rededicated to him in 1575. A retable made by Juan de Segovia was blessed on 31 July 1756, with six scenes showing the institution of the canonical community, the conquest of Guissona, the construction of the Tresponts road, Ermengol’s fall from the Pont de Bar, the stopping of his body before the cathedral as the bells rang by themselves, and the healing of a blind man.
Remains
The Cathedral Building
The cathedral is a three-aisled Romanesque basilica on an east-west liturgical axis, with the apse to the east and the principal entrance to the west. Its plan has four bays, a very long transept, and five apses. Four lateral apses are recessed within the thick eastern wall of the transept, while the central apse projects outward as a broad semicircle across the width of the central nave. The central nave and transept carry barrel vaults, and the lower side aisles have groin vaults. Four cruciform piers on each side divide the nave; they rise from octagonal bases and support transverse, communicating, and vault-bearing arches.
The Crossing and Towers
The crossing contains an unfinished cimborium covered by a slightly elongated quarter-sphere vault. Ribs divide it into four sections, and pendentives support the structure. Four openings bring light into the crossing. The cathedral also has a three-opening bell gable on an extension of the cimborium wall, together with two massive square towers at the ends of the transept. The northern tower is called the Tower of Saint Salvador, and the southern one the Tower of Saint Just.
The transept towers are built of golden-colored stone and contain small arrow slits, deep Lombard arcades, and carved corbels. Their straight, unfinished tops show that they were intended to rise higher and may originally have been planned as bell towers. A semicircular wall base beneath the Tower of Saint Salvador may preserve part of the cathedral of 839 or of the church consecrated in 1040. Bells were installed in the Tower of Saint Just during the twentieth-century restoration. The present arrangement has seven bells, four in that tower and three in the bell gable, whose bells are no longer used. Hydraulic screens open around the operating installation to improve resonance across the town.
West Facade and Portals
The walls are exceptionally thick and solid, made from squared granite blocks. Together with the towers and defensive openings, they give the church a fortress-like character consistent with its use as a refuge and defensive position during attacks. Five entrances serve the building, three in the western facade and one in each of the northern and southern walls. The lateral portals carry especially elaborate thirteenth-century decoration.
The western facade combines gray and reddish stone, probably granite quarried from the Valira River. Its central doorway is more elaborate than the two side doorways. Five archivolts, or decorated bands following the curve of an arch, surround it, while square pilasters and two smooth round columns stand on each side. The capitals show people and animals fighting or hunting.
Groups of lions decorate the main portal, including reliefs of lions devouring people. Small human faces and rounded inset forms, popularly called eggs, are also carved into the design and are associated with life and resurrection. The corners contain lions and a nude reclining man. Above them, a frieze shows humans, wolves, sheep, lions, horses, reptiles, and monsters in violent scenes.
The facade is flanked by two attached towers, rectangular below and octagonal above. A two-story bell tower with battlements crowns the composition. Its lower level has paired round-headed openings, while the upper level has triple openings supported by slender columns. The gabled roof has a cornice of three friezes, including saw-tooth and zigzag ornament. Blind arches, a central window with archivolts, two side oculi, and a higher row of three round-headed windows complete the facade. The central window is twice the size of the side windows and belongs to an interior gallery.
North and South Portals
The northern wall rises above the side-aisle vault and acts as a buttress against the thrust of the central nave. Arrow slits appear in the upper wall and around the tower area. Its cornice preserves geometric, animal, and human-headed corbels. The northern portal opens toward Plaça dels Oms and has five archivolts carried by columns. Their capitals show double-tailed sirens, lion heads combined with the legs of other animals, vegetal forms, and fluting. A nineteenth-century adjoining church blocked the entrance until 1967.
The southern portal opens onto the cloister at the level of the third bay and is the richest of the five entrances. Two columns on each side have vegetal and animal capitals, and five decorated archivolts contain rounded forms and small human heads. An octagonal holy-water stoup stands to the right. Traces beside the portal may belong to a lost porch or galilee, an entrance structure.
