Spanish Highways and Byways Part 5

Within this monument the Host, commonly spoken of in Spain as _Su Majestad_, had been solemnly placed the night before, much as the mediaeval church used to lay the crucifix, with requiems, under the High Altar on Good Friday, and joyously bring it forth again Easter morning. But Spanish Catholicism is strangely indifferent to dates, burying the Host on Wednesday and celebrating the Resurrection Sat.u.r.day.

All day long the Royal Chapel had been filled with relays upon relays of kneeling wors.h.i.+ppers, and the hush there had been so profound that the hum of the tourist-haunted nave and the tumult of the streets seemed faint and foreign to the hearing, like sounds a universe away.

Before this chapel entrance all the pageants, as they were borne in silence through the cathedral, paused and did homage to the Host.

Having outstripped the procession, we had arrived in season to witness three of these salutations. The Nazarenes, in pa.s.sing, fell upon their knees in the light of the great, gleaming monument, and each of the heavy platforms was slowly swung about so that it faced this symbol of Christ's sepulchre.

Yet there was something besides devotion in the cathedral. As the crowd pressed close, we felt, more than once, a fumbling at our pockets, and the little artist lost her purse. The rest of us comforted her by saying over and over that she ought to have known better than to bring it, and by severally relating how cautious we had been on our own accounts.

It was hard upon eleven when we returned to the house, but the streets were all alive with people. I went to the balcony at midnight, and again at the stroke of one, and both times looked down upon a _plaza_ crossed and recrossed in all directions by talkative, eager groups.

Many of these restless promenaders had been able to get no lodgings, and were walking to keep warm. The pressure upon the hotels was so great that one desperate stranger this Thursday night paid twenty dollars for a cot from ten o'clock till two, and private hospitality was taxed to a degree that nothing but Spanish courtesy and good-nature could ever have endured. In the house which harbored us, for instance, we were all fitted in as compactly as the pieces of a puzzle, when the unexpected friends began to arrive.

On Wednesday there appeared from the far north a man and wife, acquaintances of ten years back. Our host and hostess greeted this surprise party with Andalusian suns.h.i.+ne in their faces, and yielded up their own room. Thursday morning there walked gayly in one of the son's university cla.s.smates from Madrid. Don Pepe embraced him like a brother, and surrendered the sofa, which was all he had left to give.

And this Thursday midnight, as a crowning touch, three more chums of college days came clattering at the bell. Their welcome was as cordial as if the household were pining for society. The tired maids, laughing gleefully over the predicament, contributed their own mattresses and pillows, and made up beds on the study floor, where Don Pepe camped out with his comrades, to rise with a headache that lasted for days after.

By two o'clock I had taken my station on the balcony for an all-night vigil. The most of the family bore me company for the cogent reason that they had nowhere to sleep, but the other guests of the house held out for only an hour or two, and then went blinking to their repose.

My memory of the night is strangely divided between the dreamlike, unearthly pomps and splendors streaming through the square below and the kindly, cheery people who came and went about me. The senora, still fresh and charming, although she has wept the deaths of fourteen out of her nineteen children, was merrily relating, with weary head against her husband's shoulder, her almost insuperable difficulties in the way of furnis.h.i.+ng her table. The milkman roundly declared that if she wanted a double quant.i.ty of the precious fluid (and goat's milk at that), she must make it up with water. There was no meat to be had in the Catholic city during these holy days, and even her baker had forsaken his oven and gone off to see the sights. And the black-bearded senor, who, like his wife, had not been in bed for forty odd hours, laughed at her and comforted her, puffed harder than ever at his cigarette, and roguishly quoted the saying, "He whom G.o.d loves has a house in Seville."

By two o'clock the seats on the grand stand were filling fast, the _plaza_ hummed with excitement, the balconies resounded with song and laughter, and the strong electric lights in front of the city hall cast a hard, white brilliance over all the scene. The frying of _calientes_, an Andalusian version of twisted doughnuts, was in savory progress here and there on the outskirts of the throng, and our ever thoughtful hostess did not fail to keep her balcony well supplied with these crisp dainties.

