The Pyrenees is now on the turn from Autumn into the beginning of Winter, and it is time to share another extract from ‘Highly Holy’ with you all, the second and final from Chapter Five, dealing with sacred stones and their integration into the Christian framework. Sadly there are yet more delays with the layout, and so I cannot give a definite publication date, but I am trying to chivvy as much as possible!
Extract II from Chapter Five, ‘Traces, Transitions and the Healer’s Touch’
This process of absorption, either sanctioned by the Church through saintly or Marian legends or retained in folkloric practises is equally true for stone as it is for water and wood. The Pyrenees possesses many megalithic sites dating from as far back as the Neolithic, emerging from the need to demonstrate a settled presence in the landscape which came about during the transition from hunter-gatherer to pastoralist and agriculturalist. With the advent of settled occupation landscapes became bound up with the identity of tribes, becoming a series of spaces upon which man would monumentalise his presence and that of his dead. The erection of megaliths emerged from this need to imbue the newly-settled topography with memory and authority and many of the tombs and dolmens which were erected from the Neolithic into the Bronze Age and Iron Age were tied into an increasingly elaborate belief system. This process delineated certain areas as belonging to ancestral spirits and/or deities, liminal points for the celebration of religio-social rituals and spaces for commemoration of the tribe (sometimes all combined in one single space) marked by megalithic monuments. Several examples also show evidence in their alignments of relating to astronomical observation. The Gauls, Celtiberians and Basques all possessed these landscapes and the occupying Romans adopted some monuments into their own syncretic practises whilst leaving others alone. As a result, when Christianity began its process of evangelising in the Pyrenees during the fourth century, the countryside in particular held a remarkable number of these megalithic sites which were still considered to be relevant in some way to local pre-Christian practises. Even if some sites fell out of favour due to shifting tribal territories, cults becoming focused in urban environments or simply some monuments falling victim to cultural irrelevance, the majority would have retained at least some significance to the local population. Undoubtedly, missionaries would have considered many megaliths irrelevant, no longer explicitly venerated there by the fourth century, however others would have been subject to attempts either to place them within a hagiographic context or, conversely, to be linked with devilish spirits in the attempt to dissuade the continuity of pre-existing practises there. Across the Pyrenees the array of cist tombs, stone circles, menhirs and dolmens number in the thousands and if only a fraction of these became integrated into a Christian praxis, albeit with a strong echo of before, then they have played a significant role in the continuing sacralisation of the landscape. However, these echoes were often louder than the veneer of saintly or Godly associations laid across them, their origins to ‘giants’ or other beings who placed the stones there. An excellent example can be found at the Col de Peyresourde on the border of the Hautes-Pyrénées and the Haute-Garonne, where a group of stones stand on the hillsides around the hamlets. These were moved by glaciers, landslides and humans, so as to complete a line or circle. Above the village of Poubeau a track leads up and off through the woods to an open field, where a six-foot-tall granite stone is found. It is known as the ‘Cailhaou d’Arriba-Pardin’ (‘The Stone that Came from God’). Next to it was once a smaller stone, about three feet tall and phallic in appearance. It is now buried. Women would sit astride the smaller stone or kneel on a slab which lay before it so as to increase their fertility, and on the eve of Mardi Gras (the last day of Carnival, before Lent begins) they would light fires next to the stones. This was still happening in 1875, when an anthropologist was brought to the stones by a local guide and reported the following:
The spirit who inhabits the stone does not enjoy an immaculate reputation in the region but the inhabitants think none the less of it. So many happy unions consecrated by marriage and by the birth of numerous children began with meetings at the stone that young and old alike have very pleasant memories of it. They love the stone and are quite prepared to defend it if needs be.[1]
An iron cross was embedded in the stone in 1810, however it was destroyed by lightning, something which enhanced the stone’s local reputation. Another cross was raised on the stone in 1871 which is still there to this day though the villagers had officially abandoned the cult. However, the anthropologist of 1875 reported that girls confessed that they still visited the stone in secret. Other stones near the Col, known as the ‘peyre-hita’, were frequented by local women in 1877. These had a peculiar legend attached to them in which Jesus had asked a shepherd for some food when travelling along the pass and, in a most un-Christ-like gesture, he was so annoyed by the shepherd’s refusal that he turned the man, his dog and the flock of sheep to stone. These are near the village of Oueil (Haute-Garonne) and young girls would go to kiss the stones so as to increase their fertility.[2] In Jurvielle (Haute-Garonne) the ‘Sagaret stone’ can be found on a hill above the village. A spring issues from its base and the stone has been cut to form a curve, from the centre of which the water flows. Local folklore dictates that an ‘incatada’ guards the stone and can be heard whispering at night but during the day villagers would come to kiss the stone and ask for its advice, placing their ears to the granite to hear its response. These ‘incatadas’ were believed to be angels who, during the war between Good and Evil, had declared themselves neutral. God wanted his mercy to be kept a secret so he banished these neutral angels to earth and in order to return to Heaven they had to keep washing themselves until they were clean enough to re-enter Paradise. In reference to this, it was believed that any linen washed in the spring’s water would be returned to its original whiteness. Here it is possible to see the link of biblical figures (i.e. Christ and angels) to stones which almost certainly held significance prior to the arrival of evangelists in the Pyrenees, as demonstrated by the positioning of some to form circles and linear arrangements in conjunction with those deposited by nature.
