EDUCATION AND THE PRIESTHOOD
Education, especially that of the masses, has made great strides since
the Revolution. At that time perfect liberty of religion and of
instruction was established, and in this particular the somewhat
retrograde movement at the Restoration, in allowing the return of the
religious orders banished in the early years of the century, has only
resulted in a greater number of private schools being established by the
Jesuits and other teaching orders. With the public instruction they have
never been allowed to interfere.
Every town and village has now its municipal and free schools, kept up
by the _Diputacion provincial_. In all the chief towns there are
technical and arts and crafts schools, also free, the expenses being
borne by the Ministry of Fomento. Besides these are many private
schools, taught by Jesuits and other teaching orders. The Ministry of
Fomento is at present trying to bring in a law making education
compulsory, and bringing all schools under State control. There are
numerous girls' schools, managed by committees of ladies, as well as
the convent schools and other private establishments. There are also
normal schools, maintained by the Ministry of Fomento, where women and
girls, as well as men, can take degrees and gain certificates for
teaching purposes. In every capital of Spain one of these schools is
established. There are ten universities, of which the principal is that
of Madrid. In some of these only medicine and law are studied, but
others are open for every class of learning. In all these numerous
schools and colleges great advance has been made in late years; in the
department of science, electricity has taken a very noticeable step
forward, and in applied electricity Spain probably compares favourably
with any of the European nations. Even the small towns and some villages
are lighted by electricity, having gone straight from petroleum to
electric light. Most of the large towns have, besides the light,
electric tramways, telephones, etc., the engineers and artisans employed
in these works being of a very high class. Electrical engineers are not
under Government control, as the civil and mechanical engineers are, and
have therefore better chances of coming to the front and making a career
for themselves. The Government engineers, however, are kept up to the
mark of other countries, and an attempt has been made by the present
Minister to alter the system by which civil and mechanical engineers are
compulsorily a body appointed and controlled by Government.
Medical science has made great strides during the last ten or twelve
years. The hospitals are reformed, and all sanitary and antiseptical
arrangements are now strictly attended to, and brought into line with
the latest developments of science. A fine new hospital, San Juan de
Dios, has been built in Madrid, on the plan of St. Thomas's in London,
and this is only one of many improvements. The reorganisation of all
scientific teaching is now engaging the attention of the Minister. An
excellent sign of the present state of medical science in Spain--which
only a few years ago was so far behind the age--is the fact that the
International Congress of Medicine is fixed to meet in Madrid, for the
first time, in 1902.
Since the establishment of religious liberty, the Americans seem to have
made themselves very busy in missionary work. Mrs. Gulick, the wife of
the American missionary in San Sebastian, claims to have "proved the
intellectual ability of Spanish girls," and has secured State
examination and recognition of her pupils by the National Institution of
San Sebastian, and a few have even obtained admission to the
examinations of the Madrid University, where they maintained a high
rank. One always has a feeling that missionaries might easily find a
field for their zealous labours in their own country; but if an impulse
was needed from a foreign people for the initiation of a higher
education among the daughters of Spain, they will certainly be able to
carry on the work themselves, with such women as Emelia Pardo Bazan to
lead the way. Mrs. Gulick is said to project a college for women in
Madrid without distinction of creed. The whole affair sounds a little
condescending, as though America were coming to the aid of a nation of
savages; but if the Spaniards themselves do not object, no one else has
any right to do so.
The Protestant movement has made but little progress in Spain. The
religion is scarcely fitted to the genius of the people, and the
Anglican Church has shown no desire to proselytise a nation which has as
much right to its own religious opinions and form of worship as the
English nation. The Americans and English Nonconformists are very busy,
however, and talk somewhat largely of the results of their labours. In
most of the large towns there are English chapels and schools, and a
certain number among the lower classes of Spaniards have joined these
communities. A private diary of a visit to Madrid so long ago as 1877
describes the English service there. The congregation numbered "quite
five hundred." "They were of the poorer classes of both sexes, with a
sprinkling of well-dressed men and women. They seemed to perform their
devotions in a spirit of entire reverence and piety, not unlike a
similar class in our churches at home. The clergyman delivered an
impressive and forcible discourse, chiefly on the honour due to the name
of God, and reprobated the profane use of the most sacred names, so
common among the Spanish people.... Altogether I look upon the
congregation at the Calle de Madera as a nucleus of genuine
Protestantism in Spain."
As this is the opinion of a perfectly unbiassed onlooker, and has
nothing of the professional element about it, it may be taken as
absolutely reliable. In the towns, such as Bilbao, where there is a
large English colony, there are various churches and chapels, and
considerable numbers of communicants and Sunday scholars. Looking back,
as I am able to do, to the days when there was no toleration for an
alien faith; when even Christian burial for the "heretic" was quite a
new thing, and living people could tell of the indignities heaped on the
corpse of any unlucky English man or woman who died in "Catholic" Spain;
when to have omitted, or even hesitated about, any of the religious
actions imposed by the Church would have exposed one to gross insult,
and perhaps injury; the progress towards enlightened toleration of the
opinions of others seems to have been remarkable. It is, perhaps, more
significant that the members of the new congregations should be
generally of the lower classes, because it is precisely these people who
have always been mere unthinking puppets in the hands of their priests.
