The cave of the hermitages, also known as the hermits, is located on the northern slope of Cap Norfeu, next to the path that leads to the tip. The cavity is triangular in plan with a wide entrance that becomes narrower as it sinks. The mouth, 7 meters, is closed with a wall made of slate slabs arranged flat with an opening: the door. The walls of the cave are retouched and at one point even lowered as is the case of the north side where there is a bench and shelves, all excavated in the natural rock.

In front of the cave there is a limited artificial terrace that has a fence as its limit. In this space there are the remains of a square-shaped hut also made of slate slabs. This is well built since the corners are carefully made with retouched slates of a larger size than in the rest of the building.

Apart from its name, there is no written record of the use of this cave, located in Cap Norfeu, as a dwelling for hermits. Although it is a subject, like many others, little studied, we find some references to the phenomenon of hermitism in the municipality of Roses. The book Roses o a la recerca de la zona grisa summarizes them:

[...] on May 17, 1380, the bishop of Girona, Bertran de Mont-rodon i de Sorribes, asked the clergy of Santa Maria de Roses, Cadaqués, Palau-saverdera and Santa Creu de Rodes to hear the confessions of the hermits who lived in these mountains - something that confirms, on the one hand, their presence and, on the other, the more or less widespread nature of the phenomenon - and not to say that they were not his parishioners - a precision indicative of the fact that the hermits, beyond living geographically isolated in a solitary wilderness, were also socially and religiously abandoned.
A few years later, a woman - let no one unconsciously tend to identify hermitism with an exclusively masculine option -, named Francesca, worked as a hermit in a place called Panin, located in the municipality of Cadaqués. She had built a cell there and arranged a garden, which the Rosicrucian Guillem Riba, owner of the territory, donated to her on April 25, 1411, a means of living that was increased in 1418, when a vesana of land located in La Font was added. The hermit occupation of the place was still maintained in 1427. On November 26, those possessions were assigned to a new ascetic, Guillem Savella, a native of Guimerà, a remote town in the Conca de Barberà, in Tarragona, a provenance that suggests the possible attraction that the Rodes mountain range could have as a hermitic center.
At a date as late as the mid-18th century - a time when the religious authorities would once again promote this way of life - it is still possible to discover another case of survival of hermitism in Roses. On 17 July 1759, the bishop granted Felip Castelló Vila, master of servants in Roses, permission to go and work as a hermit in the small church of Santa Anna de Pontós. After all, it does not seem that the cave of the Hermitage of Cap Norfeu is an isolated reference in the religious panorama of Roses and the entire mountainous area that serves as its hinterland (since the Middle Ages, for example, there are testimonies of hermits in Sant Baldiri de Taballera and on the mountain of Sant Pere de Rodes; and, during the 17th and 18th centuries, in Sant Sebastià de Cadaqués, Llançà, Sant Onofre de Palau-saverdera or Santa Elena de Selva de Mar). Now it seems a little more plausible to be able to affirm the hermitic character of the aforementioned cave. Who knows if one day we will know the name of the hermit who inhabited it

Source: rosespedia.cat/index.php/Cova_de_les_Ermites

Translated by Google •

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Location: Roses, Alt Emporda, Girona, Catalonia, Spain

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