In Huesca, there are a number of stones which bear fertility-related folklore. Around the village of Labata are four stones, linked to three hermitages which were likely established to Christianise the space; that of the Holy Cross, Santa Lucía and San Salvador. A local tradition included processing to these rocks on the Feast of the Holy Cross following a mass in one of the hermitages. The first stone is known as Peña Os Bozos which has an octagonal column protruding from its top; an iron cross was once present here, presumably to counteract the stone’s prodigious reputation for fertility. A pair of male genitals was engraved in the stone and women who had difficulty in conceiving would put their hand on the relief in order to become pregnant. Women and girls over fourteen were permitted to do this but no man was allowed to come to the stone. The next stone to be visited by the procession was the Peña de Santa Lucía, which also possesses the remains of an octagonal column to support a now-vanished iron cross. In the surface of the stone are bowl-shaped depressions and the water caught in these depressions was taken to the church to be blessed. Some of the depressions around the base of the stone are square-shaped and said to have originally held candles. The third stone was the Pilón del Moro which stood next to the road. Here the priest would say a blessing before returning to the village. The fourth stone of significance in Labata is the Peñon de los Moros, which stands in a field. Monesma Moliner asserts that this represents a Christianised location of prior pre-Christian worship due to the proximity of the San Salvador hermitage (the stone is also associated with the saint). The stone’s morphology which displays niches and the ceramic remains were found dating to different periods, as well as the discovery of a ‘ritual knife’ with gold bands on its hilt. In Velillas a stone known as the Peña Mujer de Velillas unites both the masculine and the feminine, having a phallic shape and that of a pregnant woman. Women from Velillas would come to the stone and say prayers around its base, before rubbing their wombs against the stone in order to increase their fertility. The Peña El Cascabel de Monzón lies on the route to the sanctuary of Nuestra Señora de la Peña en Monzón and girls who made the pilgrimage to the sanctuary would often stop and place their ear to the stone, hoping to perceive the ringing of a bell or a rattle which would assure either them either a husband (if single) or a child (if married). Finally, in the village of Santa Eulalia la Mayor another stone complex is known as the Piedra de los Moros and the first stone’s immense phallic shape gives away its local reputation. As late as the 1940s a couple who were having difficulty in conceiving were recorded as going to the stone to seek its help. The second stone has a cavity where women would squat, hoping to increase their fertility and the third stone in the complex legendarily bears the footprints of the daughter of a ‘Moorish king’ who locked her in a tower, hoping that she would relent and marry a man he had chosen but whom she had rejected. The daughter leapt from the tower and landed on the stone, miraculously surviving and leaving her imprint on the top of the rock.[3]
As mentioned in Chapter Four, at the Pas de Saint-Aventin (Haute-Garonne), where the eighth-century saint’s chapel stands, the stone bearing the saint’s footprint following his miraculous jump from a tower was frequently the subject of female attention, particularly by young women who were hoping to find a husband. In the eponymous church of Saint-Aventin, the exterior walls reuse several elements from pre-Christian stele and altars, displaying inscriptions to and images of both Abellio and Aherbelst.[4] Further suggestions of fertility found in conjunction with ecclesiastical buildings are provided in an article written in 1923, when the author visits the house of antiquarian and author of ‘Les Anciens Dieux des Pyrenees’ Julien Sacaze, who shows him:
[…] a small, vert roughly executed white marble menhir statue. It was found near the door of the church of Montmajou, a hamlet of Cier-de-Luchon [Haute-Garonne]; the naked figure is standing wearing a sort of truncated cone-shaped cap; his right hand is turned outwards towards his shoulder; his elongated left arm seems to be holding a mallet. We think we can see the ends of the phallus between his legs. The legs are slightly apart; this statuette measures 0.64 in height, like the one in the Toulouse museum, also in white marble, found in Labroquère [Haute-Garonne]. This small statuette is also somewhat similar to the menhir statues of Aveyron; it is still in the possession of Mrs Sacaze in Luchon, along with a fragment of granite block whose silhouette vaguely represents a human profile and was found in Saint-Aventin in 1875.[5]
Whilst the context of the statuette is given only as being discovered next to the church of Montmajou it is not suggested that the artefact was always unknown to the locals, rather that it was ‘discovered’ by Mr Sacaze after burial at an unknown point in the hamlet’s history. The fact that it was buried next to the church may be significant. Additionally, in this tiny hamlet there are two roads, one of which is known as Rue des Sources, ‘Road of the Springs’, and as demonstrated above springs are frequently associated with healing or some saint, deity, or spirit, depending on the epoch. Whilst speculative, it is tempting to think that in Montmajou lies the blurry combination of a Christianised site via its church (details of which seem impossible to locate), where at some point in the post-Pagan past holy springs and a pre-Christian idol (as indicated by his large phallus and hammer) were also integrated into daily life, just as the ‘peyre-hita’ were near Oueil and the angels in their talking stone were in Jurvielle.
Also mentioned in Chapter Four is the tradition in San Climent Sescebas (Alt Empordà) of the procession to the ‘Roca Encatada’ (the ‘enchanted rock’) on the night of the feast of San Jordi, the 23rd of April. A spring is apparently located near this rock and inside the stone is a treasure which can only be found on that night. This tradition appears to be now extinct, with no written evidence of its perpetuity. However, three candidates for the rock suggest themselves, all of them menhirs (standing stones) within reach of the village. The first is the Piedra Gentil or Piedra Murtra, located in a spot known as La Murtra and dated to between 3500 and 3000 BC.[6] The next is the Menhir del Castellà or Rocs Blancs (the ‘white rocks’), a granite menhir near La Murtra and the church of Santa Fe dels Solers on the Serra d’en Clara.[7] It is interesting that the colour ‘white’ is attributed to the rock, which may be simply a descriptive aspect or relate to a more supernatural tradition, such as the fairy trope of a ‘dama blanca’ (‘white lady’) which is fairly common in Catalan folklore and often associated with springs and prehistoric rocks.[8] The final and most likely menhir for the title of ‘roca encantada’ is the Menhnir de Vilartolí or the Menhir de Santa Fé, an anthropomorphic menhir with two artificial recesses and a hole drilled in the top which once bore an iron cross. This was undoubtedly an attempt to Christianise the menhir and suggests that it was enjoying significant attention from locals, otherwise there would be no reason to embed a cross within the stone and bring it into the schema of Christian topography.[9] The combination of a (likely) Christianised menhir, spring, buried treasure and the feast day of a major saint in Catalan culture makes for an interesting case of blended pre-Christian and Christian elements within a landscape abundant in megalithic sites.