The twinkling of taper lights, so warm and yellow under those pallid globes of electric glare, appeared while people were still hurrying to their places; but hundreds upon hundreds of black and gold figures had paced by before the first of their _pasos_ came into view. For these processions of the dawn, _de madrugada_, call out great numbers of the devout, who would thus keep the last watch with their Lord. The clocks struck three as the leading pageant, a very ancient image of Christ, bearing a silver-mounted cross of tortoise-sh.e.l.l, halted before the Alcalde. A white banner wrought with gold heralded the Virgin, who rose, in glistening attire, from a golden lake of lights.

The wealthy _cofradia_ of San Lorenzo followed in their costly habits of black velvet. They, too, conducted a pageant of Christ bearing His cross, one of the most beautiful groups of Montanes, the pedestal adorned with angels in relief. To the Christ, falling on the Via Dolorosa, the brotherhood, with the usual disregard of historic propriety, had given a royal mantle of ermine, embroidered with gold and pearls. A large company of black-clad women, carrying candles, walked behind the _paso_, on their penitential march of some eight hours. Many of them were ladies delicately bred, whose diamonds sparkled on the breast of the approaching Mary. For the Sevillian senoras are accustomed to lend their most valuable gems to their favorite Virgins for the _Semana Santa_, and San Lorenzo's Lady of Grief is said to have worn this night the worth of millions. She pa.s.sed amid a great attendant throng, in such clouds of incense that the eye could barely catch the s.h.i.+mmer of her silver pedestal, the gleam of the golden broideries that almost hid the velvet of her mantle, and the flashes and jets of light that shot from the incredible treasure of jewels that she wore.

The third troop of Nazarenes, robed in white and violet, bore for banner a white cross upon a violet ground. Their Christ-pageant pictured Pilate in his judgment seat in the act of condemning the Son of G.o.d to death. Jesus, guarded by armed soldiers, calmly confronts the troubled judge, at whose knee wait two little pages with a basin of water and towels.

And now came one of the most gorgeous features of the Holy Week processions--a legion of Roman soldiers, attired as never Roman soldiers were, in gold greaves and crimson tunics, with towering snow-white plumes. But a splendid show they made as, marching to drum and fife, they filed down _Las Sierpes_ and stretched "in never ending line" across the _plaza_. Our most Holy Mary of Hope, who followed, wearing a fair white tunic and a gold-embroidered mantle of green, the color of the hopeful season, drowned the memory of that stern military music in a silver concert of flutes.

After this sumptuous display, the fourth band of Nazarenes, gliding through the _plaza_ between night and day in their garb of black and white, could arouse but little enthusiasm, although their Crucifixion was one of the most artistic, and their Lady of the Presentation had her poorest garment of fine satin.

A pearly l.u.s.tre was stealing through the sky, and the chill in the air was thinning the rows of spectators on the grand stand, when mysterious, dim-white shapes, like ghosts, bore by in utter silence a pageant of Christ fainting beneath the burden of the cross. But soon the clamor of drums and fifes ushered in another long array of Roman soldiers, a rainbow host in red and pink and blue, crimson plumes alternating with white, and golden s.h.i.+elds with silver. The electric lights, globed high overhead, took one look at this fantastic cavalcade and went out with a gasp.

It was now clear day. Canaries began to sing in their cages, and parrots to scream for chocolate. Sleepy-eyed servant-maids appeared on the balconies, and market women, leading green-laden donkeys, peered forth from the side streets into the square. The morning light made havoc with the glamour of the pageants. Something frank and practical in the suns.h.i.+ne stripped those candle-lighted litters of their dignity. Busy people dodged through the procession lines, and one Nazarene after another might be seen slipping out of the ranks and hurrying awkwardly, in his c.u.mbersome dress, with the half-burned taper under his arm, to the refuge of his own mosquito-netting and orange tree. The tired crowd grew critical and irreverent, and openly railed upon the Virgin of this ghostly _cofradia_ because her velvet mantle was comparatively plain. "Bah! how poor it is! Are we to sit here all the night for such stingy shows as that?"