Apse and Interior Decoration
Ramon Llambard built the semicircular exterior apse in a design comparable to Italian Romanesque churches. An open upper gallery has fifteen round-headed arcades resting alternately on paired columns and rectangular piers. Their capitals carry vegetal and animal ornament. Beneath the gallery are three windows with archivolts, five around the central opening and three around each side opening. Six attached half-columns divide the apse into seven vertical sections, while Lombard arcades and carved capitals articulate its surface.
Inside the central apse, a smaller recessed apse has five arches on small columns with carved capitals. It houses the polychrome thirteenth-century wooden Virgin of Urgell, a Romanesque Sedes sapientiae image of Mary seated with the infant Jesus on her lap. A Sedes sapientiae image represents Mary as the seated embodiment of divine wisdom. The fleur-de-lis in Mary’s right hand has led to a suggestion of Limousin provenance. The image is also known as Our Lady of Andorra because tradition holds that it was hidden in the Andorran valleys during the Muslim invasion. It is the patron of La Seu d’Urgell and the cathedral’s titular image, with its feast celebrated on 15 August.
The apse also contains blind arcades, windows opening toward the exterior gallery, a rose window, and rows of rounded inset forms along the attached columns and piers. A low window illuminates the Marian apse, while three larger upper windows light the presbytery. These openings have carved archivolts, columns, capitals, and floral decoration. The interior is relatively dark, and its columns, piers, and imposts carry extensive hemispherical ornament. The capitals are mainly vegetal but also include human and animal figures.
Paintings, Altars, and Memorials
The southern second apsidal chapel contains mural paintings originally dedicated to Saint Catherine of Alexandria and dated from 1242 to 1255. A Baroque retable dedicated to Saint Lucy and Saint Magdalene concealed them in the seventeenth century, giving the chapel the name Saint Lucy’s Chapel. The paintings reappeared when the retable was removed during the early twentieth-century restoration.
The cycle covered the apse and included a Pantocrator, a representation of Christ as universal ruler, scenes from Saint Catherine’s life, the Last Supper, and lower curtain decoration. The murals were removed by the Italian strappo technique, which lifts the painted surface from the wall, and divided into three fragments. The Disputation and Arrest of Saint Catherine are in the National Art Museum of Catalonia, the Martyrdom of Saint Catherine is held by the Abegg Foundation in Switzerland, and the Last Supper is in the Episcopal Museum of Vic.
The subject of the cycle has been interpreted in relation to conflict between the Diocese of Urgell, particularly under Bishop Ponç de Vilamur, who served from 1230 to 1257, and the interests of Castellbò and Foix associated with Cathar belief. Catharism was a medieval Christian dualist movement opposed by Catholic authorities. The paintings belong to the transition from Romanesque to Gothic art.
Renaissance mural decoration on the right side of the transept was made for the tomb of Bishop Joan Despés, also called Joan d’Espés, who died in 1530. About forty years later, Jeroni Xanxo designed the arrangement, which included a simple wooden funerary chest with the bishop’s arms, painted columns, life-size mourners, a black background, inverted torches held by putti, and broken amphorae.
The northern apsidal chapel beside the central apse contains the late eighteenth-century retable of Saint Ermengol. It includes a polychrome reclining figure of the saint and six relief panels illustrating episodes from his life. A paleochristian altar slab, probably from the first cathedral and thought to have remained in use until the eleventh century, was found during excavations in the cloister in 1996 and returned to altar use. The eleventh-century white-marble altar slab used until the twentieth century is displayed in Saint Michael’s Church, while a new high altar was installed in 1962.
The Cloister
The cloister lies south of the cathedral and has a nearly rectangular, slightly trapezoidal plan. Each of its four covered galleries is about four metres wide. The original arrangement had a single row of columns, corner piers, wooden roofing, rounded arches, and ornamented archivolts. A cloister is a covered ambulatory around an open courtyard, traditionally used for circulation, burial, and the life of a religious community.