Although there is at the present moment such a deep and widespread
revolt against the Jesuits and some of the other orders, especially
among the students and the better class of artisans and workmen, there
is not, so far as a stranger may judge, a revolt against the Church
itself, nor even against the parochial clergy. It would seem rather that
there is a fixed determination that the priests shall keep to their
business, that of the service of religion, and shall not be allowed to
interfere in secular education, or, by use of the confessional, to
dominate the family; and, above all, that the convents shall not be
filled by force, undue persuasion, or cajolery. The state of the Roman
Catholic religion and its priesthood in England is constantly being held
up as the ideal of what the Church in Spain should be.
Almost all the modern novelists of Spain show us characters of priests
with whom every reader must feel sympathy. Valera, Galdós, Pardo Bazan,
and others depict individual clerics who are simple, straightforward,
pious, and in every way worthy men, the friend of the young and the
helper of the sorrowful. Sometimes they are not very learned, and not at
all worldly-wise, but they show that the type is largely represented
amongst the priesthood of Spain, and there are not wanting some of
distinctly liberal tendencies. There was a remarkable article in a
Madrid paper of radical, if not socialistic, tendencies, the other day,
by one who signed himself "A priest of the Spanish Catholic Church."
Lamenting over the sentimentalism of modern religion, and the distance
it had travelled from its old models, he says: "Instead of the Vírgen
being held up to admiration as the Mother of Our Lord, and as an example
of all feminine perfection, the ideal woman and mother, the people are
called on to worship the idea of the Immaculate Conception, an abstract
dogma of recent invention, and in place of showing us the perfect man in
the Son of God, they are asked to worship a 'bleeding heart,' abstracted
from the body, and held up as an object of reverence, apart from the
living body of Jesus Christ." It is the reform of the national religion
still ardently loved in spite of all the crimes that have been committed
in her name, that the liberal-minded Spaniard wants, not the
substitution of a foreign church; although no doubt the opportunity, now
for the first time possible, of learning that there are people every
whit as good and earnest as themselves, who yet hold religious opinions
other than theirs, is bound to have a widening and softening effect on
the narrowness of a creed which has hitherto been regarded as the only
one.
The extraordinary outbreak against the Jesuits and the religious orders
of the last year had many causes, and had probably long been seething,
and waiting for something to open the floodgates. That something came in
the marriage of the Princess of Asturias, and the coincidence,
accidental or otherwise, of the production of Galdós's play of
_Electra_. The marriage was a love match; the two young sons of the
Count of Caserta, who were nephews of the Infanta Isabel on her
husband's side, had been constantly at the Palace in Madrid, companions
of the boy King. An attachment sprang up between Don Carlos, the elder
of the two, and the King's elder sister, the Princess of Asturias. In
every way the projected marriage was obnoxious to the people. The Count
of Caserta himself had been chief of the staff to the Pretender, Don
Carlos, and though he and his sons had taken the oath of allegiance to
the young King, Spaniards have learned to place little reliance on such
oaths. Had not Montpensier sworn allegiance to his sister-in-law Isabel
II.? and of how much was it worth when the time came that he thought he
could successfully conspire against her? To allow the heiress to the
Crown to marry a Carlist seemed the surest way to reopen civil war, and
upset the dynasty once more. Moreover, the Jesuits were supposed to be
behind it all. The Apostolic party was apparently scotched and Carlism
dead, but was not this one more move of the hated Jesuits to resuscitate
both? The Liberal Government refused to allow the marriage; the Queen
Regent, actuated, it is said, solely by the desire to secure what she
considered the happiness of her daughter, who refused to give up her
lover, was obstinate; and rather than give in, Sagasta and his Ministers
resigned. A Conservative Ministry was formed--the methods of
manipulating elections must be borne in mind--and the marriage was
carried out. Even before the wedding-day the storm broke, and things
looked ugly enough. Riots and disturbances occurred all over the
country, as well as in Madrid itself; attacks were made on the houses of
the Jesuits, who were credited with being the authors of the situation;
and then followed the Government's suicidal step of suspending the
constitutional guarantees over the whole country. Absolutism had once
more raised its head! The Conservative Ministers, or many of them, were
accused of being mere tools in the hands of the Jesuits, and it was
complained that the confessor of the young King was one of the hated
order.
For a time Spain seemed to be on the verge of one of her old
convulsions. It appeared doubtful if the Queen Regent had not sacrificed
the crown of one child to gratify the obstinacy of another. Fortunately,
a catastrophe was averted. After vain efforts to retain the Conservative
party in power, or to form a coalition, which all the best public men
refused to join, Sagasta was once more recalled to power, the
constitutional guarantees were restored, and the sharp crisis passed.
