During the Middle Ages, the monastery of Saint Catherine of Mount Sinai was a pilgrimage centre of great importance for the Christian world. The 6th century foundation by Justinian was established in the environs of the place where, according to the Scriptures, Moses had seen the burning bramblebush, received the Tables of the Law and made water spring forth for the people of Israel. But for Christians it stood out, above all, as the place to which angels had taken the body of Saint Catherine after her martyrdom in the city of Alexandria. The importance of that cult was such that towards the 11th century the monastery changed its original name of the Transfiguration (Metamorphosis) to that of Saint Catherine.
The interest awoken by the miraculous saint and the relative closeness of her monastery to the Holy Places of Palestine favoured its inclusion in the routes of pilgrims to the Holy Land. But while the Orthodox Christians frequented it from the beginning, the Christians of the Roman obedience only did so significantly after the Crusades and, above all, after the enormous diffusion of devotion to the saint throughout the West from the end of the 11th century.
In the kingdom of Aragon, as everywhere in Christian Europe, the cult of Saint Catherine acquired great importance. This is revealed by the high number of churches, monasteries, chapels and altarpieces that were consecrated to her, especially in the 14th and 15th centuries, but is also reflected in the appearances of her name, mainly in Majorca. That devotion was the principal promoter of visits to the monastery. In the 14th century, many Catalan pilgrims, who had been visiting the Holy Land for centuries, went to Saint Catherine’s. In fact at the end of the century the port of Barcelona strongly entered the competition for transportation of pilgrims to the Holy Land, which was clearly dominated by Venice, and this coincided with a decisive moment in Catalan-Aragonese commercial relations with Syria and navigation to the East. Until the 1520s, Barcelona was an important port of embarkation for pilgrims from Catalonia, Castile, Gascony, Béarn, Bordeaux, Guyenne, Britain and so on, who sailed to the East in Catalan vessels, as well as Castilian and Basque ones.
The interest awoken in the Catalan-Aragonese lands in the saint and her monastery was so great that the kings took special care of the monastery, given that the kings of Aragon were also the protectors of other holy places –the chapel of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem since the time of James II– and had always shown great concern for monastic life in the Orient and the maintenance of service in the churches, even in those which were not subject to the Latin rite, like the monastery of Sinai. This attitude, however, did not only spring from strictly personal religious impulses. There was also a strong component of individual and dynastic prestige: to manifest the role of the Kings of Aragon as champions of the faith. Beyond merely diplomatic intervention with the Mameluke authorities, the royal favour also focused on direct patronage, through economic donations which became regular with Ferdinand II the Catholic and his successors, and direct support to those who worked in the service of the monastery or for its benefit, such as the obscure Order of the Knights of Saint Catherine. However, this support was even more evident with the monks of Sinai who travelled to the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic Islands in search of economic aid for the sustenance of their monastery. They always had the help of the king in organising the collections of subsidies. Of special note was the journey made by three monks of that monastery in the years 1406-1407.5 Or the one which years later, in 1419, would take Brother Peter of Damascus, the Igumenos of the monastery, and Brother John of Pamphylia to Barcelona and through various parts of Catalonia, where they remained for some four years.
Whether owing to the policy of royal support, the written or oral accounts of pilgrims, or the visit of monks and other people related with the monastery, the fact is that the monastery of Saint Catherine became very present in the kingdom of Aragon and inseparably associated with the memory of its patron. We see this recorded, for instance, in the painting by Francesc Comes, from El Puig de Pollença, in Majorca, consecrated to Santa Caterina del Munt Sinay, on which the saint is shown within ramparts representing those of the Egyptian monastery. A witness to the special link established between the Crown of Aragon and the monastery at Mount Sinai is the altarpiece offered to the monastery by the Consul of the Catalans in Damascus, Bernat Maresa, in 1387, representing the titular saint of the monastery. It is a work of great quality, in which Saint Catherine appears represented in the classical form of Western art, standing, crowned, with the instrument of her torment, the toothed wheel, and the palm leaf that signifies her rank of martyr. Of special note is the delicate work of the cloak that covers her, close to the textile models of luxurious Italian manufacturing that imitated Persian productions, and the sinuosity of her figure, as well as the filigree work of the engraving that surrounds the whole piece and decorates the halo of the saint. It is a beautiful late work of Italianising Gothic, close to the postulates of Sienese painting, but in the modelling of the clothing already betraying the arrival of certain features of the international style.