Diverting briefly from stones into the issue of the ‘dama blanca’, she is particularly common in the eastern Pyrenees and is often described as a fairy figure and symbolic of fertility, germination and life.[10] Camiade Boyer suggests that it is only as late as the nineteenth century that the ‘white lady’ is fully incorporated into the figure of the Virgin Mary in Pyrenean folklore, particularly in her white clothes, as before she was always seen as apart (although not antagonistic to) the Virgin. Prior to this, in the case of Andorra and the surviving folktale ‘The Lady of Auvinyà’, she is seen as a protector of the land, a punisher of injustice and descending from a noble family. In this legend, a tower once stood near the village of Auvinyà (Sant Julià de Lòria) inhabited by the daughter of the last lord in the region. This family had built the tower to protect the country against the incursions of the people of Urgell, who often wanted to undo the privileges of freedom accorded to Andorra by the Frankish kings, and they were considered greatly skilled in spells and magic. The Bishop of Urgell at that time coveted Andorra’s lands and often tried to bring armies into the country to conquer it. The Lady warned him many times but he did not listen and, one night as he was returning from another foray into the country, he and his retinue were greeted by a vision by the Auvinyà waterfall. It was the Lady, with blond hair and dressed in white, standing in the middle of the road under the full moon. A wonderful smell emanated from her clothes and the sight of her terrified the Bishop and his men. She beckoned the Bishop forward and led him away from his men, into the forest where he and the Lady stayed for a long time before returning to the road. The Bishop was shaken and would not tell his men what had happened, only vowing never to return to Andorra again. Many years later, he forgot his vow and set off along the road from La Seu d’Urgell to Andorra, only to disappear. Immediately afterwards, reports began to circulate of a terrible wolf who would attack livestock and lived near the Auvinyà tower. The bravest shepherds from the valleys hunted the wolf to a hiding place in La Rabassa, and the member of the country’s council (the Síndic) who had participated fell ill with dreams of the wolf. When he was dying, the Lady approached his bed and told him that the wolf was the evil Bishop, and that no other lords would ever dare to menace Andorra again.[11] The tower was abandoned, and it is worth noting that there is a popular tradition (supported by early cartographic evidence) that in this area there once existed one of the first watch towers in Andorra, positioned to look down the valley towards the Catalan border. The remains of this tower have yet to be found. We see in the legend of the ‘Lady of Auvinyà’ an echo of a potential precursor to Our Lady of Meritxell in terms of the role of protectress of Andorra, whose home is a tower located near a natural water source, in this case a waterfall. If one were to push speculation further, it is tempting to see the tower as a representation of a natural rock feature or even a long-since disappeared megalith, a feature which may hold some validity as in nearby Juberri there are the remains of a Neolithic cist tomb and there is also the Roc de la Senyoreta (‘Rock of the Lady’), a naturally-placed rock on which artist Jordi Casamajor recently found three petroglyphs of five-pointed stars, similar to those placed on the Roc de les Bruixes in Canillo and also found on many old doors throughout the country as protective symbols.[12] Certainly, there appears to be some vestigial aspects of pre-Christian myth within this legend and the presence of the Roc de la Senyoreta with its stars gives the impression of, if not an explicitly Christianised rock site, then one whose importance in folk-belief was such that someone felt it important enough to etch protective symbols into it and for it to earning an etymological link with the legend of the Lady of Auvinyà. It is also worth noting that in Encamp, at the same elevation and parallel to the Roc de Bruixes, one finds the Roc de la Salve, where pilgrims coming towards the Sanctuary of Meritxell would sing the Salve Regina in honour of the Virgin Mary before processing to the sanctuary itself, which lies below the Roc de Bruixes.[13] It was also reputed to be hollow and shepherds would bang a stone upon it when passing to hear the strange sound within. On its surface are crosses carved at various intervals, and it may be that the naming of this rock, the carving of crosses and incorporation into a traditional approach to Meritxell was an effort at ‘the annexation of pagan myth by Christianisation’. Hollow rocks are sometimes seen in myth as potential entrances to the Otherworld or as homes for spirits and deities.[14] Lastly, it is worth mentioning that another tradition survives in Andorra which appears to be explicitly linked to some manner of tutelary spirit, that of the Ilimoi. Andorran ethnographer and artist Sergi Mas describes this creature as follows:
It is the witness, the participant in all the events that seem little or unable to be explained […] It is a kind of demon in our permanent service, exclusive to Andorra; unlike all the others that are temporary; and we say kind of demon because it seems the most heterodox; it must be taken as a genuine product of pure evil […] This devil lives on the edge of the village of Bixessarri and is therefore quite affordable for anyone who wants to find him or arrange a ‘rendezvous’ like I did myself.[15]
