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Title: Roman Catholicism in Spain
Author: Anonymous
Release Date: June 3, 2009 [eBook #29025]
Language: English
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***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMAN CATHOLICISM IN SPAIN***
Transcribed from the 1855 Johnstone and Hunter edition by David Price,
email ccx074@pglaf.org
ROMAN CATHOLICISM
IN SPAIN.
* * * * *
BY
AN OLD RESIDENT.
* * * * *
EDINBURGH:
JOHNSTONE & HUNTER.
LONDON: R. GROOMBRIDGE & SONS.
* * * * *
M.DCCC.LV.
* * * * *
EDINBURGH:
PRINTED BY JOHNSTONE AND HUNTER,
HIGH STREET.
CONTENTS.
Page
INTRODUCTION--Variableness of outward practice of 7
Christianity--The like as to that of Mahometanism--Roman
Catholicism most subject to that modification--Excesses of
Roman Catholicism in Spain accounted for by Spanish
history--The Goths and Moors of Africa--Their conversion
to Christianity--The aborigines of America--Traditional
coincidences with scriptural truth--National character of
the religion of Spaniards--Religion of the
affections--Santa Teresa--Amatory propensities in
connection with religion--Knight-errantry--Motto of
Spanish nobility--The four primitive
orders--Loyola--Religion the pretext for wars of
Spain--Three distinct features of the national character
of Spaniards, illustrated by Isabella the Catholic,
Charles V., and Philip II.
CHAPTER I.
THE SPANISH CLERGY--Their primitive state--Their 31
subsequent organization--_Barraganas_--Immoral practices
of the clergy--Their wealth, and its sources--Their
territorial possessions--Their influence and
incomes--Their opposition to the sciences--Their
ultramontane principles--The "pass" of the Spanish
sovereign necessary to the validity of the Pope's
bulls--Doctrine of the Jansenists favoured by the
ministers of Charles III.--Port-Royal and San
Isidro--Parish priests--Sources of their income--Many of
them good men, but deficient in scriptural knowledge and
teaching--Their preaching--Abolition of tithes by the
minister, Mendizabal--Effects of that measure--Poverty and
present state of the clergy--Their degraded character and
unpopularity--Their timidity in recent times of
tumult--Ecclesiastical writers of the Peninsula--Power of
the Inquisition curtailed by Charles III.
CHAPTER II.
MONACHISM--The superiority of the monastic over the 47
secular clergy--Reasons for it--Orders of Monks--The
Carthusians--Their advancement in agriculture, and love of
the fine arts--Their seclusion and mode of living--Only
learned men admitted to their order--Their form of
salutation--Curious adventure of a lady found in the cell
of a Carthusian--The Hieronimites--The Mendicant
orders--"Pious works"--The _Questacion_--Decline of Spain
accounted for--Vows of chastity, poverty, and
obedience--How vow of poverty eluded--_La
honesta_--Vicar-general of the Franciscan orders--His
immense income--Religious orders have produced many great
and good men--Cardinal Ximenez de Cisneros--His celebrated
Bible--Corruption of monastic orders--Insubordination of
friars to the bishops--The Jesuits--Deplorable reputation
of their literature--Pascal, Escobar, Sanchez, and
Mariana--Suppression of the Jesuits by Charles III.--Their
subsequent expulsion by Espartero under Isabella
II.--Nunneries, though spared on suppression of religious
houses, utterly useless--The Pope's attempt to perpetuate
them by _concordat_--The lives of the nuns
described--Their means of subsistence is now
precarious--Convent de las Huelgas.
CHAPTER III.
CELIBACY AND MORALS--Illicit relations formed by the 73
clergy--Shameless avowal of their fruits--Ferocious
character of love in the cloisters--Three flagrant
cases--Murder of a young lady by her confessor, the
Carmelite of San Lucar--His trial and sentence--Murder by
a wife of her husband under the direction of her
confessor, the Capuchine of Cuenca--His trial,
imprisonment, and escape--Murder of a lady by the
Agonizante of Madrid--His trial and execution--Scandalous
occurrences in the Convent of the Basilios of
Madrid--Forcible entry of the civil power--Murder of the
abbot--Suppression of inquiry--Shameful profligacy of the
Capuchines of Cascante and the nuns of a neighbouring
convent--Mode of its discovery--Imprisonment of inmates of
both convents--Removal of prisoners--Their mysterious
escape--Exemplary performance of vows in some
cases--Dangers of celibacy--Spanish women and their
influence on society
CHAPTER IV.
THE MASS--Its introduction but modern--The Spaniard Lainez 87
opposed it--On what grounds--Description of the
ceremony--Its religious and secular
peculiarities--Sacerdotal vestments worn while celebrating
it--High and Low Mass--Both performed in an unknown
tongue--Consequent indifference of the
congregation--Mercenary character of the mass--"_Masses
for the intention_"--Masses for the dead--The solemn mass
on Christmas eve, or _Noche buena_--Its profane
accompaniments--Passion week--Thursday--Good
Friday--Adoration of the Cross--Processions--Anecdotes of
Isabella II.--Brilliant rites and ceremonies on the day
after Good Friday--Uproarious conduct of the faithful on
that occasion--The mass as celebrated at Toledo--Judicial
combat, or judgment of God
CHAPTER V.
DEVOTION of Protestants scriptural and reasonable--That of 102
Roman Catholics poetical and affectionate--Religious
enthusiasm leads to insanity--Mental devotion as
distinguished from physical--Nature of Roman Catholic
devotion accounted for by the worship of
images--Intercession of saints--Saint Anthony--The
illiterate guided by bodily vision rather than spiritual
discernment--Horace confirms this--Illustrated by popular
errors--Sensual and poetical elements were introduced to
devotion by the Greeks--Destruction of images by the
Emperor Leo the Iconoclast--Opinion of Pope Leo the
Great--Images adorned like human beings perplex the mind
between truth and fiction--Familiar
examples--Money-contributions for adornment of
images--Belief that saints can cure certain
complaints--List of those--Saint Anthony of Padua's
miracles--The fete of _San Anton Abad_--Virgin Mary, and
her innumerable advocations--A list of several--The
Rosary--Statues of the Virgin--Immense value of their
wardrobes and trinkets--The most ugly of those statues
excite most devotion--Virgin of Zaragoza--The heart of
Mary--Month of Mary (May)--Kissing images--Anecdote of the
Duke of A--- and his courtezan--Habits and
promises--Penance
CHAPTER VI.
FEAST-DAYS--Processions and Novenas--Corpus Christi--How 122
performed in Seville, and the sacred dances of _los
seises_--How in Madrid--Procession of Holy Week--The
_Santo Entierro_--Clerical processions--Procession of the
Rosary--Rites of Roman Catholicism--Jubilee of forty
hours--_Romerias_ or pilgrimages
CHAPTER VII.
PURGATORY--Deliverance from by devotions of 142
survivors--Those devotions described--Difference between
dogma of purgatory and other dogmas--Modes of drawing out
souls--Masses for the dead--Legacies to pay for
them--External representations of images and pictures--Day
of All Souls and its practices--The Andalusian
Confraternity of Souls--_Mandas piadosas_--Debtor and
creditor account between the church and purgatory--How
balanced--Bull of
Composition--Soul-days--_Responses_--_Cepillo_, or
alms-box--Financial operation--Origin of bills of exchange
and clearing house--Wax Candles--Their
efficacy--Cenotaphs--Summary of funds, and reflections on
their misapplication
CHAPTER VIII.
AURICULAR CONFESSION--A sacrament inseparable from that of 152
communion--Obligatory on all once a year--Plan of
discovering defaulters--How punished--Evils of
confession--Power of the priest--Four evils pointed
out--Discoveries in the Inquisition in 1820--Facility of
obtaining absolution--Louis XIV.--Robbers and
assassins--The confessional--Practice, how
conducted--Expiatory acts--Refusal of absolution--A
husband disguised as his wife's confessor--The injunction
of secrecy on part of confessor--Advantages of the
knowledge he gains--Jesuits advocate the confessional--No
fees for confession, but gratuities are generally given
CHAPTER IX.
FASTS AND PENANCES--How observed--Indulgences--Spain is 170
privileged by the Bull of the Holy Crusade--Description of
that bull--Prices of copies--Commissary-General of
Crusades--His revenues--Their shameful application--Copy
of that bull--Other acts of penance--The _Disciplina_ or
whipping--_Cilicios_
CHAPTER X.
FALSE MIRACLES, RELICS, AND RELIGIOUS 187
IMPOSITIONS--Veneration of crucifixes and statues or
images--Their power of healing--Picture at Cadiz--_Lignum
Crucis_--Veronica--Bodies of saints--How
procured--Inscriptions--Lives of saints--Maria de
Agreda--St Francis--Scandalous representation of the
appearance of the Virgin to a saint--Fray Diego de
Cadiz--_Beata_ Clara--Her fame and downfall--The nun,
Sister Patrocinio--Her success, detection, confession, and
expulsion--She returns, and is protected by a high
personage--She is again expelled, but again returns and
founds a convent--Its disgraceful character and
suppression--Her flight towards Rome--Occurrences on the
road--Her return to Spain
CONCLUSION 201
Introduction
Variableness of outward practice of Christianity--The like as to that of
Mahometanism--Roman Catholicism most subject to that
modification--Excesses of Roman Catholicism in Spain accounted for by
Spanish history--The Goths and Moors of Africa--Their conversion to
Christianity--The aborigines of America--Traditional coincidences with
scriptural truth--National character of the religion of
Spaniards--Religion of the affections--Santa Teresa--Amatory propensities
in connection with religion--Knight-errantry--Motto of Spanish
nobility--The four primitive orders--Loyola--Religion the pretext for
wars of Spain--Three distinct features of the national character of
Spaniards, illustrated by Isabella the Catholic, Charles V., and Philip
II.
Christianity, although of divine origin, and, consequently, like all that
participates in the essence of Divinity, immutable in its doctrines and
creeds, submits itself nevertheless, in outward practice, to the
incidents common to all human institutions, and receives an impression
from the particular character of the people who observe its rites, and
subject their conduct to its precepts. Every religious idea lays hold on
the heart and understanding: consequently the state of the affections and
the intellectual bias of each nation must communicate to the worship it
professes a particular influence, which is seen, not only in the way in
which ceremonies are practised, or in the organization of the hierarchy,
or in the style and language which man uses in addressing the Deity, but
in the entire system of actions, relations, and thoughts, which
constitutes what is called worship.
Worship participates in the impulse which a nation has received at its
origin,--from its historical antecedents,--from its political
system,--and from the peculiarities which predominate in the formation of
its intelligence. The Greek polytheism did not distinguish itself from
the Roman either in its theogony or its rites; but there is no doubt that
the former was more poetical, more artistic, and more scrupulous than the
latter. The Romans, being brought into close contact with all the
nations of the earth, and having become subjugated by the insolent
despotism of the Caesars, opened the doors of their Pantheon, not only to
the Goths of Egypt and of Gaul, but to monsters of cruelty, and to men
sunk in every class of those vices which had stained the throne of
Augustus. The Greeks, lovers of science, had placed their city of Athens
under the protection of Minerva; but Rome was too proud to humble herself
by playing the inferior part of the protected. In order to provide for
her own security, she declared herself a goddess, and erected her own
temples and altars. The Roman priests were warriors and magistrates;
those of Athens were philosophers and poets. The same observations apply
to Mahometanism. In India it has always shown itself more contemplative,
more tolerant, than in Arabia, Turkey, or on the northern coast of
Africa, and when it propagated itself in the southern regions of Europe,
its stern inflexibility was not able to resist even the influence of
clime; the perfumed breezes of the Betis and the Xenil despoiled it, in
part, of the austere physiognomy which had been impressed on its whole
structure by the sands of Arabia. Even the severe laws of the harem were
relaxed in the courts of Boabdil and of Almanzor, for the wives of those
two monarchs, openly, and without shame, took part in the pompous fetes
of the Alhambra and of the _serrania_ of Cordova.
Of all the religious systems hitherto known, none allows itself, with so
much docility, to be modified by external circumstances which constitute
the national character as does Roman Catholicism; and there are many
causes for this: Roman Catholicism exercises an infinitely greater
dominion over the senses than over the reason and intelligence; the
objects of its veneration, of its meditations, and of its devotional
practices, are infinitely more various and numerous than those of any
other sect of Christians; it introduces itself, so to speak, to all the
occupations of life, in all hours of the day, in the trades, professions,
amusements, and even gallantries of individuals; it fetters their reason,
and deprives it of all liberty and independence; and, above all, it
raises up in the midst of society, a privileged and isolated class,
superior to the power of the law and the government; into the hands of
that class it puts an absolute and irresistible authority, which is
exercised by invisible means, but means far more efficacious and terrible
in their effects than those of the civil power. From this universal and
irresistible predominance it results that the entire existence of the
Roman Catholic is a continual observance of the worship which he
professes, and consequently, that Roman Catholicism, at the same time
that it entirely modifies man, must of necessity, in its turn, receive,
in some degree, the impress of that temper which nature has bestowed upon
him. Thus we see that Roman Catholicism is more zealous, more
enthusiastic, more turbulent, in Ireland, more artistic in Italy, more
philosophic in Germany, more literary and discursive in France, more
idolatrous in the States of South America, more reserved and modest, more
decent and tolerant, less ambitious in its aspirations, and less
audacious in its polemics, in England than in any other part of the
world.
As to Roman Catholicism in Spain: we see thrown in its face its cruel
intolerance, its puerile practices, its profane language, its blind
submission, or rather the absolute slavery in which it places the
believer with respect to the priest. There is much truth in these
charges; but all of them are accounted for by an observance of history,
and by a knowledge of the natural character and circumstances which have
contributed to foster and strengthen religious sentiments in Spain.
The intolerance of Roman Catholicism in the Peninsula, carried to
tyranny, and, frequently, even to ferocity, has been a consequence of the
religious wars of six centuries,--wars which the Goths sustained with
unwearied perseverance against the Moors of Africa. The Goths had
embraced the Christian religion with all the ardour and sincerity
peculiar to a nation but recently delivered from a violent and savage
state; for, although a generous race, they were ignorant and coarse in
their habits. Their conversion to Christianity not only entirely
modified their moral and religious notions, and introduced among them a
greater elevation of feeling and an amplitude of ideas, but associated,
intimately, the religious with the poetical sentiment, in such a manner
that, in their eyes, every enemy of Christ was the enemy of the whole
nation; difference of creed, therefore, according to their rude code of
international laws, was a legitimate cause of war. In their eyes the
unbeliever was a political enemy. Mere contact with an unbaptized person
was considered a pollution. They believed that all who did not worship
Christ were worshippers of the devil, and that Mahomet and the Moses of
the Jews were nothing more than the representatives and agents of the
fallen angel. Whilst those ideas were gaining ascendancy, the clergy,
the only depositaries of letters and of knowledge, were rapidly
possessing themselves of power, riches, and influence, and endeavouring
to conserve and confirm those advantages by all possible means. Of those
means none was so convenient, in times of continual violence and warfare,
to the habits of a nation just emerging from a savage state, and which
recognised no other merit than physical force and warlike valour, as that
of encouraging those sanguinary and ruthless propensities, sanctifying
them in some way or other by religious sentiment, and stirring up and
inflaming the passions of the nation, with a view of exterminating all
persons who did not acknowledge the jurisdiction of the church and the
power of its ministers. Thus it happened that Christianity, from a very
early period after its introduction to Spain, was deprived of that spirit
of meekness, suavity, and tolerance, impressed upon it by its Divine
Founder, and became possessed of a spirit of the most implacable
resentment against every person who had not gone through the baptismal
ceremony; and thus, also, it was that the religion of the country
degenerated into a violent and revengeful sentiment, and took part in all
the excesses and all the aberrations of the human passions; thus it was,
in fine, that the national spirit became predisposed to the persecution
of the Jews, Mahometans, and Protestants, by means of that execrable
tribunal, the Inquisition.
Immediately after the conquest of Granada, in which these cruel and
destructive habits were openly displayed, an occasion presented itself
for giving still greater scope to their exercise. The subjugation of the
Continent discovered by Columbus was a war of religion no less than of
ambition and of conquest. The mere circumstance that the aborigines of
America had not received the light of the gospel was sufficient to induce
Spaniards to regard them as so many enemies of God, and as slaves and
worshippers of the devil. In the various forms of religious worship
which prevailed in those vast territories were embodied certain
principles which might, if carried out, have been of great service to the
conquered nation. In nearly all of those forms, the unity of God was
acknowledged, and also, in many of them, the necessity of a spiritual
regeneration. In Mexico, and that part of the country now called Central
America, was preserved a traditional remembrance of a severe chastisement
inflicted by the Supreme Creator on rebellious humanity, but accompanied
with a promise that the species should not be annihilated. That
tradition taught that God had sent into the world his Son, called
_Teot-belche_, in order to repeople the earth;--that this personage had
been shut up in a floating house during the time of the great flood, and
was afraid to venture out, until he had seen an eagle bringing in its
mouth a branch from a tree--a sign that the waters had abated, and that
vegetation had re-appeared. Other great coincidences with revealed truth
discovered themselves in the religious creeds of the people of Mechoacan,
Guatemala, and in those also of the inhabitants of Peru, where the dogma
had acquired a certain degree of elevation and purity, very different
from the sensual ideas so common among the ancient Asiatics. The
conquerors, therefore, whilst attempting to make proselytes to the true
faith might have availed themselves of those antecedents, and could
easily have corrected such notions, although founded on a tradition
having the weight of ancestral authority. The right moral ideas found
already impressed on the minds of these aborigines, especially those of
Peru, might have been encouraged and amplified. Instead of embracing the
system indicated by the mild and conciliatory spirit of Christianity, the
Americans, _en masse_, were considered, from that moment, as enemies of
God, and compelled, sometimes by force, to receive baptism, without any
previous explanation of the origin and design of that rite; at other
times they were tortured with the greatest cruelty, under a notion that
in the extremity of their agony they might be induced to renounce the
only creed which had come to their conviction. Many thousands of that
unhappy people were exterminated, for they did not even understand the
language in which doctrines the most sublime and marvellous in history
were attempted to be enforced.
It has already been observed that this rancorous extravagance of the
religious spirit in Spain had its origin in a political and patriotic
struggle; but long and sanguinary as that was, it could not eradicate the
primitive type of the nation, nor prevent its characteristic qualities
from reflecting themselves in worship, devotion, and every thing else
that constitutes a national religion. Thus it was, that, with those
intolerant and persecuting propensities, were also associated, in Spanish
Catholicism, the gorgeous, romantic, and poetic, which are still
preserved among that semi-oriental race. The Spaniard, endowed with a
lively imagination, appears to identify himself with the objects of his
endearment; his soul is transported by them, and he dresses them up in
his imagination till he fancies they reciprocate his own affections.
This vehement expansion of sentiments frequently opposes his reason, and
transforms his real existence into a perpetual vision. Hence also we
find that his devotion is not only tender and sympathetic, but passionate
and warm. His fervour in prayer arrives at such a pitch as to produce
copious tears. The language of Spain's mystical writers, especially that
of the elegant Santa Teresa de Jesus, contains the same expressions as
those which are used in addressing profane objects of the affections.
One of her most celebrated spiritual songs differs in nothing from those
which might have been written by Ovid or Tibullus. Its burden is this:--
Cubridme de flores,
Que muero de amores. {15}
The word _amores_, in the plural, does not signify merely the abstract
feeling of love, the application of which is as various as are the
objects which inspire it; for example, the divine love, the parental, the
filial, and the sexual. _Amores_ signifies courtship, flirtation,
interchange of sentiments between two lovers; and yet we find this word,
at every turn, in the prayers and ejaculations of devout Spaniards.
The distinguished woman to whom we have alluded carried, even to an
incredible excess, this mixture of the sacred affections with the
profane. In her voluminous writings, unrivalled in purity of language
and elegance of style, she considers herself, always, as the bride of
Jesus Christ, to whom she addresses herself with the same transports of
love, and with the same demonstrations of tender submission and endearing
respect, that might be used by an affectionate and dutiful wife to her
husband. It requires but little knowledge of the human heart to see, at
once, that in this mixture of two sentiments so opposed to each other as
are that of the love profane and that of the love divine, the latter is
liable to succumb to the former; and, in truth, this danger can only be
averted by minds as favoured and as pure as was, without a doubt, the
mind of that extraordinary woman. It is generally the case, and commonly
observed in Spain, that the sensual element dominates over the mystical,
and corrupts it. The common mass of mankind employs devotion as an
instrument favourable to worldly views and to the material interests of
life. In Andalucia, enamoured girls confide to the Virgin their ardent
sorrows and desires, as the following couplet will show, and which is
sung with frequency and is very popular in that province of the
Peninsula:--
La Virgen de las Angustias,
Es la que sabe mi mal,
Pues me meto en su capilla,
Y no me harto de llorar. {16}
With these amatory propensities was naturally bound up that spirit of
knight-errantry which so much distinguished the national character of
Spaniards among all the other nations of Europe; a spirit which neither
the course of centuries, nor intestine nor foreign war, nor even
revolution itself, although it has transformed in a few ages the temper
of modern nations, has been able to blot out. The Spaniard was
completely carried away in a transport by his religious practices, his
gallantry, loyalty, bravery, exalted notions of honour, and other
qualities of the mind, impregnated as they were with that poesy and wild
romance which are delineated with so much propriety and skill by the
immortal Cervantes.
The motto of the Spanish nobility has always been, "My God, my king, and
my lady,"--a very significant one, and one which described in a lively
manner the predominating sentiments of the nation and the equal degree of
veneration and enthusiasm which those three objects excited in the minds
of the people. The Spaniard is always as disposed to brandish the sword
in defence of the religion which he professes, as in that of the king
whom he serves or of the lady whom he loves. The processions and all the
feasts of the church are invariably accompanied by a military show. The
four primitive orders of the nation, viz., Santiago, Alcantara,
Calatrava, and Montesa, were, in their origin, institutions as religious
in their character as the order of the Templars and as that of St John of
Jerusalem. Even in the present day, though they have degenerated, they
preserve still much of their primitive character. The knights, it is
true, do not observe celibacy, as in ancient times; but they still have
churches in which they celebrate sumptuous festivities; they take an oath
to defend the Catholic religion and the doctrine of the immaculate
conception of the Virgin, and to each of these orders there still
pertains a certain number of convents of nuns, who wear the habit and
carry the cross of their respective orders. These nuns are called
_Commendadoras_, and none can be admitted into their numbers but ladies
who are descended from an ancient nobility, preserved for many
generations from any mixture of plebeian blood.
The celebrated Ignatius de Loyola, founder of the order of the Jesuits,
carried this singular amalgamation of piety and of a belligerent spirit
to such an extreme as, in our times, cannot but appear ridiculous. On
the day on which he was made a knight, it being then the custom that a
candidate for such an honour should choose for himself a lady to whose
service he might consecrate his arms, and whose image should be
constantly before him, his election fell upon the Virgin, as in the same
manner did that of Durandarte on Belerma, and that of the celebrated hero
of La Mancha on Dulcinea.
In all wars which have been waged by Spaniards, from the times of Pelayo
down to those of Espartero, religion has been one of the motives which
have impelled them to arms. In the war of succession of 1770, which gave
the throne of Castille to the grandson of Louis XIV., the dispute was
between two nations equally Roman Catholic--Austria and France.
Nevertheless, the circumstance that Great Britain had embraced the cause
of the archduke was sufficient for considering the war as a religious
one; and those who fought for Philip V. regarded the extirpation of the
heretical subjects of the House of Orange as the consolidation of the
Bourbon dynasty. In our own times we have seen these same sentiments
predominating in the civil war of Don Carlos, whose partisans considered
their enemies as impious and as atheists, words which in their dictionary
were synonymous with "constitutional and liberal." Most of the
proclamations emanating from the press of Onate spoke of the dangers
which threatened Roman Catholicism, in case the Christine party should
triumph.
Thus far we have spoken of the influence exercised by the national
character on the religion of Spaniards. That influence has not been
lessened by the circumstance that some of their monarchs have exercised
it, and, among others deserving particular mention, the three gigantic
models, viz., Isabella the Catholic, Charles V., and Philip II. Each one
of the distinctive features which we have hitherto noted in the religion
of Spaniards is represented in history by one or another of those three
sovereigns: Isabella represented the tender, affectionate, and
correlative; Charles, the knight of chivalry and the warrior; Philip, the
cruel and sanguinary persecutor.
Isabella united to her eminent qualities, to her profound policy, to her
unrivalled valour, to her constancy in the prosecution of her designs,
and to the elevation and grandeur of her views, a heart full of
tenderness and benevolence, and an ardent disposition to contribute, by
all possible means, toward the good of her fellow-creatures. Persuaded
that religion was the greatest good which it was possible for man to
enjoy, all her anxiety was concentrated in extending that benefit to the
greatest number of human beings. It was this which induced her to show
herself benevolent and compassionate toward the Moors of Granada after
the conquest of that city; it was this, also, which induced her to lavish
her gifts upon, and afterwards to take under her protection, such of
those Moors as submitted to baptism. All the incidents of her private
life, all her letters, many of which are still extant, show that she was
actuated by the most ardent spirit of Christian charity.
History accuses Isabella of having established the Inquisition in Spain.
This great blot in her character, the origin of many of the misfortunes
and of all the intellectual drawbacks which that nation has experienced,
explains, if it cannot justify, itself, by the circumstances in which, at
that time, the people of the Peninsula were placed. After the surrender
of Granada, there remained in the kingdom a great part of the Mussulman
population. The queen fostered the hope of their conversion to
Christianity and omitted no means to realise it. But the Moors, with
very few exceptions at the beginning, resisted every effort whether by
persuasion or by promises; they became but the more firmly addicted to
their own faith, and being prohibited the public celebration of its
rites, they practised them in secret, with all the zeal and enthusiasm
which the rigours of intolerance invariably produce in the persecuted.
The clergy, who imagined they saw in the religion of Mahomet the worship
of Satan, nay even warriors themselves who had wrought prodigies of
valour and shed their blood in order to exterminate that religion, could
not regard its prevalence with indifference, nor endure the thought that
it should survive the ruin of the capital of the Saracenic empire.
Bitter complaints were made to the queen on account of the impunity with
which such excesses against her authority were committed. To her
indulgence the principal persons of the state attributed the obstinacy of
the Moors who persisted in their errors, and the perfidy of the converted
who were accused of continuing in them after having submitted to the
ordinance of baptism. Religious phrenzy had arrived at its climax; men's
only occupation seemed to be that of building churches, destroying
mosques, and ostentatiously displaying the triumphs of the new creed over
that which for many centuries had polluted the soil. It was impossible
that Isabella could long resist these continuous remonstrances. The
institution of the Inquisition was proposed to her as a last resource to
maintain the purity of the faith, and that woman, superior to the age in
which she lived, and naturally affectionate and charitable, had the
unpardonable weakness of ceding to the councils of the implacable
Torquemada.
Among the qualities for which Isabella was remarkable none were more
admired by contemporary writers than her humility. In proof of this we
have but to follow the line of conduct pursued by her during the whole
course of her existence. She humbled herself before the church, whose
voice she believed she heard through the lips of her confessor.
We have referred to the cruel character of Roman Catholicism in Spain: is
not the Inquisition a proof of it? Experience shows how easily habit
familiarises us with spectacles most revolting to those feelings of pity
and compassion which Nature has bestowed upon us. Habit always destroys
the essential qualities of our moral constitution, sometimes associating
ideas of pleasure and enjoyment with those of blood and destruction; as,
for example, it happened in the games of the circus under the Roman
emperors; nay, some have even looked upon homicide and torture as
religious duties, and a part of the worship due to the Divine Being!
Fanaticism naturally engenders that sacrilegious alliance, and man, under
its irresistible influence, becomes more frightful in his hatred, more
cruel in his hostilities, than the beasts of the forest.
The Inquisition inaugurated, in Spain, a sanguinary fanaticism which
consecrated, as religious virtues, the blackest crimes that man can
commit against his fellow-creatures; and although it must be admitted
that many thousands of human beings perished in the flames for their
religious opinions under the reign of Isabella, yet the natural suavity
of her mind, influenced as it was by the tender and passionate,
repressed, to a considerable degree, those intolerant impulses with which
Torquemada was wont to impose upon the good sense of Spaniards. Isabella
was liberal, even in the sense which that word conveys according to the
language of modern politics. {22} She, doubtless, consented to the
formation of the bloody tribunal; and hence the annals of even her reign
are stained with some of those hecatombs which were more frequent in a
subsequent era, and banished from the Spanish peninsula those mental
energies which, at that time, were enabling human reason to recover her
rights, and Spain once more to occupy that eminent position assigned her,
by Providence, in the scale of creation.
History cannot accuse the Emperor Charles V. with having lent himself, as
a docile instrument, to the intolerant devices of the clergy. Charles
was never the sincere friend of the court of Rome. On the contrary, no
Christian monarch ever treated that court with greater contumely, or in a
manner more hostile and effectively prejudicial to its prosperity and
influence. The war which he made against the Pope, and which terminated
by the invasion of Rome itself, involved that court in all the ills of a
destructive conquest. The pillage and burning of the public temples and
of private houses, the violation of the nuns, the massacre of the
citizens, were not enough to satisfy the fury of his soldiers. Released
suddenly from that respect which, from childhood, they had been
accustomed to show towards the practices and ministers of religion, they
now openly ridiculed them in the streets of Rome, representing mock
processions, dressing themselves up in the splendid and ornamental attire
of cardinals and bishops. Their spirit of profanation and impiety
arrived at the extreme pitch. They composed satirical and other songs
against the Pope--one of these in the form of a parody on our Lord's
prayer--and sung them in the public streets, and even under the windows
of the pontifical palace.
To those deeds, which proved how little the heart of the emperor was
disposed to favour the doctrines of Roman Catholicism, we could add many
others which the patient investigation of German writers have discovered
in the archives of Italy. A tolerable knowledge, however, of the
occurrences of that reign will be sufficient to convince us that Charles
V. was not sincerely religious until age, infirmities, and misanthropy,
had brought upon him the misfortunes which attended the last years of his
life, and induced him to abdicate the crown, and retire to the solitudes
of Yuste. It is already known that, at the beginning of Luther's
rebellion against the Roman church, Charles resolved to avail himself of
the terror which the name of that celebrated reformer inspired in the
hearts of Roman Catholics, in order to intimidate the court of Rome and
humiliate its pride. It is not therefore to be wondered at, that, with
this vacillation of principles and declared antipathy to Rome, Charles
should have regarded, in his dominions, if not with manifest favour, at
least with cold indifference, the propagation of what were then called,
by Spaniards, the new doctrines.
Under his reign, notwithstanding the austere character of his minister,
the Cardinal Ximenes de Cisneros, the Inquisition dared not, in Spain,
commence a system of intolerance.
One proof of this assertion is to be found in the progress which, at that
time, Lutheranism made in the Peninsula. To those days belonged, in
truth, the illustrious victims who were subsequently sacrificed on the
altar of fanaticism, and whose names may be found by the reader in the
celebrated work of M'Crie, or in that of De Castro. {25}
Philip II. ascended the throne, and the whole aspect of the unhappy
nation, delivered over by Providence to the hands of that implacable
enemy of humanity, was entirely changed. Philip's inclination was to
hate and persecute; and religion, in name, afforded him the pretext for
giving vent, with impunity, to those propensities, and covering with a
sacred veil all the excesses of a bloodthirsty and revengeful heart to
which he could abandon himself. Some writers have doubted the sincerity
of his religious sentiments, considering them as mere pretexts, of which
he availed himself in order to suggest false motives for his bitter
spirit in the war which he carried on against Henry IV. of France. And,
in truth, what sincerity could there be in the religion of a man who
lived in perpetual adultery; who seduced the wives of his most faithful
servants; who paid assassins to get rid of men he disliked, and
afterwards relentlessly persecuted these same persons hired by him to
commit such crimes? How could faith, devotion, hope, charity, and
self-consecration to God, exist in combination with vices the most
degrading to human nature, and a system of conduct diametrically opposed
to the letter and spirit of the gospel? But, without discussing those
questions which more properly pertain to the severe tribunal of history
and will be found fully examined in the works cited, it is sufficient,
for the present purpose, to indicate the reign of Philip II. as that
epoch in which an intolerant fanaticism extended its roots wide and deep
in the hearts of Spaniards,--a fanaticism which, until but a few years
previous to our own times, formed one of the most conspicuous elements of
the national character. The frequent repetition of the _autos de fe_, in
which the terrible spectacle of burning human victims alive was
countenanced by the presence of the court,--the furious harangues of the
friars,--the excommunications fulminated from the pulpit against all
those who did not prostrate themselves as slaves before the power of the
church,--and, above all, the example of the monarch, who was always ready
to exalt the clergy above other classes of the community, and whose
domestic and foreign policy was founded, invariably, on the principle of
the identity of the altar and the throne, were circumstances more than
sufficient to mould the genius, the habits, the affections, and even the
literary tastes and domestic intercourse, of any nation in the world.
