Spanish Spiritual Remedies for the Body--Miraculous
Relics--Sanative Oils--Philosophy of Relic Remedies--Midwifery and
the Cinta of Tortosa--Bull of Crusade.
The Reverend Dr. Fernando Castillo, an esteemed Spanish author and
teacher, remarks, in his luminous Life of St. Domenick, that Spain has
been so bountifully provided by heaven with fine climate, soil, and
extra number of saints, that his countrymen are prone to be idle and to
neglect such rare advantages. Certainly they may not dig and delve so
deeply as is done in lands less favoured, but the reproach of omitting
to call on Hercules to do their work, or of not making the most of
Santiago in any bodily dilemma, is a somewhat too severe reproach:
nowhere in case of sickness have the saving virtues of relics, and the
adjurations of holy monks, been more implicitly relied on.
[Sidenote: MIRACULOUS SANATIVE OILS.]
[Sidenote: COSTUME OF CONVALESCENTS.]
As our learned readers well know, the medical practice of the ancients
was, as that of the Orientals still is, more peculiar than scientific.
When disease was thought to be a divine punishment for sin, it was held
to be wicked to resist by calling in human aid: thus Asa was blamed, and
thus Moslems and Spaniards resign themselves to their fate, distrusting,
and very properly, their medical men: “Am I a god, to kill or make
alive?” In the large towns, in these days of progress, some patients may
“suffer a recovery” according to European practice; but in the country
and remote villages,--and we speak from repeated personal
experience,--the good old reliance on relics and charms is far from
exploded; and however Dr. Sangrado and Philip III., whose decrees on
medical matters yet adorn the Spanish statutes at large, deplore the
introduction of perplexing chemistry, mineral therapeuticals still
remain a considerable dead letter, as the church has transferred the
efficacy of faith from spiritual to temporal concerns, and gun-shot
wounds. Even Ponz, the Lysons of Spain, and before the Inquisition was
abolished, ventured to express surprise at the number of images ascribed
to St. Luke, who, says he, was not a sculptor, but a physician, whence
possibly their sanative influence. The old Iberians were great herbalist
doctors; thus those who had a certain plant in their houses, were
protected, as a blessed palm branch now wards off lightning. They had
also a drink made of a hundred herbs, and hence called _centum herbæ_, a
_bebida de cien herbas_, which, like Morison’s vegetable pills, cured
every possible disease, and was so palatable that it was drunk at
banquets, which modern physic is not; moreover, according to Pliny, they
cured the gout with flour, and relieved elongated uvulas by hanging
purslain round the patient’s throat. So now the _curas y curanderos_,
country curates and quacks, furnish charms and incantations, just as
Ulysses stopped his bleeding by cantation: a medal of Santiago cures the
ague, a handkerchief of the Virgin the ophthalmia, a bone of San Magin
answers all the purposes of mercury, a scrap of San Frutos supplied at
Segovia the loss of common sense; the Virgin of Oña destroyed worms in
royal Infantes, and her sash at Tortosa delivers royal Infantas. Every
Murcian peasant believes that no disease can affect him or his cattle,
if he touches them with the cross of Caravaca, which angels brought from
heaven and placed on a red cow. When we were last at Manresa, the worthy
man who showed the cave in which Loyola the founder of the Jesuits did
penance for a year, increased an honest livelihood by the sale of its
pulverized stones, that were swallowed by the faithful in cases in which
an English doctor would prescribe Dover’s or James’s powders. Every
province, not to say parish, has its own tutelar saint and relic, which
are much honoured and resorted to in their local jurisdiction, and very
little thought of out of it, their power to cure having been apparently
granted to them by Santiago, as a commission to commit is by Queen
Victoria to a magistrate, whose authority does not extend beyond the
county bounds. Zaragoza was admirably provided: a portion of the liver
of Santa Engracia was anciently resorted to, in cases where blue pill
would be beneficial; the oil of her lamps, which never smoked the
ceilings, cured _lamparones_, or tumours in the neck, while that which
burnt before the _Virgen del Pilar_, or the image of the Virgin which
came down from heaven on a pillar, restored lost legs; Cardinal de Retz
mentions in his Memoirs having seen a man whose wooden substitutes
became needless when the originals grew again on being rubbed with it;
and this portent was long celebrated by the Dean and Chapter, as well it
deserved, by an especial holiday, for Macassar oil cannot do much more.
This graven image is at this moment the object of popular adoration, and
disputes even with the worship of tobacco and money: countless are the
mendicants, the halt, blind, and the lame, who cluster around her
shrine, as the equally afflicted ancients, with whom physicians were in
vain, did around that of Minerva; and it must be confessed that the
cures worked are almost incredible.