Here we can see a helper which is classed as a ‘demon’ or ‘pure evil’, and yet often employed to provide little services or given the credit (or blame) for those small occurrences which cannot be explained; this is similar to the characteristics attributed to fairies, sprites, hobgoblins etc. in other examples of European folklore and may, like them, derive originally from the pre-Christian ‘spirits of the hearth’. In addition, Bixessarri is an Andorra village in the same parish as Auvinyà (Sant Julià de Lòria) which holds a long-standing reputation as being a centre for familial witchcraft, and its name is commonly thought to derive from a Basque etymology, that of *baxa-sarri, ‘thick forest’ or ‘wild place’.[16] [17]
Returning to the question of stones, the chapel of Saint Paul d’Arnave (Arnave, Ariège) provides an excellent example of the integration of a healing stone into a Christian context. The chapel in its current Romanesque form dates to the tenth and eleventh century, however archaeologists have determined that parts of its structure are pre-Romanesque, making it the oldest chapel in the Ariège. Next to the chapel is a stone, now housed in a small structure, which has held a reputation for curing leprosy and epilepsy (‘haut mal’) for as long as records can show:
It is not unknown that the valley of this village has preserved traditions which recall the cult of stones next to an old chapel, placed under the name of Saint Paul, there was a block of stone where leprosy patients came to rub themselves […] It is assumed that the Christians had built the chapel to transform a use established by pagans.[18]
The chapel sits on a hill above Arnave, and some believe that the ‘pierre noire’ (‘black stone’) may have earned its connection to epilepsy through the dedication of the chapel itself, as the vision of Saint Paul is linked to the symptoms of this condition; for example, in Ireland epilepsy was also known as ‘Saint Paul’s disease’. Popular tradition dictates that to be cured one must spend a night lying on top of the stone in what Puech calls an ‘incubation rite’ in association with ‘other rites’, and it seems that epilepsy was something of a concern in Arnave, at least during the nineteenth century, as in 1860 the priest of the village reported two cases of the condition. The priest referred to the healing of a thirty-five-year-old Andorran and a twelve-year-old child living in Vèbre (Les Cabannes) who returned to the site every year on pilgrimage.[19] Pilgrimages were conducted up from the village to the chapel since at least the end of the sixteenth century, as proven by the earliest surviving church records and even on the eve of the French Revolution the inhabitants requested a derogation to keep the chapel bell in addition to that of the parish church, arguing on the basis of pilgrimages and its antiquity. There is also evidence that a hermitage once existed next to the chapel, possibly supporting two hermits, as according to local tradition in the early twentieth century.[20] Without a legend linking the stone’s curative properties directly to a miraculous event connected to the chapel itself or Saint Paul, it is highly likely that the ‘pierre noire’ held a reputation for healing prior to the chapel’s construction. Its location high above the village is also something which fits in with the pattern of sacred and curative sites in the pre-Christian landscape, something which Christian church and chapel builders sought to emulate in their own program of construction. The placing of the chapel on the hill would clearly owe much to its purely topographical situation, being visible and audible for many kilometres. However, it is also likely that the presence of a pre-existing cult of curative stones was an added advantage, providing an opportunity to Christianise the site through the chapel’s construction and the introduction of hermits, thereby bringing the stone into a new sacred topography where its power now derived from Saint Paul and, ultimately, God himself. Testimonies collected by Joseph Vézian around 1934 report that people suffering from ‘mal del sol’ (epilepsy in Occitan) came on pilgrimage and spent the night with their head resting on the stone, or close to it. According to a local resident of Arnave, the last pilgrimage took place in 1947. There were two in the year: one on June 29th for the feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and one for the conversion of Saint Paul on January the 25th.
[1] Robb, 2007, p. 123.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Monesma Moliner, Eugenio, ‘Piedras Sagradas en el Alto Aragón’, in Sacra Saxa: Creencias y Ritos en Peñas Sagradas, Martin Almagro-Gorbea & Ángel Gari Lacruz (Eds.) (Huesca: Instituto de Estudios Altoaragoneses, 2017), pp. 303 – 326. Available here: http://www.dehuesca.es/~sipca/IMAGEN/documentos_web/SacraSaxaWeb.pdf
[4] This is a deity which appears to be quite local to the Luchón region, corresponding to the more widely-known ‘Akerbeltz’, the ‘black goat’. This was said to preside over witches’ Sabbath ceremonies and is thought to derive from a manifestation of the Basque goddess Mari. For a detailed examination of this figure (and witchcraft in the Pyrenees) see: Carreras Tort, Júlia, Land of the Goat: Witchcraft in the Pyrenees (San Pablo, CA: Three Hands Press, 2024).