But the last brotherhood in the _madrugada_ processions had, with their white frocks and blue caps and capes, suited themselves to the colors of the day. The stumbling children, blind with sleep, whom fathers were already leading off the square, turned back for a drowsy gaze at the resplendent tunic of the Christ in the Via Dolorosa _paso_, a tunic claimed to be the richest of all the garments worn by the effigies of Jesus. So lovely was this trooping company in their tints of sky and cloud, bearing a great blue banner and a s.h.i.+ning ivory cross, that they brought order and decorum with them.

The division that escorted the Virgin marched on with especial steadiness, not a peaked cap drooping, nor a boyish acolyte faltering under the weight of his tall gilded censer. This most Holy Mary of Anguish, whose litter and canopy were all of white and gold, swept by in triumphal peals of music while the clocks were striking six. In some mental confusion, I said good night to the people I left on the balcony, and good morning to the people I met on the stairs, and ate my breakfast before I went to bed.

It seemed as if human nature could bear no more; the eyes ached with seeing, and phantasmal processions went sweeping through our dreams; yet Friday afternoon at five o'clock found our balcony, like all the rest, full to overflowing. Some twenty thousand people were ma.s.sed in the _plaza_, and it was estimated that over one hundred thousand waited along the line of march. Our Spanish entertainers, still unrefreshed by any chance for sleep, were as gayly and punctiliously attentive to their guests as ever, from our gallant host, who presented the ladies with fragrant bouquets of roses and orange blossoms, to the little pet of the household, who at the most engrossing moments in the ceremonial would slip away from her privileged stand on a footstool against the railing to summon any member of the party who might be missing the spectacle.

The Spanish colors floated out from city hall and court-house, but the great concourse below was all in hues of mourning, the black mantillas often falling over dresses of plain purple. The senoritas in the balconies had subst.i.tuted knots of black ribbon for the customary flowers in the hair. Jet tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs abounded, and the waving fans were black.

The coming procession, we were a.s.sured on every hand, would be the most solemn of all and the most sumptuous. The habits of the Nazarenes would be of satin, silk, and velvet. The images of Christ and the Virgin would be attired with all possible magnificence of damask and ermine, gold and jewels. Brotherhood would vie with brotherhood in splendor, and one prodigy of luxury would succeed another.

The leading company, whose far-trailing robes carpeted the street with fine black velvet, stood for the olive industry. This _cofradia_ had been poor and unimportant for generations, but in recent years a devoted brother, a manufacturer of olive packing-barrels, had poured forth his acc.u.mulated fortune upon the society, with the result that their _pasos_ are now second in ostentation and expense to none. The donor, long since too feeble to bear his taper in the line, lives in humble obscurity, but his old heart swells with joy this great day of the year when he sees, following the elaborate carving of the Crucifixion, the dazzling chariot of Our Lady of Solitude. Upon her mantle, which enjoys the proud distinction of being the very costliest of all, he has lavished twenty thousand dollars. Longer by a yard than any of the others, it was yet unable to find place for all the gold which the zealous Nazarene had given for it, and the residue was bestowed about the pedestal and canopy. The _paso_ is so heavy with gold that it requires a double force of men to carry it; but each of these hidden bearers, getting air as best he can through a silver breathing-tube, is sure of a dollar for his recompense as well as two gla.s.ses of good wine.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GRANADA. LOOKING TOWARD THE DARRO]

All the adornment of the litter is of pure gold, and such wealth of jewels glinted from the Virgin's glorious raiment that a triple force of Civil Guards was detailed for her protection. Her ardent wors.h.i.+pper has denied her nothing. The very columns that uphold her canopy are exquisite in carving, and it is his yearly pride to see that her clouds of incense are the thickest, and her train of musicians the most extended, in all that glittering line.

