are many and various ways of praising God. Yet so much criticism has
this Seville custom roused, that, a few hundred years ago, the Pope
ordered its discontinuance, allowing the dance to go on only as long as
the costumes then in use should last, but the people, who love their old
usages, succeeded in evading the decision by successive patching of the
suits. This is the story. Certainly the graceful costumes to-day show no
tatters, and they are worn so carelessly that they make no suggestion of
masquerade. For the many who crave a quieter form of worship, the grave
cathedral services of Northern Spain may be more congenial, but when as
many desire magnificence and display, why should not they too be
satisfied? The church allows for all tastes and temperaments, knowing
man is not cast in one mold. The Puritan in her midst does not have to
turn Dissenter; she has her Salvation Army--so I call the
pilgrimage-going crowds; the ascetic fulfils the hard law of his nature
side by side with the enjoyer of human affections and graces. Seville's
feast, rich with old traditions, is appropriate in this southern city.
To linger each evening in the vast church lighted only by solitary
candles against each pier, to wander behind the kneeling groups
listening to the soaring voices of man and violin, to pause beside a
certain tomb in the south transept where four mammoth figures of bronze,
ungainly on close view but in a half light majestic, bear on their
shoulders a bier which holds the remains of Cristóbal Colón,--such hours
of loitering quicken the imagination and leave behind them memories of
beauty.
HOLY WEEK IN SEVILLE
"A time to weep, and a time to laugh. A time to mourn, and a time
to dance."
ECCLES. iii, 4.
An overcrowded picture rises with the thought of Seville's _Semana
Santa_,--glittering lights, statues laden with jewels, weird masked
figures in _nazareno_ costume marching to the sound of funeral dirges,
cries of street vendors and children,--all is noise, movement, color, a
true Andalusian scene. Spectacular effect is the first impression of the
week, a gorgeous pageantry that suits the Sevillian's temperament but is
not so congenial perhaps to the northerner, who would have the
commemoration of his religion's solemn hour a more tranquil time of
prayer.
Happily there are other memories carried away as well as this chief one
of noisy confusion. Never to be forgotten was the Cathedral echoing at
midnight to the sound of Eslava's "Miserere" sung by hundreds of trained
voices. Every inch of the vast church was packed. Men and women stood in
silence, with upraised faces, as they listened to the music of the old
canon who once sat in this choir. The lightest mocker would be awed to
silence under those soaring arches. For majesty, for a contagious
religious emotion, the Cathedral of Seville at the time of its feasts is
only to be rivaled by Santa Sophia during Ramazan, on that memorable
Night of Power when eight thousand Mussulmans kneel prostrate under the
floating circles of lamps. These two stand supreme; so different in the
setting,--the one rich with color, an open blaze of light beneath the
wide Byzantine dome, the other dim, mysterious Gothic,--they are alike
in the genuine thrill of worship they give the onlooker of every creed.
Familiar with her Cathedral in its every-day aspect, having seen the
celebrations of December 8th, the Christmas Midnight Mass, Epiphany, Ash
Wednesday, it was cruel to find its grand tranquillity violated during
the Holy Week. It is the processions, called the _pasos_, that are the
cause of the disorder. A _paso_ is a huge platform, on which are placed
carved statues representing scenes of the Passion. Each float is carried
by some thirty men, and its weight must be enormous, for besides the
statues there are silver candelabra, gold and silver vases, and usually
a canopy of embroidered velvet upheld by silver poles. Could one but
look on them as mere spectacular shows, they would be most picturesque
pageants, but to dissociate them from religion is impossible. The custom
is an ancient one and is still prevalent in many towns of Spain,
through happily, in the smaller places, its original purpose to edify
and rouse the people to rememberance of the holy season, has not been
lost sight of in extravagant display as at Seville.
