Monastery of Sant Joan de les Abadesses

The female Benedictine abbey

This task was carried out in a similar way to the foundation of the male monastery of Santa Maria de Ripoll and in order to promote the colonisation of these lands, which had already been occupied beforehand. To this end, he contributed a church dedicated to Saint John, which already existed in 880, when Guifré himself gave it to the monastery of Santa Maria de Ripoll. In 887, the renovated and enlarged monastery church was consecrated, and the act lists the important assets placed within the reach of the new monastery. It seems that the abbess Emma took over in 898, after the death of the count, at the age of fourteen.

The last abbess was Ingilberga (994-1017), the natural daughter of the Count of Cerdanya Oliba Cabreta, who put an end to the Benedictine monastery when she was expelled, along with the rest of the community, because of serious accusations made by her half-brother Bernat Tallaferro regarding her moral conduct. The Count of Besalú, Bernat Tallaferro, probably intended to seize the monastery's assets to carry out his project to create a bishopric in Besalú. In any case, in 1017 the monastery was extinguished, and the community was forced to disperse.

Augustinian canonry

The Marseillaise monks quickly occupied the monastery, but finally the ecclesiastical authorities returned the house to the expelled canons in the same year, with the difference that they were subject to the Augustinian reformed rule instead of the Aachen observance.

Augustinian canonry restored

This state of affairs continued until 1114, when the monastery was restored to the Augustinian canons who had remained united, but outside the monastery, the Benedictine communities that occupied it were forced to abandon it. In the same year, Pope Paschal II issued a bull approving the new situation and submitting the house to the Holy See. It was this community that established itself definitively on the site, inaugurating a new period of great vitality. In 1150 a new church, the present one, was consecrated. From 1484 onwards, the monastery was run by commendatory abbots, which aggravated the decline that had begun to be detected earlier. In 1581 the community effectively disappeared and in 1592 was secularised. The place continued to be governed by an archpriest until 1856, when the parish church of the town was transferred to the monastery church.