SANTA MARÍA DE MARQUET O DE MATADARS

Located close to the remains of a Roman city discovered in recent research, which possibly corresponds to the ancient toponym “Villa Amarus”, the church of Santa María de Marquet or Matadars already existed in 888, when it was donated, with the status of parish, by Count Gofré to the monastery of Santa María de Ripoll. In 956 Arnulf de Gurb donated the place of Matadarch to the monastery of Santa Cecilia de Moserrat with its churches, tithes and other first fruits. According to some documentary sources, it was a parish church throughout the Middle Ages. It later became a rural chapel, and with the confiscation of church property in 1835 it passed into private hands.

In a very poor state of preservation in the early years of the 20th century, the Barcelona Provincial Council then carried out several campaigns, not very successful, of archaeological excavation and consolidation of the temple. In 2003, a project was started on the building which until 2021 has involved its restoration, archaeological research of the building and its surroundings, and the study of documentary and artistic sources.

Church made up of two very different parts: the apse, built in the 9th century, and a nave from the second half of the 11th century that replaced the three naves that the pre-Romanesque church had.

The pre-Romanesque building had three naves with a trefoil apse that gives the temple a Latin cross plan formed by a apse with a rectangular plan covered by a lowered horseshoe vault, and two advanced spaces with a square plan, of which only the one on the north side has been completely preserved, covered by a rather rough barrel vault, which serve as arms of the transept connected to it by arches The nave is smaller than the one leading to the apse, and the northern one has another arch of the same type, which has been walled up and connected to the old northern nave, which disappeared in the 11th century. Between the two there is a dome raised above the transept with a modern roof.

Its walls are made of elongated and irregular ashlars joined by lime mortar, with some herringbone rows, and two windows are preserved, one in the elongated apse closed by a voussoired horseshoe arch, and the other in a loophole, in the northern chamber, where a solid stone altar attached to the eastern wall is also preserved. Inside there are some mural paintings, made between the 14th and 16th centuries in red and black, which draw rectangular boxes and palmettes.

The Romanesque nave, added to the apse with a clear deviation towards the northwest, is more regular in structure than the apse, formed by rows of ashlar masonry with stretcher and header. It is covered by a barrel vault with three sections separated by transverse arches and communicates with the apse by means of a large horseshoe arch. There are two continuous benches attached to the side walls, an arcosolium from a later period at the western end of the north side and a baptismal font in the northwest corner. It has two double-sided windows with semicircular arches on each side and another in the shape of a cross on the western wall where its only entrance with a semicircular doorway is also located.

In the latest excavations, both inside and outside the building, ten silos with an elongated spherical or semispherical section with a flat bottom were found, and nearby there was a necropolis located partly in the immediate surroundings of the head of the pre-Romanesque temple in which thirteen tombs of boxes of slabs with anthropomorphic heads were found, covered with large pieces that, once documented and consolidated, were provisionally covered.

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L’Art Préroman Hispanique – L’Art Mozarabe: Jacques Fontaine (ZODIAQUE)

La primera campaña de excavación en la iglesia de Santa Maria ge Matadars o del Marquet – Alberto López Mullor y Àlvar Caixal Mata

Església de Santa Maria de Matadars

Santa Maria de Matadars 

La primera campaña de excavación en la iglesia de Santa Maria ge Matadars o del Marquet