Each of Seville's numerous parishes has one or two of these _pasos_, and
an unworthy rivalry exists between them as to which will make the best
show. They are supposed to be scenes of the Passion, such as the
Flagellation, Christ before Pilate, the Descent from the Cross, but for
the most part they consist of single figures--a Crucifixion followed by
a _Nuestra Señora de Dolores_, another Crucifixion followed by another
single representation of Our Lady, and so on in monotonous sequence, a
repetition that makes the spectator fix his attention, not on the scene
represented but on details such as the embroidery of the robes, the
display of rare jewels, the elaborate canopy. The _pasos_ struck me as
the result of that regrettable tendency in Spain, the accentuated
devotion to a special shrine or statue. No doubt it arose in reaction
against the Moorish enemy's hatred of images, but the patriotic tendency
has been carried too far. It will ever misrepresent the Spaniard's
innate Christian belief. As these processions blocked the city streets,
one heard on every side, not alone from those of differing creed,
exclamations of "Pomp! Show! Childishness!" And the criticism was
almost justified. Many strangers leave Seville confirmed in the wrong
idea that its religion is an affair of tinsel and lights. Spain cares
little what outsiders think of her, but here is a case in which she
should consider the discredit that a degenerated custom brings on her
religion; she should sacrifice an old tradition. Like the processions of
Havana, the _pasos_ should go. The northern Spaniard agrees with the
stranger in his dislike of the noisy spectacles that so incongruously
commemorate the saddest death-scene of the ages, and there are many
Andalusians, too, who wish for their abolition. In fact, it is the
rabble and the innkeepers who agitate in their favor; these last keep
petitions for their foreign guests to sign, begging that the processions
be continued. Seville need not fear she will lose prestige should she
drop them, that the tourists will no longer flock to her each spring;
she is only beginning to be known for having a winter climate surpassing
that of Rome and Naples; _pasos_ or not, visitors will inevitably
increase.
The objectionable processions began to march late in the afternoon of
Palm Sunday, and it is hardly much of an exaggeration to say they went
on marching night and day throughout the following week. They were so
long that they took five or six hours to pass a given spot. Starting
back in the narrow streets of the town, they passed down the _Sierpes_
which was lined with spectators' chairs, defiled before the City Hall,
where the Mayor rose to salute each _paso_ in turn, then went on to the
Cathedral,--entering by a west door, crossing before the altar, and
leaving by the door near the Archbishop's palace. With each _paso_
marched the religious confraternity of its parish, a secular brotherhood
of men belonging to all ranks, who are banded together for charitable
work. The King belongs to one of these fraternities and when in Seville
marches in line, but the year of our visit he was represented by the
military governor of the province. The officers of the army also
marched. Most of these brotherhoods wore Nazarene costume, in white,
purple, or black, with the high-peaked head gear through which only the
eyes showed. Some walked devoutly, others in disorder. Membership in
religious brotherhoods is often hereditary, and it was touching to see a
little child of four, in full regalia, marching with the grown men,
planting his silver staff at each slow pace with the gravity of a
majordomo. A band of music went with each fraternity, and the blare of
brass instruments, the torches, the masked faces, make indeed a
confused, wearying spectacle.
Most of the onlookers hired chairs for the week along the streets, on
balconies, or in that most chosen spot, the square by the City Hall; the
populace thronged to the Cathedral, where the procession could be seen
free, and there the crowd was dense to suffocation, chiefly made up of
the disorderly element from Triana. The chatter and movement made me
ask, could this be a Spanish church, where irreverence is unknown?
Everyone seemed oblivious of the Tenebræ in the _coro_. They buzzed and
moved about in an unseemly scramble for seats, so that only faintest
echoes of Jeremiah's gloriously intoned Lamentations could be heard. The
sexton rose now and then from the noisy groups on the choir steps to
extinguish one by one the candles on the big triangular candlestick, a
noble object of bronze used only at this season. And I had looked
forward for months to hearing, in this grand Gothic Cathedral, my
favorite service of the church year, the solitary service that haunts
one with its subtle beauty from one's childhood. The disappointment was
keen, it gave just the final touch to my dislike of the _pasos_.
There were times when I tried to be just. Seeing the men lift their hats
respectfully as each group went by, the women cross themselves with
tears in their eyes, the babies look on in awed wonder, I tried to drop
prejudice and to see the spectacle as does a southern Spaniard: the
noisy scene is so associated with his earliest, tenderest memories that
he cannot but look at it in a different way. One evening near me, a
handsome young countryman,--moved out of all self-consciousness by the
_Virgen santísima_ he so loved, in her wonderful robe and jewels, under
a canopy richer than any earthly queen's,--this gallant young _majo_
stood forward suddenly from the crowd and, with his eyes fastened on the
glittering mass, sang a _copla_ of praise with the heart-piercing note
of the folk-song. So faultlessly artistic a moment made me look
leniently on the _pasos_ for a time, warning me, "Lest while ye gather
up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them." But to be consistent
in this home of untamed personalities is impossible! For soon a float of
extravagant bad taste would go by; horses with tails of real hair;
clumsy velvet robes hiding the excellent carving of the statues (and
some of them are the work of the best sculptor of Seville, Montañés,
whose portrait by Velasquez hangs in the Prado); worst of all the _Mater
Dolorosa_, covered with inappropriate jewels, some willed her by former
generations, others lent by rich Sevillian ladies of to-day, in her hand
the lace handkerchief of a coquette: criticism would leap to full life
again.