But the attention of the nation had been attracted to what it considered
the machinations of the Jesuits; order was indeed restored in Madrid and
the provinces, but the "clerical question" had come to the front, and
there was no possibility of allowing it to slumber again. It was
discovered that not only had many of the religious orders, whose return
had been allowed by convention after the Restoration, under certain
limitations, largely increased their numbers beyond the limits allowed
them, but that others had established themselves without any
authorisation from the Government; also that considerable properties
were being acquired in the country by the orders, though, of course,
held under other names. The Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Madrid
petitioned the Government to order an inquiry into the affairs of these
religious bodies, pointing out that they were establishing manufactories
of shoes, chocolate, fancy post-cards, and other objects of commerce,
interfering with the ordinary trades, and underselling them, because,
under the plea of being charitable institutions, they evaded duty. The
heads of colleges and the Society of Public Teachers also asked for
Government interference and the reassertion of the laws of 1881 and
1895, guaranteeing perfect liberty of instruction, because they affirmed
that the Fathers, Jesuit and others, undermined the teaching of science
in the schools by means of tracts distributed to the pupils, and also by
using the power they obtained in the confessional to set aside the
lessons in science given in the colleges.
The action of the Government was prompt and judicious. Strict inquiries
were at once made into the question of the manufacturing orders, and
those not paying the duty were reminded of the immediate necessity of
doing so, and of furnishing to the Ministry of Fomento full particulars
of the trades carried on by them. Houses that were permitted by
convention were warned to reduce their numbers to those allowed by law,
and all unauthorised orders were warned at once to leave the country.
The Press took a dignified and moderate position in the matter. It
pointed out that perfect religious liberty existed, and that all that
was needful was to see that the religious orders obeyed the law of the
country as other people did; but that to inaugurate a system of
persecution would be to return to the Dark Ages, and to follow the bad
example set by the Church itself in former years.
Meanwhile, a clear intimation had been given by the Government that
public instruction was absolutely free, and that no interference would
be allowed with the teaching of science in the public schools. After
all, public opinion alone can deal with the question of the confessional
and the occult influence of the priest, for the remedy lies in the hands
of those who place themselves under the domination of the confessor.
So far, well! The riots were at an end, and the more sensible and
law-abiding people were satisfied that the ground stealthily gained by
the Jesuits had been cut from under their feet as soon as the full light
of day had been let in on their proceedings. Then came the extraordinary
excitement caused by Galdós's play. To a stranger reading it, it is
obvious that the public mind must have been in a strange condition of
alarm and distrust to have had such an effect produced upon it by a
drama which has no great literary worth, and which appears commonplace
and harmless to an outsider. The story is simply that of a young orphan
girl, who, according to Spanish ideas, is extremely unconventional,
though nothing worse. There is nothing of the emancipated young woman
about her as the type is known in England; in fact, she has a perfect
genius for those domestic virtues which "advanced" English women regard
with disdain. The villain of the piece, is a certain Don Salvador, who,
though the fact is never mentioned, is obviously a Jesuit, and the
interest of the play consists in the efforts made by this man, first by
fair means and then by foul, to separate Electra from her _fiancé_, and
immure her in a convent. He succeeds, to all appearance, by at last
resorting to an infamous lie, which reduces the girl to a state of
insanity, in which she flies to the convent from the lover whom she has
been led to believe is her own brother. Finally, by the action of a nun
who leaves the convent at the same time as Electra, the truth is made
known, and the girl is rescued.
"You fly from me, then?" exclaims Don Salvador.
"It is not flight, it is resurrection!" replies the lover, in the last
words of the play.
This drama ran an unprecedented number of nights in Madrid, over fifteen
thousand copies of the book were sold in a few weeks, and it is still
running in the provinces. Some of the bishops and the superior clergy
have had the folly to denounce the play and to forbid their
congregations to witness or to read it. There is not an objectionable
word or idea in it from first to last, except such as may be
disagreeable to the Church--as that women should be educated so as to be
the intellectual companions of their husbands, and should not be
entrapped into convents by foul means and against their will. The action
taken by the clergy in this matter has not only largely advertised the
play, but has led to angry demonstrations against them, and has
strengthened the temper of the people to resist all clerical domination
in temporal matters.
There have not been wanting from time to time signs, especially in the
large manufacturing towns, of a spirit of revolt against all religion.
Socialism, atheism, and even anarchism are all in the air, and if these
are to be counteracted by religious teaching at all, it will certainly
not be by the narrow dogmatism of the old school. There is a deep fund
of religious feeling in the Spanish character which it would take a
great deal to uproot, but it must be a wide-spirited and enlightened
faith which will retain its hold over the people, who are everywhere
breaking their old bonds and thinking for themselves.