Hence the entire existence of the nation was, so to speak, exclusively
religious. The mass, confession, processions, and _novenas_, {26} were
the occupations which consumed all the days and all the hours of life.
The priesthood was the grand social supremacy. All the riches of the
nation were in its hands. All consciences ceded to its voice, and were
directed by its influence. The king favoured all its pretensions,
enlarged its privileges, and put into its hands the highest dignities and
employments. The bishops occupied the principal posts in the councils of
Castille, of the finances, and of the Indies; to many of these bishops
embassies and vice-regal appointments were confided; and, in the
provinces, the civil authority was eclipsed before their influence, for
they became usurpers of its most important functions. Those were the
palmy days of the Inquisition, when, secure of the monarch's favour and
co-operation, it gave itself up, without restraint, to that spirit of
hatred which constituted the chief ingredient of its institution, and
covered the Spanish peninsula and its colonies with suffering, with
tears, and with blood.
As those ideas and sentiments entirely absorbed the minds of Spaniards;
so, on the other hand, all public action was concentrated in the king, he
having silenced the voice of the Cortes and abolished the charters
(_fueros_) of the municipalities, to which had pertained all the
political and civil legislation of Spain from the foundation of the
monarchy; in fine, as the severity of the fiscal laws opposed an
insuperable barrier to all sorts of industry and enterprise, it is not
surprising that it should have transformed, as in effect it did, the
national character, or that the whole social and domestic life of
Spaniards should be nothing short of an entire and absolute consecration
to the church and its ministers, to religious ceremonies, and to the
exercises of devotion and penance. In all the hours of his life, in all
professional and lucrative occupations, in all functions incident to
public employments, nay, even in his very amusements, the religious idea
is always present to the eyes of a Spaniard; sometimes, indeed, severe
and gloomy, at others majestic and solemn, but always overwhelming him
with the weight of its preponderance, and assuming the rule and
arbitrament of his thoughts and actions. The following pages will offer
to the reader sufficient proofs of this truth; and in each of the scenes
which they present will be discovered, without difficulty, the features
of the sketch which, in this introduction, we have endeavoured to trace.
We have written them without anger and without partiality, and we propose
to insert in them no facts, or even statements, but those gathered from
personal observation, and which no Spaniard will dare to deny; facts
which many sensible and upright men in that nation worthy a better
condition, do most bitterly lament.
It may be right to add, as an undoubted fact which cannot be too often
referred to or too widely made known, that among all classes of
Spaniards, and even among the clergy themselves, are to be found men
eminently pious; men who, although outwardly submitting to the exigencies
of the worship which they are bound by their present laws to profess, are
not ignorant of the true spirit and doctrines of Christianity, and who,
perhaps, only need a more intimate acquaintance with scriptural truth in
all its purity to be transformed into a visible part of the faithful and
chosen flock of Christ, and enabled to adopt, in all its latitude, the
true gospel as the rule and standard of their faith and conduct.
The publication of this work, at the present juncture, has no other
object than to accelerate that desired transition, the influence of which
may give fecundity to the noble qualities of a nation under all aspects
interesting, worthy, and capable of figuring in the foremost rank of the
polished and regenerate.
CHAPTER I.
THE SPANISH CLERGY--Their primitive state--Their subsequent
organization--_Barraganas_--Immoral practices of the clergy--Their
wealth, and its sources--Their territorial possessions--Their influence
and incomes--Their opposition to the sciences--Their ultramontane
principles--The "pass" of the Spanish sovereign necessary to the validity
of the Pope's bulls--Doctrine of the Jansenists favoured by the ministers
of Charles III.--Port-Royal and San Isidro--Parish priests--Sources of
their income--Many of them good men, but deficient in scriptural
knowledge and teaching--Their preaching--Abolition of tithes by the
minister, Mendizabal--Effects of that measure--Poverty and present state
of the clergy--Their degraded character and unpopularity--Their timidity
in recent times of tumult--Ecclesiastical writers of the Peninsula--Power
of the Inquisition curtailed by Charles III.
Among the northern nations which invaded Europe, on the fall of the Roman
Empire, the Goths were those who most distinguished themselves by the
promptitude with which they embraced Christianity, and by the sincerity
and constancy with which they observed its precepts and adhered to its
dogmas.
When they founded the Spanish monarchy, they were in a complete state of
ignorance and barbarism; and as the clergy were at that time the sole
depositaries of the little that was known of the dead languages, science,
and literature, they were the counsellors of the sovereigns, the
directors and prime movers of the public power, and the oracles of the
court, the nobility, and the people. The Councils of Toledo, which were
true legislative bodies, better and more methodically constituted than
the assemblies of the great barons, not only legislated in religious and
ecclesiastical matters, but in all political branches of the
administration and of the government. To these celebrated assemblies is
owing the _Fuero-Juzgo_, the most ancient of the codes promulgated in the
new monarchies founded on the ruins of the empire. But what gave most
renown to these assemblies was the system which they embraced with
respect to the relations between the court of the Gothic kings and the
pontifical see. In no Catholic nation was the ecclesiastic independence
consolidated with greater vigour than in the Spanish church of those
times. In truth the Pope, as such, exercised no authority whatever,
directly or indirectly, either in the discipline or the administration of
that church. He was acknowledged as the first of its bishops, but only
as equal in power to each of them. Thus it was that the bishops of the
Spanish peninsula had formerly no need of recourse to Rome for the
presentation of candidates, the investiture of ecclesiastical dignities,
or for matrimonial and other dispensations. Spain presented, at that
time, an edifying spectacle of pure and evangelical Christianity,
resembling that which prevailed in the primitive ages of the church, when
neither councils nor traditions, nor the _motu propria_ of popes, had
corrupted the dogma and the ritual. In the fourth Eliberitan council,
celebrated in Granada, not only the worship but even the use of images,
pictures, and sculpture, was prohibited in the temples, a prohibition
before unheard of in the annals of that age,--an age in which the
practice of invoking saints had become familiar, and more importance was
beginning to be attached to the pomp of rites than to true piety and
sincere devotion. The Spanish clergy, it is true, were then powerful,
and could do much; but there is no reason to think that they abused such
power, or that their conduct was regulated, at that early period, with a
view to their temporal interests. That golden age, however, was of short
duration; at least there are strong grounds for believing that, under the
reign of Alfonso the Wise, the manners of the clergy had become greatly
corrupted, and still more so under that of John II. Their ambition had
so far increased as to provoke the rigour of the laws and of the civil
authority. It is proved by the codes of that time, by several
chronicles, and a variety of other documents worthy of credit, that the
greater number of the clergy were living openly in a state of
concubinage. The term _barraganas_ formed part of the ordinary language
of the people, as well as of that used in legislation, and was applied to
designate the paramours of the ecclesiastics: indeed, these _barraganas_
were commanded by certain sovereigns to dress in a peculiar manner, so
that they might be distinguished from virtuous women; while other
sovereigns insisted on their also living in separate buildings, called
_barraganerias_, one of which, according to tradition, was situated in
that spot in Madrid now called Puerta del Sol. In one of the ancient
codes is to be found a regulation, in virtue of which it was ordered that
no clergyman should have more than one _barragana_!
Many of the bishops were accustomed to take these creatures with them on
official visits to their dioceses. This scandal began to disappear under
the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, "the Catholic sovereigns," and from
that time the clergy, by slow degrees, began to give to their body a more
compact organization, and to introduce among their ranks a stricter
discipline. Those amendments, however, did but tend to augment their
influence and their power. But what most contributed to the
aggrandisement of that privileged class was the wealth which rapidly
accumulated in their treasury and in all their establishments.
This wealth flowed from a variety of sources. The church took its tithes
and first-fruits; and this income, slender and precarious as it was
during the wars against the Moors and the lengthened dispute between the
crowns of Castille and Arragon, increased, afterwards, to such an extent
as to produce most incredible amounts so soon as order had once become
consolidated under the firm rule of Isabella; for, then, all kinds of
useful labour began to fructify, especially those of agriculture, which
had to sustain the weight of these onerous burdens.
But besides that source of income, the churches were daily enriched by
the donations which they received from the munificence of kings and
magnates. The most meritorious act of devotion and of religion,
according to the popular notion of those times, was the endowment of a
church with lands, flocks, and plate. These fits of generosity were held
to be sufficient to absolve the donors from all their sins, and at the
hour of death, when the terror of future punishments burdened the soul of
the ambitious politician, of the assassin, of the adulterer, and of the
usurper of others' goods, a very handsome legacy, and sometimes the
abandonment of all he possessed, was considered as a safe passport to the
enjoyment of treasures in heaven. The priest, called to administer the
last consolations to the patient, never lost an opportunity of exacting
these imprudent donations; and so long did this abuse endure, and to such
an extent did it arrive and predominate in the public customs of the age,
that, under the reign of Charles III., the Council of Castille
promulgated a royal order, declaring that all such testamentary
dispositions made at the hour of death, in favour of chapels, churches,
convents, and other religious establishments, should be null and void.
The opulence which the Spanish clergy enjoyed from the conquest of
Granada until the period of invasion by the French, cannot be reduced to
calculation, nor even to any accurate conjectures. It was said of
England that, previous to the Reformation, the clergy possessed a fifth
part of the whole territory within the British Isles; of Spain it may be
said that the proportion amounted to one-third. The lands most
productive, and the estates in the most choice situations, certainly
belonged to the Spanish clergy; and there were cities, such, for example,
as Toledo, Cuenca, Leon, and Santiago, in which nearly the whole
territory belonged to their respective cathedrals.
Several other circumstances tended to strengthen the imperium of the
church. Many young men of noble families took holy orders, with a view
of aspiring to the rich prebends belonging to the cathedrals; in the
universities and in the colleges the best organised and most popular
study was that of theology, in which many Spaniards excelled. At the
same time, by means of the confessional, the clergy got power over the
conscience; they knew all the secrets of families as well as those of the
state, and there was no grave matter, concerning any class of society,
which was not submitted to the decision of some dignitary of the church.
The magnificence of the edifices consecrated to worship, the frequency
and the pomp of religious ceremonies, the alms which the bishops
distributed, the public works which they paid for, and the absolute
direction of all charitable establishments, of which they had taken the
command, were so many other favourable supports to that supremacy which
they had assumed and maintained in society.
During the reigns succeeding that of Philip II., the condescendence of
the government, the submission of the people, and the acquisition of
riches by cathedrals, colleges, and parish churches, were greatly
augmented.
The incomes of the archbishops, bishops, and canons, rose to an
incredible amount. The sees of Toledo, Seville, Santiago, and Valencia,
were endowed with much greater revenues than even some of the states in
Germany. Great as have been the efforts to investigate and ascertain
with exactitude the precise returns of these sees, it has not been found
possible to obtain any data worthy to be relied on: and in truth, all
years were not equally productive; for those revenues depended in a great
measure on the abundance or scarcity of the crops. It is, however,
certain that the archbishop of Toledo, in particular, did not receive
less, annually, than 150,000 pounds. Some prebends, particularly those
called archdeaconries, were estimated at 6000 pounds a-year, and these
were sometimes disposed of, by the crown, in favour of a cardinal or
foreign prince.
Besides the clergy employed in the cathedral and parish churches, there
were many in orders without income or benefice of any kind, and who yet
contrived to get a very decent and comfortable living by means of the
influence which they exercised in rich houses, where their presence was
regarded as a blessing from heaven. There was scarcely a family of
consideration and of wealth in any town in Spain that was not under
submission to some individual of the clergy. In this way, and deeply
interested as they were that the people thus prostrate at their feet
should not have their eyes opened, the clergy made war against the
cultivation of the sciences and the propagation of useful knowledge.
The Spanish church, however, produced many and very eminent writings on
those particular sciences which, at that time, formed part of the general
course of their studies. It also sent forth many distinguished poets,
orators, and learned men, but never was disposed to protect or to
cultivate those sciences which give to man a power over nature: thus it
was that mathematics were most shamefully neglected; in physics the
absurd doctrines of the Peripatetics predominated; and the name of
philosophy was given to a puerile and complicated dialectic which had
neither the merit of ingenious classification, nor that subtlety of
argument which distinguished the school of Aristotle.
It is easy to conceive from this situation in which the clergy was
placed, that, in point of ecclesiastical discipline, Spaniards were
extreme ultramontanes. The clergy acknowledged the Pope, not only as the
vicar of Jesus Christ,--not only as the head of the visible church, but
as superior to all councils and kings, as the possessor of the keys of
heaven and as the absolute legislator in all matters of faith and
conscience. On many occasions the bishops and the cathedral authorities
consulted the court of Rome as to whether they ought to obey or disregard
the authority of the monarch; at other times they disobeyed it openly;
and, in spite of the efforts made by the Chamber of Castille to maintain
the cause of the throne and of the law, the fear of provoking a
revolution on the part of the lower classes, entirely the creatures of
the clergy, paralysed, on more than one occasion, the zeal of the
magistrates and the action of the military chiefs.
The Spanish laws required that, in order to give validity to a pontifical
bull, it should have the approbation, or, as it was called, _the pass_ of
the crown. Sometimes, and by virtue of the representation of the Chamber
of Castille, the government refused that pass, and on such occasions the
clergy became greatly irritated, the bishops energetically insisting upon
its being given, but urging their demands with such vehemence, as even to
threaten the monarch himself with the terrible penalty of
excommunication.
The clergy sustained the excesses of the pontifical authority, and
acknowledged the principle of the universal sovereignty of the Pope. All
notions or opinions that proposed to re-establish the discipline of the
first ages of the church and to defend the rights of the bishops,
considering their authority as equal to that of the Pope in jurisdiction,
and inferior only in dignity in the hierarchy, were considered as
dangerous and as heretical as that heresy most opposed to the articles of
the faith. Yet, at the beginning of the reign of Charles III., the
progress of Jansenism in France had a considerable influence on the
opinions of the Spanish clergy. The ministers, Campomanes, Aranda, and
Floridablanca, embraced with ardour the doctrines of Port-Royal; the
canonries of the collegiate church of San Isidro, in Madrid, which had
belonged to the Jesuits, were all conferred on wise and virtuous
clergymen who were generally known as confirmed Jansenists. Indeed there
were very few of the Spanish clergy who assisted in that establishment
that were not addicted to the same doctrines.
Hitherto no mention has been made of the parish priests. In the ancient
organization of the clergy these ecclesiastics participated, in some
dioceses, in the tithes; but the principal part of their incomes arose
from the surplice-fees, called in Spanish, _de pie de altar_, which were
those payable on baptism, interment, and marriage. The quota from these
sources varied according to the pomp and luxury of the ceremonies
performed. In baptisms, this augmentation of splendour consisted chiefly
in music, flowers, and lighted candles, in the chapel where the rite was
performed. But the extravagance of the rites of interment extended
itself to a wider range; for the idea was deeply rooted in the public
mind, that the greater the expense incurred in a funeral, the greater
would be the efficacy of the service in favour of the soul of the
departed. The sums which were wont to be spent in this ceremony are
incredible; and from their results many families have been entirely
ruined. This subject will, however, be more particularly considered in a
subsequent part of this work.
In the yearly receipts of those parish priests there is an enormous
difference, which depends on the number, the class, and the wealth, of
the parishioners living within the parish. There are some cases in which
those receipts amount to nearly 2000 pounds per annum; whilst in some
others the sum total is hardly sufficient to sustain an existence of
misery and penury. Notwithstanding this deplorable condition, there have
been, it must in candour be said, notable examples of charity, zeal, and
self-denial, among the inferior classes of the parochial clergy. The
poor have frequently found in their priests consolation in their
afflictions and succour in their miseries. In small towns the priest is
the first personage of the place. But still it cannot be concealed that
there is a sad deficiency in the inculcation of the fundamental
principles of scriptural truth in the exercise of his ministry; this same
deficiency is equally observable in other Catholic countries. As a
general rule, the only instruction which children receive from the priest
is the learning to repeat from memory a very incomplete and superficial
catechism. Preaching has rarely any other object than the explanation of
some article of the faith, or a panegyric on the life of some saint.
There are no interpreters of the gospel to be heard from the Spanish
pulpit, except during the period of Lent. The preachers like rather to
refer to and expatiate largely on miracles, than to unfold the morals of
the New Testament; and, in general, it may be taken as a fact that the
immense majority of the Spanish population, and especially those of the
poorer class, have the most incomplete and erroneous ideas of the life
and doctrines of Jesus Christ.
The greatest part of what has been advanced hitherto touching the Spanish
clergy applies to that epoch which preceded the preponderance of liberal
ideas. Since the abolition of tithes, under the minister, Mendizabal,
who replaced them by moderate fixed salaries to the priests, now paid by
the state, like other public functionaries, the situation of the Spanish
clergy has entirely changed its aspect. No man of any respectable family
now enlists himself under the banners of the clergy, whose influence is
only kept up in some of the smallest and obscure towns;--in the cities it
has entirely disappeared: nor does there remain in that body sufficient
energy to make the least attempt to recover it. There have always been
in Spain, in former epochs, some ecclesiastics, eminent for their virtues
and their learning, who have commanded the respect of all classes of
society, and whose word was so powerful that criminals of the most
hardened description have fallen down at their feet; and even their
appearance, in a town of some importance, has been followed by numerous
conversions, and a great amendment of the public manners. Since the
abolition of tithes, however, there is not a name in all the
ecclesiastical state which has the least celebrity. There is now no such
thing ever heard of as an eloquent speaker, a writer notable for his
theological learning, or for works of piety and devotion. The bishops,
whose titles, generally, are owing to their political sympathies, now
live like courtiers and take part in the dissensions of parties; and the
people regard them with an indifference corresponding to the few benefits
received at their hands. There are various honourable exceptions to this
rule, but these exceptions are scarce; and if there has been of late
years a bishop of Cadiz, an admirable model of all Christian virtues,
there are many others, such as that of Barcelona, impregnated with the
maxims of the most absurd ultramontanism, and who are the declared
enemies of all that contributes to make human society moral and
enlightened.
It is very common to see priests begging in the streets. Few of them are
now permitted to visit in respectable families, or even to mix in general
society; and the strangest of all things connected with such a change is,
that the clergy themselves know the state of degradation into which they
have fallen--the total loss of their influence and of their
importance--without making the least effort to raise themselves from that
state of humiliation and abasement.
On two recent occasions have been seen evident proofs of the utter
prostration of that class which once domineered over the entire nation.
When the famous Merino attempted, in the summer of 1851, to assassinate
Isabella II., and also during the political convulsions of July 1854,
from the results of which the liberal party remained triumphant, so
fearful were the clergy of exciting the popular indignation, and so
persuaded were they that public opinion was against them, that their
prelates advised them not only to abstain from appearing in the streets
in their clerical costume, but even to discontinue the use of the
church-bells, with which they had been in the habit of calling their
congregations to the mass and other religious exercises. This advice was
followed with as much eagerness and precipitation by the clergy, as
though they wished to hide themselves from public notice, or as though
they had been guilty of some illicit and scandalous offence.
It is clear that, to some extent, such a transition is the result of that
state of poverty to which the secular clergy have been reduced; and hence
it is that many priests, particularly those in the country, have given
themselves up to a variety of secular pursuits and speculations, which
are expressly prohibited by the canon laws, and which appear incompatible
with the dignity and character of their ministry. Some of them have
become publicans, others coach-proprietors, and not a few of them
smugglers on the coasts and frontiers,--a propensity, however, to which
they have always been addicted, even in the times of their greatest
prosperity.
We have spoken of the ultramontanism of the Spanish clergy. Never had
those doctrines more fanatical defenders, nor sectarians more fiery
partisans, than the ecclesiastical writers of the Peninsula; the dogma of
the infallibility of the Pope, the superiority of his jurisdiction with
respect to the bishops and to the general councils, was propagated not
only in books but in the pulpit and the confessional. Nevertheless the
enlightened ministers of Charles III., Aranda, Campomanes, and
Floridablanca (the first initiated in the school of French philosophers
of the eighteenth century, and the last two in that of the learned and
pious recluses of Port-Royal), after having procured from the king the
abolition and banishment of the Jesuits, desired to foment in Spain the
opinions which those eminent ministers of the crown maintained against
falsifiers of Christian truth; and, to that end, they founded a
collegiate church in the principal convent which those fathers had in
Madrid, conferring its canonries upon ecclesiastics who professed the
same doctrines as themselves, and who were, besides, generally venerated
for the profundity of their scientific knowledge, as well as for the
sanctity of their lives. The canons of San Isidro, to whom allusion has
already been made, were Jansenists; and, consequently, they professed
opinions diametrically opposed to those of the Spanish clergy. According
to them, as has already been intimated, the episcopal dignity was equal
in all those who possessed it, and the pope was no more than the first
among equals--_primus inter pares_; the right to confer dispensations was
not vested exclusively in the court of Rome, but each bishop could
exercise it with equal authority in his diocese; external discipline of
the church belonged of right to the regal authority, as also did that of
presentation to benefices; the bulls and other papal precepts were not to
be obeyed without the indispensable requisite of the monarch's
approbation; and, finally, the Pope, as well as the rest of the bishops,
was inferior in authority to the general council, in which was
concentrated the legislative power of the church, whether with respect to
the dogma or discipline and administration.
The boldness of these tenets excited the displeasure and irritation of
the Inquisition; but the power of that formidable tribunal had already
notably declined. Charles III. had taken two means calculated to
militate against its preponderance, to humble its pride, and deprive it
of the faculty of exercising its sanguinary vengeance. In the first
place, the penalty of death was prohibited, and it could only impose the
punishment of confiscation, imprisonment, and banishment. In the second
place, he ordered that one of the judges of each tribunal of the
Inquisition should be a secular person; and, for the discharge of the
duties of these functionaries, men were selected in whom was reposed all
the confidence of the ministers. The inquisitors knew that, once
committed to those coadjutors, they could not expose themselves to the
beginning of a struggle in which all inferiority was on their side. The
canons of San Isidro were not, ostensibly, persecuted; but no means were
spared to discredit them in public opinion. Thus it was that they lived
isolated, and were regarded with mistrust by all the clergy; and with
them disappeared from the Peninsula the only element of opposition to the
tyranny of Rome, which had been notorious in the Spanish Church from the
times of the Gothic monarchy.
CHAPTER II.
MONACHISM--The superiority of the monastic over the secular
clergy--Reasons for it--Orders of monks--The Carthusians--Their
advancement in agriculture and love of the fine arts--Their seclusion and
mode of living--Only learned men admitted to their order--Their form of
salutation--Curious adventure of a lady found in the cell of a
Carthusian--The Hieronimites--The Mendicant orders--"Pious works"--The
_Questacion_--Decline of Spain accounted for--Vows of chastity, poverty,
and obedience--How vow of poverty eluded--_La honesta_--Vicar-general of
the Franciscan orders--His immense income--Religious orders have produced
many great and good men--Cardinal Ximenez de Cisneros--His celebrated
Bible--Corruption of monastic orders--Insubordination of friars to the
bishops--The Jesuits--Deplorable reputation of their literature--Pascal,
Escobar, Sanchez, and Mariana--Suppression of the Jesuits by Charles
III.--Their subsequent expulsion by Espartero under Isabella
II.--Nunneries, though spared on suppression of religious houses, utterly
useless--The Pope's attempt to perpetuate them by _concordat_--The lives
of the nuns described--Their means of subsistence is now
precarious--Convent de las Huelgas.
All the power, all the influence, and all the riches of the secular
clergy, such as we have described them in the preceding chapter, would
not have been sufficient completely to enslave the Spanish nation under
the baneful dominion of Rome, if its unwearied ambition for command and
power had not found out an instrument, much more efficacious, in the
institution of Monachism, the establishment of which propagated itself on
the Spanish soil with more rapidity and in greater numbers than in any
other Catholic nation.
The superiority of the monastic clergy in comparison with the secular, as
to popularity and numbers, was owing to many causes. In the first place,
to become one of the clergy, two things were necessary, and neither of
these were within the reach of the lower classes of the people, viz.,
theological attainments and a _congrua_, which latter word comprehended
the property, income, or pension, indispensable to ensure to the aspirant
a proper and competent maintenance. In many rich families there was,
besides the entail (_el mayorazgo_) pertaining exclusively to the eldest
son, another inheritable portion--the mortmain (_main-morte_), as
inalienable as the entailed estates themselves, and designed for that
individual of the family who might desire to adopt the ecclesiastic
state. These inheritable provisions were called _capellanias_, and
generally the brother, or cousin, or nephew, to whom this right,
separated from the chief inheritance, belonged, took holy orders, but
might or might not practically follow the vocation, by the exercise of
those functions, the discharge of those duties, and submission to those
privations, imposed on one who takes upon himself so high and responsible
a calling. Although there was much laxity in the observance of those
requirements, there were not wanting bishops who insisted on their most
rigorous execution; so that in many dioceses there was great difficulty
in gaining admission to the ranks of the clergy. But none of those
obstacles presented themselves in seeking admission to the monasteries,
or convents. Their doors were constantly open to the poorest and the
most ignorant. In their interior organization there was a sufficient
variety of employment for every class of human beings; the mason, the
carpenter, the simple journeyman, possessed of no other instruments than
his muscular force, was eligible to become a useful member of the holy
community; and, as in the act of taking upon him the habit of the order,
he had guaranteed to him a subsistence and all the conveniences of life,
and at the same time that the habit itself opened to him the doors of
great houses and palaces and placed him on a level with the most elevated
circles, so also these two powerful allurements attracted innumerable
persons to the cloisters, and multiplied in a most surprising degree the
numerical force of the monastic orders.
These orders divided themselves into two great ramifications, the monks
and the friars, and composed what may be called the aristocracy and the
democracy of monachism. The monks were distinguished from the friars by
their immense wealth, by the possessions of their monasteries, which were
generally situated out of, and at a great distance from, towns, by the
dignity of their manners, and by certain peculiarities in their internal
government, over which there reigned a certain spirit of retirement and
love of seclusion, that separated them from worldly things and the
interests and passions of profane society.
The principal orders of monks established in Spain were the Benedictine,
the Bernardine, the Carthusian, and the Hieronimites. The last two were
superior to all the rest in number, importance, and wealth, and it is
only respecting them that we shall treat in this chapter.
The Carthusians were opulent landowners; they lived in the midst of their
possessions, and, to a considerable extent, cultivated their own lands.
In these operations they rendered great service to agriculture; they
practised the science with great care and knowledge; they brought their
productions to great perfection. The breed of the Carthusian horses of
Xeres was notoriously the best in Europe. In most of the Carthusian
establishments they had schools in which education was given gratuitously
to the children of their tenantry, and to those of the poor of the
neighbouring towns. Under this point of view, it is certain that the
monasteries of the Carthusians contributed greatly to the extension and
improvement of agriculture and education in Spain. They were also
notable for the stimulus which they gave to the fine arts; for their
churches and monasteries were true museums of sculpture, painting, and
architecture. In that of Granada, all travellers admire the beautiful
paintings of its cloisters and refectory, the magnificent marbles of its
chapels and sacristy, and the good taste and richness of the ornaments
which cover all parts of the edifice.
The Carthusians observed, as fundamental rules of their order, silence
and seclusion. They had but few acts which they performed in common, and
these only on holidays. Each Carthusian lived in his cell, but each cell
was a house, full of conveniences, with an extensive garden, in which
they cultivated with the greatest care fruits and vegetables of the most
delicious kinds. They were forbidden to give presents or even alms; but
they allowed visitors to take from their gardens whatever they pleased.
In Granada there was a famous Father Reyes who devoted himself to the
cultivation of flowers, and from his garden all the elegant ladies of the
city were furnished with the choicest descriptions. Their male friends
were sent to gather them, nor was the reverend father altogether ignorant
of the fair uses to which they were about to be applied.
The Carthusian dined alone in his cell, into which his food was conveyed
by means of a _torno_, a kind of revolving cylindrical cupboard with
shelves, into which were put the numerous and abundant dishes composing
the dinner. The _torno_ being then spun round on its axis, the shelves
were unloaded of their sumptuous contents by the Carthusian himself.
As these monks were prohibited the use of meat, they kept up in their
monasteries a great stock of live fish and a number of turtles; these
latter being a delicacy they greatly prized. The place in which they
killed these turtles was called the _Galapagar_. They fed them in a
curious manner: at night there was thrown for them, into a large dry
tank, the carcase of a cow or a calf; and such was the voracity of the
amphibious animals, that, in the morning, nothing remained of these
carcases but the bones.
The dinner of the Carthusian generally consisted of eight or nine
distinct dishes, and their friends were accustomed to pay their visits
about the hour of dinner; for, as invitations were not allowed, they were
dispensed with. The wines they grew were always those of the best
quality, and there were no persons in all Spain who fared so sumptuously
and deliciously as did those devoted recluses.
None but presbyters were admitted to the Carthusian order, and even these
were generally only such as had exercised some dignity in cathedral or
collegiate churches; hence nearly all of them were learned men--men of
good morals and great experience in the affairs of the world. Sometimes
a military man of good attainments, a person high in the ministerial
office, or a member of the higher courts of justice, sought admission
within their walls; and although such acquisition was considered as very
useful and very honourable, they were admitted only after having for some
years belonged to the secular clergy and taken holy orders.
In a kind of life so extraordinary, so distinct, and so marked among all
human associations, they were unable to form relations of friendship,
even among individuals of the same community. They, therefore, seldom
saw and scarcely knew each other. Their salutation, when they met, was
brief but expressive; the senior began with _Morir hemos_, {52a} and the
junior answered, _Ya_, _lo sabemos_. {52b} Beyond this the conversation
did not extend. Once a-year the chapter met together to decide on the
urgent and important matters of business of their society; and once in
three years to elect a prior and a _procurator_, who were the only two
persons authorised to treat with the world without, and direct the
material interests of the establishment.
There is recorded of one of those Carthusian monasteries a narrative of a
circumstance which at first was attempted to be concealed by all possible
means, but at last came to be made known and fully authenticated. The
case is shortly told. There was in that monastery a monk, who, for many
years prior to his entering on a monastic life, had encouraged a vehement
passion for one of the principal ladies of the city. The flame was
mutual; but the lovers finding great obstacles in the way of their union,
agreed to wait, in the hope that time might afford a favourable
opportunity of realising their wishes. The father of the lady offered
her hand to a gentleman very high in the hierarchy. She, not having
sufficient courage to resist the parental authority, obeyed the mandate,
thus sacrificing herself on the altar of filial obedience. The lover
gave himself up a victim of despair, abandoned the world, and retired to
the monastery. A few months after the marriage the husband died. The
lady's affection revived; the flame was kindled anew in her heart; and
she formed the resolution of uniting herself with the object of her first
love, and of overcoming all obstacles which stood in the way of her
determination. In male attire she wandered long in the neighbourhood of
the monastery, informing herself most minutely of its internal position,
and reflecting on the means of introducing herself to the cell of her
beloved Carthusian. The stream of water which served to irrigate the
gardens of the monastery, entered a wall by a large semicircular arch or
opening near the garden itself. The lady, prodigal in the expenditure of
money, and in the employment of faithful and trustworthy agents, procured
a raft to be constructed, by means of which, all other things being
prepared, she ventured through the opening, and was carried down the
stream to the desired spot. The secret was kept. No one had the least
suspicion of this extraordinary voyage, nor was it discovered until many
years afterwards, when the monks observing that this particular one of
their number had not for a length of time been present at any of the
devotional exercises prescribed by the rules of their order, were
desirous of learning the cause of his absence. They entered his cell,
and found to their astonishment, his dead body, a lady, and four
children! The civil power was, at first, about to investigate the
affair, but, in order to avert the scandal that would result from such a
proceeding, all inquiry was suspended, and the fate of that unhappy woman
and her family was never known. The whole account seems romantic. The
facts appear incredible, but they have long been established on
unquestionable authority.
Like the Carthusians, the Hieronimites had their establishments far from
towns and cities. They were very wealthy, but did not cultivate their
own lands; they let them out on hire, and showed great consideration to
their tenants. These fathers devoted themselves, almost entirely, to
teaching, to singing, and to sacred music. From their halls have been
sent forth to the world many vocalists, organists, and composers, of
eminence. When Philip II. built the Escurial, he confided that sumptuous
edifice to the Hieronimites; and so high a position did the prior hold in
the hierarchy and in the state, that he was privileged to enter, at all
times, into the king's apartments without asking leave to do so, and his
coachman and other servants were permitted to wear the royal livery.
General opinion accuses these reverend fathers of too great a propensity
to indulge in gastronomy, and it is related of them that, in prescribing
for themselves, as a rule for their supper rations, one dozen of
mincemeat-balls (_abondigas_), they afterwards, by a supplementary rule,
extended that number to thirteen, from which circumstance the number
thirteen is generally called, in Spain, "_the friars' dozen_."
