The monastery of Sant Benet de Montserrat was founded in 1952 on the Montserrat mountain as a result of the union of two communities: San Antón and Santa Clara de Barcelona (c. 1236-1952) and San Benito de Mataró (1881 - 1952). Since 2016 our community also lives in Mallorca, since we merged with the community of the Holy Family of Manacor.
Its origins, then, come from the monastery of Sant Antoni and Santa Clara in Barcelona, which was founded outside the walls of Barcelona in 1236. This was the first Poor Clare community in Catalonia. Although, it is true that later, in 1513, the community of Poor Clare nuns passed to the Benedictine order, until its extinction in 1952.
The other leg of the foundation of Sant Benet de Montserrat was the monastery of Sant Benet de Mataró, founded in 1881 in the city of Mataró by a nun from the monastery of Sant Daniel in Girona and another from Sant Pere de les Puel las in Barcelona. , who were looking for a model of community life closer to the beginnings of the rule of Sant Benet.
With the Spanish Civil War the nuns of Sant Benet de Mataró lost the monastery and when they returned in 1939 the monks of Montserrat temporarily ceded the monastery of Santa Cecilia de Montserrat to them. It was in this Romanesque monastery, witness to the first presence of regulated religious life on the mountain of Montserrat, where on May 13, 1952 the two Benedictine communities merged, thus extinguishing Saint Anthony and Saint Clara of Barcelona and Saint Benet of Mataró. , and founding again the young community of Sant Benet de Montserrat, who since 1954 resides in the current monastery of Sant Benet.
