Marratxi and its curious church and saint

But impressions are often misleading. A municipality that is also heavily agricultural, the sense of the rural is provided by the Church of Sant Marçal and specifically by its location. If one takes the Pedro de Verí road that runs past the church heading northward, one is immediately in farm land countryside. For the main church in the municipality, this is somewhat curious, but the location goes far in conveying another impression of Marratxi - that it is a place without an obvious centre. Churches of this significance would often be slap bang in the centre of a village. And if the principal church wasn’t in the urban nucleus, as was the case in Campanet with Sant Miquel as an example, they made sure that there eventually was one.

How did Sant Marçal come to be where it is? Once upon a time, as in the thirteenth century, the original parish was Santa Maria de Marratxi. In the following century, the parish became Sant Marçal, the patron saint of Marratxi. The precise location of the original church isn’t known, but by the late seventeenth century they’d come to the conclusion that a grand church was needed and that it would be built on the estate (possession) of Son Verí; the Verí family was one of the original noble families who came to Mallorca as a result of the 1229 conquest.

Work started on the church in 1699. It took fifteen years to complete. And what the good folk of Marratxi had been given was a church that was basically in the middle of nowhere. The main urban centre at that time was Marratxinet. Nearer to Santa Maria, one arrives at Marratxinet by taking that road past the church - Pedro de Verí. Quite some time later, 1864 to be exact, they decided to move the town hall to a new location from Marratxinet. This was to Sa Cabaneta, of which there was very little but then subsequently grew.

So, and despite an impression to the contrary, there was and is a centre to the municipality - Sa Cabaneta, with its church essentially forming one border. In front of the church, there is a square which shares the name of the road but is also known as Plaça Sant Marçal. The Pedro de Verí in question, as far as I’m aware, was around in the nineteenth century, and he was one of the last of this old noble lineage, as it ran out on its female side.

In late June each year, Marratxi has its patron fiestas. Sant Marçal’s date is June 30. Around the same time as much of the island has otherwise been celebrating John the Baptist (Sant Joan) or Saint Peter (Sant Pere), Marratxi further confirms its curiosity by honouring a saint unique to the municipality. Nowhere else in Mallorca does a Sant Marçal.

We are familiar with many saints, such as John and Peter. But who was Marçal? In English he is Martial of Limoges. In Catalan he is Marçal de Llemotges. The first bishop of Limoges, he was one of seven bishops dispatched from Rome to Gaul to preach the Gospel. This was during the time of Pope Fabian, which wasn’t - as things turned out - the best time to be either a pope or a bishop. Fabian was pope from 236 to 250. He was martyred because the Emperor Decius had embarked on his persecution of Christians. Marçal did actually fare rather better. He was successful in his conversions to Christianity and died a peaceful death.

Subsequently, all manner of miracles were to be attributed to Marçal (Martial). More than this, he was to become the key figure in the eleventh-century forgeries of Ademar of Chabannes, a monk at the Saint Martial Abbey which had been founded in Limoges. What Ademar claimed was that Martial hadn’t been active in the third century at all, as he had in fact been one of the disciples and had been present at the Last Supper. Another Ademar fake was that Martial became a disciple of Saint Peter. The fact that his feast day is the day after Peter’s may well owe something (everything) to this fake, as the full extent of Ademar’s forgeries weren’t revealed until the 1920s.

To further add to the curiosity of Sant Marçal in Marratxi, therefore, we have a saint who, through no fault of his own, was associated with a far better known saint, Pere, and who apparently performed any number of miracles between the seventh and ninth centuries and then again in the fourteenth century. And why, you may ask, was Marçal chosen as the patron. Good question. He was known as a healer of pain, but if you look at the municipal shield, you will discover that it has five loaves and two fish. There was a Marçal who helped Christ with the distribution. So, was Ademar right all along? Very curious.