It may be said that all this is a raking up of remnants of mediæval
superstition and darkness, and it is probable that the medical men in
Madrid and the larger towns, and especially those who have studied at
Paris, do not place implicit confidence in these spiritual, nor indeed
in any other purely Spanish remedies; but their tried medicinal
properties are set forth at length in scores of Spanish county and other
histories which we have the felicity to possess, all of which have
passed the scrutinizing ordeal of clerical censors, and have been
approved of as containing nothing contrary to the creed of the Church of
Rome or good customs; nor can it be permitted that a church which
professes to be always one, the same, and the only true one, should at
its own convenience “turn its back on itself,” and deny its own drugs
and doctrines. Nothing is set down here which was not perfectly
notorious under the reign of Ferdinand VII.; and whatever the doctors of
physic or theology may now disbelieve in Spain, more reliance is still
placed, in the rural districts, where foreign civilization has not
penetrated, on miracles than on medicines.
We have often and often seen little children in the streets dressed like
Franciscan monks--Cupids in cowls--whose pious parents had vowed to
clothe them in the robes of this order, provided its sainted founder
preserved their darlings during measles or dentition. Nothing was more
common than that women, nay, ladies in good society, should appear for a
year in a particular religious dress, called _el habito_, or with some
religious badge on their sleeves in token of similar deliverance.
[Sidenote: CURE OF SOULS.]
One instance in our time amused all the tertulias of Seville, who
maliciously attributed the sudden relief which a fair high-born
unmarried invalid experienced from an apparent dropsical complaint to
causes not altogether supernatural; _Pues, Don Ricardo_, “and so, Master
Richard,” would her friends of the same age and rank often say, “you are
a stranger; go and ask dearest _Esperanza_ why she wears the Virgin of
Carmel; come back and let us know her story, and we will tell you the
real truth.” _Vaya! vaya! Don Ricardo, usted es muy majadero_,--“Go to,
Master Richard, your Grace is an immense bore,” replied the penitent, if
she suspected the authors and motive of the embassy.
The pious in antiquity raised temples to Minerva medica or Esculapius,
as Spaniards do altars to _Na. Señora de los Remedios_, our Lady of the
Remedies, and to San Roque, whose intervention renders “sound as a
roach,” a proverb devised in his honour by our ancestors, who, before
the Reformation, trusted likewise to him; and both thought, if Cicero is
to be credited, that these tutelars did _at least_ as much as the
doctor. Alas! for the patient credulity of mankind, which still gulps
down such medicinal quackery as all this, and which long will continue
to do so even were one of the dead to rise from the grave, to deprecate
the absurd treatment by which he and so many have been sacrificed.
However, by way of compensation, the saving the _soul_ has been made
just as primary a consideration in Spain as the curing the _body_ has
been in England. These relics, charms, and amulets represent our patent
medicines; and the wonder is how any one in Great Britain can be
condemned to death in this world, or how any one in the Peninsula can be
doomed to perdition in the next: possibly the panaceas are in neither
case quite specific. Be that as it may, how numerous and well-appointed
are the churches and convents there, compared to the hospitals; how
amply provided the relic-magazine with bones and spells, when compared
to the anatomical museums and chemists’ shops; again, what a flock of
holy practitioners come forth _after_ a Spaniard has been stabbed,
starved, or executed, not one of whom would have stirred a step to save
an army of his countrymen when alive; and what coppers are now collected
to pay masses to get his soul out of purgatory!
[Sidenote: PHILOSOPHY OF RELICS.]
Beware, nevertheless, gentle Protestant reader, of dying in Spain,
except in Cadiz or Malaga, where, if you are curious in Christian
burial, there is snug lying for heretics; and for your life avoid being
even sick at Madrid, since if once handed over to the faculty make thy
last testament forthwith, as, if the judgment passed on their own
doctors by Spaniards be true, Esculapius cannot save thee from the
crows: avoid the Spanish doctors therefore like mad dogs, and throw
their physic after them.
The masses and many in Spain have their own tutelars and refuges for the
destitute; the kings and queens--whom God preserve!--have their own
especial patroness by prerogative, in the image of the Virgin of Atocha
at Madrid, which they and the rest of the royal family visit every
Sunday in the year when in royal health. No sooner was the sovereign
taken dangerously ill, and the court physicians at a loss what to do, as
sometimes is the case even in Madrid, than the image used to be brought
to his bedside; witness the case of Philip III., thus described by
Bassompierre in his dispatch:--“Les médecins en désespèrent depuis ce
matin que l’on a commencé à user des _remèdes spirituels_, et faire
transporter au palais _l’image_ de N. D. de Athoche.” The patient died
three days after the image was sent for.
[Sidenote: SPANISH MIDWIFERY.]
