Abbot Oliva

Oliba (c. 971-1046) was the count of Berga (998-1003) and Ripoll and later bishop of Vic (1018–1046) and abbot of Sant Miquel de Cuixà. He was the son of a noble Catalan house who abdicated his secular possessions to take up the Benedictine habit in the Monastery of Santa Maria de Ripoll. He is considered one of the spiritual founders of Catalonia and perhaps the most important prelate of his age in the Iberian Peninsula.

Subsequently raised to the bishopric of Vic and the abbacy of Cuixà, Oliba was a great writer and from his scriptorium at Ripoll flowed a ceaseless stream of works enlightening us about his world. Most importantly, however, are the Arabic manuscripts he translated into Latin for the benefit of all Europe.

Oliba promoted the movement of Peace and Truce of God (Pau i treva), towards 1022 and in 1027 the agreement of this treaty with other bishops and noblemen took place in Toulouges (Roussillon) and was said that all, noblemen, knights, farmers and monks, agreed to make, days in which nobody could quarrel with anybody and in which the fugitives could take refuge in churches and places holy, sure of being protected and respected, some days every year, be days of Peace.

So influential was Oliba, that, in 1023, King Sancho III of Navarre consulted him on the propriety of marrying his sister Urraca to her second cousin Alfonso V of León. The bishop objected, but Sancho ignored him. His letters to the various contemporaneous kings of Spain indicate to us that Alfonso and his successor, Vermudo III were regarded as imperatores, while the king of Navarre was a mere rex, though eventually rex Ibericus.

Oliba founded or reformed the monasteries of Montserrat (1025), Fluvià, and Canigó, and consecrated or patronized numerous other churches, such as the Collegiate Basilica of Manresa. It was he who created the Assemblies of Peace and Truce, the seeds of the future Catalan corts, to aid the nobles in the administration of the realm. He improved the decoration of his own church at Ripoll and rededicated it on 15 January 1032. He was a close advisor to Count Berengar Raymond I of Barcelona and reconstructed the cathedral of Vic with the support of his Countess Ermesinda. The new cathedral was rededicated to Peter and Paul on 31 August 1038. He died at his monastery at Cuixà in 1046.

In 1973 the Abat Oliba College was created as a private branch of the University of Barcelona. In 2003, the Catalan government (Generalitat de Catalunya) approved the Abat Oliba College conversion to the Abat Oliba CEU University. They take the name of Abbot Oliba because they "aim to embrace the spirit of Oliba who thousand years ago established the foundations of the nascent Catalonia on the basis of the Roman and Christian culture".