With reference to the authorship of the work we have the inscription in Latin by the painter on the back of the board: .Martinus de Vilanova. .pinxit. Unfortunately, nothing is known about this painter. As it is a commission of the Consul of the Catalans, as indicated by the inscription in the lower part of the board (.aquest retaula. fe[u] fer .lo honrat. en Bernat Meresa. ciutadà. de Barchinona. Cònsol. de. Cathalans. en Domàs .en l’an. m. ccc. lxxxvii.), it is believed to have been executed in Barcelona, because the Consul of Damascus was elected by the councillors of that city. Others, however, have pointed out a possible Majorcan connection, but it is difficult to say. The name seems to dismiss the possibility of an Italian origin, but the stylistic singularity of the work distances it from the Catalan-Aragonese pictorial world of its time. Thus it seems necessary to incline towards a Catalan or Majorcan who either had been trained in Italy or had learned the Sienese style very well. The former option, however, would serve to explain why he is not mentioned in any painter’s workshop either as an apprentice or an assistant. This temporary absence abroad, moreover, could have condemned him to a later wandering career, which would explain why he has not left any documentary trace and no other works are known.
One feature of the altarpiece may help to clarify where it was painted. The board is decorated with the coat of arms of the King of Aragon, the crowned bars of the House of Barcelona, at the top left of the altarpiece. At the top right there is another coat of arms of ambiguous interpretation. The shield, divided into quarters by a cross, has the second and third quarters decorated with the royal bars. The first and the fourth however are almost completely devoid of paint, making identification difficult. Only traces of blue pigment are preserved, which allows us to dismiss the possibility that it forms part of the coat of arms of Barcelona: a red cross on a white background. Only the coat of arms of the city of Majorca matches that pigmentation, since, besides the two quarters with the royal arms, the other two feature a castle on an azure background. This seems to strengthen a Majorcan connection in the execution of the work. This would not in fact be unusual. The island’s devotion to Saint Catherine and the role of Majorca as a communication crossroads in pan-Mediterranean trade made the island a suitable place for the issuing of such a commission, or at least for its performance. We do not know whether the Consul gave the order directly to a painter of the island or whether it arrived indirectly, but in the latter case it would be explicable that the painter interpreted the commission to represent the arms of the city as those of the city of Majorca, when possibly the Consul was thinking of those of Barcelona although he did not specify this in his commission.
But why did the Consul of the Catalans order a work like this and donate it to the monastery? The pilgrims who visited Saint Catherine’s used to leave diverse offerings or ex-votos such as the armour that the Castilian Pero Tafur donated to the monks of Sinai in 1439. However, this piece goes much further. At bottom left one can see the personal arms of the Consul: a quartered shield with the first and fourth quarters blazoned “vair ancient azure and or”, and the second and third each showing a bird, no doubt a water rain, whose name in Catalan, guatlla maresa, makes allusion to the surname of the principal. This may suggest a private initiative, of personal piety and prestige. But the inclusion of the dedication, which emphasises the public aspect of the person elected Consul in 1385, and the royal coat of arms, point to the idea of a foreign projection of the work and its political meaning, the creation of a very specific public image.
Maresa’s term of office was of key importance in the history of the consulate in Damascus. Soon after his election, the Barcelona councillors, acting with the King, proceeded to an extensive reform of the consulate through the promulgation of a series of stipulations which were to regulate its organisation and functioning. Maresa was to be responsible for their application and the reactivation of the consulate. We can imagine that, as part of the new and ambitious project, the Consul would also display a series of images and promote a series of events that would strengthen his figure both before his countrymen and with the local authorities and certain prestigious institutions. With this in view, the chronology of the commission of the altarpiece and its donation are quite revealing. They occur just before the blossoming of Barcelona as an embarkation port of pilgrims to the Holy Land. Could this initiative be an attempt by the Consul to gain the favour of the monastery and manifest the power of the Catalan community? Certainly. It is significant that the following years see a multiplication of mentions of vessels and pilgrims setting sail from Barcelona for, among other places, the port of Jaffa, a place where the pilgrimage to the Holy Land was centred and which was under the jurisdiction of the Consul of Damascus. Reports also multiply of Catalan-Aragonese pilgrims passing through the monastery of Saint Catherine, which was moreover closely linked to the Syrian capital.
By the historian Daniel Duran Duelt
