The history of the Church of Sant Antoni Abat (Saint Anthony the Abbot) is closely linked to the farmers’ confrerie of the same name, the oldest in Tortosa. With records dating back to 1358, this confrerie was founded to avoid the prohibition by the regulatory statutes known as the Costums, which prevented different professional sectors from creating guilds. It should be noted that from here, the worship of the Saint was introduced into the lands of Valencia by the Bishop of Tortosa, at the start of the 16th Century.
The confrerie's first known base can be found in the Monastery of Santa Clara. Due to the vicissitudes of history, it later changed location, but always with its headquarters somewhere along the length and breadth of Montcada street, one of the main thoroughfares of 15th Century Tortosa, where the first Church of Sant Antoni Abat was built in 1446.
For a long time, the patron saint of Tortosa’s farmers had been Saint Amatus. However, the fact that Saint Anthony the Abbot advocated against the devastating effects of ergot fungus poisoning (commonly known as Sanit Anthony’s fever) consolidated his status as our peasentry’s main protector. Hilari Muñoz explains that, after reaching such a large number of members, the confrerie split up into two at the start of the 16th Century, with the new confrerie having Sant Jaume (Saint James) as its patron saint.
The choice of the new patron is probably explained by the fact that the only remedy known for ergot poisoning in the Medieval period involved a pilgrimage to Sant Jaume de Galicia (Saint James of Galicia). Curiously enough, it is in the parish of the Hispanic apostle James where the Festival of Saint Anthony is still celebrated to this day in Tortosa.
In 1652, the confrerie took up permanent residence in the building which still stands today, the former house of the Boteller and Oriol families. The church was built in the last quarter of the 17th Century, maintaining the lower part of the façade, at 11 metres wide, which has enabled the original round-arch doorway with the large keystones to survive to this day. This main access is crowned by a tondo, a round painting, which portrays Saint Anthony the Abbot as a bearded old man, wearing the habit of the Order of Saint Anthony and the Tau or Egyptian cross (one of the oldest and most magical symbols of mankind). The anchorite saint is holding a cowbell in his right hand and a book in his left. The entrance doorway of the old country house has also survived. It has a pair of pruning shears on the threshold and an inscription indicating the existence of a well in one of the chapels.
The largest altarpiece was created in the fashion of the Baroque period. In the main section of the altarpiece, the saint to whom the church is dedicated to stands in the centre, with Saint Isidore on one side of him and Saint Lambert on the other. The former was canonized in 1622, while the latter, as well as being a peasant, was the protagonist of the miracle of the tooth witnessed by Pope Adrian VI, the former Bishop of Tortosa. The upper section of the altarpiece portrays Saint Mary, preserved from sin. On the Sunday following the Feast of Saint Anthony, the confrerie worshipped her to commemorate the pledge that it had made to defend, with their lives if required, the Immaculate Purity of the Mother of God, two hundred years before it was proclaimed as the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Her statue stands between those of Saints Abdon and Sennen, the patron saints of Catalan market gardeners. At the very top, there is a Calvary, as is typical of this kind of altarpiece.
In 1896, the architect Joan Abril and the painter Antonio Cerveto conducted restoration works on the church.
In July 1936, the church was desecrated and destroyed. The Republican assault led to both the loss of the valuable guild archive and the destruction of the liturgical furnishings. Another treasure that perished was the procession statue of ‘L’Oració a l’Hort’ (The Prayer in the Garden), painted by Ramon Cerveto and Josep Maria Beltri (probably to replace a less ornate statue mentioned in records from 1781).
During the Post-War period, the guild managed to reform and perform the procession within just two years, with the replacement statue, created by the Tortosa-born sculptor Carles Riba. There were also attempts to restore the guild’s church for the worshippers, but the Bishop’s interest in building the new seminary prevented it. However, for many years, this did not stop the traditional events related to the patron saint from being celebrated in front of the church: collections for the poor, dancing jotas and a bonfire in honour of Saint Anthony. The building was used a carpenter’s workshop and as a storage space for the Devastated Region Service. With great foresight, the procession statues were kept there until the decrepit state of the building made it unviable in the 1990s.
Eventually, in 2009, the diocese agreed to open the Easter Week Interpretation Centre in the building, the first museum dedicated to Catalan procession statues. In April 2011, the employees of the company Garcia Riera completed 12 months of renovation works, based on a project by the architect Tomàs Homedes. The building forms part of the city of Tortosa’s catalogue of historic buildings.
The Church of Sant Antoni Abat represents a unique milestone within the scope of Tortosa’s religious tourism. The church is ennobled by the presence of Saint Francis Gil de Federich, Saint Maria Rosa Molas, the blessed Manuel Domingo i Sol and, first and foremost, by Saint Enric d’Ossó. “It could be said that, in this church, the majority of the works of worship have taken seed and flourished”. In effect, the remains of friezes of the murals on the walls in Cerveto has enabled us to identify the chapel in which the altarpiece funded by Saint Enric was located, in dedication to Immaculate Conception, where we also see images of Saint Joseph, Saint Theresa and the infant Jesus (a dedication closely linked to the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage, probably inspired by the divine infant who accompanies the saint from Avila on her foundational journeys, which Sant Enric has captured in this temple as the ‘Pastor de la Rabereta’ (Shepherd of the Flock) in 1876). This temple was also where the saint was inspired to create the Arch-Confrerie of the Maria Immaculada and Santa Teresa de Jesús in 1873, which went on to become the Teresian Arch-Guild and now known as the MTA (Teresian Apostolic Movement), which now operates around the world.