The second _cofradia_ exhibited but a single pageant, relying for effect upon the beauty of the sculpture. The Mater Dolorosa was bowed in her desolation at the foot of the Holy Rood, from which hung only the white folds of the winding-sheet.

But the third brotherhood had bethought themselves to introduce, between their austere Crucifixion and their s.h.i.+ning image of Mary, another preposterous parade of Roman soldiers--flower-colored, plume-tossing, b.u.t.terfly creatures far too bright, if not too good, "for human nature's daily food." One whiff from Caesar's iron breast would have blown them away like soap bubbles.

The silversmiths trooped by in graver, more majestic state, their purple velvet habits girded with gold cords. Upon a gilded pedestal, wrought with high relief, was seen their Christ, bowed beneath a precious cross of tortoise-sh.e.l.l and silver. Our Lady of Expectation gleamed with gold and gems, and this haughty brotherhood received a full meed of applause.

Black from top to toe was the fifth procession. Their Jesus of the Via Dolorosa bent beneath a sombre cross of ebony embossed with gold, but the blithe young voices of the countless choir-boys, singing like birds before the dawn, ushered in a sun-bright image of Mary.

But something was amiss with the processional order. Where were the stately ranks of Montserrat? Alas and alas! Scarcely had this aristocratic _cofradia_ gone a hundred paces from their chapel when, in the narrow street of Murillo, a leaning candle touched the lace skirt of the Virgin and instantly all the front of the litter was in flames. It was hardly a matter of minutes. From the balconies above were dashed down pailfuls and pitcherfuls of water. The Nazarenes, wrenching away the blue velvet mantle wondrously embroidered in gold with castles, lions, and _fleurs de lis_, succeeded in rescuing a ragged half of it, and the Civil Guards, drawing their swords and forming a circle about the smoking litter, saved the jewels from robbery. Perhaps the other _paso_, too, Christ of the Conversion of the Penitent Thief, had some protecting influence. But in all this ado about her finery, the poor Virgin's face, beloved for its winsome look, was completely burned away. In sorry plight Our Lady of Montserrat was hurried back to her chapel, and the swift rumor of the disaster sent a superst.i.tious trouble through the city.

But more and more solemnly the taper-bearing troops of Nazarenes poured by with the culminating pictures of the Pa.s.sion. These last three _cofradias_ presented each a single pageant. An escort in dark purple conducted an impressive Descent from the Cross. The Virgin, her crowned head bowed in anguish, clasps the drooping body of Christ to her heart, while John and Mary Magdalene look on in hopeless sorrow.

Figures in black and white came after, with their sixteenth-century carving, Christ of the Dying Breath, beneath the cross standing Our Lady of Tears. And last of all, in slow, sad movement, their white trains streaming like a line of light along the stone-paved way, pa.s.sed the second brotherhood of San Lorenzo, bearing the Most Blessed Virgin in her Solitude. The gold of her mantle seemed one with the gold of the candle rays, and, for many a silent watcher, those gliding, gleaming, spiritlike forms will move forever down a s.h.i.+ning path in memory. So closed the Holy Week processions.

"How sorry I am," said our host, with the Andalusian twinkle in his eye. "It is almost eleven o'clock. Ladies and gentlemen, will you please walk out to dinner?"

On Sat.u.r.day morning we went early to the cathedral for the closing rite. The Sagrario was thronged. Some of the senoras had brought low folding chairs with them, others sat upon the floor, but most of that innumerable congregation knelt or stood. We were all facing the great purple veil which concealed the high altar, with Roldan's retablo of the Descent from the Cross. There was an hour or more of expectation, during which rosaries slipped through the fingers of many a veiled nun, and the soft murmur of prayer came from strong men as well as from pale-faced women. Suddenly, while a shock of thunder crashed from the organ, hidden ministrants sharply drew on hidden cords, the purple curtain parted in the midst, and the two folds rolled asunder, revealing the high altar, with its carving of the accomplished Pa.s.sion. The organ poured forth jubilees of victory, all the bells of the cathedral pealed together, _Gloria in Excelsis_ soared in choral chant, and amid the awe-stricken mult.i.tudes fallen to their knees, _Su Majestad_ was borne in priestly procession from the tomb in the Royal Chapel to the candles and incense which awaited at the high altar that triumphal coming.