Although neither priest nor physician might credit the sanative
properties of rags and relics, they gladly called them in, for if the
case then went wrong, how could mortal man be expected to succeed when
the supernatural remedy had failed? All inquests in awkward cases are
hushed up by ascribing the death to the visitation of God. Again, if a
relic does not always cure it rarely kills, as calomel has been known to
do. This interruptive principle, one distinct from human remedies, is
admitted by the church in the prayers for sick persons; and where faith
is sincere, even relics must offer a powerful moral medical cordial, by
acting on the imagination, and giving confidence to the patient. This
chance is denied to the poor Protestant, nay, even to a newly-converted
tractarian, for truly, to believe in the efficacy of a monkish bone, the
lesson must have been learnt in the nursery. Their substitute in
Lutheran lands, in partibus infidelium, is found in laudanum, news, and
gossip; the latter being the grand specific by which Sir Henry kept
scores of dowagers alive, to the despair of jointure-paying sons, from
marquises down to baronets; and how much real comfort is conveyed by
the gentle whisper, “Your ladyship cannot conceive what an interest his
or her Royal Highness the ---- takes in your ladyship’s convalescence!”
The _form_ of the moral restorative will vary according to climate,
creeds, manners, &c.; it is to the _substance_ alone that the
philosophical physician will look. That chord must be touched, be it
what it may, to which the pulse of the patient will respond; nor,
provided he is recovered, do the means much signify.
One word only on Spanish midwifery. There is a dislike to male
accoucheurs, and the midwife, or _comadre_, generally brings the
Spaniard into the world by the efforts of nature and the aid of _manteca
de puerco_, or hogs’ lard, a launching appropriate enough to a babe,
who, if it survives to years of discretion, will assuredly love bacon.
The newly-born is then wrapped up, like an Egyptian mummy, and is
carefully protected from fresh air, soap, and water; an amulet is then
hung round its neck to disarm the evil eye, or some badge of the Virgin
is to ensure good luck: thus the young idea is taught from the cradle,
what errors are to be avoided and what safeguards are to be clung to,
lessons which are seldom forgotten in after-life. Without entering
further into baby details, the scanty population of the Peninsula may in
some measure be thus accounted for. Parturition also is frequently
fatal; in ordinary cases the midwife does very well, but when a
difficulty arises she loses her head and patient. It is in these trying
moments, as in the critical operations of the kitchen, that a male
artiste is preferable.
[Sidenote: SPIRITUAL AIDS TO ACCOUCHEMENT.]
The Queens and Infantas of Spain have additional advantages. The
palladium of the city of Tortosa is the _cinta_[11] or girdle, which the
Virgin, accompanied by St. Peter and St. Paul, brought herself from
heaven to a priest of the cathedral in 1178; an event in honour of which
a mass is still said every second Sunday in October. The gracious gift
was declared authentic in 1617, by Paul V., and to justify his
infallibility it works every sort of miracle, especially in obstetric
cases; it is also brought out to defend the town on all occasions of
public calamity, but failed in the case of Suchet’s attack. This
girdle, more wonderful than the cestus of Venus, was conveyed in 1822,
by Ferdinand VII.’s command, in solemn procession to Aranjuez, in order
to facilitate the accouchement of the two Infantas, and as Lucina when
duly invoked favoured women in travail, so their Royal Highnesses were
happily delivered, and one of the babes then born, is the husband of
Isabel II. For humbler Castilian women, when pregnant, a spiritual
remedy was provided by the canons of Toledo, who took the liveliest
interest in many of the cases. The grand entrance to the cathedral had
thirteen steps, and all females who ascended and descended them ensured
an early and easy time of it. No wonder therefore, when these steps were
reduced to the number of seven, that the greatest possible opposition
should have been made by the fair sex, married and unmarried. All these
things of Spain are rather Oriental; and to this day the Barbary Moors
have a cannon at Tangiers by which a Christian ship was sunk, and across
this their women sit to obtain an easy delivery. In all ages and
countries where the science of midwifery has made small progress, it is
natural that some spiritual assistance should be contrived for perils of
such inevitable recurrence as childbirth. The panacea in Italy was the
girdle of St. Margaret, which became the type of this _Cinta_ of
Tortosa, and it was resorted to by the monks in all cases of difficult
parturition. It was supposed to benefit the sex, because when the devil
wished to eat up St. Margaret, the Virgin bound him with her sash, and
he became tame as a lamb. This sash brought forth sashes also, and in
the 17th century had multiplied so exceedingly, that a traveller
affirmed “if all were joined together, they would reach all down
Cheapside;” but the natural history of relics is too well known to be
enlarged upon.
[Sidenote: BULL OF CRUSADE.]
Any account of Spanish doctors without a death, would be dull as a blank
day with fox-hounds, although the medical man, differing from the
sportsman, dislikes being in at it. He, the moment the fatal sisters
three are running into their game, slips out, and leaves the last act to
the clergyman: hence the Spanish saying, “When the priest begins, the
physician ends.” It is related in the history of Don Quixote, that no
sooner did the barber feel the poor knight’s wrist, than he advised him
to attend to his soul and send for his confessor; and now, when a
Castilian hidalgo takes to his bed, his friends pursue much the same
course, nor does the catastrophe often differ. Lord Bacon, great in
wise saws and instances, prayed that his death might come from Spain,
because then it would be long on the journey; but he was not aware that
the gentlemen in black formed an exception to the proverbial
procrastination and dilatoriness of their fellow countrymen. As patients
are soon dispatched, the law[12] of the land subjects every physician to
a fine of ten thousand maravedis, who fails after his first visit to
prescribe confession; the chief object in sickness being, as the
preamble states, to cure the soul; and so it is in Italy, where Gregory
XVI. issued in 1845 three decrees; one to forbid railroads, another to
prohibit scientific meetings, and a third to order all medical men to
cease to attend invalids who had not sent for the priest and
communicated after the third visit. In Spain, the first question asked
in our time of the sick man was, not whether he truly repented of his
sins, but whether he had got the Bull; and if the reply was in the
negative, or his old nurse had omitted to send out and buy one, the last
sacraments were denied to the dying wretch.