That the _pasos_ violated the quiet of the Cathedral, that they reeked
of the baroque period of bad art, these are not the only complaints
against them. They turn all Seville into a picnic week. We began to ask
ourselves if this noisy excitement commemorated a solemn time, what
would the following week of the Fair be like? The Andalusian can hold
revelry with zest and vigor for fourteen unbroken days. Easter week was
to open with the Italian opera and the first bull-fight of the year;
there were to be three days of horse and cattle show, followed by three
days of the grand _Feria_, when the whole province pours into Seville,
and the nights are one glare of fireworks; _maja_ and _majo_ are then
out in all their finery, and the families of the upper classes live in
open booths on the fair grounds, where they pay visits and dance the
national dances in public with the easy democracy of true Spaniards.
Much as we hoped to see this typical feast, it began to dawn on us early
in the week that there were limits to endurance. The hurrying crowds,
the blocking of the streets, the noise of vendors, of clashing music,
made the fatigue indescribable. Sleep at night was out of the question,
noisy Triana roamed the streets; brass bands would sound, and in nervous
excitement one would spring to the balcony. The hotels were packed to an
uncomfortable extent. By Good Friday all desire to stay over for the
Fair week was extinguished; we were very close to physical collapse.
So, taking a night train, we slipped away from the turmoil to have a
peaceful Easter Sunday in unspoiled Estremadura. There also they were
having _pasos_, but _pasos_ of such simple devotion, humble, and
primitive, that one knelt with the crowd in prayer as they passed.
Before this final, hasty desertion, however, I had dragged myself, worn
out with a sleepless night, to the lengthy services in the Cathedral
each morning. There, happily, was nothing to criticise. The Holy Week
ceremonies customary to all Catholic Christendom, were carried through
with dignity; only, since this was irrepressible Spain, there were some
local additions, and most beautiful ones. Such was the waving of a huge
flag, black, with a large red cross, like the banner of some military
order, before the High Altar, while some special prayers were read; love
of country and love of God seem so inextricably interwoven here. On Palm
Sunday the Cathedral was filled with the stately white leaves, six and
ten feet long, from the palm forest of Elche; each canon carried one and
each verger; the priests and acolytes who served the Mass bore each his
palm, and they waved and swayed around the altar in lovely symbolization
of the Entry into Jerusalem twenty centuries before. Pictures like that
never fade. A year later in Palestine, it rose vividly before me, while
driving out to Bethany, when we passed some hundreds of humble Russian
pilgrims tramping back from the Dead Sea, each of whom bore a palm. For
in very reality they were following the route of entry into the Holy
City. Seville Cathedral on Palm Sunday morning was not unworthy to be
grouped with that moving scene. The excessively long Gospel was chanted
in the customary different keys by three canons, one standing in the
Epistle pulpit, one in the Gospel, and the third on a rostrum erected
between the two. Near me several Spaniards of the artisan class followed
in Latin every word of the lengthy chanting. The tourists present who
knew not what was read, fretted and moved incessantly. No intelligent
person should attend a Holy Week in either Seville or Rome without a
special book, picked up anywhere for a couple of francs, in which the
services are given in Latin and English, or Latin and French. Without
the liturgy to voice these ceremonies, they must be weary hours indeed.
And yet of the hundreds of visitors on this Palm Sunday, literally, not
one followed with a book, and many perhaps held themselves competent to
criticise what they had seen.
Expectant of the sensational, the tourists filled the great church on
Holy Thursday morning, when the white veil was withdrawn: it was done
so swiftly, at the opportune words of the Gospel, that there was nothing
spectacular about it. Two days later, at the moment in the Mass when
every bell in the city bursts out in joyous acclamation of the
Resurrection, the black veil was rent; that we missed seeing. Some days
before Holy Week a towering temple of wood, white and gilt, a hundred
feet high, had been erected in the nave over the tomb of Columbus' son.