Easter Sunday was celebrated by a bull-fight.

VII

TRACES OF THE INQUISITION

"I live a life more great than I.

The life I hope is life so high, I die because I cannot die."

--_Santa Teresa de Jesus._

All Spaniards venerate the name of _Isabel la Catolica_, nor is the impressionable De Amicis the only foreigner who has trembled and wept at Granada before the enshrined memorials, jewel box, mirror, missal, and crown, of her royal womanhood. She is a precious figure in Spain's sunset revery--a saint beneath a conquering standard, a silken lady in a soldier's tent. Yet this peerless queen, merciful, magnanimous, devout, "the s.h.i.+eld of the innocent," caring supremely for the glory of G.o.d and the good of her country, gave consent, albeit reluctant, to the establishment of the Inquisition, Christianity's chief scandal and Spain's most fatal blight. So ironic were the stars of Isabel.

The Inquisition, it is true, originated in Italy early in the thirteenth century and followed the flight of some of the Albigenses into Aragon, but its work in Spain had been comparatively slight and merciful until the "Catholic Kings," in the interests of religious reform, for the purification of the national faith, let its horrors loose. Wherever one moves in Spain the sickening breath of the _auto de fe_ lingers in the air. In such a square, we read, was once a mighty bonfire of Jews; beneath our feet, we are told, is a ma.s.s of human bones and cinders. This suns.h.i.+ny Seville, with her parks and patios, her palms and orange groves, a city seemingly fas.h.i.+oned only for love and song, had her army of nearly twoscore thousand martyrs, who, dressed in the hateful _San Benitos_, yellow coats painted with flames and devils, were burned to death here in our gay _Plaza de la Const.i.tucion_, then known as the _Plaza de San Francisco_, and in the _Quemadero_ beyond the walls. As one mingles with some outdoor throng, all intent on pageant, dance, or other spectacle, one shudders to remember that just such dark, eager faces were ringed about the agonies of those heroic victims. For there are two sides to the Spanish Inquisition. If Spaniards were the inquisitors, Spaniards, too, were the dauntless sufferers. The sombre gaze of the torturer was met, as steel meets iron, by the unflinching eye of the tortured. But "the unimaginable touch of Time" transforms all tragedy to beauty, and red poppies, blowing on the gra.s.sy plain of the _Quemadero_, translate into poetry to-day that tale of blazing f.a.gots.

Sometimes the victims were of foreign blood. Hakluyt has preserved the simple narratives of two English sailors, who were brought by their Spanish captors from the Indies as a sacrifice to the Holy House of Seville. One, a happy-go-lucky fellow, Miles Phillips, who had been too well acquainted in Mexico with the dungeons of the Inquisition, slipped over the s.h.i.+p's side at San Lucar, made his way to sh.o.r.e, and boldly went to Seville, where he lived a hidden life as a silk-weaver, until he found his chance to steal away and board a Devon merchantman. The other, Job Hortop, added to his two years of Mexican imprisonment two more years in Seville. Then "they brought us out in procession, every one of us having a candle in his hand, and the coat with S. Andrew's cross on our backs; they brought us up on an high scaffold, that was set up in the place of S. Francis, which is in the chief street of Seville; there they set us down upon benches, every one in his degree, and against us on another scaffold sate all the Judges and the Clergy on their benches. The people wondered, and gazed on us, some pitying our case, others said, burn those heretics. When we had sat there two hours, we had a sermon made to us, after which one called Bresinia, secretary to the Inquisition, went up into the pulpit with the process, and called Robert Barret, s.h.i.+p-master, and John Gilbert, whom two Familiars of the Inquisition brought from the scaffold before the Judges, where the secretary read the sentence, which was that they should be burnt, and so they returned to the scaffold, and were burnt.