The inferior section of Monachism, viz., that of the Friars, is composed
of many orders, among which the most important and numerous were the
following: _Mercenarios_, or Friars of Mercy (_de la Merced_), founded
with the exclusive object of ransoming Christian captives who groaned in
the dungeons of the Barbary States; the _Carmelites_,--_calzados_,
wearing shoes and stockings, and _descalzos_, without either; the
_Augustines_, _calzados_ and _descalzos_; the _Preachers_, or
_Dominicans_; the Friars of _St John of God_, whose duty was to serve
sick persons in the hospitals attached to their convents; and above all
the large family of _St Francis_, divided into four great ramifications,
viz., the _Franciscan_ properly speaking; the _Fathers of Observance_;
the _Fathers of St Diego_; and the _Capuchins_. All these orders had
convents in the principal towns of the Peninsula, and its colonies. In
some cities,--as, for example, Madrid, Seville, and Toledo,--there were
as many as twenty or thirty of these establishments, many of which
contained from one hundred to one hundred and fifty inmates; but the
average may be stated, with reason, at thirty for each convent. The
_calzados_ orders were at liberty to hold property; but the _descalzos_,
in whose number are to be reckoned all the family of Franciscans, were
strictly forbidden to do so; and hence they lived, exclusively, on the
alms of the faithful.
These alms were of various kinds. Those called pious works (_obras
pias_), consisted of certain rents, or pensions, granted to a convent on
condition that certain masses should be said therein, during the year,
for the soul of the grantor. Rich men who had acquired a fortune by
unfair means, or through an extortionate usury, were induced to expect
forgiveness of their sins, if they left large sums of money to the
fathers of the convent the saint of which they were accustomed to worship
or venerate, and to whom they usually paid their devotions. Some of
those benefactors, most generously, defrayed the expenses of a religious
festival, from which resulted a considerable profit to the convent in
which that festival was celebrated. Others repaired conventual edifices
at their own expense, or enlarged them by making extensive wings or other
additions, in which there was always a profuse display of marble, bronze,
and other precious materials. But the principal source of the revenue of
the mendicant orders was that called the _questacion_. {57} Every
morning each convent poured out from its gates a certain number of lay
brothers (_legos_), each being furnished with a wallet over his shoulder;
and it was the duty of each to traverse the whole town, begging alms for
his respective convent. These pious beggars visited, one by one, the
shops of the trades-people, and places most frequented, calling at the
houses of the poor as well as at those of the rich. The alms which they
thus received were chiefly in bread, meat, eggs, and every description of
eatables, besides small copper coins generally contributed by the poor,
and which were not the least important parts of these gatherings. In
this way thousands of robust, able-bodied men, not only maintained
themselves, but were enabled to live in the lap of luxury, for many
years, without contributing, on their part, one farthing to the public
treasury, but on the contrary diminishing, immensely, the population and
the number of those engaged in cultivating the soil and in other useful
labour. Was not this alone sufficient to explain the deplorable state of
the economy of the Spanish Peninsula, the paucity of its inhabitants, the
backwardness of its agriculture, its want of capital, and the nakedness
and poverty of its fields and its towns? Indolence being, so to speak,
thus sanctified, what stimulus could there be for productive labour? Why
should men have fatigued themselves by arduous employments, when the
convent offered them not only food, raiment, and lodging, but even a
respectable position in society, without further trouble than that of
passing a few hours in the choir of the church, to confess penitents,
assist now and then at the bedside of a dying person, and to preach an
occasional sermon, for which they always received a decent payment?
In all the religious orders three vows were exacted, namely, those of
chastity, poverty, and obedience. Of the first we shall have some
remarks to make when we come to speak of celibacy in the ecclesiastical
state. That of poverty was eluded in a very simple manner; individuals
were held bound by that vow, but communities were entirely free to accept
and acquire property; and thus it was that the greater number of the
convents lived in opulence, and the friars enjoyed all the conveniences
of life. The friar delivered to the chief of his community all that came
to his hands, either as alms or by way of salary for the masses he had to
say and the sermons he preached.
Each order had, at its head, a superior chief, called the Vicar-general;
the chief functionary of each province was called the Provincial, and
that of each convent the Guardian in the Franciscan orders, and the Prior
in all the rest. These personages were exempt from the vow of poverty;
they had, tacitly, a dispensation for the use of money, under the
supposition that all they received or possessed would be by them laid out
for the good of their community. Every three years the provincial
visited all the convents in his jurisdiction, and it was the universal
custom, that in the act of finishing his visit, the prior of the visited
convent put into his hands a purse of gold. This contribution was called
_la honesta_. The vicar-general of the Franciscan orders, generally a
Spaniard, received another species of tribute, which put him on a level
with the most opulent men in Europe. Each convent of the three Orders in
all parts of the globe sent to him, weekly, the largest amount it had
received for any one mass said during that week. These orders had no
less than two hundred and seventy provinces, and in them twelve thousand
convents, {59a} from which may be conceived the immense sums of money
that came into his power. This personage enjoyed the honours of a
grandee of Spain, and was always in great favour with its sovereigns, on
whom he lavished money. Father Campany, who occupied this post during
the reign of Charles IV., was accustomed to send to the queen, Mary
Louisa, yearly, large quantities of bricks made of fine chocolate, and
studded all over, within and without, with solid gold doubloons.
The last vicar-general of the order was the celebrated Father Fray Cirilo
de Alameda, now Archbishop of Burgos, well known for his attachment to
the cause of Don Carlos, during the civil war between that prince and
Queen Christina.
The vow of obedience was observed with the most rigorous exactness. The
chief of each convent was a despot to whose mandates it was not possible
to offer the least resistance. All his inferiors, except those ordained
to the priesthood, spoke to him only on their knees. The most tyrannical
precepts were obeyed with the greatest docility. It would often occur
that the guardian, or the prior, wishing to exercise influence in some
powerful family, commanded one of his friars to use all possible means of
gaining an introduction, so that the end might be accomplished. In this
way they became possessed of great power over the most important families
in the chief cities and towns of the kingdom; and from these families
they received large donations and handsome legacies.
The penal code of the convents provided for certain offences the
punishment of flagellation, imprisonment in a dungeon for indeterminate
periods, living on bread and water, and public confession of sins. The
mildest punishment consisted in being compelled to eat off the ground,
kneeling, at the hour of the refectory. The friar who by his conduct had
become incorrigible, and worthy of the severest punishment, was sent
away, for the remainder of his life, to one of the convents situated in
desert places.
All the religious orders of Spain have produced many men eminent for
science and virtue, and among these may be reckoned one of the greatest
and most distinguished statesmen that ever governed in that
country,--such was the Cardinal Ximenez de Cisneros, minister of
Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic sovereigns, and of Charles V. This
cardinal was the founder of the proud university of Alcala; he was the
conqueror of Oran, and the great reformer in all branches of the
administration and of the government.
The sacred sciences owe to him inexpressible benefits for his famous
Complutense Polyglot Bible, one of the most correct and splendid editions
of the sacred writings hitherto published. One of the few copies now
extant of that monument of piety and wisdom is to be found in the British
Museum. Such men, however, were, it must be admitted, extremely rare
exceptions, which do not weaken the force of our objections to the whole
system of monastic institutions.
The corruption of the monastic orders began during the earliest times of
the monarchy. In the time of Isabella the Catholic, the immorality of
the friars had arrived at such a height as to induce that eminent woman,
led by the counsels of the Cardinal Cisneros, to demand of Pope Alexander
VI. a bull permitting her to introduce a radical reform among the
religious orders in Spain. The Pope resisted, but, ultimately, was
obliged to cede to the Spanish court; and Isabella checked, for some
years, the disorders which brought so much scandal on the nation. The
fact is, that the friars formed a separate state, independent of the
government, and even of the bishops; they acknowledged no authority but
that of the Pope, and their communications with the court of Rome were as
frequent as they were private and mysterious. The bishops often claimed
the right to exercise their own authority over this part of the
ecclesiastical state, but always in vain; and although the Chamber of
Castille, which was the supreme tribunal, lent its support to those just
pretensions, that support was always disregarded by the pontifical court.
The friars never would submit themselves to the bishops, except to
receive holy orders from them; and whenever these were refused, although
it might be on strong and just grounds, the friar had recourse at once to
Rome, and returned from thence ordained.
We have not entered, in our list of religious orders, that of the
Jesuits, because these formed an entirely separate class, and the
greatest insult that could be committed against a Jesuit was to call him
a friar. The Spanish Jesuits, like those throughout all Europe, were, in
their exterior conduct, modest and decorous. They mixed but little with
the lower classes of society, and their chief occupation was to direct
the consciences of eminent persons, and particularly those of kings,
bishops, and ministers. In Spain, as in all other places, they took a
large share in politics, they patronised good studies, and accumulated
great wealth. If jesuitical casuistry had not its birth in Spain, at
least the greater part of its ecclesiastical writers, who propagated and
defended that absurd and immoral conceit, were Spaniards, as may be seen
on reference to the catalogue of them published by Pascal, in his
_Lettres d'un Provincial_. The names of Escobar and of Sanchez have left
a deplorable reputation for them in this branch of ecclesiastic
literature. The treatise _De Matrimonio_ of the latter contains such
profound immorality, and such dangerous and obscene queries and
doctrines, that the Inquisition included the publication in its index of
prohibited books. But far greater scandal was produced throughout Europe
by the book entitled _De Rege et Regis Institutione_, written by the
celebrated Jesuit, Juan de Mariana. This man, truly great, and whom
Gibbon places in the number of the most distinguished historians of
ancient and modern times, wrote that work, apparently with the view of
assisting in the education of Philip IV., but in reality to justify the
assassination committed in France on the person of Henry III., and
probably to prepare for that of his successor. Mariana sustains, with
warmth, with eloquence, and with erudition, the dogma of regicide;
determines the cases in which the commission of that crime is not only
lawful but necessary and praiseworthy; lays down rules by which the deed
should be executed, under certain and determinate circumstances; and even
goes the length of excusing the use of poison, if other means fail, to
get rid of a tyrant! The book was prohibited by all the governments of
Europe, and burnt publicly in Paris by the hands of the common hangman.
That culpable and highly dangerous doctrine was not the only one of the
same character with which the Jesuits poisoned the public morals in
Europe. The system of ethics which they taught in their classes, and
propounded from the pulpit and confessional, had for its basis the famous
doctrine of probablism, by means of which all crimes found a powerful
subterfuge through which their perpetrators were enabled to avert
responsibility and punishment. For all kinds of excess, that doctrine
afforded excuses; and hence falsehood, perjury, robbery, and even murder
and adultery, might be converted by it into innocent actions, by means of
the sophisms and frauds with which that absurd theory was interwoven. To
this was united, in order to exasperate opinion against such men, the
irresistible influence which these Jesuits exercised in all the courts.
Meanwhile the immense wealth which they were accumulating, by means of
commerce with the West Indies and in South America, betrayed, in the
so-called Company of Jesus, a mundane and ambitious spirit totally
incompatible with that which ought to prevail in every religious and
cloistral establishment. About the middle of the eighteenth century, all
the enlightened men of Europe exclaimed against that company, and
ardently desired its extermination; and, although many works were
published against it, and the voices of many religious orders were raised
in denouncing it to the pontifical throne and to the public, such was the
power and dexterity with which it neutralised these hostile dispositions,
that nobody dared to attack its front, until a king of Spain, the
illustrious Charles III., undertook that great work, and carried it on to
its consummation with as much resolution as ability.
We have already described the characters of those good and able ministers
who surrounded that monarch, and we have alluded to their Jansenistic
doctrines, which were diametrically opposed to those professed by the
Jesuits. But neither the upright principles nor enlarged ideas of the
monarch, nor yet the influence exercised by Aranda, Campomanes,
Floridablanca, and Roda, would have been sufficient to induce him to take
a measure so violent, if there had not intervened a circumstance which
necessarily appeared, in his eyes, an outrage on his dignity, a wound on
his self-respect, and a threat against the legitimacy of his rights.
The king was as much a Jansenist as his ministers. The Jesuits knew it,
and resolved to make a secret war against him, which should terminate in
his dethronement. Father Rizzio, General of the Jesuits established in
Rome, gave orders to all the chiefs of the convents belonging to their
institution to propagate, by means of their subalterns, as well by
private conversations as through the confessional, the important secret
that Charles III. was the illegitimate son of Ferdinand VI., and that,
consequently, he ought to be considered as a usurper of the throne of his
reputed father. The minister, Roda, intercepted a correspondence
containing irrefragable proofs of that abominable intrigue; and this was
sufficient to make the king resolve upon a course of action which he had
refrained from for some time, at the instance of his ministers, through
fear of offending the court of Rome and of bringing a scandal on the
Christian world. The king had no power to suppress a religious order;
but he could, as chief of the state, expel from his territory any persons
whomsoever, and this was the part which he took with respect to the
individuals of the Company of Jesuits. The execution of this grand
design was a master-work of foresight and prudence. The civil
authorities of all the towns having Jesuitical establishments, as well in
Spain as in the colonies, received a sealed packet from the government.
On opening the outer cover was found an order that the interior packet
was not to be opened till a certain day and at a certain hour, and in the
presence of the subaltern authorities, and a most severe injunction to
keep even that operation secret till the moment of its execution. On the
arrival of the day and hour appointed the packets were opened, as had
been previously arranged, simultaneously; and then was found, in each, an
order to take immediate possession of the houses of the Jesuits, to
sequester their goods, and transmit, without delay of time, their persons
to the nearest port, in which would be found vessels already waiting to
receive them on board, and convey them into Italy. This was done, at the
same instant, in all places for hundreds of leagues in extent, without
the Jesuits, with all their cunning, having received a breath of
information, or entertained a suspicion, as to the stroke impending over
them; and, what is still more strange, without having given rise to the
least symptom of complaint or disapprobation. On the contrary, the other
religious orders, who had been offended by the haughty bearing of the
Jesuits, and who beheld their opulence and preponderance with envy,
celebrated their fall without restraint, and considered it as a triumph
of the true religion over the dangerous novelties which these men had
introduced.
From that period nobody cared for the Jesuits nor thought of them, and
the rest of the reigns of Charles III. and Charles IV. passed without a
single voice being raised in their favour.
In 1817, Ferdinand VII., released from his captivity in France, and ruled
entirely by the persecuting and fanatical party, not satisfied with
having re-established the Inquisition, wished also to recall the Jesuits.
The Council of Castille, which he consulted, _pro forma_, on that
business, showed itself favourable, moved by the able report of his
fiscal, Gutierez de la Huerta, a man known for his Voltairean opinions,
who was suspected of having received a large sum of money to defend, with
energy, the cause of fanaticism and of intolerance. The few Jesuits who
have outlived their expulsion, and who are scattered over some of the
towns of Italy, are returning to the Peninsula in such small numbers,
that they are scarcely enough to occupy the ancient establishment of San
Isidro in Madrid. Their installation, which was announced as an epoch of
triumph, disappointed the expectation of the court, and of their friends.
Those extraordinary beings, whose dress, customs, and even affected
Italian accent, were opposed to the national habits and the ideas of the
new generation, were beheld by the public with the most perfect
indifference. It was said publicly that they were strangers, and that
they despised their country; that they ate _maccaroni_ instead of
_garbanzos_; {67} and people spread about innumerable other epigrams and
satires against them, regardless of the government police, and even
without fear of the inquisitors. But what most tended to destroy their
reputation was the circumstance that none of them were in a condition to
instruct youth, and that, in order to fill the professorships of their
college, they were obliged to take their professors from the secular
ranks, some of them notorious for their independent and
anti-Roman-Catholic opinions. When they began to recruit novices, they
were unable to find any decent men, or known family, who would submit
their children to their rule; and their noviciate was consequently
composed of only ninety young persons, and these drawn from the lowest
classes of society.
For the space of seventeen years they maintained themselves in this
precarious condition, without advancing one step in their popularity, and
even without exhibiting any of the qualities which had given confidence
to their rule in former times. Far from captivating the will of the
people, they exasperated it to such a degree, that in 1834, after the
death of the king, the people of Madrid, in one of those moments of
madness and irritation so frequent after the scourge of the cholera,
penetrated the establishment of those holy fathers, and inhumanly
sacrificed them to their fury. Even to this day the mystery which
covered that sanguinary catastrophe has never entirely been revealed.
One thing is certain, that in spite of the religious ideas of Spaniards,
and of the superstitious veneration with which they beheld a religious
habit, the Jesuits were immolated without causing one murmur of
fanaticism or one tear of compassion.
It is but a few years ago that the Spanish government had the
inexpressible condescendence to allow a community of Jesuits to establish
itself in the magnificent convent of Loyola, the country of their
founder. The last revolution which happened in that country offered them
an opportunity of putting in practice those absolute principles which
have always governed their conduct. The government of Espartero,
informed of their secret intrigues, by which they contrived to agitate
the public mind in the Basque provinces in favour of Don Carlos, ordered
them to be expelled to the Balearic Islands; but they, fearful perhaps of
severer measures being adopted against them, and convinced of the general
hatred in which they were held by the people, fled to France, from whence
it is probable they will not attempt to recross the frontier.
Monachism, then, has entirely disappeared from Spain, where only two
convents remain for the instruction of those who are destined for the
priesthood in the Philippine Islands. These men live within the
cloisters according to the ancient regime; but they are forbidden to
appear in public in the costumes of their respective orders. The
preservation of those two establishments was considered indispensable for
the preparation of materials for the government of those remote
possessions, where the Indians are accustomed to obey the priest, and
look upon him with more respect than that shown to the civil authority,
and where their influence is sufficient, according to general opinion, to
put down that revolutionary spirit which has despoiled Spain of her
splendid dominions in South America. All this, however plausible, may
arise out of a mistaken policy. New political ideas and legislation,
under constitutional rule, have respected the convents of the nuns. One
can scarcely conceive of this inconsistency on the part of governments
which, under the name of liberty, have ruled Spain in these latter times.
If the abolition of the convents of friars had for its chief ground the
uselessness of those who inhabited them, it must be admitted that
infinitely more useless is the life of a nun, consecrated to perpetual
idleness, and without further occupation than that of assisting in the
choir and in devotional practices, to which duties she could equally
resign herself in the bosom of her own family.
The religious communities of women have the same denominations as the
convents of friars, and they call themselves Augustines, Franciscans,
Benedictines, &c. The respective rules of their organization do not
exact from them, in any case, more duties than those of a contemplative
life; and, in reality, there are now but few of those convents of nuns
whose inmates dedicate themselves to the task of giving to persons of
their own sex even the imperfect and limited education which, after all,
forms no part of that useful knowledge required by modern civilization.
The Spanish nuns are, absolutely, some of the most insignificant of
beings. There is nothing recorded of them either good or bad, and for
many centuries we have no account of any Spanish nun distinguished for
her talents, her writings, or even for her eminent virtues. In their
conversation, they display a childish simplicity and an unwearied
curiosity, together with an extraordinary deficiency of knowledge as it
respects the fundamental truths of the Christian faith. The amusements
with which they while away their secluded lives are reduced to those of
making sweets (_dulces_), dressing images of saints, embroidering
scapularies, {71a} and other such-like frivolities. A celebrated living
poet has characterised them with great propriety and truth in the
following epitaph:--
"Aqui yace Sor Belen,
Que hizo almibares mui bien,
Y paso la vida entera
Vistiendo ninos de cera." {71b}
Except the convents of nuns of the mendicant orders, the greater part of
them, in Spain, possessed, prior to the constitutional regime,
considerable inheritances. These, however, having been, by a decree of
the Cortes, converted and sold as national property, all their means are
reduced to a bare subsistence on a small pension which _ought_ now to be
paid from the public treasury; but as that obligation has frequently been
neglected in consequence of the repeated disturbances which have
interrupted the peace of the monarchy, those unhappy women have often
been overwhelmed with the greatest privations and misery. In such cases
Christian charity has lent its succour, and all classes of the state have
contributed to their relief. The government, on different occasions, has
prohibited the admission of novices to these convents of nuns, in order
that death itself might, without violence, extinguish those institutions,
which are contrary to the ideas of the age. But this salutary provision
has been imprudently eluded by the bishops, and recently modified by an
article of the _concordat_ effected with the court of Rome a few years
ago, and which is everywhere unpopular.
One of the great evils resulting from the continuance of these nuns in
Spain is, that they occupy numerous edifices worthy of a better purpose,
and generally in the best situations in populous cities. Only one
convent of this class deserves particular mention, on account of the
great historical recollections connected with its existence, for the
singularity of its organization, and for the pious object of its
institution. It is called the Convent _de las Huelgas_, and is situated
at a short distance from Burgos.
This magnificent establishment, founded and enriched by ancient monarchs,
maintained an hospital in which a great number of invalids were attended
to with the greatest care. The abbess wore the mitre and _baculo_ like
the bishops, and exercised both civil and criminal jurisdiction in the
vast dominions belonging to the convent; she was called Senora de _horca
y cuchillo_, {72} and was the chief of several ecclesiastical and secular
officers. The sumptuous church of this convent contained within its
walls the ashes of many of the kings and princes of ancient Spanish
dynasties.
CHAPTER III.
CELIBACY AND MORALS.--Illicit relations formed by the clergy--Shameless
avowal of their fruits--Ferocious character of love in the
cloisters--Three flagrant cases--Murder of a young lady by her confessor,
the Carmelite of San Lucar--His trial and sentence--Murder by a wife of
her husband under the direction of her confessor, the Capuchine of
Cuenca--His trial, imprisonment, and escape--Murder of a lady by the
Agonizante of Madrid--His trial and execution--Scandalous occurrences in
the Convent of the Basilios of Madrid--Forcible entry of the civil
power--Murder of the abbot--Suppression of inquiry--Shameful profligacy
of the Capuchines of Cascante and the nuns of a neighbouring
convent--Mode of its discovery--Imprisonment of inmates of both
convents--Removal of prisoners--Their mysterious escape--Exemplary
performance of vows in some cases--Dangers of celibacy--Spanish women and
their influence on society.
Religious celibacy has been justly censured, by true Christians, as
opposed to the ends of creation, to the spirit of the gospel, and the
good order of human society. If so severe a prohibition can scarcely be
observed without great mortification and inconvenience by a few,--a very
small number of men, endued with an aptitude which places them above the
ordinary laws of humanity,--what shall we say to the possibility of its
exercise by men with no such fitness for the task,--men of a nation whose
very climate is incessantly soliciting the expansion of the sensual
faculties,--a nation of whose social organization frequent intercourse in
all the affairs of life between the two sexes is one of the most
essential and necessary elements? We have already alluded to the state
of concubinage in which the Spanish clergy were living prior to the reign
of Isabella the Catholic. But we shall not be guilty of an injustice in
admitting, that from that period until our own times a great number of
the Spanish clergy, as well regular as secular, have borne the yoke with
singular patience, and have, with exemplary self-denial, resigned
themselves to the severe privation imposed upon them by that ordinance of
their church. On the other hand, however, we cannot dissimulate the
violent struggle between inclination and duty which they have had to
sustain, and the immense difficulty of resisting a temptation which the
frequent intercourse with the female portion of their charge has always
offered to the clergy and friars in the discharge of their functions,
especially when it is considered how prodigal nature has been to the
women of the Peninsula in the bestowment of her richest personal
attractions, and that great facilities have been given to the spiritual
guides for the abuse of that _prestige_ conferred upon them by the habit
of their order.
In large towns, the presence of the bishops, and the respect which a
polished and select society inspired, were, for the most part, a check on
the impure inclinations of the clergy, even when their own sense of
virtue and religion was insufficient to lead them to a spontaneous
compliance with their arduous but sacred duty. But in small towns where
these barriers did not exist, the clergy and friars, it must be admitted,
infringed, and continued grossly to infringe, frequently in a scandalous
manner, the vow of celibacy which they had solemnly sworn to observe.
The priest of a rural parish, who was generally the most important
personage of the whole population, had so frequent and such dangerous
opportunities of forming relations of an illicit character with the
weaker sex, that he required a proportionate degree of sanctity, virtue,
and prudence, to resist them. These relations, however, be it said to
the shame of Spain, once formed, are not concealed, but are generally
openly and unblushingly made known to the public. All the towns-people
know very well the person who is the priest's _querida_; {75} nay more,
on many occasions they have recourse to her influence over the mind of
their pastor; and even the fruits of these illicit relations are commonly
known throughout the parish by the name of "the children of the priest!"
(_los hijos del cura_.)
Not many years ago, in a small town in Valencia, and on a Sunday, the
parishioners assembled in the square according to custom, waiting till
the bell should announce to them the hour of entering the church to hear
mass; hour after hour passed--no bell sounded--the people directed their
steps towards the house of the priest's _querida_, where they found that
he had passed the night in orgies of drunkenness and dissipation, and
was, even then, in a state of intoxication.
It is worthy of note, as a remarkable circumstance, borne out by
experience and by facts well authenticated, that the softer passion of
the mind is, generally, in the cloisters, one of a cruel and ferocious
character, quite incompatible with its natural essence. The archives of
the Spanish tribunals abound with criminal proceedings against friars,
for murders committed on the persons of their unhappy victims or
paramours. There are three celebrated instances of this kind,--one
against the Carmelite of San Lucar, another against the Capuchine of
Cuenca, and the third against the Agonizante of Madrid.
The first of these notorious delinquents was a man of middle age, robust,
strong, and who, until the event now referred to, had not given occasion
for the least suspicion as to his morality. A young lady, of
extraordinary beauty, and held in great esteem by all the towns-people
for the purity of her conduct and the sanctity of her life, used
frequently to attend the confessional of this Carmelite friar. He
conceived for her, secretly, a violent passion, which he kept up and
fostered through the constant interviews which his vocation afforded him
in gaining the unlimited confidence of his penitent. But he contrived,
with incredible command over himself, to suppress his feelings. He never
uttered one word to the young creature which could indicate to her the
risks she was incurring in seeking for his guidance and blessing. One
day, however, she appeared before him on her knees at his confessional,
and, with a simplicity and sweetness, such as innocence alone can
command, informed him that, with the advice and consent of her parents,
she was about to enter into the married state, and now came before him,
as her spiritual father, to prepare herself for so important an ordinance
by the previous sacraments of confession, absolution, and the holy
communion. The friar heard this simple statement, received the child's
confession, little as that amounted to, pronounced upon her the
absolution, and administered to her the eucharist, without betraying the
least perturbation or confusion in his countenance. On rising from her
knees, as pure, as holy, and as fully and freely pardoned from sin as her
fond and simple mind imagined it was in the power of her church and its
minister to make her, the friar said he wished her to go to the vestibule
(_porteria_ {77}), where he would give her some counsel relative to the
new state into which she was about to enter. The unsuspecting girl
blindly obeyed the voice which had often before directed her in the ways
of virtue; she rose, went to the indicated spot, where already stood the
friar, who, without uttering one word, drew from his bosom a poniard, and
thrust it into the heart of his ill-fated victim, who fell mortally
wounded at his feet. With the utmost coolness, the assassin retired to
his cell, wiping the gory blade on the sleeve of his habit, as if he had
been performing a most innocent deed. The alarm was immediately given.
The friar was arrested and thrown into prison. Proceedings were
commenced, and supported by evidence which left no doubt as to the author
of the crime, and the circumstances under which it was committed. The
public prosecutor (fiscal) moved the court for the extreme penalty of
death; but against this sentence arose a strenuous opposition on the part
of the bishops, who pretended, in the first place, that the crime was one
which ought only to be judged by the ecclesiastical authority, and in the
second, that in no case could the penalty of death be inflicted on a
priest. The contest was carried to the government for its decision, and
the minister, Campomanes, a zealous defender of the sovereign's rights,
as well as a constant enemy to the usurpations of the clergy, confirmed
the jurisdiction of the civil power which had heard the cause, and
declared that the Spanish legislature offered no impediment to the
execution of the last penalty of the law, if the judges found sufficient
grounds to warrant them in awarding it. The judges did so find, and
pronounced sentence accordingly; but the king, Charles III., commuted the
sentence to perpetual banishment and imprisonment. The assassin was
conducted to Puerto Rico, where he ended his life, weighed down by
remorse, though his hours were consecrated to penitence and prayer.
The history of the second case, viz., that of the Capuchine of Cuenca,
bears a still more scandalous and atrocious character. The unhallowed
passions of this great criminal had their origin also in the
confessional. The accomplice of his wickedness was, too, his "daughter
of confession," (_hija de confesion_. {78}) She was the wife of a
carpenter of respectable character, who, not content with the influence
which the friar exercised over the conscience of his wife, wished that
influence might also be brought to bear over the concerns of his own
modest household, and therefore frequently invited the friar to his
table. The latter and his _querida_, unknown to the confiding carpenter,
passed some years in a total abandonment of themselves to vicious
courses. The friar began, subsequently, to imagine he observed a certain
coldness or indifference on the part of his companion in guilt, and,
attributing that change to a feeling of the woman's self-disgust and
reproach, he had recourse to the most diabolical means of searing her
conscience, and making her still more the associate of his depravity:
indeed, it is not possible even to read without horror of the abominable
artifices to which this monster of iniquity had recourse, although these
were all minutely detailed in the written charges brought against him at
his trial, and were deposed to by the woman herself, she being fully
corroborated by the testimony of other witnesses secreted in a part of
the house from whence his revolting conduct was both seen and heard. One
step in the path of immorality and crime too often leads on to another.
The friar at length imagined that the woman's indifference arose from
some latent spark of affection which she still bore to her husband, and
he resolved on sacrificing the life of the unfortunate man whose
connubial rights seemed to stand in his way. Full of impatience for the
consummation of the diabolical project when once he had determined on its
execution, and having given to his victim a strong soporific, which threw
him into a heavy sleep, he proceeds to urge on the faithless wife to the
act of stabbing her unconscious husband. This tragedy she performed with
one of the unhappy man's own instruments of trade, under the guidance of
the friar, who first ascertained and indicated to her, by the pulsations
of the doomed man's heart, the exact spot into which she was to give the
instrument its fatal plunge.
The extreme docility of the woman in the hands of the friar, as disclosed
in the evidence, can only be explained by the absolute control which he
held over her conscience and her will; and, doubtless, even that control
arrived at such a pitch, that, at last, the yoke became insupportable, if
we may judge from the declarations which she made during the trial, for
she appeared to take credit to herself for the revelations which she then
made of all the disgusting particulars connected with the crimes of that
detestable culprit.
Immediately after the perpetration of the crime, the civil power seized
the persons of both the guilty parties, and began to prosecute judicial
inquiries, with the greatest secrecy, under the clandestine supervision
of the bishop. The proceedings were prolonged to an indefinite period,
until the friar had been six years in prison, within which interval the
woman died. In a popular commotion which occurred in Cuenca in
consequence of an invasion by the French, all prisoners were set at
liberty, and this execrable miscreant disappeared.
The _Agonizante_ of Madrid {81} (which is the third case) also murdered
the companion of his vices, on her own bed too, in which they had passed
the preceding night. The true motive of this murder could never be
satisfactorily ascertained. But the friar having been taken _in
flagrante_, the judges could not hesitate for a moment in passing
sentence of death upon him. All the Spanish clergy had recourse to
Ferdinand VII., and used their utmost influence to obtain a pardon, or at
least a commutation of the sentence; but the king was inflexible, and the
criminal died at the hands of the executioner, by the _garrote_, in the
Plazuela de la Cebada, in Madrid.
Under the same reign of Ferdinand VII., the Convent of the Basilios of
Madrid was the theatre of most scandalous and sanguinary atrocities,
which had their origin in the relaxed manners of the inhabitants of that
establishment. The friars were accustomed to introduce by night into the
cloisters women of ill fame, and this custom had grown into something
like a right or privilege, which the friars were resolved to maintain at
all hazards, as it was afterwards proved; for the abbot, who until then
had connived at these irregularities, wished all of a sudden to adopt a
system of the utmost rigour and discipline, and to reduce the friars to
the severe observances of their order. The convent was situated in the
most populous part of Madrid. One night in the year 1832, loud screams
were heard by the inhabitants of the opposite houses, and by people who
were passing in the streets. The civil authorities were called to the
spot, and informed of the circumstances. They demanded entrance at the
doors of the convent, but the friars refused to comply. Force became
necessary. The gates were broken open, and the officers rushed in. All,
however, that the public could ever learn of that nocturnal invasion was
simply that the head of the unfortunate abbot was found in one cell, and
his trunk in another. Ferdinand VII. did not on that occasion display
the same degree of indignation and severity as he had done towards the
Agonizante. He was at that moment in all the plenitude of his despotic
power, and this mysterious affair of the convent of the Basilios was
buried in the most profound oblivion.