[Sidenote: NECESSITY OF THE BULL.]
One Word on this wonderful Bull, that disarms death of its sting, and
which, although few of our readers may ever have heard of it, plays a
far more important part in the Peninsula than the quadruped does in the
arena. Fastings are nowhere more strictly enjoined than here, where Lent
represents the Ramadan of the Moslem. The denials have been mitigated to
those faithful who have good appetites, by the paternal indulgence of
their holy father at Rome, who, in consideration that it was necessary
to keep the Spanish crusaders in fighting condition in order more
effectually to crush the infidel, conceded to Saint Ferdinand the
permission that his army might eat meat rations during Lent, provided
there were any, for, to the credit of Spanish commissariats in general,
few troops fast more regularly and religiously. The auspicious day on
which the arrival is proclaimed of this welcome bull that announces
dinner, is celebrated by bells merry as at a marriage feast; in the
provincial cities mayors and corporations go to cathedral in what is
called state, to the wonder of the mob and amusement of their betters at
the resurrection of quiz coaches, the robes, maces, and obsolete
trappings, by which these shadows of a former power and dignity hope to
mark individual and collective insignificancy. A copy of this precious
Bull cannot of course be had for nothing, and as it must be paid for,
and in ready money, it forms one of the certain branches of public
income. Although the proceeds ought to be expended on crusading
purposes, Ferdinand VII., the Catholic King, and the only sovereign in
possession of such a revenue, never contributed one mite towards the
Christian Greeks in their recent struggle against the Turkish
unbelievers.
[Sidenote: DEATH-BED IN SPAIN]
These bulls, or rather paper-money notes, are prepared with the greatest
precautions, and constituted one of the most profitable articles of
Spanish manufacture; a maritime war with England was dreaded, not so
much from regard to the fasting transatlantic souls, as from the fear of
losing, as Dr. Robertson has shown, the sundry millions of dollars and
silver dross remitted from America in exchange for these spiritual
treasures. They were printed at Seville, at the Dominican convent, the
_Porta cœli_; but Soult, who now it appears is turning devotee, burnt
down this gate of heaven, with its passports, and the presses. The bulls
are only good for the year during which they are issued; after twelve
months they become stale and unprofitable. There is then, says Blanco
White, and truly, for we have often seen it, “a prodigious hurry to
obtain new ones by all those who wish well to their souls, and do not
overlook the ease and comfort of their stomachs.” A fresh one must be
annually taken out, like a game-certificate, before Spaniards venture to
sport with flesh or fowl, and they have reason to be thankful that it
does not cost three pounds odd: for the sum of _dos reales_, or less
than sixpence, man, woman, and child may obtain the benefit of clergy
and cookery; but evil betides the uncertificated poacher, treadmills for
life are a farce, perdition catches his soul. His certificate is
demanded by the keeper of conscience when he is caught in the trap of
sickness, and if without one, his conviction is certain; he cannot plead
ignorance of the law, for a postscript and condition is affixed to all
notices of jubilees, indulgences, and other purgatorial benefits, which
are fixed on the church doors; and the language is as courteous and
peremptory as in our popular assessed tax-paper--“Se _ha_ de tener la
bula:” you _must_ have the bull; if you expect to derive any relief from
these relaxations in purgatory, which all Spaniards most particularly
do: hence the common phrase used by any one, when committing some
little peccadillo in other matters, _tengo mi bula para todo_--I have
got my bull, my licence to do any thing. The possession of this document
acts on all fleshly comforts like soda on indigestion, indeed it
neutralizes everything except heresy. As it is cheap, a Protestant
resident, albeit he may not quite believe in its saving effects, will do
well to purchase one for the sake of the peace of mind of his weaker
brethren, for in this religion of forms and outer observances, more
horror is felt by rigid Spaniards, at seeing an Englishman eating meat
during a fast, than if he had broken all the ten commandments. The sums
levied from the nation for these bulls is very large, although they are
diminished before finally paid into the exchequer; some of the honey
gathered by so many bees will stick to their wings, and the place of
chief commissioner of the Bula is a better thing than that in the Excise
or Customs of unbelieving countries.