This pseudo-classic temple, completely out of touch with the Gothic
church, was to serve as the repository of the Blessed Sacrament on Holy
Thursday, and it was for the center of such shrines that the old
silversmiths of Spain, the de Arfe family, made their priceless silver
_monumentos_. Such repositories are customary in all Catholic lands on
Thursday of Holy Week, for in the midst of sorrow, the Church celebrates
the foundation of the Sacrament that has brought joy and solace to
mankind. She commemorates the events of the week chronologically. Before
the altars are dismantled for Good Friday, she typifies by lights and
flowers, her gratitude for that passover supper in the upper room. It is
a general Catholic custom to visit a number of these lighted shrines on
Holy Thursday, and in Seville this usage leads to one of the charming
things of the week, like an oasis of peace in the midst of the arid
_pasos_. Everyone pays these visits on foot. During two days not a
carriage is allowed in the city, the King himself must walk. Their silk
mantillas, black or white, draped high over their combs, wearing jewels
and carrying flowers, the ladies of Seville went from church to church,
to kneel in graceful groups around the exposed Host, and the men in
frock coats and high hats stood in the rear, in simple attitudes of
prayer: the Spaniard and the Mussulman are alike in their
unconsciousness at their devotions. The next day all would wear deep
mourning, but to-day is a feast of rejoicing. Each one goes in quiet
composure, as if her mind dwelt on the hours of peace her communions had
brought her. Again I felt the same impression that the Christmas
midnight Mass had given me; that the imagination of this people was busy
with the past event they were celebrating. Does not lack of
comprehension of old usages often mean lack of the shaping power of the
imagination?
From one parish church to another I followed these fascinating women.
Here was true Seville, not seen in the Cathedral's tourist crowd, nor
under Parisian hats on the _Paseo_. Wandering through the network of
streets north of the _Sierpes_, I paused to look into the spotless
patios distant as they ever seem from the fret of life. A touch of
summer was in the air; the marble courtyards were decked with flowers,
and one heard the notes of singing birds. Two dark-eyed ladies came out
from a tranquil patio; they wore white mantillas in honor of their
visits to the Blessed Sacrament. They set me dreaming of Seville in its
summer aspect, when the skies are blue in the fragrant night. Nowhere on
earth are women more alluring and essentially feminine, nowhere has man
fashioned his house so fitly for charm and romance.
By chance, on Holy Thursday, I stumbled on another local usage, full of
the same racial flavor. Returning from the Cathedral, where, amid a
throng of sight seers, the Archbishop had carried the Host to the
lighted _monumento_, I happened to drop into the Church of the
Magdalena. It was filled with its own parishioners, since most Spaniards
leave the Cathedral services of this crowded week to the visitors. Near
the door were seated three separate groups of ladies and young girls,
belonging unmistakably to the aristocracy; each wore a black
mantilla,[31] and in their tight-fitting black gowns and long white
gloves, they were indescribably elegant. They were the ladies in waiting
of the various altars, their duties to tend them, and like the men's
brotherhoods, to help in the charitable work of the parish. The
Magdalena Church is dark, so on the table before these daughters of Eve
stood a pair of high candlesticks, between which lay an open tray
soliciting contributions for their special shrines or charities. Young
beaux entered the church and as they passed the table, dropped a _duro_
or a paper bill in the different trays, according as they felt devotion
to such and such an altar, or to judge by the glances that passed
between the givers and receivers, as they felt devotion to its fair
caretaker. Unexpected scenes like this, unmentioned in the guide books,
give to this city its allurement, enhanced doubly because the actors are
so unconscious of their picturesqueness.
And as unpleasant things fade away, leaving only the happier memories,
two scenes stand out unforgettable in Seville's Holy Week: Eslava's
"Miserere," echoing at midnight through the Cathedral whose name is
fittingly the _Grandeza_, and that other picture, enchantingly
Andalusian, the ladies in mantillas paying their silent visits to the
Blessed Sacrament on Holy Thursday. The _pasos_ fade to a blurred
background of pomp and glitter.
CADIZ
"Para que yo te olvidará
Era menester que hubiera
Otro mundo, y otro cielo,
Y otro Dios que dispusiera."
CANTAR ANDALUZ.
