Manresa

Manresa, a town of north-eastern Spain, in the province of Barcelona, on the river Cardoner and the Barcelona-Lerida railway. Pop. (1900), 23,252. Manresa is the chief town of the highlands watered by the Cardoner and upper Llobregat, which meet below the town, and are also connected by a canal 18 m. long. Two bridges, one built of stone and dating from the Roman period, the other constructed of iron in 1804, unite the older and larger part of Manresa with the modern suburbs on the right bank of the river. The principal buildings are the collegiate church of Santa Maria de la Seo, the Dominican monastery, and the church of San Ignazio, built over the cavern (cueva santa) where Ignatius de Loyola spent most of the year 1522 in penitentiary exercises and the composition of his Exercitia spiritualia. Santa Maria is a fine example of Spanish Gothic, and consists, like many Catalan churches, of nave and chancel, aisles and ambulatory, without transepts. One of its chief treasures is an exquisite 15th-century Florentine altar-frontal, preserved in the sacristy. The Dominican monastery, adjoining the cueva santa, commands a magnificent view of the Montserrat, and is used for the accommodation of the pilgrims who yearly visit the cavern in thousands. Manresa has important iron-foundries and manufactures of woollen, cotton and linen goods, ribbons, hats, paper, soap, chemicals, spirits and flour. Building-stone is quarried near the town.

Manresa is probably the Munorisa of the Romans, which was the capital of the Jacetani or Jaccetani, an important tribe of the south-eastern Pyrenees. A large portion of the town was burned by the French in 1811.