To return to the dying man: if he has the bull, the host is brought to
him with great pomp; the procession is attended by crowds who bear
crosses, lighted candles, bells and incense; and as the chamber is
thrown open to the public, the ceremony is accompanied by multitudes of
idlers. The spectacle is always imposing, as it must be, considering
that the incarnate Deity is believed to be present. It is particularly
striking on Easter Sunday, when the host is taken to all the sick who
have been unable to communicate in the parish church. Then the priest
walks either under a gorgeous canopy, or is mounted in the finest
carriage in the town; and while all as he passes kneel to the wafer
which he bears, he chuckles internally at his own reality of power over
his prostrate subjects; the line of streets are gaily decorated as for
the triumphal procession of a king: the windows are hung with velvets
and tapestries, and the balconies filled with the fair sex arrayed in
their best, who shower sweet flowers down on the procession just at the
moment of its passage, and sweeter smiles during all the rest of the
morning on their lovers below, whose more than divided adoration is
engrossed by female divinities.
[Sidenote: BURIAL DRESSES.]
To die without confession and communication is to a Spaniard the most
poignant of calamities, as he cannot be saved while he is taught that
there is in these acts a preserving virtue of their own, independent of
any exertions on his part. The host is given when human hopes are at an
end, and the heat, noise, confusion, and excitement, seldom fail to kill
the already exhausted patient. Then when life’s idle business at a gasp
is o’er, the body is laid out in a _capilla ardiente_, or an apartment
prepared as a chapel, by taking out the furniture; where the family is
rich, a room on the ground floor is selected, in which a regular altar
is dressed up, and rows of large candles lighted placed around the body;
the public is then allowed to enter, even in the case of the sovereign:
thus we beheld Ferdinand VII. laid out dead and full dressed with his
hat on his head, and his stick in his hand. This public exhibition is a
sort of coroner’s inquest; formerly, as we have often seen, the body was
clad in a monk’s dress, with the feet naked and the hands clasped over
the breast; the sepulchral shadow then thrown over the dead and placid
features by the cowl, seldom failed to raise a solemn undefinable
feeling in the hearts of spectators, speaking, as it did, a language to
the living which could not be misunderstood.
The woollen dresses of the mendicant orders were by far the most
popular, from the idea that, when old, they had become too saturated
with the odour of sanctity for the vile nostrils of the evil one; and as
a tattered dress often brought more than half-a-dozen new ones, the sale
of these old clothes was a benefit alike to the pious vendor and
purchaser; those of St. Francis were preferred, because at his triennial
visits to purgatory, he knows his own, and takes them back with him to
heaven; hence Milton peopled his shadowy limbo with wolves in sheep’s
clothing:--
---- “who, to be sure of Paradise,
Dying put on the robes of Dominick,
Or in Franciscan think to pass unseen.”
[Sidenote: BURIAL PLACES.]
Women in our time were often laid out in nuns’ dresses, wearing also the
scapulary of the Virgin of Carmel, which she gave to Simon Stock, with
the assurance that none who died with it on, should ever suffer eternal
torments. The general adoption of these grave fashions induced an
accurate foreigner to remark, that no one ever died in Spain except nuns
and monks. In this hot country, burial goes hand in hand with death, and
it is absolutely necessary from the rapidity with which putrefaction
comes on. The last offices are performed in somewhat an indecent manner:
formerly the interment took place in churches, or in the yards near
them, a custom which from hygeian reasons is now prohibited. Public
cemeteries, which give at least 4 per cent. interest, have been erected
outside the towns, in which long lines of catacombs gape greedily for
those occupants who can pay for them, while a wide ditch is opened every
day for those who cannot. In this _campo santo_, or holy field, death
levels all ranks, which seems hard on those great families who have
built and endowed chapels to secure a burial among their ancestors. They
however raised no objections to the change of law, nor have ever much
troubled themselves about the dilapidated sepulchres and crumbling
effigies of their “grandsires cut in alabaster;” the real opposition
arose from the priests, who lost their fees, and thereupon assured their
flocks, that a future resurrection was anything but certain to bodies
committed into such new-fangled depositories.
Be that as it may, the corpse in its slight coffin is carried out,
followed by the male relations, and is then put into its niche without
further form or prayer. Ladies who die soon after marriage, and before
the bridal hours have danced their measure, are sometimes buried in
their wedding dresses, and covered with flowers, the dying injunctions
of Shakspere’s Queen Catherine:--
“When I am dead, good wench,
Let me be used with honour; strew me o’er
With maiden flowers, that all the world may know
I was a chaste wife to my grave.”
At such funerals the coffin is opened in the catacomb, to gratify the
indecent curiosity of the crowd; the dress is next day discussed all
over the town, and the _entierro_ or funeral is pronounced to be _muy
lucido_ or very brilliant; but life in Spain is a jest, and these things
show it. The place assigned for children who die under seven years of
age lies apart from that of the adults; their early death is held in
Spain to be rather a matter of congratulation than of grief, since those
whom the gods love die young; their epitaphs tell a mixed tale of joy
and sorrow. _El parvulo fue arrebatado á la gloria_, the little one was
snatched up into Paradise:--
“There is beyond the sky a heaven of joy and love,
And holy children, when they die, go to that world above.”