--"The sea tides tossing free,
And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,
And the witchery and beauty of the ships,
And the magic of the sea."
H. W. LONGFELLOW.
In the midst of the warm Seville winter the thought of sea breezes
tempted us to Cadiz for a week. The hundred miles' run down there was
through a charming corner of Andalusia, with orange groves, olive
plantations, woods of stone pines, hedges of cactus, in the meadows
herds of most royal bulls. It was the eighteenth of January, yet the
fruit trees were in blossom, and over the streams floated a lovely
white-flowering verdure. We passed Jerez, source of English sherry,
where on our return to Seville we stopped some hours to see the bodegas
and sample the native wine. As we neared the coast big pyramids of salt
covered the marshes, telling of another industry; in fact, every part
of Andalusia which I saw was well cultivated, despite the guide book
laments over its backwardness.
Soon came whiffs of the sea air. The first view of Cadiz, set right out
to sea, is very striking. Only a narrow strip of sand, eight miles long,
connects it with the mainland, and as we skirted the coast, past San
Fernando,--where there is a naval station and an astronomical
observatory,--the compact, sturdy little city out in the Atlantic made a
stunning picture; the sea so very blue, the town so dazzlingly white.
And inside the treble line of walls and moats that defend its one
land-entrance, the "silver dish," as its citizens love to call it, has
as individual a character as its distant prospect. It is miraculously
clean, its streets seem swept and scrubbed like a Dutch village. Down
these narrow lanes you catch the gleam of the sea to east, to north, to
west. When it rains, Seville turns into a muddy distress, but
well-drained Cadiz grows more proper still in wet weather. The patio of
the rest of Andalusia is not found here, for being confined to its ledge
of shells, the town could not spread itself about, but had to build
itself up in the air. On top of the high houses, whose vivid green
balconies add to the general air of trig neatness, are _miradores_,
small towers formerly built by the merchants as look-outs from which
they could spy their returning galleons. The view of Cadiz from a
_mirador_ is like nothing else ever seen: the clean whiteness of
hundreds of roof terraces, the church towers of colored tiles and a host
of other _miradores_, made it seem like a second city in itself,
suggestive of the Orient; a strange city set in the blinding blue circle
of the ocean.
The town is almost surrounded by high sea walls, four miles of them, and
on the Atlantic side the surf breaks in thundering eternity, throwing up
spray twenty feet high. There is something splendidly plucky about
Cadiz. One of the few spots in Europe forced to battle for her
existence, with a devouring enemy at her door, she thrives and continues
century after century. She is the oldest town in Spain, founded by
Ph[oe]nician mariners more than a thousand years before the Christian
Era.
"Ah when the crafty Tyrian came to Spain
To barter for her gold his motley wares,
Treading her beaches he forgot his gain,
The Semite became noble unawares."
Spain has influenced them all, all the strangers, the heterogeneous
throng, that have gone to the making of the Spanish race. Ph[oe]nician,
Roman, Iberian, Goth, Jew, and Moor, she has imprinted on them all her
own distinguishing mark, has breathed into them her own intense soul.
For this psychological reason it is true to say that Seneca was a
Spaniard, that the wonderful Jew Maimonides and the Moor Averroës, and
the Gothic bishop, Isidoro, Doctor of the Church were all of them
Spaniards. The Catalan, Ramón Lull rang out the national note with no
uncertain sound, mystic hermit and active missionary. And with the
centuries "christened in blood and schooled in sacrifice," the spirit
grew more convincingly apparent: Domingo de Guzmán, Francisco Ximenez,
Gonsalvo de Córdova, Luis de León, Iñigo de Loyola are very brothers
with a like high fealty that tells what majestic mother nurtured them on
her battlefield of ages.
Cadiz, the oldest spot in Spain, has known each of the conquering races
in turn. She was four hundred years old when Rome was founded. She has
had tremendous ups and downs of fortune; at her height during the age of
the Cæsars, who saw her importance as key to Andalusia, then with the
fall of Rome dropped into insignificance, her name almost forgotten. She
rose again with the discovery of the New World, whose ships of treasure
anchored off her ramparts. A strange outlook on the passing of power
lies in the statement that in 1770 this town was a wealthier place than
London. With the loss of the Colonies, Cadiz has sunk back to be a
mediocre city in the world, but she is contented and self-respecting.