These terms of harmony have always existed between the Spanish monarchs
and the clergy, who have been accustomed to lend themselves,
reciprocally, to the interests and persecutions of each other; and hence
it is that a great number of crimes similar to that just referred to has
never before been brought to light. Some of these, however, have been of
such a nature and magnitude, and accompanied with such extraordinary
circumstances, that, in spite of the efforts made by the clergy to
conceal them, they have not altogether eluded the public curiosity. To
this class belongs the celebrated case of the Capuchines of Cascante, the
recollection of which is traditionally preserved, and is still the
subject of many a conversation, although to the present day we are not
aware of any account that has been published on the subject of that
shameful transaction. There still exist those who either were children
in the time of Charles III., or who heard, from the lips of their fathers
or grandfathers, all the particulars of that flagrant case, as well as of
the extraordinary sensation which the discoveries then made produced on
the public mind. The facts, which appear indisputable, are
these:--Towards the middle of the reign of that sovereign, a prelate of
one of the districts of the province of Arragon had good reason to
believe that there existed intimate and criminal relations between the
nuns and the friars of two convents situated in the same town. It had
been observed that the number of foundlings had been for some time
considerably on the increase, many of which were left, by persons
unknown, in the houses of poor women, who received with them very
considerable sums of money. At first, no suspicion whatever fell on the
friars, who continued their offices of preaching, saying mass, confessing
penitents, and giving ostentatious indications of their leading humble
and ascetic lives. A diligent watch was instituted by the authorities,
but as far as exterior observances went, there was no reason to believe
that any suspicious persons from without ever entered the convent of the
nuns; it was therefore thought right to have an internal examination of
that convent, a measure never had recourse to by the authorities but on
occasions of the gravest kind.
The result of this step was, that in the interior of the edifice was
discovered a door leading to a subterranean passage or tunnel which
crossed underneath the principal street of the town, and led direct to
the convent of the Capuchines. All the inmates of both establishments
were immediately taken prisoners; a judicial examination followed, when
it was found that for many years the societies of these two convents had
been living in a state of concubinage,--that even the outward doors of
the two houses were seldom shut at night,--that the friars had free
ingress to the convent of the nuns, where both sexes gave themselves up
to the most dissolute abandonment in drunkenness, gluttony, debauchery,
and all sorts of carnal excesses. The authorities found more than they
had expected, and began to repent the course they had taken. The trials,
however, were pushed forward apparently with all usual formalities, but
the judges were exclusively ecclesiastics, and everything was conducted
with profound caution and secrecy. The prisoners were removed to several
towns in Arragon, and kept apart from each other, in different cells; but
in one single night they all disappeared, and were never afterwards heard
of. The only part which the civil authority took in this mysterious
affair was to command the two convents to be pulled down, and salt to be
sown on their foundations,--a ceremony which was accordingly performed,
and one which the laws of Spain then required as to all houses which had
been the scene of any atrocious offence.
It may hardly be necessary to reiterate what we have already more than
once insisted on, as a well authenticated fact, that in the midst of all
such irregularities and crimes as those detailed to show the unnatural
and violent character of celibacy in the clergy, there always have been,
in Spain, a large number of persons of both sexes, who have been
privileged to take up and bear this cross of privation with singular
resignation and constancy. But those efforts on the side of virtue, that
perpetual conflict with sentiments most grateful to the human heart,--and
that separation of an entire class, constituted in society self-acting,
without any relation of endearment towards a general society,--may be
considered as some of the grave inconveniences of Roman Catholicism, or
rather as some of the most formidable obstacles which that faith opposes
to the regular habits and to the peace of families.
The dangers of celibacy in the clergy are perhaps more serious and more
inevitable in Spain than in any other country of Europe. The Spanish
nation is, generally, renowned for its chivalrous sentiments, for the
violence of the tender passions, and for the influence which the fair sex
exercises, not only in all the domestic but in the civil and political
relations of life. There is, in the society of the Spanish lady, a
distinctive feature of character, called _franqueza_, which, above all
others, gives her the greatest charm in the eyes of a foreigner. She is
eminently sociable, and is the life and essence of Spanish society, in
which she maintains an imperium over all tastes, affections, and
operations. Besides this, it is the universal custom of Spaniards to be
constantly going in and out of one another's houses without ceremony or
invitation; and this frequent contact with Spanish women, generally
pretty, but almost always amiable and graceful, naturally produces
intimate relations, and not unfrequently reciprocal attachments. One may
conceive of such a thing as a cold, repulsive resistance to such
attractions in the dreariness of a desert, or even within the four walls
of a cell; but when such influences are not merely occasionally, but
unceasingly brought to bear upon the senses, they too often leave
impressions which, by a law of our sinful nature, are capable of
reciprocating so as to produce their corresponding effects. Hence
humanity, unless upheld and strengthened by a superior power, is too
often insufficient and prone to give up the contest.
In Spain, the inferior classes of society have always, until of late,
submitted not only to the influence but to the authority of a priest or a
friar; and it may well be conceived how easy it is to abuse this power in
the intercourse which such functionaries have with ignorant and weak
persons. In small towns, the inhabitants of which are devoted
exclusively to labour, fathers and husbands pass the entire day in the
fields, whilst the priest remains at home without a witness of his
conduct or his actions. No domestic hearth is at liberty to exclude him.
He is authorised by custom to enter all houses, at all hours, where he is
received and treated almost as a god. These are facts which can be
vouched by all Spaniards, by whom they are spoken of without the least
reserve. In laying them before the English public, we disavow all idea
of calumniating an entire class of Spanish society. Our object is to
point out one of the causes which, in our opinion, enters into the number
of those which, most effectively, have contributed to the decline of so
sensible and generous a nation.
CHAPTER IV.
THE MASS--Its introduction but modern--The Spaniard Lainez opposed it--On
what grounds--Description of the ceremony--Its religious and secular
peculiarities--Sacerdotal vestments worn while celebrating it--High and
Low Mass--Both performed in an unknown tongue--Consequent indifference of
the congregation--Mercenary character of the mass--"_Masses for the
intention_"--Masses for the dead--The solemn mass on Christmas eve, or
_Noche buena_--Its profane accompaniments--Passion week--Thursday--Good
Friday--Adoration of the Cross--Processions--Anecdotes of Isabella
II.--Brilliant rites and ceremonies on the day after Good
Friday--Uproarious conduct of the faithful on that occasion--The mass as
celebrated at Toledo--Judicial combat, or judgment of God.
The mass is the chief rite in the Roman Catholic worship. The obligation
for all members of that church to hear it, on every Sunday and every
feast-day, is imperative and absolutely indispensable; and the infraction
of it is considered a mortal sin. Although the obligation does not
extend to those days of labour on which masses are said, yet pious and
devout persons go to hear it, and this act is considered as eminently
commendable and meritorious.
The introduction of the mass into Roman Catholic worship is of an epoch
comparatively modern. In the first centuries of the church, the divine
offices were but those of singing hymns and psalms, reading the Sacred
Scriptures, and the sermon. These rites being terminated, a collection
was made among believers for the relief of their poor; and the portion of
these alms which was _sent_ to such of them as could not attend the place
of worship was called _missa_, or _sent_, from the participle of the
Latin verb _mittere_, to send.
Many have been the disputes between Roman Catholic writers themselves
touching the epoch at which that part of the ceremonial called the mass,
used in the present day, was first introduced. There is no doubt that
many ages of the church passed away before it was considered as a
sacrifice; and even the Council of Trent were much divided in their
opinions on this point, and the fathers vacillated much before they
decided respecting it. The Spaniard Lainez, general of the order of
Jesuits, was one of the most strenuous opposers of the novelty, and gave
the same reasons for his opposition that all Protestant writers have
alleged against it, viz., that the New Testament abolished the sacrifice,
or rather, that ancient rites and ceremonies were superseded by the great
sacrifice of the Saviour of the world himself on the cross, and that the
idea itself involves the profanation that mortal and sinful man can
sacrifice on his altars at his will the immaculate Lamb of God. These
powerful objections were only met with excuses of convenience and
utility. The Council wrestled with the reformed doctrines, and contended
that its own system must necessarily be entirely different from that
taught by the Reformers, not only in substance but even in its accidents.
Reform denied Transubstantiation, and therefore the Roman church thought
it convenient to fortify that dogma by bringing it daily before the eyes
of the people, and constituting it an essential part of their worship.
If, in a Protestant point of view, the mass is considered as an attack on
the true spirit of Christianity, as upholding not only
transubstantiation, but also the doctrine of intercession of saints, yet
still, in the eyes of a good Roman Catholic, it is a rite full of
elevated thoughts, devout prayers, and highly proper and religious ideas.
The first part of the mass, from the _Introite_ to the _Offertory_, is
composed almost entirely of fragments of Scripture: such are, first, the
_Introite_, generally taken from the Psalms; secondly, the _Collect_,
which is the same as that in the Protestant Book of Common Prayer for
Sundays; thirdly, the _Epistle_, which is part of a chapter out of the
prophecies, or out of one of the epistles in the New Testament; fourthly,
the _Gradual_, also taken from the Psalms; and fifthly, the _Gospel_,
which, as its name indicates, is a portion of a chapter taken from some
one of the four evangelists. The parts added by the popes are, first,
the _Kyrie Eleyson_, taken from the rites of the Greek church; secondly,
the _Gloria_, which is a magnificent outburst of the most elevated
religious sentiments; and lastly, the _Symbol_ of the faith.
The _Offertory_, which is the second part of the mass, is one series of
prayers, in which the _Canon_ is prepared, by offering up the host (which
has to be consecrated in order to obtain upon it the blessing of the Most
High), and by invoking the intercession of the saints, and enumerating
all the graces and favours implored through the medium of the sacrifice.
The priest, in this part of the ceremony, washes his hands; he concludes
with the _Preface_, an act of thanksgiving, in which are explained some
of the mysteries of religion applicable to the day on which they are
celebrated. Among others of this latter class, the preface for the
Trinity is admired for its conciseness, and the elegance and accuracy
with which the composition explains that great mystery, in terms which
cannot be objected to even by any Protestant church.
After the offertory follows the canon, which is the preparation for the
consecration, and is also composed of prayers, in which a spirit of
penitence, and the invocation of the divine protection in the solemn act
about to be celebrated, form prominent features. The priest next takes
the host, pronounces over it the words of consecration, and elevates it,
so that the people may see and adore it. He does the like with the
chalice, and then prepares himself for the communion, which consists in
his eating the host and drinking the wine in the cup. Twice afterwards
he pours wine and water into the cup, and drinks off the contents, which
are called the _ablutions_. He pronounces other two prayers or
thanksgivings, blesses the people, and dismisses them with the formula,
"_Ite_, _missa est_," "Go, the mass is over." Still, however, he
continues to read, on ordinary days, in the first chapter of St John's
Gospel, or, on other solemn days, from the other evangelists.
All this is accompanied with various ceremonies, genuflections, and
changes of position. For example: the prayers are said in front of the
altar; the introite, the collect, and the epistle, on the right; the
gospel on the left; the priest, at certain parts of the ceremony, turning
his back upon the altar, and his face towards the people. In celebrating
the mass, it is required that the priest be dressed in certain vestments,
which are, in no small degree, complicated. Some of these are white, and
of linen. Others are of silk, and in colour varied according to the
solemnity of the day. For example: on the feast-day of a martyr, the
ornament is red; on the feasts of the Virgin, and on those on which are
celebrated any of the mysteries of the life of the Saviour, it is white;
in masses for the souls of the departed, of which we shall treat
hereafter, it is black; the violet colour is used in Advent and in Lent;
the green on some particular Sundays. The cathedral of Seville alone
enjoys the privilege, in all the Roman Catholic world, of using the
sky-blue colour on the day whereon is celebrated the Conception of the
Virgin.
On the altar at which mass is said, there ought to be, at least, a
crucifix, two wax lights, and a slab (_ara_) of stone. The cloth which
covers the chalice and the exterior adornment of the altar, called the
_frontal_, must be of the same colour as the ornament of the day.
There are two kinds of mass, high mass and low mass. The first is
generally performed by three priests, viz., the officiating priest, the
subdeacon, who chants the epistle, and the deacon, who chants the gospel.
In the high mass, the choir sings many parts of it, and the organ is
played at times by way of accompaniment, and at other times as a solo,
during the offertory and the canon. On these occasions incense is burned
to perfume the altar, after which the deacon perfumes the officiating
priest; and if persons of authority or distinction are in attendance at
the office of the mass, the acolytes perfume them with the incensories.
The most extraordinary, and, we may justly say, absurd thing in all this
complicated series of practices and ceremonies is, that the whole of them
are performed in a language which the people do not understand, and
consequently they play the part of mere spectators, without having one
single religious idea communicated to the mind, or one devout sentiment
to the heart. The people see nothing more than a man dressed in a
certain manner, moving from one side to another, and from whose lips are
proceeding words which are absolutely void of sense. Hence proceeds that
species of indifference with which the people regard that spectacle, an
indifference which degenerates into profanation and levity. In Spain,
particularly, it is quite common for lovers to converse with each other
during the mass; and the turbulent crowds which rush in towards the
conclusion, the noise, the haste, and, sometimes, the bad expressions
which fall on the ear, in the precincts of the edifice, form a strange
and scandalous contrast to the sacred character with which the church
seems anxious to invest the sacrifice of the mass. The greater number of
those persons who assemble to witness it, particularly the humble
classes, believe they have complied with the obligation they are under to
hear the mass, if even they only _see_ the priest; and so wearisome has
this duty become to the majority of Spaniards, that the most popular
priests are those who say the shortest masses.
We have heard such and such a father spoken of with enthusiasm who says
the mass in twelve minutes, although it appears impossible even to read
the parts composing it in less than eighteen or twenty. On the other
hand, when a devout and scrupulous priest recites these offices with due
deliberation, and performs the ceremonies with a becoming degree of
solemnity and decorum, the church is deserted. The popular phrase in
such cases is "Father So-and-so is heavy in the mass,"--("_El padre tiene
la misa pesada_.")
There are some persons who, during the mass, read their prayers
translated into Spanish; but this is really a French custom, and wholly
inadmissible among a people the great majority of whom are unable to
read. But the most objectionable thing in the mass is its mercenary
character. The object which induces a Christian to pay for a mass, is to
recompense the priest for applying the merits of the sacrifice to
_desires_ and _intentions_, sometimes not very pure, on the part of those
who pay.
Thus they pay for a mass to obtain the health of a sick person, security
during a journey, a good result from a speculation, or the preservation
of a soul from the fire of purgatory. Even robbers will give a certain
portion of their plunder to a priest to say a mass for their next
adventure. The ordinary phrase in these cases, at the time of paying the
father for the mass, is this:--"Say a mass for my _intention_;" so that
the priest has recourse to the throne of the Most High, immolates the
most sacred of victims, believes that he introduces to his own body that
of the Saviour, and all this without knowing why or wherefore! He who
orders a mass and pays for it has no need to reveal to any one his object
or intention; and if he likes to be silent, it is a want of discretion
and of delicacy on the part of the priest to question him on that point.
The price of a mass varies from a shilling to one pound sterling. A high
mass is much dearer, and its price depends on the pomp and ornaments
bespoken by the person desiring it. In wills and testaments it is very
common to order a number of masses to be said for the soul of the
testator; and even in recent times, it has been a common practice to
found what are called "pious works." These consist in giving to a church
a sum of money, a rural or a city property, bound by an obligation to say
so many masses in the year for the soul of the donor.
Whenever it happens that this obligation is disregarded, and the required
masses are not said, the Pope concedes a "bull of composition" (_bula de
composicion_), which, in effect, commands that a single mass shall serve
for all those which have been omitted. This kind of legislation will
appear incredible to all those who are ignorant of the irregularities of
the court of Rome; but every person who has lived in Spain knows that it
is of daily occurrence.
One of the most solemn masses in the year is that which is celebrated on
Christmas-eve at midnight, that being the hour at which, it is supposed,
the Saviour of the world was born. It is called "The mass of the cock,"
(_misa del gallo_), as having an allusion to the hour in which it is
celebrated. The hilarity of the Spaniards on this occasion is expressed
in a way more analogous to that accompanying heathen rites, than to any
which should pertain to Christian worship. Under pretext of taking part
in so happy a commemoration, they abandon themselves, during the whole
night, to the most noisy demonstrations of joy. Numerous parties of men
and women perambulate the streets, singing couplets, called
_villancicos_, which are exclusively applicable to this feast, and
playing on two species of musical instruments, having the most abominable
sound, called _raveles_ and _zambombas_, which are never used but on this
occasion. The churches are filled with people, who are far from
conducting themselves with that decorum and moderation belonging to the
place. The jovial dispositions then manifested are encouraged by the
organ, on which are played waltzes, polkas, and even the vulgar songs
heard at dances of the lower classes; and these performances are
distinctly heard whilst the priest is saying the mass. In general, the
believers, after having taken a part in the service, give themselves up
to all the disorders of excessive eating and drinking. Nothing in modern
times approximates so nearly to the orgies of antiquity as this
celebrating "the good night" (_la noche buena_) in Spain. Sometimes the
civil authorities are obliged to put a check upon them, but we believe
there is no instance in which the clergy have made the slightest attempt
to repress such scandalous disorders. We cannot see how the most zealous
Roman Catholic can justify a practice so opposed to the true spirit of
Christianity, and so deeply rooted in the public manners, that, in the
eyes of most Spaniards, any person who would dare to censure it would
pass for an unbeliever or a heretic.
There are two days in the year on which it is prohibited to say mass at
all; these are, Thursday in Passion-week and Good Friday. The English
tourists know the eminently dramatic character which distinguishes these
feasts at that season of the year in St Peter's at Rome. All the offices
of the seven days of that week are well calculated to excite the
imagination, and awaken in the coldest hearts the most lively sympathy
with the great events then commemorated. Every thing connected with
those rites breathes grief and sadness, and there is a certain mournful
solemnity in them which harmonises with the scenes of our Saviour's
passion. The chapters of the four Evangelists, containing the narrative
of that great event, from the going up of our Lord to Jerusalem to the
crucifixion, are chanted by three priests, each one taking a distinct
part. One takes the words in which the evangelist recounts those events;
another the words put into the mouths of Judas, Pilate, Peter, and the
other persons referred to in the narrative; and the third, whose voice is
generally a profound bass, the words of the Saviour. The solemnity of
the Thursday has for its object the institution of the eucharist, and the
long series of ceremonies in which this grand mystery is symbolised,
concludes by conducting, in solemn procession, the consecrated host from
the great altar of the church, where it has been preserved all the year,
to a wooden sanctuary in the same church, more or less richly adorned,
called the monument (_monumento_), which is dressed up with a profusion
of jewels, lights, and flowers, and remains all night guarded by some of
the devout, and, in towns which contain a garrison, by military
sentinels. Some of those monuments are, in truth, works of architecture
of great merit; and among them that of the cathedral of Seville is
distinguished for its gigantic dimensions, and for the richness and
elegance of its structure.
In the offices for Good Friday, the host is restored to the altar, with a
ceremony as solemn as that of the day preceding; and the services, which
are very long, refer to all the scenes of the crucifixion, including all
the passages in the prophecies and other parts of the Old Testament in
which the event is prefigured or foretold. After the offices are gone
through, the cross is placed on the ground, supported by a cushion, and
all the faithful, from the highest personages of the state down to the
meanest subject, bow down before it, kiss it, and leave some piece of
money on a plate placed by its side. In the royal chapel of the palace
are placed, close to the cross on this occasion, the files of the
proceedings against criminals who have been condemned to die. The
sovereign, in the act of adoration, takes into his hands one of those
files, which signifies the granting a pardon to the culprit whose trial
it contains. There is a pleasing anecdote related of the young Queen
Isabella II., that, being but a girl when she for the first time took a
part in this ceremony, and on being informed of its signification, she
took up _all_ the files placed before her; by which act of grace a free
pardon was extended to all the delinquents. {98}
During the whole night of Thursday until the Friday, the faithful go
about the streets in numerous companies visiting the different monuments.
Every foreigner who is present at these peregrinations would take
Spaniards for the most devout people in the world. The whole population
are at that time circulating through the streets. The use of coaches or
other vehicles is prohibited, and the churches are never empty. The
different regiments of the army, the functionaries of the tribunals, and
every public body, all these visit the monuments headed by their
respective chiefs. The queen sets the example, accompanied by all the
nobility, her ministers, and all the high officers of state. A sedan
chair of great magnificence is carried in the rear for her Majesty's use,
in case she should become fatigued.
On the Saturday after Good Friday only one mass is said, viz., high mass,
after the consecration of the oils and blessing the water for the service
of the daily ablutions of the faithful. This mass is dedicated to the
resurrection, and its rites have a character really striking and
romantic. When the offices commence, the altar is entirely covered with
a black veil, the church is in darkness, and not a single light to be
seen in the whole space. But on the intonation of the _Gloria in
excelsis Deo_, the veil divides itself into two parts, and is drawn to
the sides, which operation, suddenly performed, discloses hundreds of
lights and a most splendid profusion of ornaments. Then the bells, which
have been silent for the two preceding days, are set a-ringing,--pigeons
are let off upon the wing,--every one makes the greatest possible noise,
striking the benches of the church, firing rockets within its walls, and
salvos of artillery in the squares. Some churches enjoy the privilege of
saying only low masses (_misas rezadas_) on this day.
We have spoken of the obligation of all to hear mass on Sundays and
feast-days; and we should add that this is the only act of devotion
required from Spaniards on those days. By the words, "observe the
feasts," is understood, in Spain, that after joining in the mass, as
before stated, believers are at liberty to dedicate the day to every
species of diversion and profanity. In France and in England, it is
obligatory also to attend vespers on the Sundays. Not so, however, in
Spain, where, in the evenings, scarcely a person is to be seen in the
churches.
All truly religious men who read the foregoing remarks, and in which
there is not the least exaggeration or departure from the truth, will
imagine, doubtless, that the modern ecclesiastical authorities of the
peninsula have, at least, attempted to rectify all that is absurd and
irreverent in those practices, and to strip a ceremony so august and
imposing as that of the mass of all that a want of true devotion, and
that ignorance and neglect on the part of the clergy, has introduced to
that ceremony,--nevertheless it is not so; the clergy themselves appear
to co-operate in those attempts to pervert the ideas of the nation. The
proof of it is, that being ordered by all the councils, especially that
of Trent, to preach a sermon, during the high mass, explaining the gospel
for the day, as is done in all other Roman Catholic countries, yet in
Spain no such practice is observed, except in poor and small towns; so
that the Spaniard is not only wanting of that spiritual aliment which the
reading of the Bible is able to furnish, but also of a person to explain
those parts of Scripture which he has been hearing read, and in a strange
language, during the mass. Preaching, as has already been stated in our
introductory chapter, is in Spain reduced to panegyrics on the saints,
and to Lent-sermons,--which, in truth, have only reference to the gospel
for the day; and although this spiritual food is administered but seldom
and in small quantities, that is to say, eight or ten times from
Ash-Wednesday until Palm-Sunday, there is no doubt whatever of its
beneficial effects, and that by its means some temporal improvement in
the habits of the people evidently results from it. But, that season
over, the flock is abandoned by the shepherd, these slight impressions
wear off, and the people return to the same godless and mundane system of
life.
In the cathedral church of Toledo there is a particular chapel in which
the mass is celebrated, according to the rite called Mozarabe,
introduced, as its name indicates, in the time of the occupation by the
Moors, by the Christians who lived under their yoke in that city. The
Roman Catholic ritual having been made prevalent all over the peninsula
by the Great Isabella, and adopted in all the churches, the faithful of
Toledo still wished to preserve that form of ritual which they had
practised for many centuries. Although this portion of Spain's
ecclesiastical history is wrapt in great obscurity, and has given rise to
many disputes among learned men, yet it is certain that in order to
decide between that authority which wished to extinguish those remains of
antiquity, and the people who desired to preserve them, recourse was had
to what then went by the name of "the judgment of God," viz., a formal
duel, attended with all the ceremonies which the feudal system had
imported into Europe. The partisans of the Roman ritual placed their
defence of it in the hands of one knight-errant, and those of the
opposite party confided theirs to the care of another. He who defended
the Roman rite was conquered in the fight; and although the conditions of
the combat were not entirely observed, because the cathedral and the
other churches of Toledo were, after all, reduced to the authority of the
Pope, yet a chapter of canons was instituted, to whom was conceded the
privilege of saying mass according to the ritual of the conquerors.
CHAPTER V.
DEVOTION of Protestants scriptural and reasonable--That of Roman
Catholics poetical and affectionate--Religious enthusiasm leads to
insanity--Mental devotion as distinguished from physical--Nature of Roman
Catholic devotion accounted for by the worship of images--Intercession of
saints--Saint Anthony--The illiterate guided by bodily vision rather than
spiritual discernment--Horace confirms this--Illustrated by popular
errors--Sensual and poetical elements were introduced to devotion by the
Greeks--Destruction of images by the Emperor Leo the Iconoclast--Opinion
of Pope Leo the Great--Images adorned like human beings perplex the mind
between truth and fiction--Familiar examples--Money-contributions for
adornment of images--Belief that saints can cure certain complaints--List
of these--Saint Anthony of Padua's miracles--The fete of _San Anton
Abad_--Virgin Mary, and her innumerable advocations--A list of
several--The Rosary--Statues of the Virgin--Immense value of their
wardrobes and trinkets--The most ugly of those statues excite most
devotion--Virgin of Zaragoza--The heart of Mary--Month of Mary
(May)--Kissing images--Anecdote of the Duke of A--- and his
courtezan--Habits and promises--Penance.
Devotion in Roman Catholicism is totally distinct in its essence from
that of Protestantism. The devotion of Protestants is scriptural and
reasonable; that of Roman Catholics poetical and affectionate. The
Protestant considers God as a spiritual being, and, as such,
incomprehensible, the only object of worship, the only fountain of grace
and pardon. The Roman Catholic represents the Eternal in material forms,
accessible only through the indirect medium of intercession, and
addresses him with the familiarity and tenderness peculiar to the human
relations between a father and a son. In prayer the truly devout Roman
Catholic weeps, afflicts himself, gesticulates, touches the ground with
his forehead, kisses it, strikes his breast, and reveals, by his whole
physiognomy and exterior actions, a vehemence and intensity which his
physical frame appears scarcely able to sustain. His prayers are full of
poetical exclamations, which are called _jaculatorias_; and in addressing
the object of his devotion, he feels more complacency in accumulating
sonorous epithets, and in repeating groans and sighs, than in imploring,
by properly-constructed and continuous phrases, the protection and mercy
of the Almighty. Roman Catholic devotion gives a perfect idea of
ecstasy, and shows that religious enthusiasm, carried to the utmost
extreme, agitates the nervous system, and produces effects very similar
to those of mental abstraction; and, in truth, in those asylums provided
for the insane, we find many of their inmates to be persons who have
fallen into that deplorable state through religious enthusiasm. There
are other cases in which these excesses in devotion have ended in
catalepsy; and some of those women who have been celebrated for the
supernatural state in which it has been pretended they lived for many
years, without food, and insensible to all external impressions, have
been rather the unhappy victims of mental disease than the instruments of
wilful imposture.
Perhaps some one may ask why, seeing that the mysterious principles of
the Roman Catholic faith and those of the Protestants are equal, there
should be so much difference in their devotional characters, the one
being opposed to the other? why in the one case it is entirely mental,
while the other largely participates in a physical nature? why in
Protestant devotion there is thinking and reflection, while in that of
Roman Catholics all is feeling and affection? The problem is resolved in
a single expression,--the worship of images.
This practice, which neither the fathers nor the councils have enforced
or authorised to the extent to which it has been carried by modern Roman
Catholics, and especially by Spaniards, exercises so powerful an
influence, or rather so irresistible an imperium, over the mind of man,
that it entirely perverts his reason, and radically extinguishes in it
the difference between the spiritual and the physical world. This great
enigma, the solution of which the Eternal has, in his wisdom, reserved
from mortal creatures, loses all its obscurity and ceases to be a mystery
to the man who converses with a figure made of wood or painted on canvas;
for he not only believes that it sees him, but that it can protect him,
grant him favours, and even obtain for him salvation. In vain it will be
said that the Roman Catholic sees in the image a symbol, an emblem, a
representation. It is not so. In his eyes the image is the saint
itself, and therefore he adorns it, covers it with splendid attire,
surrounds it with flowers and with lights, kneels down before it,
confides to it his griefs, and asks its intercession. If the object of
veneration and of worship were the saint itself,--that is to say, a
beatified spirit, which is supposed to dwell in heaven, and there enjoy
the favour of the Eternal Being,--the prayer made and the homage rendered
would be to that pure essence, and would be purged of all the external
accidents of humanity. But not so do Roman Catholics generally pray. In
order to pray it is necessary for them to have a material object; they
must enter with that object into similar relations as those which exist
between man and man; they must bring down the saint to their own level,
instead of endeavouring to lift up themselves to the level of the saint,
by means of a communication purely spiritual.
The proof of this is, that, among the images which represent the same
original and the same type, there are some which are believed to have
more power, and to be capable of working more miracles, than others. The
Saint Antonio, for example, which is venerated in one church in Madrid,
called La Florida, is much more popular than the Saint Antonio venerated
in another, called the Church de los Portugueses. In Burgos there is a
crucifix to which infinitely more solemn worship is paid than to one in
any parish church, or even in any chapel of the same city. The popes
have encouraged this absurd aberration of the human mind, by conceding,
and permitting the bishops to concede, indulgences to certain statues,
certain pictures, and even certain engravings, which represent objects of
devotion. The person who prays in front of that favoured object gains so
many years of indulgences; he who prays to the same saint, but before
another statue, another picture, or another engraving, obtains nothing.
Of course, all these concessions which are obtained are paid for in ready
money.
Now to the point. Are not these means the most efficacious that can be
imagined in order to materialise religion, and to subjugate it entirely
to the senses? Is it not infinitely more easy and shorter, especially
for rude and illiterate men, to believe in what they actually see, than
in any metaphysical notions, far above the reach of their understanding,
like those of a spiritual kind? From very ancient times it has been
thought that the impressions which the mind receives through the medium
of sight, are more striking and efficacious than those which are
communicated to it by all the other organs of the senses. Horace has
followed out this idea in his well-known lines:--
"Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem
Quam quae sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus, et quae
Ipsi sibi tradit spectator."
_De Ar. Poe._, 180.
Thus it is explained why men imagined for many centuries that the sky was
a solid superficies, and that the earth was a superficial plane, bounded
by the horizon; that the sun moved round the earth; that the existence of
the antipodes was a chimera; that the dew fell in the same way as the
rain from the upper regions of the atmosphere; and other popular errors
which science has corrected, but which were in a certain way justified by
the undeniable testimony of the senses. How difficult then is it, on
such evidence, to doubt the existence of a soul in a human representation
to which one speaks as to a person alive, and to which are tendered all
marks of respect and veneration, and before whom even the priests, those
masters of the people and depositaries of all true doctrine, kneel down
as would a son before his father, a subject before his sovereign, and a
culprit before his judge? Who would forbid this delusion to that simple
and ignorant mind, whose relations with the exterior world form the only
source of all his knowledge and all his feelings?
The Christian religion, purely spiritual in its dogmas and practices,
never would have admitted into them this profanation of their sublime
essence, if the Greek empire, by virtue of the great religious revolution
conducted by Constantine, had not been placed at the head of Christendom.
But the Greek Christians were descendants of those who had condemned
Socrates, and had not been purged, nor have they yet been purged, of
their sensual propensities, of their artistic tastes, and of their
attachment to whatever is pompous and ornamental. When the Emperor Leo
wished to uproot this abuse, and ordered the images venerated in the
temples to be destroyed, his orders were executed with so much imprudence
and cruelty, and the persecution raised against those who participated in
the common error was conducted in so sanguinary and implacable a manner,
that the general opinion rose against the new doctrine, and the name of
_iconoclast_ denoted in that day one of the most odious forms of heresy,
and one most severely condemned by the apostolical see. {107}
The Latin Church was long preserved from that contagion. When John, the
patriarch of Alexandria, consulted the great Pope Leo, whether it would
be right to adorn the Christian temples with pictures representing pious
objects, that eminent man answered him, that he could only be permitted
to have the representations of the historical facts related in the Bible,
in order that those believers who were unable to read might in this way
instruct themselves in sacred history, but that great care must be taken
that such a practice might not degenerate into idolatry.
