It’s a note from a century ago. A member of the Puigvert family sends memories to an ancestor, a member of the medieval Catalan nobility who lies in one of the two impressive cloisters of the monastery of Santes Creus (Aiguamúrcia, Alt Camp). An emotional piece of paper, filtered through a crack despite the fact that, as it seemed at the time, the tomb could be empty. In theory it had been looted in the confiscations of the 19th century. Well no
The restoration works of the monastic enclosure have just discovered that the twenty sarcophagi and ossuary in the Gothic cloister contain human remains. That they had never been opened.
For now, those in the north wing have been removed. In just six burials, vestiges of between twelve and fourteen people have appeared, two of them creatures; one of them keeps a scapular between his hands, as the X-ray taken by the Pius de Valls hospital has shown. Possibly each sarcophagus contains remains of members of the same family.
The vestiges have already begun to be studied. The analyzes of genetics and human tissues will allow us to investigate the type of life of those medieval nobles: diseases, age, kinship, wounds, food… It also opens new perspectives for study regarding the burial systems of the medieval Catalan nobility and funeral rituals. The remains were not treated with any mummification process. Some have remains of lime, but possibly they were not thrown to fight the plague (which would have been the cause of death), but the stench.
An endoscopic camera was inserted into the rest of the tombs, which showed that they also contain remains from that time.
Apparently, all the bodies are as they were placed there 600 or 700 years ago, although in some cases they are secondary or perhaps tertiary burials; they arrived at Santes Creus after previous burials. The kings James the Just and Blanca of Anjou wanted to turn Santes Creus into a pantheon of the Catalan aristocracy. Possibly by burying themselves there they sought to “link themselves in a direct way” to the royal pantheon and “consolidate their social position”, said the director of the area of ??monuments and sites of the Catalan Agency for Cultural Heritage, Carme Bergés .
The find took place as part of the building’s restoration work, to which the Department of Culture and the La Caixa Foundation are allocating a little more than 3.6 million euros under the “Gothic Time” program . “Today we see that heritage is a living thing”, said the Minister of Culture, Natàlia Garriga. “Understanding the past allows us to understand the present and project the future”, added Elisa Duran, deputy general director of the philanthropic entity.
The restoration began in April last year with the aim of solving the pathologies of the cloister and ensuring the conservation of the whole by waterproofing the roofs and improving the water drainage systems.
Despite the long chronology, the sarcophagi are stylistically quite similar. According to the heraldry present on the frontal decoration and on the covers, the burials are of the Cervelló, Cervera (from two different branches), Queralt, Puigvert and Montcada families, all belonging to the middle-high Catalan nobility and active between the 13th and 14th centuries.