Structure and Medieval Construction
The cloister was built after the cathedral, probably in the early thirteenth century. It was not the galilee built opposite the cathedral between 1083 and 1119, but appears to have replaced an earlier plan for a single porch beside the side entrance. Continuous sculptural workmanship indicates that some of the same workshops worked on the cathedral and cloister. Burials recorded there from 1245 show that the cloister was completed shortly before that date.
Only three galleries retain their Romanesque form. The eastern gallery was demolished in 1603 and replaced by large semicircular arcades built by Francisco Bolet and Pedro Boria. Antoni Cabot proposed rebuilding the entire cloister and removing the 1603 work in 1781, but the plan was not executed because the French occupation of La Seu d’Urgell in 1794 interrupted the project.
Carved Capitals
The galleries rest on a continuous solid masonry podium about 66 centimetres high and 60 centimetres wide. The arches stand about one metre apart and are supported by cylindrical columns with mostly identical bases; three bases are octagonal. The imposts are generally plain, while the arches and moldings repeat the hemispherical ornament found inside the cathedral.
The Romanesque cloister contains about fifty granite capitals, twenty-three purely ornamental and twenty-seven figurative. Their restrained carving shows strong influence from the sculpture workshops of Roussillon. The subjects include foliage, lions, eagles, griffins, harpies, human figures, atlantes, grotesque monkeys, winged demons, and musicians. An atlantes figure is a human form shown supporting an architectural element.
The north gallery has sixteen arches and seventeen capitals. Its decoration includes palms, foliage, winged demonic figures, human heads emerging from leaves, griffins with lion heads, figures among lions, mocking monkeys, harpies, and crouching nude male figures. The last group has been compared with a capital at the Basilica of San Zeno in Verona and provides an Italianizing reference.
The west gallery has seventeen arches and eighteen capitals. Their subjects include floral and palm motifs, lions attacking people, people overcoming lions, atlantes, four musicians, and monkeys associated with imagery of lust. The south gallery has fifteen arches and twenty-four capitals decorated with foliage, volutes, pinecones, lions devouring human heads, atlantes, fantastic animal heads, eagles grasping snakes, and monkeys pulling their ears.
Saint Michael’s Church and the Episcopal Complex
Saint Michael’s Church
Saint Michael’s Church is reached through the southern cloister gallery. It was originally dedicated to Saint Peter and Saint Andrew, then assumed the parish function formerly performed by the church of Saint Michael. It consequently became known first as Saint Michael and Saint Peter and later simply as Saint Michael.
The church is the oldest surviving building in the cathedral complex and the surviving church from Bishop Ermengol’s monumental building program. Its present structure was built between 1055 and 1092. It has a single nave with a wooden roof supported by three diaphragm arches, three apses, and external Lombard blind arcades.
Paintings from the Romanesque apses, attributed to the Master of Urgell and dated to the twelfth century, are in the National Art Museum of Catalonia. They include a Pantocrator and the figures of Andrew, Peter, Mary, and John. A reproduction is displayed in the church.
Diocesan Museum and Former Churches
The Diocesan Museum of Urgell occupies the former Church of the Pietà, the chapter-house area, and the former Deanery House. Bishop Ramon Iglesias i Navarri founded it in 1957, and it was expanded between 1981 and 1983. Its collections include religious works from the tenth to the eighteenth centuries, including the tenth-century Beatus of Urgell, a copy of the Apocalypse commentary associated with Beatus of Liébana, and the 1616 reliquary sarcophagus of Saint Ermengol, restored in 2012.
Other components of the episcopal complex included Saint Dominic, the Pietà, Saint Eulalia, and the Holy Sepulchre. Saint Dominic, formerly dedicated to Saint Michael, is a fifteenth-century Gothic building that was given to the Dominicans and now serves as an exhibition hall. Saint Eulalia was an eleventh-century single-nave church apparently connected with the town hospital; its remains and Roman structures are visible. The location of the Holy Sepulchre church is unknown.