[Sidenote: BURIAL OF THE POOR.]
Yet nature will not be put aside, and many a mother have we seen,
loitering alone near the graves, adorning them with roses and plucking
up weeds which have no business to grow there; the little corpses are
carried to the tomb by little children of the same age, clad in white,
and are strewed with flowers short-lived as themselves, sweets to the
sweet. The parents return home yearning after the lost child--its cradle
is empty, its piteous moan is heard no more, its playthings remain where
it left them, and recall the cruel gap which grief cannot fill up,
although it
“Stuffs out its vacant garments with its form.”
The bodies of the lower orders, dressed in their ordinary attire, are
borne to their long home by four men, as is described by Martial; “no
useless coffins enclose their breasts,” they are carried forth as was
the widow’s son at Nain. And often have we seen the frightful death-tray
standing upright at the doors of the humble dead, with a human outline
marked on the wood by the death-damp of a hundred previous burdens. Such
bodies are cast into the trench like those of dogs, and often naked, as
the survivors or sextons strip them even of their rags. Those poorer
still, who cannot afford to pay the trifling fee, sometimes during the
night, suspend the bodies of their children in baskets, near the
cemetery porch. We once beheld a cloaked Spaniard pacing mournfully in
the burial-ground of Seville, who, when the public trench was opened,
drew from beneath the folds the body of his dead child, cast it in and
disappeared. Thus half the world lives without knowing how the other
half dies.
[Sidenote: FUNERAL SERVICE.]
In the upper ranks the etiquette of the funeral commences after the
reality is over. The first necessary step is within three days to pay a
visit of condolence to the family; this is called _para dar el pesame_.
The relations are all assembled in the best room, and seated on chairs
placed at the head, the women at one end and the men at another. When a
condoling lady and gentleman enter, she proceeds to shake hands with all
the other ladies one after another, and then seats herself in the next
vacant chair; the gentleman bows to each of the men as he passes, who
rise and return it, a grave dumb-show of profound affliction being kept
up by all. On reaching the chief mourners, they are addressed by each
condoler with this phrase, “_Acompaño á usted en su sentimiento_;” “I
share in the affliction of your grace;” the company meanwhile remain
silent as an assemblage of undertakers. After sitting among them the
proper time, each retires with much the same form.
In a few days afterwards a printed letter is sent round in the name of
all the surviving relations to announce the death to the friends of the
family, and to beg the favour of attendance at the funeral service:
these invitations are all headed with a cross (+), which is called _El
Cristus_. Before the invasion of the enemy, who not only destroyed the
walls of convents, but sapped religious belief also, very many books
were printed, and private letters written, with this sign prefixed. In
our time sundry medical men at Seville always headed with it their
prescriptions, the Cardinal Archbishop having granted a certain number
of years’ release from purgatory to all who sanctified with this mark
their recipes even of senna and rhubarb. Under this cross, in the
invitation, are placed the letters R. I. P. A., which signify
“Requiescat in pace. Amen.” At the appointed hour the mourners meet in
the _casa mortuaria_, or the house of death, and proceed together to
church. All are dressed in full black, and before the progress of
paletots and civilization, wore no cloaks: this, as it rendered each man
of them more uncomfortable than St. Bartholomew was without his skin,
was considered an offering of genuine grief to the manes of the
deceased. Uncloaking in Spain is, be it remembered, a mark of respect,
and is equivalent to our taking off the hat. When the company arrives at
church, they are received by the ministers, and the ceremony is very
solemnly performed before a catafalque covered with a pall, which is
placed before the altar, and is brilliantly lighted up with wax candles.
As soon as the service is concluded, all advance and bow to the chief
mourners, who are seated apart, and thus the tragedy concludes. Parents
do not put on mourning for their children, which is a remnant of the
patriarchal and Roman superiority of the head of the family, for whom,
however, when dead, all the other members pay the most observant
respect. The forms and number of days of mourning are most nicely laid
down, and are most rigidly observed, even by distant relations, who
refrain from all kinds of amusements:--
“None bear about the mockery of woe
To public dances or to private show.”
[Sidenote: ALL SOULS’ DAY.]
We well remember the death of a kind and venerable Marquesa at Seville
just before the carnival, whose chief grief at dying, was the thought of
the number of young ladies who would thus be deprived of their balls and
masquerades; many, anxious and obliging, were the inquiries sent after
her health, and more even were the daily prayers offered up to the
Virgin, for the prolongation of her precious existence, could it be only
for a few weeks.
