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ENG Welcomes 22 ignatian sites

The Hermitage of Saint Paul and the water tank

Built in 1308, it was initially under the patronage of Saint Mark and Saint Barbara. The leper hospital moved there in 1322. In 1412 it was donated to some hermits from Montserrat, who dedicated it to Saint Paul. In the fifteenth century a community of monks from Valldaura settled there and it became a Cistercian priory, linked to the Monastery of Poblet. In 1522 Ignatius of Loyola started to visit the Hermitage and he became friends with the prior, Alfonso de Agurreta, whom he defined as a “very spiritual man”. Ignatius tried to see him again after returning from the Holy Land, but Alfonso had already died. Jesuit tank: a hydraulic engineering invention which collected water from the Sèquia canal. It was probably built in the eighteenth century on instructions of the Society of Jesus in order to irrigate that part of the city when the convent of Saint Paul was acquired by the College of Saint Ignatius in 1700