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.