November drear, brings in other solemnities connected with the dead, and
in harmony with the fall of the sear and yellow leaves, to which Homer
compares the races of mortal men. The night before the first of
November--our All Hallow-e’en--is kept in Spain as a vigil or wake; it
is the fated hour of love divinations and mysteries; then anxious
maidens used to sit at their balconies to see the image of their
destined husbands pass or not pass by. November the first is dedicated
to the sainted dead, and November the second to all souls: it is termed
in Spanish _el dia de los difuntos_, the day of the dead, and is most
scrupulously observed by all who have lost during the past year some
friend, some relation--how few have not! The dawn is ushered in by
mournful bells, which recall the memory of those who cannot come back at
the summons; the cemeteries are then visited; at Seville, long
processions of sable-clad females, bearing chased lamps on staves, walk
slowly round and round, chaunting melancholy dirges, returning when it
gets dusk in a long line of glittering lights. The graves during the day
are visited by those who take a sad interest in their occupants, and
lamps and flower garlands are suspended as memorials of affection, and
holy water is sprinkled, every drop of which puts out some of the fires
of purgatory. These picturesque proceedings at once resemble the _Eed es
Segheer_ of modern Cairo, the _feralia_ of the Romans, the Νεμεσια of
the Greeks: here are the flower offerings of Electra, the _funes
assensi_, the funeral torches of pagan mourners, which have vainly been
prohibited to Christian Spaniards by their early Council of Illiberis.
In Navarre, and in the north-west of Spain, bread and wheat offerings
called _robos_ are made, which are the doles or gifts offered for the
souls’ rest of the deceased by the pious of ancient Rome.
[Sidenote: PURGATORY.]
As on this day the cemetery becomes the public attraction, it too often
looks rather a joyous fashionable promenade, than a sad and religious
performance. The levity of mere strangers and the mob, contrasts
strangely with the sorrow of real mourners. But life in this world
presses on death, and the gay treads on the heels of pathos; the spot is
crowded with mendicants, who appeal to the order of the day, and
importune every tender recollection, by begging for the sake of the
lamented dead. Outside the dreary walls all is vitality and mirth; a
noisy sale goes on of cakes, nuts, and sweetmeats, a crash of horses and
carriages, a din and flow of bad language from those who look after
them, which must vex the repose of the _benditas animas_, or the blessed
souls in purgatory, for whom otherwise all classes of Spaniards manifest
the fondest affection and interest.
[Sidenote: PROTESTANT BURIAL-GROUND.]
Such is the manner in which the body of a most orthodox Catholic
Castilian is committed to the earth; his soul, if it goes to purgatory,
is considered and called blessed by anticipation, as the admittance into
Paradise is certain, at the expiration of the term of penal
transportation, that is, “when the foul crimes done in the days of
nature are burnt and purged away,” as the ghost in Hamlet says, who had
not forgotten his Virgil. If the scholar objects to a Spanish clergyman,
that the whole thing is Pagan, he will be told that he may go farther
and fare worse. In the case of a true Roman Catholic, this term of hard
labour may be much shortened, since that can be done by masses, any
number of which will be said, if first paid for. The vicar of St. Peter
holds the keys, which always unlock the gate to those who offer the
golden gift by which Charon was bribed by Æneas; thus, to a judicious
rich man, nothing, supposing that he believes the Pope _versus_ the
Bible, is so easy as to get at once into Heaven; nor are the poor quite
neglected, as any one may learn who will read the extraordinary number
of days’ redemption which may be obtained at every altar in Spain by the
performance of the most trumpery routine. The only wonder is how any one
of the faithful should ever fail to secure his delivery from this
spiritual Botany Bay without going there at all, or, at least, only for
the form’s sake. It was calculated by an accurate and laborious German,
that an active man, by spending three shillings in coach-hire, might
obtain in an hour, by visiting different privileged altars during the
Holy week, 29,639 years, nine months, thirteen days, three minutes and a
half diminution of purgatorial punishment. This merciful reprieve was
offered by Spanish priests in South America, on a grander style, on one
commensurate with that colossal continent; for a single mass at the San
Francisco in Mexico, the Pope and prelates granted 32,310 years, ten
days, and six hours indulgence. As a means of raising money, says our
Mexican authority, “I would not give this simple institution of masses
for the benefit of souls, for the power of taxation possessed by any
government; since no tax-gatherer is required; the payments are enforced
by the best feelings, for who would not pay to get a parent’s or
friend’s soul from the fire?” Purgatory has thus been a Golconda mine of
gold to his Holiness, as even the poorest have a chance, since
charitable persons can deliver blank souls by taking out a _habeas
animam_ writ, that is, by paying the priest for a mass. The especial
days are marked in the almanac, and known to every waiter at the inn;
moreover, notice is put on the church door, _Hoy se saca anima_, “this
day you can get out a soul.” They are generally left in their warm
quarters in winter, and taken out in the spring.
Alas for poor Protestants, who, by non-payment of St. Peter’s pence,
have added an additional act of heresy, and the worst of all, the one
which Rome never pardons. These defaulters can only hope to be saved by
faith, and its fruits, good works; they must repent, must quit their
long-cherished sins, and lead a new life; for them there is no rope of
St. Francis to pull them out, if once in the pit; no rosary of St.
