Festival of the Corpo de Deos.--Striking decoration of the
streets.--The Patriarchal Cathedral.--Coming forth of the Sacrament
in awful state.--Gorgeous Procession.--Bewildering confusion of
sounds.
7th June.
A most sonorous peal of bells, an alarming rattle of drums, and a
piercing flourish of trumpets, roused me at daybreak. You are too
piously disposed to be ignorant that this day is the festival of the
Corpo de Deos. I had half a mind to have stayed at home, turning over a
curious collection of Portuguese chronicles the Prior of Avis has just
sent to me; but I was told such wonders of the expected procession that
I could not refuse giving myself a little trouble in order to witness
them.
Everybody was gone before I set out, and the streets of the suburb I
inhabit, as well as those in the city through which I passed in my way
to the patriarchal cathedral, were entirely deserted. A pestilence
seemed to have swept the Great Square and the busy environs of the
Exchange and India House; for even vagrants, scavengers, and beggars, in
the last state of decrepitude, had all hobbled away to the scene of
action. A few miserable curs sniffing at offals alone remained in the
deserted streets, and I saw no human being at any of the windows, except
half-a-dozen scabby children blubbering at being kept at home.
The murmur of the crowds, assembled round the _patriarchale_, reached us
a long while before we got into the midst of them, for we advanced with
difficulty between rows of soldiers drawn up in battle array. Upon
turning a dark angle, overshadowed by the high buildings of the seminary
adjoining the patriarchale, we discovered houses, shops, and palaces,
all metamorphosed into tents, and hung from top to bottom with red
damask, tapestry, satin coverlids, and fringed counterpanes glittering
with gold. I thought myself in the midst of the Mogul’s encampment, so
pompously described by Bernier.
The front of the Great Church in particular was most magnificently
curtained; it rises from a vast flight of steps, which were covered
to-day with the yeomen of the Queen’s guard in their rich
party-coloured velvet dresses, and a multitude of priests bearing a
gorgeous variety of painted and silken banners; flocks of sallow monks,
white, brown, and black, kept pouring in continually, like turkeys
driving to market.
This part of the holy display lasting a tiresome while, I grew weary,
and left the balcony, where we were placed most advantageously, and got
into the church. High mass was performing with awful pomp, incense
ascending in clouds, and the light of innumerable tapers blazing on the
diamonds of the ostensory, just elevated by the patriarch with trembling
devout hands to receive the mysterious wafer.
Before the close of the ceremony, I regained my window, to have a full
view of the coming forth of the Sacrament. All was expectation and
silence in the people. The guards had ranged them on each side of the
steps before the entrance of the church. At length a shower of aromatic
herbs and flowers announced the approach of the patriarch, bearing the
host under a regal canopy, surrounded by grandees, and preceded by a
long train of mitred figures, their hands joined in prayer, their
scarlet and purple vestments sweeping the ground, their attendants
bearing croziers, crosses, and other insignia of pontifical grandeur.
The procession slowly descending the flights of stairs to the sound of
choirs and the distant thunder of artillery, lost itself in a winding
street decorated with embroidered hangings, and left me with my senses
in a whirl, and my eyes dazzled, as if awakened from a vision of
celestial splendour.... My head swims at this moment, and my ears tingle
with a confusion of sounds, bells, voices, and the echoes of cannon,
prolonged by mountains and wafted over waters.