We have already mentioned the fact that the Council of Granada prohibited
the worship of images; but when the thrones founded by the invading
nations of the north became settled, their monarchs--men profoundly
ignorant, and exclusively devoted to war and conquest--placed their
consciences and the direction of public affairs in the hands of the
clergy, who were then the monopolisers of learning and literature. The
clergy spared no means of consolidating their power, and it was their
interest to brutalise the people, in order to domineer over them with the
greater facility; and nothing could contribute more certainly to carry
out that view than the puerilities of a worship solely limited to the
adoration of the physical man. The pageantry of processions, the jewels,
the splendid vestments and ornaments with which their images were
covered, the miracles attributed to them, and the incense burned on their
altars, were so many other soporiferous drugs administered to the
understanding to lull its energy, and deprive it of every devoted thought
and of all liberty of examination. There is, moreover, in the
representation of a human being of the size and colour of life, a certain
character of reality, which at first sight cannot do less than make a
profound impression on the mind, leaving it for a time in a state of some
perplexity between truth and fiction. That immovable attitude, those
fixed eyes, those features which never alter the expression of the grief
or the joy impressed upon them by the hand of the artist, have in
themselves something of the awful and mysterious, which powerfully
affects us, despite our reason and experience. How many persons are
there who could look, without shuddering, on the statue of Fieschi, the
celebrated French murderer, in the collection of Madame Tussaud? How
many, on coming out from the chamber of horrors, in the same
establishment, resolve and vow never to go into it again? How many, who
would not, for any money, pass a night in the apartment in which these
disagreeable objects are exhibited? And to what extreme may not that
imperium extend, which these works of art exercise on the imagination,
if, in addition to their resemblances to nature, superstition endows them
with a supernatural power, and when reason persuades us that they hear
what we say to them,--that they receive our homage, and are able to
favour us with their protection?
But the Roman Catholic clergy have had another motive for promoting a
belief in such things, viz., the immense wealth which they draw from them
in the name of oblations, alms, and legacies. To contribute money to the
adornment of a saint, and to the celebration of rites which are
consecrated to it, is a meritorious work, which ensures its protection to
the contributor. By this fiction the people have been made to believe
that every human complaint, every one of the misfortunes that can occur
in life, depends on some particular saint who defends their respective
devotees against it. Saint Ramon favours women in the season of
parturition; Saint Demas preserves travellers on their journeys from
robbers; Saint Apollonius cures the toothache; Saint Lucy heals diseases
of the eyes; Saint Lazarus cures the leprosy; Saint Roque the plague;
Saint Joseph protects carpenters; Saint Casianus and Saint Nicholas
preserve children; Saint Luis Gonzaga, young people; Saint Hermenegild,
soldiers; Saint Thomas Aquinas, students; Saint Gloi, silversmiths; and
Saint Rita, superior to all the celestial court, obtains, by her
mediation, the _realization of impossibilities_! {110}
And yet, after all, the most popular of all the saints which the power of
the Vatican has placed on its altars is Saint Anthony of Padua. The
miracles which he wrought in his life are quite out of the ordinary
course, and some of them appear rather preposterous and ludicrous to the
incredulous. On one occasion, when he was preaching by the sea-shore,
and his audience had gone away, the fishes came out to hear him.
Whenever he was present at a banquet, and a plate or a soup tureen was
accidentally broken, he joined the fragments so completely together that
the piece recovered its former integrity. The superior of his convent
forbade him to perform miracles; but, one day, seeing a man falling from
a high tower, he ordered him to remain suspended in the air until the
superior should give the saint permission to let him fall without injury.
The devotees of Saint Anthony treat him with great familiarity, and even
punish him when he does not satisfy their desires. When they wish to
obtain some favour from his protection,--for example, to draw a prize in
a lottery, to find a lost cow, or to find a husband for a damsel,--they
burn tapers before his image, and adorn it with flowers. If they do not
still obtain his favour, they place the image with its face towards the
wall, in the darkest corner of the house, and even treat it with other
indignities, of which decency forbids the mention.
The solemnity of the day of San Anton Abad, the protector of all horses
and mules, is of a different kind, and is considered as one of the most
noisy and brilliant of all public amusements. The equestrians of the
city, mounted on their steeds, which, on this occasion, are splendidly
caparisoned, give three gallops round the church dedicated to the saint,
and, on finishing the third, they receive from the hands of the priest
the blessed barley, which is designed that night as provender for their
happy animals. The streets are filled with people anxious to witness
this grand exhibition of luxury and of horsemanship, and the balconies
are filled with ladies, whose plaudits compensate the dexterity of the
heroes of the feast, or rather of the day.
But of all the devotions of Spaniards, none is so general, none so
fervent, none so varied in its forms and ceremonies, as that which has
for its object the mother of the Saviour. All travellers know that Spain
is the classic country of _Mariolatry_; and certainly, if we could divest
it of the idea of intercession, which is its foundation, we should find
in it much of the poetical, the affectionate, and much of analogy to the
temper of a people in which the imagination predominates, and which still
preserves many traits of the knightly spirit of its progenitors. Mary
is, in the estimation of Spaniards, a tender mother, the confidante of
all their woes, and the support of all their hopes. In their prayers to
her, they are prodigal of the most expressive epithets of endearment and
admiration. They call her the spouse of the Holy Spirit, the door of
heaven, the star of the morning, the tower of David, the tower of ivory,
the house of gold, the ark of the covenant, the health of the sick, the
queen of heaven, the queen of angels, of prophets, of apostles, of
martyrs, and of virgins. We will not do Spaniards the injustice of
suspecting them capable of believing that Mary is superior to God in
power, but there is no doubt that there are in that country many
benighted souls who, when they have addressed their prayers to God,
asking some special favour which has not been granted, have recourse to
the Virgin under a persuasion that through her means they shall obtain
it. Innumerable authors of religious books have written, and it has
daily been repeated from the pulpits, that the Virgin never denies a
favour to her devotees; that in the mere fact of being her worshippers,
they have salvation assured to them; and that it is enough to implore her
by name, in order to preserve both body and soul from all danger. "Hail,
most immaculate Mary!" (_ave Maria purisuma_) is the formula with which a
visitor salutes persons in a house, and the response is, "conceived
without sin" (_sin pecado concebida_) {113} These words are engraven on
the facades of many public buildings and private houses. They are used
also by way of exclamation in familiar conversation, in order to express
surprise and admiration. Relate to a Spaniard some extraordinary
act,--as, for example, a murder, an incendiarism, an earthquake,--and you
will hear him exclaim, "Ave Maria!" just as an Englishman would say,
"Dear me, is it possible? You don't say so!" Such is the prestige that
hovers about the name of the Virgin in the national customs of Spain.
Although the Virgin is in the eyes of Spaniards but an only being, and
although they do not believe that there is more than one mother of God,
yet the devotion which they tender to her is diversified in its forms
according to the various _advocations_ which the clergy have invented,
which the popes have sanctioned, and to which the liturgy has given an
official character. But the word _advocation_ extends itself to a
special name, a name significant of that with which the name of the
Virgin is coupled, and which is sometimes derived from the facts in her
history, from the endowments of her mind, or from the places in which her
image has miraculously appeared. To the first class pertain the Virgin
of the Nativity, the Virgin of Candlemas, the Virgin of the Assumption,
the Virgin of Griefs, the Virgin of the Seven Griefs; the Virgin of
Anguish or Agonies; and the Virgin of Solitude. To the second class, the
Virgin of the Conception, of the Rosary, of Mercy, of Remedies, and of
Pity. To the third class, the Virgin of Carmen, of Zaragoza, of
Guadaloupe, of Copacabana, of Olivia de la Victoria, of Penacerada, of
Regla, of Cavadoraga, of Montserrat, of Nieves, of Fousanta, of Atocha,
{115} and innumerable other places.
The Virgin of the Rosary is so called, because it is before her image
that her devotees pray the rosary. This pious exercise consists in a
paternoster and ten _Ave Marias_, repeated five times. The advocations
of the Virgin _de las Carretas_, the Virgin of the Dew, and some others,
are of an origin now unknown. In truth, this multiplication of the same
religious type has no fixed limits.
But the most extraordinary thing in this peculiarity of Roman Catholic
worship is, that not only is the Virgin not worshipped at all without
some one of these titles which a mistaken piety has conferred upon her,
but that every one of these titles has a particular class of persons
singled out from among the faithful, so that some are the devotees of one
Virgin and some of another; and they who profess such devotion, for
example, to the Virgin of the Rosary, never pray to the Virgin of Griefs.
To such a point does this exclusive affection arrive, that the devotees
are apt to dispute among themselves as to the respective merits of the
advocations to which each consecrates his worship. In some cities and
towns the inhabitants are divided into parties, some defending one
Virgin, and some another, which state of discord has resulted in angry
disputes, animosities, and even acts of violence.
The statues of the Virgin are of two classes; some are made entirely of
wood, including the draperies. Among these are some of superior merit.
{116} Others have only the head and hands of sculpture, the rest being
only a kind of frame-work, fit to support the dress, which is made of
worked velvet and other rich textures.
The statues consecrated to a popular advocation have immense treasures,
consisting of clothes, of crowns and collars, bracelets, and other
trinkets, brilliants, pearls, emeralds, and other precious stones. The
custody of these things is confided to one of the principal ladies of the
city, and she is called the mistress of the robes to the Virgin
(_camarera mayor de la Virgin_), and it is her duty, assisted by other
ladies of inferior degree in the sacred household, to dress and undress
the statue, varying the costume and ornaments according to the solemnity
of the day.
Some few of those advocations require particular colours to be observed
in the vestments appropriated to the respective statues; the Virgin of
Carmen, for example, must be dressed in white and dark grey; that of the
Conception in white and blue; that of Griefs in blue and red; that of
Solitude in white and black, and so on. The greater number of those
statues of the Virgin have in their arms a figure of the infant Christ.
It is worthy of remark, that the images which most excite devotion are
generally those which are most ugly and most disproportionate. The
Virgin of Zaragoza, the devotion of all Spain to which touches the
borders of enthusiasm, and on which statue Ferdinand VII. conferred the
office of field marshal (_capitan general_), is very small, and has the
appearance of a carbonised mummy.
Roman Catholics, not satisfied with this indefinite multiplication of the
personality of the Virgin, this innumerable variety of names and
attributes ascribed to the same individuality, have gone a step farther,
and worshipped one part of her body separately from the rest; and this
singular idea has given birth to another, viz., "devotion to the heart of
Mary,"--recently adopted in France, propagated in all the Papal
dominions, converted into an especial rite which the Church of Rome
celebrates with mass, vespers, and other services comprised in the missal
and the breviary. If, by the words, "heart of Mary," is to be understood
that muscle which serves as the centre of the circulation of the blood,
or the common metaphor which attributes to the heart the affections, the
desires, and all the other acts of the will, it is a mystery which
hitherto has not been explained either by the Roman Catholic church, or
any of the devotional books which have been written on the subject,--it
is a dilemma from which Roman Catholics never will be able to escape;
and, in the first case, nothing can be more preposterous than to divide
adoration between the entire person and one of its parts; and, in the
second case, the object of adoration is reduced to a mere verbal
artifice, depending on vulgar custom or on the caprice of men. If the
heart of the Virgin is adored under a supposition that it is the centre
of the most pure and virtuous sentiments, why has there not been
adoration of her head, which is supposed to be nourished with noble and
elevated thoughts? Why not her womb, in which lay the Saviour of the
world? Why not her hands, which nursed him, and performed all those
various acts and offices which are dictated by maternal solicitude?
The practice of consecrating the month of May to the Virgin, and
designating it the month of Mary, has the same origin, and been in the
same way brought into general use in the Roman Catholic world. The
religious feasts of those thirty-one days have a certain character of
splendour and of gladness, which makes them resemble those of the Greeks
and Romans consecrated to Flora. The altars, on which is placed the
image of the Virgin, are adorned with an extraordinary profusion of
feathers, flowers, rich silks, and precious jewels; the smoke of incense
ascends perpetually before the image; the temples are illuminated by
numerous candles, chandeliers, tapers; troops of women, dressed in white,
surround the image; and the most celebrated singers from the public
theatres chant hymns to the accompaniment of the organ and a numerous
orchestra. Enough has been said to enable the reader to perceive the
strict analogy that exists between the worship of saints and true
idolatry; but still, Spaniards have carried the personification of these
fragile works of men's hands far beyond the idolatries of ancient and
modern times. Not content with addressing words to them, as if they
possessed intelligence and the sense of hearing, they kiss their feet and
their hands, as though the marble, the plaster, or the wood, of which
they are made, were sensible of these demonstrations of tenderness. To
kiss an image is an act of merit which confessors recommend, and one to
which the popes have conceded spiritual privileges.
There is an anecdote related in Madrid, which proves to what an extreme
vices deserving the severest censure may be associated with the grossest
superstition. There was in that capital, towards the end of the reign of
Charles IV., a grandee of Spain, the Duke of A---, who professed especial
devotion to an image of the Virgin, which he was continually kissing.
Having taken under his protection a notorious courtesan, whose house he
furnished sumptuously, he ordered an image of the Virgin to be placed in
a corner of the staircase, which he never ascended without bestowing his
accustomed tokens of affection upon that representation of the object of
his devotion. One day, however, the favoured paramour had capriciously
elevated the image far above the reach of the lips of her protector.
Deprived of the exercise of his daily ceremony, the duke contented
himself with throwing up his handkerchief against the image, and on its
descent kissing it as an object which had been blessed by its mere
contact with the idol!
We could adduce several other proofs of the belief, prevalent in the
minds of Spaniards, that images can exercise many of the faculties of
animate objects, and therefore are capable of reciprocal intercourse in
the same way as living persons. For example, if it is intended that an
immoral act shall be committed before a picture, or a piece of sculpture,
representing the Virgin or any saint, in the first case it is turned
towards the wall; or, in the second, it is covered over with a sheet, in
order that it may not be a witness of the sin. In asking a favour of an
image, it is a common practice for the devotee, in order to propitiate
it, to inflict upon himself some punishment or privation; such, for
example, as that of absenting himself from the theatre, or the bullfights
(_corridas de toros_), abstaining from eating dessert, or from going to
the promenade, balls, and routs. This is called making _a promise_. To
wear the habit (_llevar habito_) signifies to dress modestly, and in
clothes of a dark colour, and without any ornaments, until the desired
favour from the image be obtained, and, at the same time, wearing a medal
of the Virgin on the arm. Those persons who desire to carry these acts
of penance and mortification to a greater degree of perfection, adopt
much severer practices and even more painful, such as putting hard peas
into their shoes, wearing _cilicios_,--which are belts made of hogs'
bristles, and having sharp iron goads which penetrate the
flesh,--sleeping on the ground, and other foolish practices.
All those inflictions are performed only when the favour stipulated for
with the Virgin or the saints is obtained; so that if what is asked be
not granted, the devotee remains absolved from the conditional obligation
which he has contracted.
The practice of self-scourging has been established in the Roman Catholic
Church from time immemorial. In the religious orders, particularly those
of the Capuchines, there were appointed days, such as Good Friday, on
which a whipping, self-inflicted, was a rigorous obligation. Among
devotees it is a voluntary act, except when imposed by the confessor by
way of penance. The number of lashes depends on the time which it takes
to pray the _Miserere_. The instrument employed is exactly the same as
that known to the English as the "cat o' nine tails."
There is a society, or brotherhood, designated the school of Christ ("_La
Escuela de Cristo_"), very much addicted to this self-castigation. They
meet together regularly in a subterranean chapel, which is kept in total
darkness during their exercises. The priest who conducts them ascends a
pulpit, and all his performance consists in the most lamentable
exclamations, which excite not only the grief, but the horror, of the
hearers. Every thing in these meetings breathes obscurity, and is
calculated to appal the human mind. There nothing is heard of the
goodness of God, or of his mercy, but, on the contrary, he is represented
as an inexorable tyrant, always disposed to punish with the most horrible
pains those who have offended him.
CHAPTER VI.
FEAST-DAYS--Processions and Novenas--Corpus Christi--How performed in
Seville, and the sacred dances of _los seises_--How in Madrid--Procession
of Holy Week--The _Santo Entierro_--Clerical processions--Procession of
the Rosary--Rites of Roman Catholicism--Jubilee of forty
hours--_Romerias_ or pilgrimages.
From the time at which the true spirit of Christianity, under the
dominion of the popes, began to be corrupted, and experience taught what
effects might be drawn from material worship, founded chiefly on pomp and
a complication of religious ceremonies, the Roman Catholic clergy,
especially those of Spain, have never ceased to multiply and vary the
means of occupying the imagination of men with exterior acts of an
apparently religious character. One of the principal abuses emanating
from this idea has been the invention of feast-days, which are ordered to
be observed as days of rest in the same manner as Sunday. So numerous
are the feast-days in the Spanish calendar, that there is scarcely a
month in the year which does not contain three or four of them. The
chief mysteries in the life of Jesus Christ, viz., the nativity, the
epiphany, the passion, the resurrection, ascension, and others,--the
celebrated epochs in the life of the Virgin Mary, and some of her
advocations, and the apostles, and a few favourite saints,--are the
objects to which those different feast-days are consecrated; and as on
these all kinds of labour are suspended, and as their number, including
Sundays, forms nearly a third part of the whole year, the vacuum they
leave in productive labour and in the exercise of professional avocations
is incalculable; so that feast-days may be enumerated among the various
causes tending to bring about the poverty of the nation. But besides
these days, there are others, called days of mass, on which it is
obligatory to attend that rite, although it is lawful to pursue secular
occupations.
Among the most popular exercises of worship, and from which the clergy
draw most profit, are worthy of note those of _processions_ and
_novenas_. In the most important among the former, that of _Corpus
Christi_ is the chief, and most observed. In that procession, it is the
practice to carry about the streets the _host_ and certain images of
saints. This rite was established in the twelfth century, in consequence
of a dream or vision had by a woman of Liege, in which it is pretended
this practice was commanded to be introduced to the church. At first,
almost the whole church opposed the innovation, but, by degrees, the
interests of the clergy prevailed, and the popes at length made this
procession of Corpus Christi obligatory. In Spain, it is celebrated with
all the pomp and ostentation imaginable. In the poor towns and villages,
the priest carries the consecrated _host_ in his hands; but in rich
cathedral towns, an expensive tabernacle or canopy of silver, generally a
master-work of art, is provided for the purpose. It is called _La
Custodia_. That of Seville is divided into three bodies or compartments,
and adorned with bas-relief, admirably executed, and having in the lower
part an urn of gold containing the host. This production is a gem, and
always attracts the wonder and amazement of foreigners. The structure,
when carried about, is adorned with flowers, lights, bunches of grapes,
and ears of wheat. The procession is composed of all the religious
communities, all the brotherhoods, the clergy of all the neighbouring
parishes, the municipal body, all public officers, and the most notable
persons of the city, all carrying lighted candles in their hands. It is
headed by detachments of cavalry, and surrounded by a numerous body of
infantry, with a military band. In some towns it is usual to have in
these processions immense giants, made up of pasteboard, similar to those
seen in pantomimes at English theatres, and, as may be supposed, the
laughter which these ridiculous exhibitions excite in the spectators
contrasts greatly with the august character wished to be given to the
ceremony. The cavalcade stops at various intervals during its progress,
and on these occasions the priests burn incense before the perambulating
temple; and thereupon an ecclesiastical choir chants, in succession, the
stanzas of the famous hymn, _Tantum ergo Sacramentum_,--a poetical
composition, attributed to Thomas de Aquinas, and which, although written
in rhyme, according to the practice adopted on the degeneration of the
pure Latinity, and although the verses have a species of jingling which
never met the approbation of the literati of the Augustan age,
nevertheless they contain lofty sentiments, and explain in an ingenious
manner the dogma of transubstantiation. The following may serve as an
example:--
"Tantum ergo sacramentum
Veneremus cernui,
Et antiquum documentum
Novo cedat ritui.
Suppleat fides complementum,
Sensuum defectui." {125}
In the procession of Corpus Christi in Seville, which is the most
celebrated one in all Spain, and which attracts an immense concourse of
people from all parts of the province, the moving temple is preceded by a
troop of chorister boys, called _los seises_. These boys are dressed up
with much elegance in the picturesque Spanish costume of the fifteenth
century, and, in the progress of the procession, they dance with large
castanets to the sound of an ancient kind of music, much admired by those
able to form a judgment on such matters. This custom had its origin in
the will of a devotee, who left a considerable sum of money to be so
employed, under a condition that the custom should terminate when the
dresses he had ordered for the boys should be worn out; but the canons
invented a very ingenious plan, by which the custom has been perpetuated.
When one of these dresses begins to fail at any particular part, they
order that part alone, the sleeve for example, to be replaced, so that
all these vestments have gone through innumerable transformations from
the foundation of the custom down to the present time. It is related
that a certain pope, having been informed of such a custom, and seeing in
it a profanation of the sacred ceremonies, attempted to suppress it, and
reprehended the canons for their want of discretion. These canons,
however, begged his holiness to suspend his judgment until he should
behold with his own eyes what had so much offended him; and with that
object one of the canons went to Rome, taking the boys with him. The
pope at first most positively refused the sought-for condescension; but
at last he yielded to the canon's entreaties, and the exhibition took
place in presence of the whole conclave of cardinals, presided over by
the head of the Roman Catholic Church. The sacred dance made so great an
impression on that respectable company, and so excited the admiration of
the august personages who witnessed it, that the pope changed his
opinion, and sanctioned the practice which before he had condemned. {127}
In the rear of this ambulant temple goes the archbishop, the bishop, or
principal ecclesiastical personage of the diocese, under an awning or
canopy, supported by silver rods, and carried by eight of the chief
citizens, and then come the civil authorities, with the functionaries of
the tribunals, and the head officials of the public service.
As this feast always falls in spring, the serenity of the atmosphere, the
perfumed air of Andalusia, the innumerable flowers thrown along the line
of the procession, the balconies splendidly adorned, and full of
beautiful women dressed in the highest state of luxury, the charms of
music, and the brilliant display of uniforms, embroidered vestments, and
other gay appearances which catch the eye of the spectator on every side,
form a spectacle eminently picturesque and romantic, which seldom fails
to make a lively impression on the exalted imaginations of the
inhabitants of those regions. On these occasions, more particularly, may
be observed the dexterity with which the Roman Catholic clergy avail
themselves of every opportunity of profiting by human weakness, and of
that imperium which the senses exercise over the mind, to augment the
number of their proselytes and consolidate their power over the
conscience.
In Madrid the parts of the streets through which the procession is to
pass is shaded by awnings, and the pavement is sprinkled with sand. The
ceremony over, all belonging to the elegant and fashionable class of
society go at once to the _Calle de Carretas_, which is one of the
streets in the line of the procession, and one which, on this occasion,
may certainly vie with the far-famed Long-champs of Paris; for there the
fair rulers of fashion display those tasteful changes in their personal
attire which are to be in vogue during the remainder of the spring.
The processions of Holy Week are of a character entirely different from
those of Corpus Christi. In the latter all is animation and joy, singing
and triumph; but in the former every thing is sadness, seriousness, and
grief. All the sculptured figures, called _pasos_, which are of the
natural size and colour, and are carried about in those doleful
processions, represent the principal scenes of our Saviour's
passion,--such as his prayer in the garden, the treachery of Judas, the
judgment of Pilate, and the crucifixion. In Seville, the processions of
Holy Week are of an extent and character renowned all over Christendom.
There they bring out one of these _pasos_, in which are seen the twelve
apostles seated at table, with the slight anachronism that their chairs
are of the most elegant description that can be manufactured in London or
Paris. In the processions we are now describing, besides all those
persons we have named as taking a part in that of Corpus Christi, are
innumerable _penitentes_, who are men in masks, dressed in tunics of a
white, black, or brown colour, their heads covered with an enormous cone,
of the same colour and form used by the magicians or astrologers
represented in English theatres. In Granada those tunics, which are
called _chias_, are of black velvet, embroidered with gold or silver, and
having a train of six or eight yards in length. The diversity of colour
denotes the brotherhood to which the penitent belongs; and these
brotherhoods, among which are many of opulence, bear the expenses of the
procession.
In some small towns, instead of images of wood, living persons represent
the personages of sacred history, and, generally, the young people of
both sexes most distinguished for their fine personal endowments are
selected to figure on those occasions. Even in Seville, where these
ceremonies are performed with something more of decency, may be seen,
following a _paso_, a number of children dressed up so as to represent
angels, and each of them carrying an instrument connected with our Lord's
passion, viz., the nails, the spunge, the lance, and the crown of thorns.
There are also three persons to represent three of the principal doctors
of the church who have defended the dogma of transubstantiation. In the
midst is placed one young girl who plays the part of Veronica; and it is
but a few years ago that she who was performing this part, not being
adequate to the fatigue of the day, followed by a severe cold, was taken
ill, and in a few hours died from the effects of her exertions and
exposure. It is usual to reward the young woman who plays this part with
an ounce of gold.
In a certain country-town in Spain there are two _pasos_, one
representing our Saviour and the other the Virgin, and when the
procession turns to enter the church, scarcely has the former been
introduced when the second approaches, but before she can get within the
porch the door is shut, and thereupon the whole concourse of attendants
burst out into bitter sobs and crying, deploring that the mother of our
Lord is denied the favour of following her Son into the sacred edifice.
The most solemn and brilliant of all the processions of Holy Week in
Seville is that of the holy burial (_Santo Entierro_), the name of which
indicates its object; and the expenses which it occasions are so
considerable, that it is celebrated only once in four or five years,--an
interval of time necessary for the brotherhoods to accumulate the
required amount, which, according to assurances from persons likely to
know the fact, does not fall far short of four thousand pounds sterling.
The figure which on this occasion represents the dead body of our
Saviour, and which is a fair work of art, is placed in an urn made of
large squares of glass, in framework of silver, and adorned with
extraordinary magnificence. Behind this goes the image of the Virgin,
also the size of life, in a cloak of black velvet embroidered with
silver, on her head a crown of gold, and in her hand, as if to wipe away
her tears, an exceedingly rich cambric pocket-handkerchief, embroidered
and trimmed with the most costly Brussels lace. There is also in this
procession a figure emblematical of death, which is represented by a
human skeleton at the foot of a cross. Such is the importance given in
all Andalusia to the procession of the holy funeral, that the year in
which it is celebrated forms an epoch in the history of Seville, and for
many years, both before and afterwards, nothing else is spoken of. Many
persons from Madrid and other principal cities, and even the English
_employes_ of the garrison of Gibraltar, are present in the Andalusian
capital on these occasions.
As a proof that Spaniards themselves, and even the clergy, consider these
ceremonies as a mere mundane spectacle, it is related of a king of Spain
that, having gone to Seville at a time very far distant from the Holy
Week, he was favoured by the authorities and the chapter with all the
rites, feasts of the church, and processions, appropriate to that holy
occasion.
In all the towns of Spain the last week of Lent is celebrated by
processions. Where there are no _pasos_, or groups of statues, to
represent the scenes of the passion, these are substituted by real men
and women, among whom are distributed the parts of the Virgin, the
apostles, Pilate, and the Saviour himself;--and this profanation does not
excite the least scruple in a nation calling itself Christian.
It is certain that this abuse greatly prevailed in all the nations of
Europe during the middle ages, and that such was the origin of those
so-called _mysteries_, which, in reality, were but a species of sacred
dramatic representation that preceded the true comedy, and turned the
porch, and even the altar, of the sanctuary, into a theatre. But those
customs disappeared at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and have
not since been in use except in Spain.
Besides the processions of _Corpus Christi_, and those of Holy Week,
there are several others paid for by the clergy themselves, by the
brotherhoods, or by the public, according to the favourite devotions in
the respective localities. The city of Valencia is particularly noted
for its attachment to this class of exhibitions. There is scarcely a
week in the year in which two or three processions are not celebrated
there, in which a great majority of the people take a part. On these
occasions all useful labours are suspended, and the sums which are spent
in ornaments, music, and, above all, in wax, are beyond calculation.
Every individual in the procession carries a wax candle in the hand. The
images of the saints are adorned with great profusion. The balconies of
the houses make an ostentatious display of rich festoons and garlands;
while the presence of the authorities and of the troops, which serve as
an escort to the clergy, the flowers which cover the streets, and the
music, both military and religious, which never fails on these occasions,
form a whole more like a public amusement than any part of religious
worship.
In many of the towns in Spain, and particularly those of Andalusia, there
is a nocturnal procession called the Rosary (_el Rosario_), for those who
compose it go along either praying or singing those prayers of the rosary
to which we have already alluded, when describing this part of devotion.
The Rosary of the Aurora is another procession which goes forth at
daybreak, to the great nuisance of the more peaceable inhabitants, who
are then enjoying the sweets of sleep. In Toledo this nuisance has
reached such an extent as really to be one of the gravest character.
Before the procession sets out, there are certain heralds sent round the
town, each having a bell in his hand which he rings continually, and at
the same time calls out with all his might this doggrel couplet:--
"El Rosario de la Aurora!
Ya es hora! Ya es hora!"
In some places the nearest relatives of some person recently deceased
assemble together, and then all the full concourse are seen directing
their steps towards the cemetery, and there to collect round the grave of
the departed, whilst the relatives kneel at the tomb, and the clergy
recite a part of the office for the burial of the dead. It cannot be
denied that this part of the ceremony is extremely imposing and romantic.
The rites of Roman Catholicism may be divided into two classes, viz.,
those required by the liturgy, and for which it establishes fixed rules
approved by the councils, such as the mass and the administration of the
sacraments; and, secondly, those invented and practised by the devotions
of the faithful, which are without any fixed limits. Among these, the
most notable are the Jubilee of Forty Hours, and the Pilgrimages
(_romerias_).
The Jubilee of Forty Hours consists in the public exhibition of the
consecrated host during the whole day, enclosed in a _custodia_, which
has already been described. It lasts three days, and these are alternate
in all the churches of great cities; so that there is not a day in the
whole year, except the Thursday and Friday in the Holy Week, on which the
host does not receive this kind of worship. At night-fall the _custodia_
is covered with a curtain, which is generally made of rich gold and
silver lace. This act, at which an officiating priest presides, and
during which hymns are chanted and accompanied by music, usually attracts
a great concourse of the devout. In the mornings the eucharist is
uncovered with the same ceremonies.
The Pilgrimages or _romerias_ are devout expeditions made to certain
celebrated sanctuaries on the days of the saints to which they are
dedicated. Those sanctuaries are generally situated out of the towns.
Some of them are convents, others mere chapels; but in both one case and
the other, large sums of money are collected on those occasions. In
ancient times, in Spain, as also in all other Roman Catholic countries,
these pilgrimages were acts of sincere devotion, which imposed the
necessity of confession and communion. The devout passed all their time
in the church,--in the morning hearing mass, in the evening reciting
prayers dictated to them by a priest from the pulpit. On these occasions
it was usual for enemies to be reconciled, confessing their most grievous
sins, and celebrating other acts of true repentance and piety. But in
modern times these usages have been much relaxed; the greater part of
those who attend such pilgrimages give up the entire day to dinners,
dancing, and other amusements. Many serious disorders have generally
resulted from such customs, and the authorities have been under the
necessity of suppressing them. In olden times the two sanctuaries of
Santiago in Galicia, and of the Virgin del Pilar in Zaragoza, drew
together immense crowds of devotees, not only of the Peninsula and other
Spanish dominions, but from all parts of Europe; and the offerings which
were made to the images in those temples, in money, and in jewels, and
other precious things, amounted in value to sums which would, if named,
be considered fabulous. In the present day, however, that zeal has
considerably cooled, although the practice of attributing to those
images, and others called _Milagrosas_, the cure of all human disorders,
is not exploded, but still prevails. Whenever cases occur in which an
individual believes that he has been restored to health by means of the
_Milagro_, it is customary for him to deposit, in the chapel of the image
he venerates, a small model or representation of that member or part of
the body restored to health by the prodigy. These objects in great
abundance adorn the walls of such edifices, where may be seen innumerable
arms, legs, eyes, mouths, and so on, of silver or of wax, according to
the circumstances of the persons so favoured. People, who have been
cured of their lameness, leave in the chapel the crutches which they made
use of during the continuance of their infirmities.
The processions _del Viatico_ are worthy of note in this chapter. These
are of two classes, and may be thus described. When a sick person is
threatened with approaching death, the priest of the parish carries to
his house, in his hands, the consecrated host. This he does with the
greatest solemnity, preceded by a procession of great numbers of devout
people, bearing in their hands large wax candles; and when the patient
happens to be a person of distinction and rich, the procession is
accompanied by a band of music. Before this group goes a number of
people who are constantly ringing a bell. All persons who meet this
concourse kneel down and take off their hats as it passes; and if a
body-guard happen to be in the route, the troop immediately forms and
goes through certain evolutions peculiar to such occasions, which consist
in every soldier bending his knee and inclining his arms to the ground,
whilst the drums beat the royal march. A piquette is then detached from
the troop and follows the priest and escorts him to the church. If the
procession in its route meets a carriage, no matter how high a personage
may be in it, he cedes his place at once to the priest, who goes in it to
the sick person, and returns in it to his parsonage. The monarch himself
forms no exception to this rule. Ferdinand VII., after his return from
France, subject entirely to the clergy, and desiring to give them his
support, performed this customary duty on several occasions. But as the
clergy abused this courtesy and the facility with which the sovereign was
made to lend himself to their wishes, and as it became a fixed plan to
set out at such a time and in such a direction as to make these
processions fall in his way as he was returning from the Prado, the
custom was at last found insupportable; and, therefore, it frequently
happened that, on seeing the lights preceding the _Viatico_, the king
ordered his coachman to turn back and take another direction, so as to
avoid the inconvenience of coming in contact with the procession. Queen
Isabella II. has been frequently obliged to discharge this act of
devotion. On those occasions she not only placed her carriage at the
disposition of the officiating priest, but, with a wax candle in her
hand, formed part of the procession, entered the house of the patient,
however humble, assisted in the ceremony, kneeling on her knees, and if
the sick person was poor, defrayed the expenses attendant on the illness,
and, if death ensued, on the burial of the sufferer. To those who
believe in the doctrine of the bodily presence of Jesus Christ in the
eucharist this act contains a sublime lesson of humiliation and
reverence; for to see the pomp and power of an earthly potentate
resigned, so to speak, before the presence of God, must certainly be to
them a spectacle both moving and edifying.