Domenick to remove them, quick, presto, begone, from torment to
happiness. Outside the pale of the Vatican, their souls have no chance,
and inside the frontiers of Spain their bodies have scarcely a better
prospect, should they die in that orthodox land. There the greatest
liberal barely tolerates any burial at all of their black-blooded
heretical carcasses, as no corn will grow near them. Until within a very
few years at seaport towns, their bodies used to be put in a hole in the
sands, and beyond low water mark; nay, even this concession to the
infidel offended the semi-Moro fishermen, who true believers and
persecutors feared that their soles might be poisoned: not that either
sailor or priest ever exhibited any fear of taking British current coin,
all cash that comes into their nets being most Catholic, so says the
proverb, _El dinero es muy Catolico_.
[Sidenote: LUTHERAN BURIAL.]
[Sidenote: CEMETERY AT MALAGA.]
Matters connected with the grave have been placed, as regards
Protestants, on a much more pleasant footing within these last few
years; and it may be a consolation to invalids, who are sent to Spain
for change of climate, and who are particular, to know, in case of
accidents, that Protestant burial-grounds are now permitted at Cadiz,
Malaga, and in a few other places. The history of the permission is
curious, and has never, to the best of our belief, been told. In the
days of Philip II. Lutherans were counted in many degrees worse than
dogs; when caught alive, they were burnt by the holy tribunal; and when
dead, were cast out on the dunghill. Even when our poltroon James I.
sent, in 1622, his ill-judged olive-bearing mission, by which Spain was
saved from utter humiliation, Mr. Hole, the secretary of the ambassador,
Lord Digby, having died at Santander, the body was not allowed to be
buried at all; it was put into a shell, and sunk in the sea; but no
sooner was his lordship gone, than “the fishermen,” we quote from
Somers’ tracts, “fearing that they should catch no fish as long as the
coffin of a heretic lay in their waters,” fished it up, “and the corpse
of our countryman and brother was thrown above ground, to be devoured by
the fowls of the air.” In the treaty of 1630, the 31st Article provided
for the disposal of the goods of those Englishmen who might die in
Spain, but not for their bodies. “These,” says a commentator of Rymer,
“must be left stinking above ground, to the end that the dogs may be
sure to find them.” When Mr. Washington, page to Charles I., died at
Madrid, at the time his master was there, Howell, who was present,
relates that it was only as an especial favour to the suitor of the
Spanish Infanta that the body was allowed to be interred in the garden
of the embassy, under a fig-tree. A few years afterwards, 1650, Ascham,
the envoy of Cromwell, was assassinated, and his corpse put, without any
rites, into a hole; but the Protector was not a man to be trifled with,
and knew well how to deal with a Spanish government, always a craven and
bully, from whom nothing ever is to be obtained by concession and
gentleness, which is considered as weakness, while everything is to be
extorted from its _fears_. He that very year _commanded_ a treaty to be
prepared for the proper burial of his subjects, to which the blustering
Spaniard immediately assented. This provision was stipulated into the
treaty of Charles II. in 1664, and was conceded and ratified again in
1667 to Sir Richard Fanshawe.
No step, however, appears to have been taken before 1796, when Lord Bute
purchased a spot of ground for the burial of Englishmen outside the
Alcalá-gate, at Madrid. During the war, when all Spain was a churchyard
to our countrymen, this bit of land was taken possession of by a worthy
Madrilenian, not for his place of sepulture, but for good and profitable
cultivation. In 1831 Mr. Addington caused some researches to be made,
and the original conveyance was found in the _Contaduria de Hypothecas_,
the registry of deeds and mortgages which backward Spain possesses, and
which advanced England does not. The intruder was ejected after some
struggling on his part. Before Lord Bute’s time the English had been
buried at night and without ceremonies, in the garden of the convent _de
los Recoletos_; and, as Lord Bute’s new bit of ground was extensive and
valuable, the pious monks wished to give up the English corner in their
garden, in exchange for it; but the transfer was prevented by the recent
law which forbade all burial in cities. The field purchased by Lord Bute
is now unenclosed and uncultivated; fortunately it has not been much
wanted, only fifteen Protestants having died at Madrid during the last
thirty years. In November, 1831, Ferdinand VII. finally settled this
grave question by a decree, in which he granted permission for the
erection of a Protestant burial-ground in all towns where a British
consul or agent should reside, subject to most _degrading_ conditions.
The first cemetery set apart in Spain, in virtue of this gracious decree
from a man replaced on his throne by the death of 30,000 Englishmen, was
the work of Mr. Mark, our consul at Malaga; he enclosed a spot of ground
to the east of that city, and placed a tablet over the entrance,
recording the royal permission, and above that a cross. Thus he appealed
to the dominant feelings of Spaniards, to their loyalty and religion.
The Malagenians were amazed when they beheld this emblem of Christianity
raised over the last home of Lutheran dogs, and exclaimed, “So even
these Jews make use of the cross!” The term Jew, it must be remembered,
is the acme of Spanish loathing and vituperation. The first body
interred in it was that of Mr. Boyd, who was shot by the bloody Moreno,
with the poor dupe Torrijos and the rest of his rebel companions.
[Sidenote: THE SPANISH FIGARO.]