[5] Coutil Léon, ‘Les Monuments Mégalithiques des Environs de Luchon (Haute-Garonne)’, Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique de France, Vol. 20, no. 12, 1923, p. 360. Translated by author. Available here: https://www.persee.fr/doc/bspf_0249-7638_1923_num_20_12_7343
[6] Pella y Forgas, José, Historia del Ampurdán: Estudio de la Civilización en las Comarcas del Noreste de Cataluña (Barcelona: Luis Tasso y Serra, 1883), p. 788.
[7] Santa Fe dels Solers was built between the seventh and ninth centuries and was only known to those outside the region due to a study by Joan Badia in 1970. See: Badia, Joan, ‘Descoberta d’una Església Pre-Romànica: Santa Fe del Mas Solers’, Canigó, Vol. 198, 1970, pp. 10 – 11.
[8] Fairies are also a popular feature of Audoise folklore, coming under various categories depending on their benevolence or antipathy towards humans, such as mitounes, fadas, encantadès and salimondes or saurimondes. Falguera, Marjorie, L’Aude Mystériouse (Pollestres: TDO Éditions, 2016), pp. 6 – 7.
[9] This menhir has an entry in the digital Inventari del Patrimoni Aqueològic I Paleontològic de Catalunya: https://invarque.cultura.gencat.cat/card/8047
[10] Camiade Boyer, Martina, ‘Dama Blanca, Bruixa, Verge: La Representació de la Dona en les Llegendes Andorranes’, in Roches Ornées, Roches Dressées, Michel Martzluff (Ed.) (Perpignan: Presses Universitaires de Perpignan, 2005), pp. 555 – 563.
[11] Camiade Boyer, 2005.
[12] Author Unknown, ‘El Secret de la Senyoreta’, Bon Dia, 24th April 2023. Available here: https://www.bondia.ad/cultura/el-secret-de-la-senyoreta For a discussion of the star in its role as an apotropaic symbol on doors in Andorra, see: Locker, Martin, Protection and Property: Apotropaic Marks on Rural Andorran Buildings (Andorra: Mons Culturae Press, 2023).
[13] For a discussion of this rock and its carvings, see: Locker, 2019, pp. 142 – 145.
[14] Camiade Boyer, 2005.
[15] Mas, Sergi, Cassigalls (Andorra: Editorial Filfon, 1980), p. 83. Translated by author.
[16] For a detailed analysis of witch persecutions in Catalonia and Andorra, see: Castell, Pau, Origens i Evolució de la Cacera de Bruixes a Cataluna (Segles XV – XVI), Doctoral Thesis, University of Barcelona, 2013. For a summary of witch legends in Andorra (and the Pyrenees,), see: Locker, 2019.
[17] It is thought that the Basque language was widely spread throughout the Pyrenees until the Middle Ages stemming from the degree of transhumance and pastoral exchange which took place through the mountains from west to east, with numerous toponyms and inscriptions demonstrating Basque roots in areas where Catalan, Aragonese, Aranese and Occitan are now considered the traditional dialects or languages. See: Trask, Robert, The History of Basque (London: Routledge, 1997).
[18] Baby, Paul, Gude-Route e Ariège (Foix: Gadrat, 1890), p. 629. Translated by author. Baby also mentions that at the time of writing the chapel was abandoned.
[19] Puech, Dominique, ‘La Chapelle Romaine Saint-Paul à Arnave (Ariège)’, Archéologie du Midi Médiéval, Vol. 35, 2017, p. 48.
[20] Pélissier, Emile, ‘Le Temporel de l’Abbaye Saint-Volusien de Foix á la Révolution’, Bulletin de la Societé Ariégeoise des Sciences, Lettres et Arts, 1913, pp. 261 – 279.