Those persons who are prevented by acute, although not dangerous,
diseases, from attending the churches in compliance with the paschal
precept, are also privileged to have the _viatico_ in a splendid
procession once a-year. This ceremony is attended by all the
brotherhoods and principal people of the parish. The grandees of Spain,
and the richest inhabitants of the neighbourhood, send the best of all
their carriages on those occasions. The balconies are covered with
ornaments, and the fair occupants scatter abroad a profusion of flowers,
and copies of rude engravings of devout subjects, which are called
_aleluyas_, towards the coach in which the priest is conveyed. Numerous
bands of music accompany the cavalcade, which is escorted by a strong
detachment of troops. Every time that the priest descends from the
carriage to enter the house of some infirm person, the soldiers perform
those military honours which already have been described, and during the
performance the band plays the royal march. In some parishes, the
proprietor of the carriage, or one of his principal people, assumes, _pro
hac vice_, the office of coachman.
Under the title of processions may conveniently be placed those of the
funerals of such persons as have left sufficient funds to defray the
expenses exacted by the church on such occasions. Until within a very
few years ago, it was the custom to convey the body to the dead-house of
the church, with the face uncovered, in some religious habit, which was
called the shroud (_la mortaja_), and the body was borne on the shoulders
of the brotherhood of some society. Now-a-days, however, it is usual to
convey it in a closed coffin, and on a funeral car. In Madrid, some of
these cars are on such a scale of luxury and sculpture as but ill accords
with the character and nature of the ceremony. The body is preceded by
the poor of the charitable institutions, with lighted candles or tapers
in their hands; and the clergy follow it, chanting the office for the
dead. The undertaker is a personage entirely unknown in Spain. The
church takes possession of the body, and keeps it until the time of
interment, and the bill of expenses for the offices which the church
performs frequently amounts to a sum absolutely ruinous. There is a
Spanish city of which it is recorded that no sooner has a person breathed
his last sigh, than the surviving family are importuned by deputations
from the different religious communities, offering their respective
services to conduct the interment on the cheapest scale of prices.
We have several times had occasion to allude to the strange contrast
formed in Spain between the superstitious character of Roman Catholicism
there professed, and the mockery which, at the same time, is made of the
most sacred objects and venerated practices. The most notable example
which we have of this moral phenomenon is _The funeral of the sprat_, or,
as called in Spain, _El entierro de la sardina_, which is performed
yearly in Madrid. On Ash-Wednesday, the day on which the follies of the
carnival cease, and on which the people proceed, at once, from dancing
and revelling, to the church, to receive the ashes which the priest rubs
in form of a cross on the forehead of every believer, and in the evening
of the same day, the population of Madrid meet on the shores of the
Manzanares, where they witness the caricature of a solemn funeral, the
body interred being that of a dead sprat. This absurd feast is truly one
of bacchanalian character; in it are committed a thousand excesses of
many kinds, among which that of drunkenness, especially among the lower
classes, greatly prevails. There is not in any modern society a more
faithful copy of Pagan festivities than that we are now describing, as
witnessed every year in Madrid. The clergy have often protested against
this stupid ceremony; but all their efforts to procure its abolition have
been fruitless, and the authorities have retroceded before a practice so
deeply rooted in the public habits, and so analogous to the gay
temperament of the people of the Spanish capital. In the year 1851, it
having been reported that the government was going to prohibit this
horrible profanation and mockery of one of the most solemn ceremonies of
the church, all the periodicals of Madrid, except those under the
influence of the clergy, put forth the most energetic remonstrances. In
the Cortes the most violent debates took place on the same subject, and
appeals were made to the cabinet; nay, there were symptoms of an
approaching vote of censure on the ministers, in case they should have
the temerity to think of abolishing the obnoxious practice. Senor Madoz,
who afterwards became minister of _Hacienda_, put himself at the head of
this opposition, and displayed great ardour; and in spite of the
religious periodicals accusing him of inconsistency, and quoting a
passage from his own writings, in which he advocated the suppression of
the feast as a blot on Spanish civilization, the question was too popular
to be easily given up. Warm debates followed, and the subject took an
aspect so serious, that the government, seeing itself exposed to a
_crisis_, was obliged, to save its own existence, to come to the Cortes
and declare solemnly that it would not offer the least opposition to the
_Entierro de la sardina_, the funeral of the sprat. After this triumph,
the interment of the sprat was performed with a splendour never witnessed
before. The whole city attended the procession; there were thousands of
coaches and vehicles of every description, besides an incredible variety
of masked characters; guitars and castanets resounded for more than
twelve hours on the _pradera_ adjoining the Manzanares. The burlesque of
the religious ceremonies was greater than ever; and the history of Madrid
never recorded a day on which was consumed so great a quantity of wine
and _escabeche_ (a kind of pickle of different sorts of fish), being the
classical refreshments with which the people of Madrid honour that
ceremony in taking leave of the carnival, and furnish themselves with
strength to bear up against the fastings of Lent.
CHAPTER VII.
PURGATORY--Deliverance from by devotions of survivors--Those devotions
described--Difference between dogma of purgatory and other dogmas--Modes
of drawing out souls--Masses for the dead--Legacies to pay for
them--External representations of images and pictures--Day of All Souls
and its practices--The Andalusian Confraternity of Souls--_Mandas
piadosas_--Debtor and creditor account between the church and
purgatory--How balanced--Bull of
Composition--Soul-days--_Responsos_--_Cepillo_, or alms-box--Financial
operation--Origin of bills of exchange and clearing house--Wax
Candles--Their efficacy--Cenotaphs--Summary of funds, and reflections on
their misapplication.
In the year 1802, the Inquisition of Granada celebrated an _auto-de-fe_
against a teacher of languages, who lived at Malaga, for having said and
written that the true purgatory was the purse of the friars and clergy.
All persons who have considered the immense gains which the Spanish
clergy have drawn, and continue to draw, from the belief in purgatory,
will agree that the unhappy professor did not wander far from the truth.
According to the doctrine, generally admitted among the Roman Catholic
clergy, upon this dogma, which the Roman Catholic Church alone receives,
the liberation of souls suffering the torments of fire in purgatory, or,
what is much the same, their admission to the joys of the celestial
state, does not depend so much on the culpability of the defunct
individual as on the devotion of those who survive. It is taught in the
catechism, it is preached in the pulpit, and enforced in the comments of
theological works, that the souls of those condemned to purgatory can be
ransomed and drawn out by means of prayer, penance, alms, and religious
rites; and that one of the works of charity, most meritorious in the eyes
of the Almighty, is the use of those means to abbreviate the duration of
punishment of the sufferers. Hence it is that what is called in Spain
devotion, with reference to souls in purgatory, is one of the most
striking characteristics of religious life in that country. Nobody there
has hitherto ventured to examine whether this belief is or is not
conformable to the sacred Scripture, and to the doctrines of the first
centuries of Christianity.
Purgatory in Spain, and in all Roman Catholic countries, is a dogma as
sacred as that of the Incarnation and that of the Trinity, with this
difference,--that the latter mysteries, and all those relative to the
Saviour, place man in a position of immense inferiority with respect to
their object, whilst purgatory, on the contrary, gives him an effective
power, the object of which is nothing less than the salvation of souls.
It is scarcely possible to conceive that to a being so weak as man could
ever be attributed a power equal to that of Divinity itself. This
creature, man, whom we see occupied in his business or his diversions,
impregnated with profane ideas, and perhaps on the very point of
committing crime, or of abandoning himself to criminal excesses, is
supposed to be capable, even in these very acts, to open the gates of
heaven to the soul of a relative or of a friend, and this, too, without
any effort of his conscience or his will, but simply by taking out a
piece of money from a purse, laying it on the plate of the sanctuary, or
saying a paternoster.
Many and various are the methods which have been invented "to draw out
souls from purgatory." The principal of these is "the mass of the dead;"
and it constitutes one of the most lucrative sources from which the Roman
Catholic clergy derive their revenues. As a general rule, when a
testator makes his will, he bequeathes a certain sum of money to be laid
out in masses, which are to be said as suffrages for his soul. These
sums are sometimes more than sufficient to pay for a thousand, or even
two thousand, masses. The relatives or friends pay for other masses for
the same object, and many devout persons contribute large sums to draw
out, indiscriminately, those souls which are most ready to avail
themselves of such generosity. In all acts of devotion, including the
daily and common mass, a prayer is introduced in favour of departed
souls; and in order to exalt the imaginations of the faithful, by means
of external representations, which, as we have seen in preceding
chapters, form the grand arm of Roman Catholicism, they present, in
painting, or engraving, or in statuary, figures of human beings
surrounded by flames, and extending the hands as if in the act of
imploring the compassion of their friends. In truth, in order to see
this there is no need to go to Spain; for even in London, that great
centre of civilization, and at a few paces from Temple-bar, some of these
impious caricatures are exhibited for the edification of the English
public.
On the day of All Souls (_el dia de difuntos_), in Spain, we find
exhibited in the churches the most disgusting representations, such as
human bones, skulls, and entire skeletons; the churches are kept in
profound darkness; and nothing is omitted to inspire terror and move the
hearts of the devout. In the middle of the church is placed a large
table with a silver plate, two immense wax candles, lighted, and some of
the figures just alluded to. A priest, seated by the table, is
imploring, in the most pitiful language, the generosity of the
attendants. "He who puts a half-dollar in this plate," said the priest
in one of the churches in Cadiz, "draws out a soul from purgatory." An
Andalusian, as great an epigrammatist and jester as are generally the
natives of that agreeable province, on one of these occasions took out
from his purse his half-dollar, and put it on the plate, saying that his
intention was to rescue the soul of his father. At the end of a moment
or two he asked the priest if the soul of his father was now drawn out of
purgatory, and on being answered by the oracle in the affirmative, very
quietly re-took possession of his coin, with this pungent observation,
"Very well then, my father is not such a fool as to return to purgatory
after having succeeded in entering heaven." Ridiculous and irreverent as
this incident may appear, it cannot be denied that the logic contained in
it is irresistible.
In every parish in Spain there is a confraternity of souls (_hermandad de
animas_), whose treasure is composed not only of the contributions of the
faithful, but of vast properties and metallic recompenses called
_censos_, which always, in fact, consist of available money. The pious
legacies (_mandas piadosas_), which abound in all the provinces of Spain,
form a capital of incalculable amount. They call _mandas piadosas_ those
rustic or urban securities which have been left by testators with the
sole object of investing their products in masses to be said for the
dead. The church receives these proceeds, and pays for the masses. It
often occurs that the number of those masses is so immensely great that
there is not a sufficient number of priests in the neighbourhood to
discharge the duty of saying them; the incomes, therefore, received by
the clergy accumulate, and are disposed of for other purposes. Thus the
church becomes a debtor to purgatory for thousands of masses which,
though paid for, remain unsaid. In these cases the clergy have recourse
to the pope, and demand a bull called _bulla de composicion_, for which
the datary at Rome exacts a considerable sum of money. In fact, this
bull is to compress, by a science which appears very like that of
chemistry, the virtue of four or five thousand masses unsaid into only
one which _is_ said; so that if four or five thousand or more souls ought
to be drawn out by means of the like number of masses, one single mass
alone, through the medium of the bull, produces this grand result; and by
this homoeopathic process the consciences of the debtors are pacified.
It may easily be imagined that these practices lead to the greatest
abuse. Before the suppression of the friars, the convents were the great
depositaries of this species of treasure. The bishops, and even the
government itself, have often desired to look into these accounts in
order to see whether the will of the testator had been exactly complied
with in the application of the funds to their intended purposes. But the
prelates of the respective orders have always most tenaciously resisted
any such encroachment on their faculties and jurisdiction. It is quite
certain that the incomes from these _mandas piadosas_ were frequently
laid out in repairing convents, erecting new chapels, celebrating
religious feasts, and purchasing rich ornaments, and other precious
objects, for augmenting the splendour of the sacred rites and ceremonies.
When, at the end of the year, the account came to be stated of this
branch of the church's industry, and there appeared to be a vast
disproportion of masses said in comparison with the sums received, the
procurador of the order in Rome solicited a bull of composition. The
account was thus balanced, and every thing nicely adjusted.
Although, on every day in the year, the suffrages of all classes may be
offered in favour of souls in purgatory, there are some days especially
privileged and set apart in the calendar for the purpose, with this note
affixed to them, _dia de anima_ (Soul-day), and on which the effect of
the suffrage is supposed to be infallible; that is to say, that each
devout person draws out as many souls from purgatory as pieces of money
which he draws out of his purse to pay for the like number of masses, or
other acts of devotion to be performed. On those days, a large placard
is erected at the church-doors, and bearing this inscription, "_Hoy se
saca anima_," (To-day souls are drawn out). The churches are full of
people, and the contributions of money are numerous and abundant.
The prayer especially consecrated to the drawing souls out of purgatory,
and which forms an essential part of the office for the dead, is called
in Spanish _responso_. It is composed of three anthems taken from the
book of Job, a paternoster, and a collect, and ends with the formula,
_Requiem eternam dona eis_, _Domine_. When the prayer is in favour of
all souls, the _eis_ remains in the plural; but if it is in favour of one
particular soul, then the singular _ei_ is used. On the day of All
Souls, when an innumerable crowd of people assembles in the cemeteries,
the priests also attend in great numbers to say _responsos_, at so much
a-piece, for those who desire them. In a certain Spanish city, which we
forbear to name, we have seen these priests rival each other in lowering
the prices current of these precious performances. One was crying out,
"I say a _responso_ for tenpence;" {148a} and another, "I say it for
fivepence." {148b} This may appear incredible, but it is an undeniable
fact.
In all Roman Catholic churches there is a _cepillo_ (alms-box), nailed to
the wall, and having this inscription upon it, "_Para las benditas almas
del purgatorio_," (For the blessed souls in purgatory), for the reception
of contributions: and the circumstance has given rise to an operation of
mercantile character which is certainly very ingenious, and to which some
Spaniards attribute the origin of bills of exchange. The priest of a
parish of Andalusia, for example, has occasion for a certificate of the
baptism or of the burial of some person in a parish of Arragon or in
Navarre. The fee for this document is usually two pesetas. As it is
almost impossible to send so small a sum from one extremity of the
Peninsula to the other, the priest of Arragon or of Navarre draws two
pesetas from the _cepillo_, or alms-box of his parish, and the Andalusian
priest puts the same sum into the _cepillo_ of his parish, _or he says
two masses as an equivalent_. In this way purgatory is converted into a
kind of clearing-house, which wonderfully facilitates the transaction of
business in the funds of the ecclesiastical market.
A circumstance peculiar to the worship celebrated in favour of souls in
purgatory is the prodigality of lighted candles which are consumed on
those occasions. There is no doubt that the object of this practice is
to expose to the view of the faithful a lively image of the flames by
which these souls are tormented in their probationary state. A
traveller, worthy of credit, assures us that the wax consumed with this
object in the city of Granada alone (in which there are about forty
churches), on the day of All Souls, amounted, a few years ago, to the
incredible sum of 10,000 pounds.
The cenotaphs placed in the churches when the funeral rites of some rich
man are celebrated, are, in truth, nothing but perfect pyramids of
burning flames produced by wax candles. It is a common belief,
maintained in the pulpit and in the confessional, that the brighter these
candles burn the more efficacious will be the suffrages. The royal
family of Spain has had the good taste to avoid this error. In the
magnificent monastery of the Escurial, where the remains of deceased
members of the royal family are deposited, all show is reduced to a
sumptuous carpet of black velvet, worked with gold, and spread out upon
the floor, on the centre of which is a cushion of the same materials, and
upon that a royal crown of gold. At the extremities are placed four
immense candelabra of solid silver, called _blandones_, with their
corresponding wax candles of various diameters and sizes.
From what has been said in this chapter the reader may form some idea of
the immense sums of money which the clergy absorb by virtue of this
belief in the dogma of purgatory. When he reflects that those
contributions are upon a more liberal scale than any others which the
Spanish nation pays, and that the product is sunk by the most
unproductive of all the classes in society, he will then be able to
arrive at some conjecture as to who and what are the Roman Catholic
clergy of Spain. These contributions, be it remembered, are paid, on
every day in the year, in all parts of the Peninsula, and by persons of
every category in the nation, from the very meanest to the most elevated
in rank. The means employed to wring these sums from the contributors
are infallible in their effects. The attack is made, indiscriminately,
by appeals to charity, family affection, and reciprocal duties of
parents, children, brothers, and sisters. The act of liberating a
Christian soul from the dreadful torments which purgatory is supposed to
inflict, however opposed to reason may be the idea of operating by
material fire upon the incorporeal essence of the soul, is considered
superior, in the estimation of every sensible and Christian heart, to any
succour which can be given to hunger, misery, nakedness, or other
numerous corporal afflictions. In this way the money which might be
spent in wiping the tears from the cheek of the widow and the orphan, and
be applied to the erection of useful human institutions, is prodigally
spent in a mysterious and incomprehensible operation, which, after all,
is a purely human invention, and which, by its practical results, and the
great amount of wealth it draws to the Roman Catholic Church, bears a
greater affinity to a financial operation than to any religious duty.
It would be almost impossible to calculate the advantages which would
have resulted to the Spanish nation from those great resources, if the
product had been applied in the construction of roads, canals, or other
useful labours. But this immense capital being thus spread about in
small fractions, the inevitable consequence has been a continual draining
of the public wealth, the perpetuating of a theological error
(contradicted by Holy Scripture, and by the true doctrine of the church
of Christ), and that pomp and splendour which the clergy are enabled to
assume by such abundant means, in addition to the funds received by them
from other sources.
CHAPTER VIII.
Auricular Confession, a sacrament inseparable from that of
communion--Obligatory on all once a-year--Plan of discovering
defaulters--How punished--Evils of confession--Power of the priest--Four
evils pointed out--Discoveries in the Inquisition in 1820--Facility of
obtaining absolution--Louis XIV.--Robbers and assassins--The
confessional--Practice, how conducted--Expiatory acts--Refusal of
absolution--A husband disguised as his wife's confessor--The injunction
of secrecy on part of confessor--Advantages of the knowledge he
gains--Jesuits advocate the confessional--No fees for confession, but
gratuities are generally given.
Confession is one of the sacraments of the Church of Rome. Roman
Catholicism, at least in Spain, requires that all believers shall
celebrate that sacrament, as well as the sacrament of the Lord's Supper,
at least once a-year. Confessors amplify this obligation, and require
their penitents to observe both these sacraments frequently. Devout
persons who aspire to greater spiritual perfection practise these
observances once a week. Still, however, the church is satisfied with an
annual celebration of them by each of its members, and fixes the period
for that performance at Easter. The infraction of this rule is
considered a mortal sin, and the clergy use every possible means to
enforce the precept. The two sacraments are inseparable, and to obey the
injunction of confession and communion is called "to comply with the
church," (_cumplir con la Iglesia_).
The method employed by the clergy to discover delinquents with reference
to these obligations, is as rigid and severe as any that can be devised
by the most despotic civil authority. About the middle of Lent the
priest and one of his assistants form a general census of all their
parishioners. In the acts of confession and communion, the penitent
receives two tickets, which certify his obedience to the paschal precept,
and when the assigned period is over for these observances, the priest
goes from house to house to gather the tickets; so that it is impossible
to conceal any infraction of the rule. Until within the last few years,
it was the custom to write the names of all defaulters upon a board,
exposed to public view in the churches, by way of punishment of the
delinquents; and, consequently, those who were the subjects of this
punishment were badly looked upon by the towns-people, and considered as
atheists and heretics. The result of this absurd penal code was, that
men preferred sacrilege to dishonour, and complied externally with the
precept, making an imperfect confession, receiving the eucharist in a
state of culpability, and committing, consequently, in the eyes of a
Roman Catholic, one of the blackest crimes. Whether it was on account of
a grave inconvenience resulting from this mode of punishment, or by
virtue of that decay in the ecclesiastical influence in Spain, so notable
in recent years, we cannot determine, but that practice has now been
completely abolished; and even in Madrid and the principal cities of the
kingdom, the "complying with the church" has lost its compulsory
character, and been reduced to those who truly believe in its efficacy.
It is true that the clergy still give tickets, as testimonials, to those
who perform acts of confession and communion, but they have not the
temerity to go from house to house to collect them as formerly, and the
clergy who would venture to demand them would be exposed to mortification
and rebuke. Still, however, in some families, the children are bound in
duty to prove before the paternal tribunal their compliance with those
obligations, by means of those official documents; but even this test is
easily evaded by the purchase of the tickets, which are publicly sold in
the churches by the sacristans and other inferior agents of the
priesthood, for the moderate sum of a _peseta_, (ten-pence.)
The practice of confession, however, is not quite extinct, particularly
among the inferior classes of society, and it is natural that the clergy
should represent it as absolutely necessary to the salvation of souls,
looking to the great advantages which they themselves derive from it. By
means of the sacrament of confession, the confessor makes himself the
absolute master of the conscience of his penitent,--not merely of his own
secrets, but of those of his whole family; he directs all their
operations, and superintends all their domestic concerns, as well as
their social and even their political affairs. The confessor has
constantly suspended over the head of his penitent the terrible menace of
eternal punishment. It is not the pure and genuine law of God which the
devotee observes,--it is the law of God explained, augmented, or
diminished, and often distorted, by the voice of a fallible man, only his
equal, and perhaps vastly inferior to him in point of erudition and
purity of morals. The devotee has no right to obey God in the way he
understands the precepts imposed upon him by God and God's church. In
his view, God and the church are a sort of concrete centred in the
confessor. The confessor not only directs him, but punishes him with the
severest penances that a confessor can enjoin, for the penal code of the
confessional not only embraces the religious practices of fasting, alms,
scourging, and other inflictions, which are entirely at the disposal of
that terrible judge, but he has, or assumes to have, the power of denying
absolution; that is to say, of condemning the soul to the terrible state
of mortal sin, of interposing himself between the sinner and the divine
mercy, and of annulling the consoling hopes of Him who in compassion to
human weakness has said, "I have no pleasure in the death of a sinner,
but rather that he should turn from his wickedness and live." The
confessor is just as frail, as mortal, as subject to human weakness, as
susceptible of human passions and vices, as the penitent himself. The
character he assumes to perform, by the imposition of his hands, does not
allay in him either the violence of appetite, or the claims of
self-interest. How is it possible to believe that, in the exercise of
his ministry, he can entirely rid himself of sentiments of hatred,
sympathy, rancour, and envy, with respect to the man or woman who kneels
at his feet, imploring through him the pardon of sin?
People greatly deceive themselves who imagine that the confessional, at
least in Spain, bears the least analogy to the case of a man who,
burthened with sorrow and repentance, comes in confidence to deposit the
weight of the burden which oppresses him on the bosom of his friend. No;
do not believe that the penitent hopes to find in the confessor a kind
consoling guide to wipe away his tears, pour into his bosom the balm of
hope, and present to him an endearing hand which may lead him in the way
of holiness. The confessor is an implacable judge, who speaks with
gentle smiles or bland insinuations, but who tears out, with an imperious
tone and formidable menaces, the secrets of the heart, and not only those
which may be connected with crime worthy of deep contrition and sincere
repentance, but even others which pertain to an order of things exempt
from the sinfulness attaching to human actions. The confessor has an
absolute right to know every thing without exception. The most
insignificant actions, and even the most innocent ones, must come to his
knowledge. He is not content with the spontaneous declaration that the
penitent feels disposed to make of all infractions of duty; but he
insists on examining the case with the most scrupulous minuteness, and
takes as much pains as would a clever, cunning lawyer to extract every
particle of evidence from the witnesses for or against a culprit on his
trial. Under this last point of view, auricular confession may be
considered as the most tyrannical, odious, and unmoral institution, which
superstition, leagued with sordid interests, could ever have invented.
Innumerable are the abuses made of this wicked instrument by the Spanish
clergy, and which have resulted in the abandonment of the confessional by
every educated, discreet, and intelligent man. Of those abuses we shall
only point out four of the most important, and which have most
efficaciously contributed to bring auricular confession into disrepute.
_First_. The great interest of the clergy being to consolidate the papal
power, the confession serves to ascertain the extent of hostilities
raised against that power by philosophy, impiety, the tendency to
religious reform, and the general spirit of the age. The confessor asks
every penitent whether he has any prohibited or simply profane books; if
he, or his parents, or his friends, listen to the conversation or
discourse of heretics, or murmur against the ecclesiastical power, or
satirise the conduct of the clergy, or even attend balls, theatres, or
other profane amusements. Many confessors give to these things
infinitely greater importance than to the infraction of the Decalogue.
If the answer to these questions is in the affirmative, then the
confessor requires, under pain of refusing absolution, that such books be
given up,--that all further communication with the enemies of the church
be discontinued,--and that such carnal entertainments as balls and
theatres, and the like, be renounced for ever.
_Secondly_. As the exorbitant ecclesiastical power of the Church of Rome
is bound up intimately, and by a well-known analogy, with absolute power
and civil despotism, the confessional is converted into a political
engine by a true espionage, by means of which is discovered every liberal
tendency, every germ of conspiracy or rebellion, and every thing that can
offend the supreme authority.
In the epoch of the restoration of Ferdinand VII. to Spain, after his
captivity in France, when the persecution of the liberal party became the
essence of that monarch's policy, the confessors were actively occupied,
by command of the bishops, in these odious examinations and inquiries.
Thus, the wife was made to denounce the husband, the son the father, and
the friend the friend. Peace, thus disturbed, flew from the abodes of
families; the clergy acquired new rights to the hatred of the
nation,--for many were the persecutions to which the accusations, thus
dragged from the weakness of penitents, gave rise. Freemasonry was
considered then not only as a political crime, but as a challenge to
pontifical bulls, which were fulminated against the mystery with violent
anathemas. The penitent saw himself obligated to accuse, before the
tribunal of the Inquisition, any persons whom he knew to be members of a
lodge, although bound to such persons by the ties of kindred or
friendship.
_Thirdly_. The most dangerous use of the power of examination, which the
confessor exercises, is that of interrogating persons of the weaker sex.
A woman who once kneels before a confessor renounces from that moment the
most noble, the most pure, and the most amiable of the sentiments which
can animate the bosom of her sex. The searching voice and tone of her
judge breaks down with violence, at once, all those barriers which
modesty and self-respect by turns have raised up in her heart and
conscience. Not only is she compelled to reveal the positive acts,
gestures, and words, containing the least element of culpability or blame
against the chastity and purity of her habits, but even the most vague
and inevitable thoughts,--those against which woman recoils with
indignation, and which she would even blush and refuse to give an account
of to herself,--have all to be expressed and uttered by her lips without
the least palliation or disguise. It is a fact generally admitted in
Spain, and one spoken of without reserve in all classes of society, that
the most uncontaminated and pure maiden rises from the confessional as
well instructed in things of which before she was absolutely ignorant, as
though she had come from a house of the vilest character. It is enough
to indicate the nature of this abuse, in order to form some idea of its
pernicious consequences. Women worthy of credit have declared over and
over again that their first visit to the confessional opened the way to
their perdition, by inflaming the imagination with ideas of a most
voluptuous and obscene nature, and exciting their curiosity on subjects
which had never before even entered into the mind or conception. Should
any person doubt these statements, let him turn to any book of Roman
Catholic devotion, which contains what is called, in ecclesiastical
language, "examination of the conscience." The famous treatise, "_De
Matrimonio_," cited in our introduction, by the Jesuit Sanchez, for the
use of confessors of married women, contains particulars so filthy, and
pictures, descriptive of certain sins, so utterly disgusting and obscene,
that even the Court of Rome has been obliged to order all copies of the
work to be bought up and suppressed.
_Fourthly and finally_. Another of the great dangers of the indefinite
authority of the confessor, with respect to penitents of the weaker sex,
is the facility it offers for seduction.
Consider the situation of a single man in the presence of a young and
beautiful woman, alone with her, and master of her conscience and all the
secrets of her heart. How much denial, how much virtue must he not
possess to resist the temptation which such circumstances bring before
him! That great crimes do very commonly result from such circumstances
in Roman Catholic countries, is proved by the existence of the penalties
which the canon law imposes on the authors of such crimes, in the book
which goes by the title of "_De Solicitante in Confessione_." In almost
all the cities of Spain are recounted scandalous examples of this class
of abuses, and it is generally believed that in the greater number of the
cases, criminal relations between the clergy and women of all classes had
their origin in the confessional. When the people in Spain rose against
the Inquisition in 1820, and sacked the archives of that tribunal, they
found numerous informations by modest women against their confessors, who
had assailed their virtue in the confessional. The interests of the
clergy required that a veil should be thrown over those excesses, and
thus we find but very few instances in which the Inquisition awarded
punishment to the culprits.
With such efficacious instruments of power and of influence, it is not
surprising that the clergy and friars should wield an authority, without
limit, over all the affairs of families. Spaniards, who are old enough
to remember the moral state of their country towards the end of the last
century, are well aware that there was scarcely a family of any
importance in Spain which was not blindly subjected to the advice and
even orders of some individual member of the priesthood. Nothing could
be done without such advice and sanction. The clergy had great influence
in the marriages, domestic disputes, business, studies, and even
diversions, of all who recognised their superiority. They prohibited the
reading of the most innocent books,--even those respected by "the Index."
They exacted acts of devotion, such as masses, romerias, novenas, and
others, from which there resulted constant droppings of money into the
coffers of the church. In short, it may be taken as a fact, that, until
the period of the French invasion, the true government of the Spanish
nation had been a theocracy in the hands of forty or fifty thousand
individuals, freed from all responsibility with respect to the civil
power, united among themselves by the bonds of a common interest, and
forming a privileged caste, considered generally as the depositaries of
divine power. All this rested upon the basis of confession.
But the most deplorable inconvenience of these practices, and that which
makes it incompatible with the public morals, is the facility of pardon
offered for those criminal excesses and to the most abandoned depravity.
He who can be assured of the efficacy of a remedy which is at his
disposition every moment does not fear exposing himself to temptation.
The most obstinate sinner, the perpetrator of the most atrocious crimes,
knows that he has in his hand, already, absolution for all his
excesses,--that he is free from all responsibility and all
consequences,--and, in a word, that he can transform himself into a saint
or an angel by the mere performance of the rite which his church
prescribes. If, after this purification, he returns to his old habits,
and gives himself up to his wicked inclinations, the same process of
absolution is at hand, and can be repeated as often as he pleases; and as
the administration of this sacrament, on the part of the priest, becomes,
through force of repetition, a mere matter of routine, it can hardly be
supposed that the words he utters can carry along with them any efficacy,
as they might be expected to do if they were those of a truly devoted
minister of Jesus Christ. To assure oneself of these truths, let any one
attend a Spanish church on one of those days on which it is necessary
"_to comply with the church_," and draw near to those confessional-boxes
which are there erected for the use of the penitents. He will there see
people successively throw themselves down on their knees before a priest,
pronounce a few words, hear a slight admonition, and then rise up to make
way for another person who in his turn does the like, and so on during
the day. Can any one believe that this almost insignificant ceremony is
sufficient to impress on any mind that profound feeling, that intense
grief for past sins, and that firm resolve to sin no more, which are the
true signs of contrition and repentance? Can it be believed that the
treasures of divine mercy and forgiveness are open to all comers, who,
persisting in their sinful course, think fit to come, and, as a matter of
right, demand them as they would passports at the office of the police?
It is well known that even Louis XIV., notorious for his open and
profligate as well as habitual adulteries, had a confessor, and complied
with the duties of confession and communion in the presence of his whole
court. In Spain, robbers, assassins, and the most corrupt of the people,
pursued by justice for their crimes, and who are the terror of society,
always confess and receive the eucharist at Easter, but without ever
amending their lives or even intending to do so.