"Then I, Job Hortop, and John Bone, were called, and brought to the place, as before, when we heard our sentence, which was, that we should go to the Galleys, and there to row at the oar's end ten years, and then to be brought back to the Inquisition House, to have the coat with S. Andrew's cross put on our backs, and from thence to go to the everlasting prison remediless.

"I with the rest were sent to the Galleys, where we were chained four and four together.... Hunger, thirst, cold, and stripes we lacked none, till our several times expired, and after the time of twelve years, for I served two years above my sentence, I was sent back to the Inquisition House in Seville, and there having put on the coat with S. Andrew's cross, I was sent to the everlasting prison remediless, where I wore the coat four years, and then upon great suit I had it taken off for fifty duckets, which Hernando de Soria, treasurer of the king's mint, lent me, whom I was to serve for it as a drudge seven years."

But this victim, too, escaped in a fly-boat at last, and on a certain Christmas Eve, about the time when people in London were beginning to like the comedies of a certain poor player, one Will Shakespeare, did Job Hortop, Powder-maker and Gunner, walk quietly, after twenty-three years of martyrdom, into the village of Redcliffe, where he had been a ruddy English boy with no dream of the day when he should be "prest forth" by Sir John Hawkins and compelled, sore against his will, to embark for the West Indian adventure.

Religious liberty now exists under the laws of Spain, although the administration of those laws leaves much to be desired. In three old conventual churches of Seville gather her three Protestant congregations. Beneath the pavements of two of these heretic strongholds old inquisitors sleep what uneasy sleep they may, while one of the Protestant pastors, formerly a Catholic priest, has quietly collected and stored in his church-study numerous mementos of the Holy Office. Here may be seen two of those rare copies of the 1602 revision of the Spanish Bible, by Cipriano de Valera, whom the Inquisition could burn only in effigy, since the translator, who had printed his book in Amsterdam, did not return to accompany the Familiars to the _Quemadero_. Here are old books with horrible woodcuts of the torments, and time-stained ma.n.u.scripts, several bearing the seal and signatures of the "Catholic Kings," these last so ill written that it is hard to tell the name of Ferdinand from that of Isabella. Among these are royal commissions, or licenses, granted to individual inquisitors, records of _autos de fe_, and wills of rich inquisitors, the sources of whose wealth would hardly court a strict examination.

Here, too, is the standard of the Holy Office, the very banner borne through Seville in those grim processions. Its white silk is saffroned now, but the strange seal of the Inquisition, a bleeding Christ upon the cross, is clearly blazoned in the centre, while the four corners show the seal of San Domingo.

The Inquisition prison, the dreaded Holy House of Seville, is used as a factory at present, and heresy no longer secures admission there; but I looked up at its grated windows, and then, with a secret s.h.i.+ver, down on the ground, where the Spanish pastor of antiquarian tastes was marking out with his cane the directions of the far-branching subterranean cells. We slipped into an outer court of the _fabrica_, where the two gentlemen, effectively aided by a couple of st.u.r.dy lads, pried up and flung back a sullen door in the pavement and invited me to grope my darkling way down some twenty crumbling steps, overgrown with a treacherous green mould. There was no refusing, in face of the cloud of witnesses whose groans these stones had heard, and I took a heart-breaking plunge into the honeycomb of chill, foul-smelling, horror-haunted dungeons, whose roofs let fall a constant drip of water and from whose black recesses I was the unwilling means of liberating a choice variety of insects.

"But even yet one cannot call one's self a Protestant in Spain, you know," said an English diplomat to us in another city of Andalusia.

"It's not socially respectable. Spanish Protestants are the very sc.u.m of the earth--illiterate, dirty, boorish. You couldn't a.s.sociate with them for a minute."