The priest, before saying mass, in which rite he is about to identify
himself with what he supposes to be the very body of our Saviour, is
bound to purify himself previously, so that in that awful ceremony the
holy elements may not enter a temple wherein dwelleth sin. The greater
number of those priests say mass every day, but seldom are they seen,
before assuming the sacred vestments to officiate at the altar, to
prepare themselves by means of confession, as the rules of their religion
most strictly enjoin. There are innumerable towns in Spain in which
there are no other clergymen than the parish priest. In what state then
must _his_ soul be when he approaches the altar to eat and drink, as he
professes to believe, the body and blood of Jesus Christ?
These considerations are so obviously natural and simple, that it has
required six centuries of civil and religious oppression to hide them
under the weight of ignorance and the fear of punishment. Nevertheless,
the invasion of the French, the political revolutions which have
followed, intercourse with foreign nations, and other causes which have
co-operated with these, have at last begun to open the eyes of Spaniards,
and confession is daily falling into disuse, particularly among the
educated classes of society. Even in these same classes, however, there
are many persons who, although persuaded of the truth of all that their
clergy teach them, refuse to confess, and declare that they will do so
only at the hour of death. Confession is, in the present day, more
common in the inferior ranks; for these move in a sphere without the pale
of civilization, and consequently are yet under the clerical power.
Still, there are villages in Spain in which the bad example of the
priest, and the enmity which is manifested towards him by the
inhabitants, prevent the compliance with those sacraments, so that for
years together the great majority of the people never think of purifying
their consciences in the way prescribed by their church. In the eyes of
a true Roman Catholic, these people are therefore living in a state of
complete reprobation, and are destined to perdition. And yet, how can a
human being throw himself at the feet of a man whom he despises? How can
he ask absolution of a man who he knows requires it more, perhaps, than
himself? And, above all, how can he confide the consciences and souls of
his daughters to a man who carries seduction in his eyes and pollution on
his lips?
The act of confession is practised after the following manner:--First of
all, the penitent makes, whilst alone, a private examination of the heart
and conscience, according to the instructions of books written with this
special object in view, some of which have justly merited the censures
passed upon them by the English press, in citing them by way of argument
against Parliamentary grants in favour of the college of Maynooth. The
hour of confession arrived, the penitent kneels before the priest, who is
seated in a kind of sentry-box, called the confessional, open in front,
and having the two sides of trellis-work, by which the priest is
separated from actual contact with the woman who comes to confess. This
confessional is placed in the church. Those who have visited the
churches and cathedrals on the continent of Europe may have seen several
of them in almost every one of these. Thus the confession may be said to
be made in public, for the rite is most frequently performed when there
is a crowd assembled, so that persons nearest to the confessional can
often distinctly hear much of what passes between the confessor and his
penitent. Now, only consider the situation of a woman observed, at
least, by so many witnesses, who, even though they do not hear her words,
can, by the alteration of her features and visage, understand what
emotions of mind she is enduring whilst undergoing the painful process.
The parties thus placed, the ceremony then begins with an act of
contrition, which the penitent pronounces.
Then follows the self-accusation of sins, in the order of the ten
commandments, or the Decalogue, and the other five of the Roman Catholic
Church. The priest frequently interrupts this self-accusation with
leading questions concerning the most minute particulars of the act which
is the subject of accusation. For example, suppose the accusation to be
this: "I accuse myself, holy father, of having uttered a falsehood." The
priest interrupts: "On a light matter, or on a serious one? was it for
personal interest? was it in order to stain the reputation of another?
and if so, was the person calumniated a man or a woman? and was that
person married or single? a member of the civil authority, or one of the
clergy?" This introductory part being ended, the priest begins a fresh
tack, and interrogates the penitent upon infractions not specified in any
of the commandments. For example: If the penitent is accustomed to pray
the rosary; if she frequents churches; if she contributes her money
towards the support of divine worship; if she knows, and omits to
denounce, impious persons, heretics, and enemies of the church; if she
prefers the society of worldly men to that of the clergy and friars; if
her parents, brothers, husband, sons, relatives, or friends, read
prohibited or dangerous books; if she orders masses to be said for the
souls of the dead; and other things of a similar kind. Then follows an
exhortation to show the turpitude of the sins confessed and the necessity
of repentance, and the priest concludes this peroration by the imposition
of penance or other expiatory act. Here the confessor has an open field
before him, in which he shows the fecundity of his imagination,--prayers,
paying for masses, fasting, alms, corporal mortification, pilgrimages to
sanctuaries, privation from theatres, balls, and parties, and other
penalties of a similar nature, which form the criminal code of the
confessional tribunal; and here it is easy to imagine what a latitude
this faculty offers to gratify hatred, show revenge, flatter the
powerful, and make things pleasant to those who have the power of
conferring favours. The act concludes with the words of absolution,
which is a formula consisting of a few Latin phrases.
The priest has the power of refusing absolution, but which however he
seldom ventures to exercise, for there is no penitent, be she who she
may, that would not sooner make the most terrible sacrifices of her
self-respect, than expose herself to such an affront. There have been
instances in which refusal of absolution has provoked the penitent to
personal vengeance against an inexorable confessor.
There is a fact well known in Spain, which proves the abuses to which the
practice of confession may lead. A husband who suspected the fidelity of
his wife, knowing that she was accustomed always to go to the same church
and the same confessional to confess, dressed himself up as a friar, and
taking care to conceal his face with the capucha, entered the church and
sat down in the confessional. The unlucky woman fell into the snare, and
confided to her husband the particulars of her faithless conduct. The
result was, as the reader may readily suppose, a great outcry among the
clergy against such profanation and sacrilege; but the man who was guilty
of this delinquency being high and powerful, escaped punishment.
The canon law imposes on the confessor the most inviolable secrecy, and
provides severe penalties for the least infraction. This injunction, it
must be admitted, is most scrupulously obeyed; but then it must be
considered, that, if the prohibition favour the penitent by preventing
the disclosure of her frailties, it equally favours the clergy
themselves, by making them the masters of all consciences, and lifts up
to their own eyes the veil which is supposed to conceal the infirmities
of their fellow-creatures.
It is not difficult to calculate the advantages the clergy are able to
draw from this intimate knowledge of the interests, and the ambition,
hatred, and other passions of the mind most dangerous to the quietude of
families. One would think it impossible that there could exist a human
society in which a privileged body of men were to be found, invested with
the faculty of penetrating into those mysteries which are generally
supposed to be open only to the Almighty. But it was for the possession
of this very faculty, that the Jesuits, so clever in discovering and
practising the means of their greatness and influence, abandoning their
vulgar ambition, their mitres, and other ecclesiastical insignia, fixed
all their hopes and attention on the confessional. Before the extinction
of that order, confessors of the popes, kings of Europe, and the chief
persons of their courts, pertained to it. Leo X., Louis XIV., Louis XV.,
and Catherine de Medicis, may be looked upon as regulators who qualified
that temperament of Christian morals which domineered over the world
under the imperium of those reverend fathers.
The administration of the sacrament of absolution does not figure in the
tariff of regular parochial dues, payable for baptism, marriage, and
burial. That act, according to the canons of the church, must be
gratuitous. But in Spain, since the abolition of the tithes, which
brought with it that state of poverty under which the clergy now groan,
there has been introduced a custom of slipping a few pieces of money into
the hand of the confessor at parting. This gratuity varies according to
the means of the penitents; but the average may be taken at a dollar and
a half. May not the probability of a larger or a smaller fee on these
occasions, as pourtrayed in the aspect of the giver, have an influence,
more or less, in proportioning the amount of severity in the penance
imposed?
CHAPTER IX.
FASTS AND PENANCES--How observed--Indulgences--Spain is privileged by the
Bull of the Holy Crusade--Description of that bull--Prices of
copies--Commissary-General of Crusades--His Revenues--Their shameful
application--Copy of that bull--Other acts of penance--The _Disciplina_
or whipping--_Cilicios_.
The Roman Catholic Church prescribes two kinds of mortification with
respect to food, viz., fasting and abstinence from meat. Fasting is
obligatory during the whole period of Lent, and on the eve of each
principal feast-day in the year. To comply with this obligation, it is
enough to eat a mere formal meal on these days, consisting of some light
vegetable diet in the morning, and again in the evening. This
observance, however, admits of some indulgence, and confessors are wont
to absolve many of their penitents from its severity, under pretext of
their having to do hard work, or to contend with physical infirmity. The
clergy, besides the fasting common to all the devout, are bound also,
during the holy week, to abstain from eggs, milk, and all sorts of food
which come under the denomination of _lacticinio_, or any thing of which
milk or eggs form a component part. Friars and nuns fast, also, during
the whole of the period called advent; and when those obligations are
truly performed, there is no doubt that they have a considerable
influence on the physical constitution. Medical men are authorised to
consent to its infraction by their patients. In some religious
communities of both sexes, but especially in those of the Capuchines, the
fast-days are multiplied to such an extent, that they compose the greater
number of days in the year.
Abstinence from meat varies in the different bishoprics, according to the
established custom or the bishop's will. In France, for example, in some
dioceses they never eat animal food on Fridays or Saturdays; in others,
Friday only is a fast-day, but in all of them abstinence from meat is
obligatory during the whole of Lent, Sundays excepted.
Spain is a country privileged in this respect. By virtue of a
contribution paid to the government, and which the latter divides with
the Pope, Spaniards are absolved from the greater part of all those
duties. The origin of this privilege dates from the time of the
crusades, when the popes, in order to meet the expenses of those
expeditions, imposed this tribute on Spaniards, in exchange for the
dispensation. In course of time, however, this usage was abolished; but
Charles III. solicited of the Pope its renovation, with a view of
depriving the English of the vast sums of money which they received in
Spain from the produce of the stockfish (_bacalao_) of Terranova. This
singular institution, called the Holy Crusade, occupies a great number of
public officials, and had produced immense sums previous to the general
change of ideas brought about in Spain by the war of invasion by the
French. In every year, at the beginning of January, the Commissary of
the Holy Crusade, who is generally a high personage among the clergy, and
his attendants, set out in carriages, with a procession consisting of his
subalterns and the municipal body-guard of the city. In one of the
carriages is unfurled and exposed to view the standard of the Holy
Crusade. From that day the sale of the bull is opened, and several
thousands of copies of this bull are printed. The price of each copy is
about sevenpence. The printing is executed in a very inferior manner,
and the paper used for the occasion is of the most inferior quality. The
bull in substance states that the contributor, having paid the money
required for it, is authorised for a year to enjoy all the prerogatives
which it concedes to him. By its influence, the days of abstinence from
meat are reduced to Ash-Wednesday and the Fridays in Lent, the last three
days of the holy week, and the eve of the great festivals.
The Commissary-General of Crusades, the absolute master of this enormous
public revenue, is bound to deliver a part of the profits to the
treasury, and to lay out the rest in works of benevolence in such manner
as he, in the exercise of his charity, may think fit. This important
office is usually conferred on some one of the clergy who may happen to
be a favourite of the court; and almost every person who has attained
this distinction has been notorious for his luxuriousness and
prodigality. It is related of some of them in the time of Ferdinand
VII., that having exhausted all inventions in the culinary art, in the
splendid banquets given by them frequently to the chief persons of the
court, they have even placed upon their tables live sardines, brought
from a distance of three hundred miles through a country in which there
were no regular roads, swimming in sea water, in large glass bowls, and
after gratifying the guests with the amusement which such a spectacle
afforded, the little finned creatures were then sent to the kitchen, and
served up as a dish of the greatest delicacy.
It is a public thing in Madrid, and one which is spoken of without the
least disguise, that a large portion of those funds is set apart as
pensions of considerable amounts to the mistresses of grandees, and
persons in high offices of the state, and also in order to political and
other purposes, far alien to the objects of the institution. The Roman
Catholics of other countries are scarcely able to credit that so
monstrous an abuse of the pontifical authority really exists, it not
being possible to conceive that, for a paltry sum of money, Christians
can remain exempt from an obligation considered sacred by Catholicism.
We have alluded to the small sum paid to obtain that exemption; but the
tariff of the Holy Crusade exacts a larger sum from the nobility and
persons of high dignity. To those a bull is sold, which is called _Bula
de ilustres_, which costs from eight to twelve shillings; and in order to
leave the door open for the augmentation of those revenues, there is a
clause which says that every person purchasing them is bound, as a matter
of conscience, to contribute according to his ability.
In order that the reader may have a right idea of these bulls, we insert
a translation of one of them, which doubtless will be interesting:--
The Bull published and sold every year in Spain, and by which Spaniards,
and all Catholics resident in Spain, are authorised (provided they
purchase a copy of it) to eat meat on certain days of the week and
throughout Lent, when Catholics in all other parts of the world are bound
to abstain from eating meat.
M.DCCC.LII.
Summary of Faculties, Indulgences, and Graces, which our Most Holy
Father Pius IX. (who now governs the church), deigns to concede, by
the Bull of the Holy Crusade, to all the faithful who, being in the
kingdoms of Spain and other the dominions subjected to his Catholic
Majesty, or coming to them, shall take it, giving the alms {174}
assessed by us for the same, expedited for the year 1852.
A long time ago, when infidel people made a cruel war against the
Catholic nations, and by their arms placed divers regions of Europe
in great danger, with risk to the faith and to souls, our Catholic
kings obtained apostolical letters from the Holy See, by which were
conceded many spiritual and temporal graces, during some years, to
those who might leave the Spanish dominions to fight against the
infidels, or who might assist those military expeditions with special
aid, contributing, to some extent, towards the expenses of such
necessary purposes. The same indulgence, with some additions or
declarations, was repeated many times afterwards by the Roman
pontiffs, and the necessity for continuing that war having ceased on
account of a change in the times, the last prorogations of this
indulgence were upon condition that the alms collected should be laid
out and employed in other pious objects. H. M. has recently
obtained, by entreaty of the Holy See, a further prorogation of the
said indulgence, with a view of applying the alms collected in
respect thereof towards the expenses of divine worship, in aid of
necessitous churches, or in the endowment of priestly seminaries, in
order, by this means, to repair the damages caused by the public
calamities which have afflicted us. Our most holy father,
benignantly hearkening to the entreaties of H. M., has not hesitated
to make this ample concession in favour of the objects indicated, and
for the benefit of our queen and of all Spaniards. In order,
therefore, to have temples worthy of God, to whom they are
consecrated, and to form a clergy capable of fulfilling their high
and divine mission, our most holy father, Pius IX., listening
benignantly to the supplications of H. M., did, by the bull issued at
Gaeta on the 8th of May 1849, give us the privileges, indulgences,
and graces, contained in the bull of the Holy Crusade, the execution
of which is committed to us. Therefore we, Don Manuel Lopez
Santaella, priest, Knight Grand Cross of the royal and distinguished
Spanish order of Charles III., archdeacon of Huete, dignitary of the
holy church of Cuenca, president of its illustrious chapter, preacher
to H. M., member on his own right (_individuo nato_) of the royal
junta of the Immaculate Conception, and of various literary
societies, only judge of the new liturgy, president of the
apostolical commission of the subsidy of the clergy, of the tribunal
of the grace of the _Excusado_, and of that of the general treasury
of _Espolios y Vacantes_, {176} senator of the kingdom, and
apostolical commissary-general of the Holy Crusade, and other
pontifical graces in all the dominions of H. M., with a view of
making them known to the faithful, and that they may be able to avail
themselves of so precious a treasure, reduce them into a summary in
the form following:--
In the first place,--To our lady the queen, who with constant care
and diligence watches over the propagation of our holy Catholic
faith, the splendour of the worship, and the decorum of the temples;
and to all the faithful Christians who are on the Spanish territory,
or who may come to it within the year, reckoning from the day of the
publication of this bull, and who shall contribute to such holy ends
with their alms, taking this summary, and having our authority to
enjoy the graces in it contained, his holiness concedes the same
plenary indulgence which has been accustomed to be conceded to those
who went to the conquest of the Holy Land, and in the year of
Jubilee; if contrite for their sins they shall confess them with the
mouth and receive the holy sacrament of the eucharist, or, not being
able to confess, desire truly to do so.
Item,--To those above said, his holiness concedes that even in time
of interdict (provided they have not given cause for it, nor been an
obstacle to its being raised), and having permission for it from the
commissary-general, even one hour before daybreak, and another after
noon, can within the same year celebrate, if they are presbyters, or
cause masses to be celebrated and other divine offices in their
presence, and in the presence of their familiar friends, domestics,
and relatives, and receive the eucharist and other sacraments (except
on Easter-day), as well as in churches where, on the other hand, it
is permitted in any mode of celebration whatever of the divine
offices during such interdict, as in a private oratory set apart
solely for divine worship, and that it may be visited and appointed
by the ordinary; and that they may assist at the divine offices in
time of interdict, it being their duty, provided they use it for the
said purpose, always to pray to God for the prosperity of the Roman
Catholic apostolic Church, for the peace and concord of Christian
princes, and for the other pious ends already expressed. In like
manner, it is conceded to them that their bodies may be buried in the
said time of interdict with moderate funeral pomp, as if they had not
died excommunicated.
Item,--That during the said year of publication, they being in the
said Spanish territory (but not out of it), may eat meat, by the
advice both of their spiritual and corporal physicians, in all times
of fasting throughout the year, even those in Lent, and in the same
way, at their own free will, eat eggs and _lacticinios_ (any thing
made up with milk), so that it is understood the obligation to fast
will be satisfied by those who eat meat, as much as it will be by
those who strictly observe the form of fasting. In which pardon are
comprehended the religious persons of all military orders, but
excepting from it all patriarchs, archbishops, bishops, inferior
prelates, regular ecclesiastics, and secular presbyters, who may not
have attained sixty years of age, and, out of Lent, all of them may
have recourse to such pardon in respect of eating eggs and
_lacticinios_.
Item,--As to the faithful who contribute their alms in form
aforesaid, and who, in order to implore the divine aid for the ends
above expressed, shall fast voluntarily on days not appointed as
fast-days, or, being lawfully hindered from fasting, shall do some
other pious work at the free-will of their confessor or parish
priest, and pray to God for those ends; as often as they shall do so,
so often shall they be released and freed mercifully by the Lord for
fifteen years and fifteen times forty days from the penance imposed
on them owing to whatever cause, and shall, besides, be made
partakers of all the prayers, alms, pilgrimages (even those to
Jerusalem), and of all other good works done in the church militant,
and by every one of its members.
Item,--Those who devoutly visit, on each one of the days of the
_Estaciones_ of Rome, five churches or altars, or in default of such
five, five times the same altar, and pray to God for the expressed
ends, shall obtain a plenary indulgence, as well for themselves as
also, by way of suffrage, for the deceased persons in whose favour
they make such visit and prayer.
Item,--In order that all those, and each one of those before-named,
may pray to God with more facility, and more efficaciously implore
his divine aid, it is conceded to them that they shall be at liberty
to choose a secular or regular confession from those approved by the
ordinary, and to obtain from him plenary indulgence, and remission of
whatever sins and censures, even those reserved to the apostolical
see (except the crime of mixed heresy, and, as to ecclesiastics, the
censure treated of in the constitution of Benedict XIV., _sacramentum
Poenitentiae_), once in their lives, and again in the article of
death; imposing on themselves salutary penance, according to what the
crimes demand, and so that if satisfaction may be necessary they may
give it of themselves, or by their heirs or others in case of
impediment. All vows also, excepting those of ultramarine, chastity,
and religion, may be commutated by the same confessor for the
performance of some other good work, and some contribution towards
the said ends.
Item,--If death shall occur within the said year without confession,
in consequence of the death being sudden, or for want of confessors,
still the same plenary indulgence shall be extended as if they had
died contrite, and as though they had been confessed at the proper
time determined by the church, and had not been negligent in doing so
through confidence in this concession.
And it is declared that in each year it shall be competent to take
two summaries of the said bull, and thus enjoy, twice within that
period, all the indulgences, graces, and privileges, which are above
expressed.
And to us, the said apostolical commissary-general, his holiness
concedes that we may be able to dispense and compound for any
irregularity whatsoever, provided it shall not arise out of any
wilful homicide, simony, apostasy from the faith, heresy, or bad
inception of orders; and in like manner to absolve those who shall
have contracted matrimony, there being impediment of secret affinity,
arising from previous illicit copulation, one of the contracting
parties being ignorant of it at the time of the contract, in order
that they may be able to celebrate it anew between themselves
(although it be secretly) for conscience' sake; and also, in order
that they may, after celebrating the matrimony, and contracting a
similar impediment, demand their conjugal rights; and we, earnestly
desiring the good of souls, authorise the confessors, in order that
(in the article of death, only and without the obligation of giving
account to us) they may use these our faculties, and apply the
privileges and indulgences contained in this summary, to those who,
being extremely poor, are not able to pay for it; and those who,
truly penitent, desire to obtain these graces, imposing upon them the
obligation of afterwards taking them if they have an exit out of
danger in the case for which they have recourse to it.
* * * * *
And inasmuch as, besides the other faculties, his holiness concedes
to us power to suspend, during the year of the publication of this
bull, all indulgences and graces, similar and dissimilar, conceded by
apostolical authority to any churches, monasteries, hospitals, pious
places, universities, brotherhoods, and private persons, in the said
kingdoms and dominions, although they may be in favour of the fabric
of the chapel of St Peter at Rome, or of any other similar crusade,
even containing clauses contrary to such suspension, as also that we
may re-validate in favour of those who participate in the indulgences
and graces of this bull what we may have suspended:
From henceforth, therefore, using the said apostolical authority, we
suspend, during the year of publication of this bull, the said
indulgences and graces, which, as aforesaid, we have power to
suspend, so that no person whosoever is able to publish, preach to,
or profit, any one in common or in particular, except he takes and
has this said bull, in whose favour only we re-validate them, in
order that they may be enjoyed by those who may have them, supposing
that our pass and examination shall have been previously obtained;
provided, that neither at the time of publishing or making them known
to the faithful, or in distributing the summaries of them, nor
before, nor afterwards, on any occasion or pretext, shall they ask
alms of any kind for the churches, sanctuaries, hospitals,
congregations, or other pious communities, at whose instance they may
have been conceded; for if such are asked, it is not our will to make
the said re-validation; on the contrary, we desire that the said
suspension shall remain in force, in order that not even those who
have the bull of the Holy Crusade shall be able to gain the
indulgences which, in manner aforesaid, are published, circulated, or
distributed.
On the other hand, by virtue of the same apostolical authority, which
also has been to us conceded, we suspend the interdict, if such there
be, in whatsoever place wherein this bull shall be preached or
published, for eight days before and eight days afterwards.
And we declare, that those who wish to enjoy its indulgences and
graces must take (purchase) and retain this summary of them, printed,
sealed, and signed with our seal and name, in order that no one can
err touching the graces to them conceded, nor any one usurp them, and
that every one may be able to show by what faculty he uses them.
_And_ inasmuch as you, _John Doe_, contribute the alms of three
_reales de vellon_ (about 7.5d.), being the amount which, in virtue
of apostolical authority, we have assessed, and take this summary
(which you must take care to have written out in your own name), we
declare that power is conceded to you to use and enjoy all the said
indulgences, faculties, and graces, in form aforesaid. Given in
Madrid the seventh of January 1851.
* * * * *
_Summary_ of the days of the _Estaciones_ of Rome, on which, by
concession of his holiness, plenary indulgences may be gained by
those who, having taken this bull, devoutly visit five churches or
altars, or, for want of these, one five times, praying to God for
union and concord between Christian princes, and for the ends of the
church; and also, on each day of making the same visit, they may draw
a soul out of purgatory by virtue of such plenary indulgence.
Days on which a plenary indulgence may be gained.
On each of the four Sundays in Advent.
On the Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, of the four _Temporas_ in
the year (the beginning of each of the four seasons of the year).
On the three Rogation days in May.
On the eve of the Nativity of our Lord, and at each of its three
masses.
On the days of St Stephen, St John the Evangelist, and the Holy
Innocents.
On the day of our Lord's Circumcision, and on that of the Epiphany.
On the Sundays of Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima.
On all the days in Lent.
On the first eight days after the Resurrection.
On the Feast of St Mark.
On the day of our Lord's Ascension.
On the eve of the day of Pentecost.
On the six days following Pentecost.
Days on which a soul may be drawn out of Purgatory,
+ On Septuagesima Sunday.
+ On the Tuesday after the first Sunday in Lent.
+ On the Saturday after the second Sunday in Lent.
+ On the third and fourth Sundays in Lent.
+ On the Friday and Saturday before the fifth Sunday in Lent.
+ On the Wednesday of the octave of the Resurrection.
+ On the Tuesday and Saturday of the octave of Pentecost.
(Signed) * D. MANUEL LOPEZ SANTAELLA. [SEAL.] Madrid: Press of the
Holy Crusade.
In numerous families the tax of those bulls is very heavy, for the master
or mistress is bound to purchase a copy for each member residing under
the roof, including all the servants.
Within the last three years, the office of commissary-general of the
Crusade has been abolished, and the collection of the funds arising from
this source has devolved on the bishops of the respective dioceses.
Besides fasting, there are other acts of penance and mortification
practised by the truly devout, and some of these have already been
noticed in former chapters. The _disciplina_ (whipping) was the most in
use when Roman Catholicism flourished in Spain without a rival. It was
very common, in the processions of Holy Week, to see penitents with their
shoulders naked, whipping themselves in public with so much severity as
to cause them to be literally covered with blood. We know a town in
Andalusia in which this is encouraged by the clergy; but in that place
the penitents receive money in exchange for the floggings which they
inflict on themselves, and which sometimes have laid the foundation of
bodily complaints that have terminated in the death of the victims.
Some penitents make a vow to go, with naked feet, and even on their
knees, from their houses to a certain sanctuary; others wear _cilicios_
(hair-shirts) or girdles around their bodies; these practices, however,
are now almost entirely abolished, and are observed only in some of the
few convents of the religious orders remaining in the present day.
In times of great calamities, such as earthquakes and epidemics, this
spirit of penance is resuscitated and exercised with great fervour;
public prayers are offered up, and sermons are preached, which inspire
terror and increase the natural fear and alarm attending the catastrophe.
On these occasions the churches are filled, and nothing is heard in them
but shrieks of grief and expressions of repentance. But the misfortune
overpast, all those external signs of religious sentiment disappear, and
society at large once more returns to the usual routine of business and
pleasure.
CHAPTER X.
FALSE MIRACLES, RELICS, AND RELIGIOUS IMPOSITIONS--Veneration of
crucifixes and statues or images--Their power of healing--Picture at
Cadiz--_Lignum Crucis_--Veronica--Bodies of saints--How
procured--Inscriptions--Lives of saints--Maria de Agreda--St
Francis--Scandalous representation of the appearance of the Virgin to a
saint--Fray Diego de Cadiz--_Beata_ Clara--Her fame and downfall--The
nun, Sister Patrocinio--Her success, detection, confession, and
expulsion--She returns, and is protected by a high personage--She is
again expelled, but again returns and founds a convent--Its disgraceful
character and suppression--Her flight towards Rome--Occurrences on the
road--Her return to Spain.
It is easy to conceive the abuse that may be made by the clergy of the
credulity of a nation in which such ridiculous and absurd practices
prevail as those to which we have already alluded. The priest is
considered, in Roman Catholic countries, as the representative of Jesus
Christ, the only depositary of true doctrine, the only dispenser of
celestial favours, the agent of the supreme authority of the Pope,--in a
word, the infallible oracle, to whose teachings the faith cannot be
opposed, and whose mandates must not be resisted under penalty of
incurring a mortal sin. Thus all his words carry the stamp of
irresistible power. The Spanish clergy have always known the resources
they could draw from this position, and they have abused it in order to
establish numberless false miracles, which, at the same time that they
add to their prestige, greatly augment their treasure. There is scarcely
a cure of an infirmity which human flesh is heir to, that is not
attributed to some prodigy from heaven. There is scarcely a town in
Spain in which they do not venerate a crucifix which has perspired, or a
virgin's statue which has moved its eyes. In some places they pretend to
believe that bells are rung without being touched; in others, roses grow,
out of their proper season, to serve the festivals of the church. At the
time of the expedition of the Earl of Essex to Cadiz, the English took
their swords and cut asunder a certain painting of a religious subject in
one of the churches, whereupon the edges of the cut canvas began to
bleed, and the blood remains there to this day, and may be seen by the
curious in one of the parish churches of that city! They relate numerous
cases in which the host when profaned has, when broken, sent forth blood.
If a sacristan omits to light the lamp which burns at night before the
eucharist, the lamp lights itself. There are innumerable persons in
Spain who believe that he who is born on Good-Friday has a cross on the
roof of his mouth, and the faculty of curing diseases by mere contact
with his hands, or even a piece of his garment. The palms which are
blessed on Palm-Sunday, and the candles burnt on Good-Friday before the
sacrament, have power to preserve houses from thunderbolts. The same
faculty is attributed to a small bell blessed by the priest. In times of
drought, which are the greatest calamities that afflict the Spanish soil,
a favourite image is taken out and conducted in procession, in order to
implore genial showers of rain. Thanks to the invention of the
barometer, and a practical knowledge of the aspect of the weather, it
almost always happens that this ceremony is followed a few days
afterwards by a copious supply. But it would require an entire volume to
enumerate all the errors and superstitions of this description which have
been propagated by the clergy in Spain, and which form the chief props of
their power.
Relics have served as efficacious instruments to accomplish that end.
The _lignum crucis_, pieces of the cross on which the Saviour suffered,
are profusely distributed not only in the churches, but in the private
houses of many persons. In most of the cathedrals are preserved and
shown to the public, on certain occasions, some of the thorns which
composed our Saviour's crown; in others, fragments of the Virgin's veil;
and in the cathedral of Jaen, _the face of God_. A description of this
last-named wonder may not be unacceptable to some of our readers, and
therefore we give a description of it in the words of a living English
writer:--"According to the tradition of the Romish Church, a lady called
Veronica met our Saviour in the street of Amargura, in Jerusalem, bearing
his cross, on the way to Mount Calvary; and perceiving the perspiration
running down his face, she offered the use of her handkerchief, which our
Lord is said to have used, or to have permitted Veronica to use, in
wiping the sweat from his temples. In performing this operation, the
handkerchief happened to be folded into double, treble, or quadruple, and
it was found that an exact impress of the Saviour's visage was indelibly
stamped on every fold! These portraits, they say, have been preserved,
and are certainly venerated as sacred relics in different places. One is
exhibited in Rome, another in Padua, and a third in Jaen, in Andalusia.
A public exhibition of this _holy face_ is permitted, annually, on a
certain day appointed for the purpose, when a plenary indulgence is
granted to all who go to look upon it, to confess and to receive the holy
communion. It is only the most ignorant and superstitious who are found
to believe in this fable; indeed, it has now become proverbial with a
Spaniard, when told of any thing that seems impossible, to say, _Eso y la
cara de Dios estan en Jaen_,--That and the face of God are in Jaen."
The bodies of saints exposed to public veneration in many churches are
almost innumerable. The authenticity of these holy remains is founded on
pontifical bulls invested with all necessary formalities. The way of
procuring these remains of corrupt mortality is very easy and simple. It
consists in gathering up, in the catacombs of Rome, some of the infinite
numbers of bones there deposited; there is never wanting some devout
antiquarian to discover that they are those of a saint or a martyr, and
the assertion is supported by old parchments of remote ages, made in
Rome, where the profession is of great use. Those testimonies are
presented to the Roman Datary, and by means of a fixed sum found in a
tariff comprising many other articles, the pontifical sanction is
obtained, and then the bones become converted into objects of general
devotion.
The inscriptions on Roman altars and sepulchres in the pagan ages are
used to support those inventions. All the world knows the history of the
celebrated saints Perpetua and Felicity, whose beatifications have no
other foundation than the words _perpetua felicitas_, so very common on
the monuments of that nation. The improbability of some of the fictions
has been such, that in Spain itself, in the face of that respect there
shown to the things pertaining to religion, there have not been wanting
pious men who have dared to doubt the authenticity of some of those
saints. In a certain city in Andalusia, in which are venerated the bones
of two Christian soldiers who were martyrs, and are the declared patrons
of that city, and as such to be worthy the devotion of the inhabitants,
it has been proved recently, from the examination of certain documents,
that those supposed martyrs were nothing more than two Roman soldiers who
had fallen in an action near the walls of that city.
But the lives of the saints are the great repositories of false miracles.
There is no extravagance which has not been resorted to by the authors of
those biographies. The miracles of their heroes occupy more space than
do their virtues. The Roman Church never canonises any human being, of
whatever eminence his piety may have been, if it is not proved _to its
satisfaction_ that he had the power of altering the laws of nature, and
availed himself of divine omnipotence in order to serve his friends, and
even to satisfy their caprice. For example: one saint has been able to
traverse the seas with no better vessel for his use than his own cloak;
another used to bring down rain from heaven in times of drought; almost
all of them cured the most dangerous maladies by merely their blessing;
and there are but few of them who have not even raised the dead with the
like facility. The famous _beata_ Maria de Agreda has written many
volumes, wherein she records the continuous revelations with which she
was favoured, and her familiar conversations with the Saviour, to whom
she always gives the title of spouse. On one occasion, when sweeping the
cloisters of her convent, she being unable through debility to take up
the dust, the infant Jesus came to perform that office for her. In the
work entitled, "_Conformidad de San Francisco con Dios_," it is said,
among other wonders, that the saint formed a statue of ice and breathed
life into it, in the same way that God did to Adam. That saint had his
hands and feet perforated like those of Jesus Christ on the cross, and
the Roman church consecrates a day in the calendar and a special festival
with its corresponding service to "the wounds or sores of St Francis"
(_Las Llagas de San Francisco_).
But all these extravagances of the imagination are exceeded by the
impiety and scandal of the appearance of the Virgin to a saint who
implored her favour. It is related of her, that on this occasion she
sent forth from her bosom a stream of milk, which the saint received in
his open mouth, in a kneeling position, at a few paces from her feet.
Paintings of this may be seen in the cloisters of many convents in Spain.
Hypocrisy, interest, and ambition, have found in this frightful credulity
an ample and open field for their labours, and in which they have
gathered abundant crops. It would, however, be an act of injustice, of
which we would desire not to be guilty, if we did not admit that some of
the most heroic virtues have flourished in the cloisters, and that the
annals of the religious orders have handed down to posterity names which
are worthy of admiration and respect. The name of the Capuchine Fray
Diego de Cadiz must be still fresh in the memory,--a man no less
remarkable for his poverty, self-denial, and humility, than for the
sublime eloquence with which he contended against the vices of his times,
and drew sinners into the paths of virtue. Such was the reputation of
this good man, that the churches were unable to hold the multitudes who
came to hear him preach. He therefore usually delivered his sermons in
the public squares, where he was eagerly and devoutly listened to by
people of every class and denomination, including Protestant reformers,
who came to hear his denunciations against the enemies of God and the
church. But by the side of this and some other models of religious
consistency, how many hypocrites are there who have abused the simplicity
of Spaniards, ostentatiously displaying, in public, self-denial and
penitence, whilst giving themselves up, in private life, to every kind of
iniquity! A convent lucky in having a man of this class possessed in him
an inexhaustible fountain of presents and money. Sometimes those
excesses arrive at such a point, that the attention of the bishops is
called to them; but when searching inquiries were set on foot, the friars
with all haste removed the delinquent to some distant place where he
would be out of the reach of the bishops. Two facts of this kind may
serve to illustrate this chapter.
Towards the beginning of the present century, there was in Madrid a
_beata_ {194} called Clara, of whom they relate such prodigies as filled
the capital from one end to the other with astonishment, and induced
society to believe that this _beata_, Clara, was a being highly favoured
by Providence. She lived in a private house, under the pretence that the
malady under which she laboured prevented her residence in the
_beaterio_. She was always prostrated on her bed, and never took any
kind of food except the consecrated host. The nobility and persons in
the upper ranks of society, including canons, bishops, and other learned
personages, came to consult her, not only on matters of conscience, but
of ecclesiastical discipline and state-government. She never permitted
her face to be seen, but kept it covered with a kind of veil which
entirely concealed her features. Gifts of every kind were showered upon
her, and when money was given to her, which was always in large amounts,
she declared that the article was of but little use to her, for she
always gave it away to the poor. In short, nothing was talked of in
Madrid but this most wonderful woman, whose presence it was believed was
sufficient to obtain blessings from heaven; and even the queen, Maria
Louisa, herself, wife of Charles IV., sent her frequent messages.
Clara's fame increased. The renown of her name reached Rome, and made a
profound impression in that city. The Pope granted her the unheard-of
privilege of having the holy eucharist kept in her room, a privilege
never conceded but to churches, cathedrals, and convents. In her room
was erected an altar on which the priests said mass. There the holy
communion was received with outbursts of devotion, and sometimes with
ecstasy. In short, the woman was considered as something more than
mortal; nor can that be surprising, when it was believed, on her own
assertions, that she existed without other sustenance than the body and
blood of Christ.
There was in the same quarter of the city a pastrycook called Ceferino.
It had been observed that this shop was the nightly resort of a female
attendant of Clara, who made purchases of the most delicate and savoury
articles of this good man's manufacture, nor could he imagine from whom
she came or where she went, for instead of going into the vicinity with
the precious load, she invariably made off in a direction for the heart
of the city, and was soon out of sight. One night, however, one of
Ceferino's workmen was determined to follow her closely. He did so, and
after many an artful dodge through streets, lanes, courts, and alleys,
she entered the house of _beata_ Clara. The fact was kept secret from
the public, but information was given privately to the police, who late
at night entered the suspected dwelling, and there surprised Clara and
her confessor, who were both elegantly dressed, and sitting at a table
profusely served up with viands and wines of the most _recherche_
descriptions. The inquisition at once seized their persons, and
proceeded to try them for their crimes. The confessor, who was a young
robust Franciscan friar, was condemned to perpetual imprisonment in one
of the most severe convents of the order. The _beata_ Clara was paraded
through the streets of Madrid, _honeyed and feathered_, and mounted on a
jack-ass, and then sent to be imprisoned in a house of penance for the
remainder of her life.
The other fact which we have alluded to and promised some account of to
our readers, dates in more modern times; indeed, all the actors in that
far-famed farce are still living.
Under the regency of Espartero, it was currently reported in Madrid, that
in a certain convent of that city there existed one of the order whose
name was Sister Patrocinio (_Sor Patrocinio_), and who, like St Francis
before alluded to, had in her hands and feet the _stigmata_ or open sores
which correspond with those of our Saviour, made by the nails and spear
in his crucifixion. This rumour, and many acts of the nun, produced an
extraordinary sensation in Madrid, and especially when it began to be
believed there was some political legerdemain connected with the prodigy,
for the confessor of this woman, who now occupies one of the episcopal
chairs of Spain, and gave his testimony to the case, seemed to be upon
very intimate terms with the royal family, and had very lengthened
conversations with some of its members. As at that time the political
world was agitated by the question of the political pretensions of Don
Carlos to the throne of Spain, the government, which held, or at least
professed liberal opinions, thought that possibly the case of this
miraculous woman might have some connection with the absolute views of
the clergy, particularly as the miracle was everywhere spoken of.
Thirsting, therefore, to prove the truth of the alleged fact, which was
that the sores or wounds of this Saint Patrocinio were open and bleeding
in the same way as if they had been the results of nails lately driven
into her feet and hands and a spear thrust into her side, the government
ordered the lady to be examined by the most celebrated medical man of the
day, who instantly discovered that the wounds or sores were produced by
the mere application of lunar caustic. He applied to them the usual
remedies. Patrocinio was watched day and night to prevent a
re-application of the caustic, and the openings were soon healed.
On this discovery of the truth, the nun was banished to a convent in one
of the provinces; but a few years afterwards so many and such clever
intrigues were employed, and by such high personages, in her favour, that
she obtained permission to return to the capital, where in her convent
she became the point of attraction and assembly of all that portion of
the clergy most opposed to the constitutional system, and where she
received the constant visits of one of the most exalted personages of the
kingdom. She no longer, however, had recourse to the open sores to
deceive the people, whose eyes have been opened in the way already
described. The extraordinary beauty with which nature had endowed her
person was the means of which she availed herself to enslave the will of
her august protector. The government of General Narvaez, which was then
in power, thought it expedient to put an end to these scandalous scenes;
and the more especially as it was impossible not to see that their
influence was brought directly to bear on the gravest political
questions. Thus was that woman a second time expelled the capital; but a
second time was she permitted to return to it on the fall of Narvaez's
cabinet. Vain beyond all measure with her triumph, she abused this new
era of the victory she had obtained, and founded a convent in that city,
of which she declared herself the superior, and into which no other nuns
were admitted than such as were both young and pretty. This
establishment was the resort and rallying-point of the most elevated of
the clergy and nobility; and to the scandal of the nation, the high
personage already so often alluded to there passed his evenings with his
courtezans, giving rise to the free circulation, and without any
disguise, of anecdotes of the most immoral and yet ludicrous description.
But such unbridled turpitude could not last long without provoking the
activity of the civil authority. The convent was suddenly suppressed,
and Sister Patrocinio was put on the road to Rome, accompanied by her
favourite novice and two of the clergy. The extreme slowness with which
she proceeded on her journey was attributed to a certain delicate state
of health, the gravity of which had become so urgent, that on reaching a
town in the south of France she was obliged to suspend her march, and
having been detained there for some months until the expiration of the
time necessary for cure and convalescence after such infirmities, which
was in short the sole object of her journey, instead of pursuing her tour
to the capital of the Roman Catholic world, she was permitted a third
time to return to Spain, where she now lives in obscurity and contempt.
Since the foregoing was written, the following account of her own
confession has appeared before the public, and may very properly conclude
this chapter:--
"But we have one word more yet to say on the subject of these wounds,
to convince our readers of the ridiculous farce that was enacted at
the convent. The medical men were not singular in denying their
supernatural origin. The _saint_ herself, when she found she was in
the power of justice, and out of the hands of nuns and friars, made
the following most curious and decisive statement. Our readers will
imagine that they are perusing a romance of the middle ages.
"'On the 7th of February, the further declaration of Sister
Patrocinio was taken, who, after having made an avowal of _being
truly penitent_, and that she cast herself upon the mercy of her
Majesty the Queen Protectress, declared that from the time of her
taking the veil, down to the 7th July when the convents were
suppressed, her confessor was friar Benito Carrera.--That she
afterwards had for confessor the vicar of the convent; for although
friar Joseph de la Cruz wished to be her confessor, and spoke to her
once or twice to that effect, she did not consent, because from the
first she knew that he was not of very strong understanding, for he
had proposed to her to leave the convent, in order to go to Rome, and
ask permission to found and establish a convent, with many other
extravagant propositions; showing her at the same time a very rare
print, which contained many allegorical devices.--That no doubt her
confessor, friar Benito Carrera, knew what were the ideas of friar
Joseph de la Cruz; and he had told the abbess that she ought not to
permit declarant to go to confess to him; and for that reason she did
not see him again.--That one of the nuns being taken ill during her
(declarant's) noviciate, Father Alcaraz, a capuchin of the padro,
came to attend her; and then she saw him, and had a conversation with
him upon different matters.--That a few days afterwards, she was
called into the visitor's parlour, and found that said father Alcaraz
was there alone; that he addressed her in a solemn tone, as if he was
preaching, and said that St Paul was very urgent on the subject of
penance; {200} and then he took out a little purse which he carried
in his hood, and told her that it contained _a small relic that would
produce a wound if applied to any part of the body_; that this wound
ought to be kept open, so as to occasion suffering and mortification,
that so, by offering to God our pain by way of penance, we might
obtain pardon for sins already committed or future.--That after this
he gave her a most solemn injunction, commanding her to apply the
relic to the palms and the back of her hands, to the soles of her
feet, to the left side, and _all round her head in the manner of a
crown_; and charged her most strictly upon her obedience, and upon
peril of the most terrible punishments in the next world, _not to
disclose to anybody how the wounds had been caused_; and if she was
asked, she must say that _she had found them upon her
supernaturally_.--That being terrified by the threats of eternal
punishment and the divine anger, she obeyed his command, and never
disclosed the matter either to the abbess or to her confessor, or to
any other person whatever.--That it was believed by the community in
all good faith, that it was a miracle; that she never attempted to
apply ordinary medicines for the healing of the wounds, which, though
they closed apparently, broke out again, always being attended with
pain, until she _left the convent and had them cured_."
CONCLUSION.
The picture which we have sketched of the religious state of Spain,
explains all the history, all the peculiarities, and all the vicissitudes
of that great nation, from its conversion to Christianity down to our own
times. It was the religious principle which inspired Spaniards in all
the great actions by which their name has been immortalised during their
sanguinary struggles of six centuries against the Saracenic power; but in
that magnificent epoch of their national existence, there were many
circumstances which concurred in drawing forth the great failings of the
Roman Catholicism of the present day. In the first place, all
Christendom was Catholic, but that creed was not stained with the abuses
and errors which, many ages afterwards, provoked the grand work of
reformation. In the second place, society in general was wanting in
those energetic attractions which led, in our age, to the cultivation of
the arts and of the sciences, to the exercise of lucrative professions,
and to speculations in credit, commerce, and industry. Finally, the time
of the popes' aggrandizement had not yet arrived; as yet, Rome had not
begun to exercise over the Western nations that pernicious influence
which afterwards degraded her religious doctrine, nor that proud
preponderance which threw back kings and governments to the class of
humble subjects of the Vatican. In Spain, at least, religion was not so
material nor so dramatic as it became in subsequent ages; the mendicant
orders, which contributed so much in later epochs to the corruption of
religious doctrine, had not been founded, nor had the multitude of new
devotions, which afterwards complicated the simplicity of worship and
converted it into a code of forms and ceremonies, been invented.
Before the conquest of the Moors, as has already been observed in the
body of this work, Spaniards were truly Catholics, and nothing more than
Catholics. At that period, they had no other knowledge than that
acquired from the study of Christian truth; excepting the military, there
was no profession but that of the ecclesiastic; the arts, still rude, and
almost denuded of invention and of ideality, were limited in their
application to religious objects; and even architecture itself was not
ostentatious of its grandeur and its beauties, nor were its plans and
resources developed in great dimensions, except in the erection of those
proud cathedrals, which, like those of Burgos, Seville, Palma, and
Toledo, still excite the admiration of foreigners, and continue to be
objects of study to the artist. {202}
Animated by so vigorous a principle of action, the only one which was
capable of exciting the enthusiasm of their energetic but simple minds,
Spaniards became the admiration of the world for their prowess, for the
elevation of their sentiments, for their conquests in the East, where the
Arragonese humilitated even the throne of the Caesars, and, above all,
for the innumerable series of exploits and sublime feats of valour and
patriotism with which they succeeded in expelling from Europe the
Saracenic dominion, then about to extend itself from the shores of the
Garonne to those of the Tiber.
What a difference do we perceive between the Spaniard of those times and
the abject and degraded vassal of the princes of the Austrian dynasty!
Religious sentiment was not less energetic, it was not less profound, in
the second epoch than in the first; but it was a sentiment perverted by
superstition, envenomed by fanaticism, and which, far from associating
itself, as before, with the propensity to illustrious deeds and grand
enterprises, consecrated itself exclusively, moved by the former, to the
most puerile rites and ridiculous exterior practices, and, influenced by
the latter, to the most abominable excesses of persecution and
intolerance. Thus it is, that from the time of Philip II. down to that
of Charles II., the history of Spain presents nothing but an
uninterrupted series of blunders in the government, of intrigues and
disorders in the court, and of crosses and misfortunes in the national
affairs. In a word, it sets before us a treasury without credit and
without money, an army without discipline and without organization,
tribunals sold to power:--and everywhere we perceive recklessness,
ignorance, poverty, and immorality, which are the inseparable
accompaniments of mal-administration.
It was not possible that a nation forming part of the great European
family could long continue in such a condition. At the present time we
distinctly discern that the progress of civilization keeps pace with the
perfection of religious ideas. The most cultivated nations, the richest
and most nourishing, are those which have most purified their
creeds,--those which have put farthest from them the material element
introduced to worship by superstition and fanaticism,--those who come
nearest to the spirit and letter of the gospel in the relations of man
with the Divinity. Spaniards have begun to penetrate these truths; they
have compared their actual condition with that of other nations which
have embraced the doctrines of the Reformation, and, above all, have felt
that great void left in their religious and moral condition by the want
of true Christianity, of the pure dogma taught by its Founder, and of the
truth to be discovered only in those inspired pages containing the
treasures of revelation.
This exchange of ideas is one of the most striking facts of the present
age, and more especially when it is considered that it is taking place at
this instant by a spontaneous movement, which installs itself in
different parts of the Peninsula; not, as in other ages and nations, in
consequence of a proselytism headed by an apostle or a reformer, but of
_a necessity strongly felt_, and which imperiously demands the object
that alone can satisfy it. In Spain,--yes, in Spain,--the Bible is read,
and people write and speak freely against the errors of the Church of
Rome; nay, the Cortes denounce the vices of the clergy, and defend
liberty of conscience; they propose means which, a few years ago, would
have been visited with the most cruel persecution, and with the _brutum
fulmen_ of anathema. The government expatriate reactionary bishops
without so much as a murmur from the people against these strokes of
severity; many priests, enlisted under the banner of Carlism, have been
taken by the troops, and shot as common culprits, without a single voice
having been raised in their defence. The new doctrine on the immaculate
conception of the Virgin Mary has been attacked with irresistible
arguments in a pamphlet published in Madrid, without either the
authorities or the clergy having offered the least obstacle to its
circulation. The law authorising the sale of the church property is
executed with the general consent and approbation of the nation.
Finally, the efforts made by certain well-intentioned Englishmen to
propagate sound doctrine in the Peninsula have been generally received,
not only with a becoming appreciation and gratitude, but with an
eagerness and relish approaching to enthusiasm; and the persons who have
set on foot this pious undertaking receive, almost daily, letters from
Spaniards of all classes, urging them to persist in a work which,
manifestly, has a direct bearing on the minds and manners of the people.
The beneficent designs of Providence cannot be manifested more clearly.
A movement in favour of the ideas of reform, and a prevailing disposition
to read the Bible, are showing themselves simultaneously in many Roman
Catholic countries, without any concert between themselves, and without
any reciprocal intimation or knowledge of what is going on in each of
those countries. The recent occurrences in Florence are notorious, so
are those in Genoa, and even in Rome itself, where, to the political
exasperation against the pontifical government,--whose existence is owing
simply to the presence of three thousand French soldiers,--is united the
contempt which the lax habits of the clergy and the puerile ceremonies of
worship inspire in the minds of all men who have received the least
education. This is precisely what is now taking place in all the
ramifications of the great Spanish family.
We have already alluded to the state of abasement and degradation in
which the clergy of the Peninsula now find themselves,--clergy who, for
many centuries swimming in opulence and surrounded by a splendour which
almost eclipsed the throne, have been the true regulators of the public
spirit of the nation, the keepers of all consciences, and who formerly
composed the most influential and powerful among all her social
categories,--these clergy who, to-day, barely maintained by the public
treasury, have been reduced to impotence, and become, as it were, a
nullity,--they are excluded from all social intercourse with the elevated
classes, and are deprived of all means of recovering their ancient
predominance. With this decay of the depositories and agents of the
papal authority and of the ultramontane ideas, other circumstances, which
it was impossible to foresee, co-operate, in order to destroy those two
scourges of humanity,--circumstances which promise better days for
evangelical truth in that nation so long enslaved by superstition and
fanaticism. Not only does the actual government harbour ideas of
religious liberty, and endeavour, by all possible means, to curb the
pride and reactionary spirit of the bishops, but many of the most
elevated public functionaries abandon the Popish creed, and openly favour
the propagation of the Bible and of the different writings which have
been recently published in London in the Castillian language, and in
which the doctrines and practices of the Roman Church are attacked with
the arms of logic and erudition. One of these publications, entitled
"_El Alba_," which is issued in numbers at indeterminate periods, finds
so much favour in all classes of Spanish society, that its editors are
constantly receiving letters of encouragement to persevere, such as those
already alluded to, from many cities in the Peninsula, as well as
reiterated demands for supplies of the work. "_El Alba_" is read
publicly in the guard-house of the national militia of Madrid, and has,
it is said, been reprinted at the common expense of the journeymen
printers of that capital, without the least obstacle.
Whilst these things are happening in the very cradle of the Spanish
nation, the republics of South America, formed out of the fragments of
the ancient colonial power founded by Charles V., enter simultaneously
into the religious movement, without any previous concert with the
ancient metropolis. These dispositions manifested themselves in Buenos
Ayres from the earliest days of its independence. The Protestants,
without the least difficulty, obtained permission to have a cemetery for
the burial of their dead, wherein are publicly performed the funeral
rites of the Anglican Church, at which ceremony may be seen assisting,
very often, not only the Roman Catholic inhabitants of the city, but even
the clergy and friars of the dominant church. Under the government of
the illustrious Don Bernardino Rivadavia, these good tendencies towards
religious liberty acquired greater force and development, and Protestants
are able to meet together on Sundays to celebrate their worship without
that circumstance causing the least surprise, or even exciting the
curiosity of the people. Rivadavia, in 1828, founded, in the vicinity of
the capital, a colony composed entirely of Scotch families, who were
permitted to erect a chapel in a building expressly set apart for the
purpose, and there was not so much as a murmur against the project. The
iron despotism of Rosas could do nothing against this bias given to the
public opinion; and although the colony dissolved itself in one of those
political convulsions so frequent in that country, the Protestants of the
city still preserved their privileges. Rosas did not show himself much
disposed to tolerate the abuses of the power of the Roman Catholic
clergy, and he banished the Jesuits, in whose hands was placed the
education of youth. The Bishop of Buenos Ayres has been, during the
dominion of that extraordinary man, entirely subservient to his power.
In Chili religious fanaticism has always predominated, sustained by an
archbishop, by a numerous clergy, and by many convents of friars and
nuns; yet still, in Valparaiso, the principal seaport of the republic,
there exists a Protestant congregation, composed of many hundreds of
English, German, and American citizens. They have a chapel, as also a
chaplain, whose stipend is borne, in equal moieties, by the congregation
and the government of her Brittanic Majesty. Many Spaniards attend the
divine services performed therein, and we have good grounds for believing
that some of those attendants, particularly that portion of them composed
of the fair sex, have abjured the errors of the Roman Catholic communion.
The rising generation is impregnated with ideas of religious reform, and
we have seen works of some of the young writers of that country in which
the prejudices of former times are openly attacked, and principles of
independence and religious liberty proclaimed,--a course of action which,
in other epochs, would have provoked the scandal and indignation of the
authorities and of the nation at large.
In Lima, the capital of Peru, a city abounding with convents, and
celebrated for the wealth and power of its secular clergy, Dr Vigil, a
priest of irreproachable conduct and profound learning, has published a
voluminous work, in which he attacks and pulverises the pretensions of
the Roman Court, defends the independence of the bishops, and
demonstrates, in the most luminous manner, the necessity of an
ecclesiastical reformation, differing but very little from that which was
most dexterously and successfully headed by Luther. That work of Dr
Vigil was condemned, and its author excommunicated by a pontifical bull;
and yet, despite this circumstance, the book circulates from hand to hand
freely throughout Peru, and the doctor himself lives in perfect
tranquillity in the midst of his fellow-countrymen, respected by all, and
employed by the government in the distinguished post of director of the
national library.
In New Granada this reformation has proceeded from the government itself.
The archbishop and the Jesuits have been banished from the territory of
the republic, the legislative power has sanctioned the liberty of
worship, and the public writers employ themselves in enlightening the
people upon the falsity of the Roman doctrines, and the necessity of
undoing the work, which, ever since the discovery of the new world, has
been set up and perfected in it by the enemies of the true faith of Jesus
Christ.
If the publication of this present work shall contribute, in any manner,
to the intellectual emancipation of those favoured portions of the human
race, its author will have received the only recompence which he desires.
* * * * *
THE END.
Footnotes:
{15} Cover me with flowers,
For I am dying of love.
{16} The Virgin of Anguish,
She it is who knows my grief,
Because I go to her chapel
And am never tired of crying.
{22} Isabella foresaw the advantages of free trade at a time when all
Europe groaned under the yoke of the most severe prohibitions. Not only
did she abolish all those which the fiscal legislation of Spain prior to
her times had sanctioned, but she had the merit of being the founder of
the first tribunal of commerce, and of expressly ordering that in all
matters of mercantile contract, shipwrecks, &c., submitted to her
judgment, barristers should take no part, so that the course of justice
might not be obscured with pedantic arguments and formal technicalities.
{25} The Spanish Protestants and their Persecution by Philip II. By Don
Adolfo de Castro. Translated from the original Spanish, by Tho. Parker.
Gilpin, London, 1851.
{26} _Novena_. A devotional practice applicable to the worship of all
saints, and consisting of music, prayer, mass, &c., and of _nine_ days'
duration.
{52a} "We must die."
{52b} "We already know it."
{57} Importunate and unwearied begging.
{59a} On the portico of the Franciscan convent, in Granada, is to be
seen a large marble slab, on which a sonnet is engraved, the first two
lines of which are:--
"En provincias doscientas y setenta,
Tiene Francisco doce mil conventos." {59b}
{59b} "In 270 provinces,
Francis has 12,000 convents."
{67} A kind of chick-pea, much used in Spain, especially in the _olla
podrida_.
{71a} A kind of talisman hung round the neck of devout persons, which
sometimes is supposed to contain relics of saints, pious prayers, or
images of the Virgin.
{71b} "Here lies Sister Belen,
Who made sweetmeats very well,
And passed her whole life
In dressing wax figures" [_of the infant Christ_].
{72} The great feudal lords who had jurisdiction over their own lands
were so called, because on the limits of those lands they fixed a gallows
(_horca_), with a large knife (_cuchillo_), as a symbol of their
privilege.
{75} Loved one, or sweetheart.
{77} The vestibules of the convents are called the _porteria_. They
lead to the cells of the friars, and are distinct from the entrances to
the church. All women are prohibited from entering these portions of the
cloisters.
{78} This name is given to a female who confesses to one ecclesiastic
exclusively, making him also the spiritual director of her conscience.
Some persons who profess to be extremely religious divide these functions
between two distinct persons, one of them being the confessor, and the
other the director.
{81} Agonizante was the name of a religious community. The principal
duty of its members was that of administering to the wants and last
religious consolations of the faithful at the hour of death.
{98} There are numerous other anecdotes of her Majesty, which tend to
show she is possessed of some of the best qualities which can adorn the
mind of a queen, and tend to make her popular. Some of these will appear
in the following pages. We shall at present but give one. Passing one
day, when quite a child, along the Prado in Madrid, the eyes of a poor
little girl, without shoes or stockings, were directed to the royal
carriage and caught those of her Majesty. Perceiving the queen's eyes
were fixed on her, the little urchin dropt a courtesy, and held out her
hand in the attitude of supplication. Her Majesty halted, beckoned the
child forward, saw her naked feet, and having no money, in a moment took
off her own shoes and threw them out of the carriage-window to the girl,
desiring her to try them on, which she did, made another genuflection,
and walked off with them, to the great delight of her royal benefactor.
{107} An anecdote referred to by Gibbon, in the part of his history
relative to the sect of the _iconoclast_, confirms all that is advanced
in the text on the powerful influence of worship to images, as it regards
the character of devotion. When the soldiers of Leo broke in pieces the
image of a saint before whom daily prayers were wont to be offered up, a
pious individual gave vent to this bitter lamentation, "Now I can no
longer address my prayers to heaven; now I have no one to hear them!"
{110} Santa Rita is called by Spaniards "The advocate of
impossibilities,"--(_La abogada de los imposibles_.)
Thus, it is not uncommon for a young lady to say to a suitor whom she
refuses, and who imploringly asks her what he shall do to gain her
favour, "Go and invoke Santa Rita."
{113} Spaniards have not waited for Pius IX. to come and acknowledge the
immaculate conception as a dogma of the faith. This belief has existed
in Spain from time immemorial. Murillo has immortalised it in his
master-works, and Charles III. declared her to be the patroness of Spain,
commanding her image to be placed in the badges of the order which he
founded under the title of "The Royal and Distinguished Order of Charles
III."
{115} The Virgin of Atocha is the patron of the sovereigns of Spain.
Her image, which is small and of a colour as dark as a mulatto, appeared,
as tradition asserts, at the spot on which the chapel was afterwards
erected, and in which, in the present day, it is deposited. This chapel
is situated near the magnificent promenade called the Prado, in Madrid,
and was formerly part of a convent of Dominican Friars, converted, after
the suppression of the religious orders, into barracks for sick soldiers.
When the court is in Madrid, the sovereign goes every Saturday evening to
this sanctuary with a great procession of grandees and guards. The
Virgin of Atocha has an immense fortune, consisting of jewels and
trinkets which have been presented to her by the monarchs. Among these
presents, one is the distinguished velvet dress, embroidered with gold,
worn by Isabella II. at the time she was wounded by the Priest Merino.
When her Majesty felt she was wounded by the poniard of this assassin,
and saw him seized by her guards, her first words were, "Pray, spare the
life of that man!" This is another proof of Isabella's kind and
forgiving disposition, especially when it is considered that she uttered
the words spontaneously, without prompting or premeditation, but on the
spur of the moment.
{116} Spaniards have greatly excelled in the sculpture of wood,--a
branch of the fine arts which does not deserve the disdain with which
modern writers have treated it. In many churches in Spain there are
admirable productions of this kind, of a perfect execution, expression,
and design. The statue of the Virgin of the Conception, placed in the
choir of the cathedral of Seville, a work of the celebrated Montanes,
will rival the most celebrated masterpieces of modern sculpture.
{125} The Roman Catholic Church has adopted, for its hymns, the poetry
of the low Latinity of the middle ages. Among these is distinguished for
its originality that which is generally sung in the office for the dead.
The two principal verses are these:--
"Dies irae, dies ilia,
Solvens sec'lum in favilla,
Teste David, cum Sybilla.
. . . . .
Tuba mirum spargens sonum,
Per sepulchra regionum,
Venient omnes ante thronum."
We cannot resist the opportunity of giving the late Sir Walter Scott's
metrical translation of this sublime ode, a translation which, as a hymn,
is generally sung in Protestant churches:--
I.
"The day of wrath: that dreadful day,
When heaven and earth shall pass away!
What power shall be the sinner's stay?
Whom shall he trust that dreadful day?
II.
"When, shriv'lling, like a parched scroll,
The flaming heavens together roll,
When louder yet, and yet more dread,
Swells the high trump that wakes the dead,--
III.
"Oh, on that day, that wrathful day,
When man to judgment wakes from clay,
Be thou, O Christ! the sinner's stay,
Though heaven and earth shall pass away!"
We also find in this collection the hymn which is sung to the Virgin of
Griefs in the Holy Week, and which begins thus:--
"Stabat mater dolorosa
Juxta crucem lachrymosa,
Dum pendebat filius."
{127} This game dance is repeated in the cathedral of Seville on the 8th
of December, the day of the immaculate conception of the Virgin, and
during eight days afterwards, which are called an _octave_. In the
present day this cathedral, as we have said elsewhere, has also the
singular privilege of using ornaments of a sky-blue colour, which is not
permitted by the church on other feast-days. These ornaments are of an
incomparable value, and the chief one of them, called _capa pluvial_, is
richly embroidered with pearls and precious stones.
{148a} "Digo un responso por una peseta."
{148b} "Yo lo digo por media peseta."
{174} The word _alms_ in this case does not mean alms given away to the
poor, but the money invested in the purchase of a copy of this bull,
published and sold by the commissary-general, or by the different
archbishops and bishops.
If we consider that the bull is printed on a small piece of very inferior
paper, and that it is sold for 7.5d., and that every Spaniard in the
Peninsula and its colonies is bound to purchase it, at the risk of
incurring a mortal sin every Friday in the year that he eats meat without
this authorization, we may form some idea of the enormous revenue derived
from this source by the Spanish Church, and by the Roman See, which has a
profit in the speculation. The Spanish Peninsula contains at the present
moment, on a very low calculation, fifteen millions of inhabitants, the
Philippine Islands four millions, and Cuba and Porto Rico together
something more than one million. In Spanish America, from Mexico to Cape
Horn, there are nearly sixteen millions of inhabitants subject to the
Catholic Church, and his holiness grants to them likewise the privilege
of the _Holy Crusade_ bull, with the further advantage of being allowed
to cook their fish or vegetables with hog's lard or beef and mutton fat,
on those days too on which not even Spanish Catholics are allowed to eat
meat.
{176} The name given to the administration of episcopal property in the
interval between the death of a bishop and the consecration of his
successor. A part of the revenues of such sees during the vacancy went
to the public treasury, and the other to the church treasury.
{194} They so call certain women, who without being in the cloisters use
the habit of nuns, and live in common together, in establishments called
_beaterios_.
{200} What Roman Catholics generally understand by repentance.
{202} This spirit was preserved down to the time of Isabella of
Castille. After the conquest of Granada, Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordova,
known by the name of "the great captain," and to whose valour and
military foresight was owing, in a great degree, that glorious conquest,
erected in the precinct of the same city a proud palace which was
destined for his own use. The queen wished to see it ere it was scarcely
finished, and after having examined it minutely, turning to Gonzalo she
said,--"Gonzalo, this house is too good for a man; God only ought to live
in it." The hero, yielding to the suggestion, delivered up the edifice
to the Hieronimite monks, in order that they might found a convent
therein. The monks, grateful for so generous a gift, resolved, on the
death of Gonzalo, to inter his body in the church of the establishment;
and on the exterior of its tower they wrote in enormous letters the
epitaph of its founder in these words:--
"Gonzalvo Ferdinandez de Cordova,
Hispanorum duci,
Gallorum et Turcarum terrori."
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