THE POOR AND THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS
My readers may be inclined to think that the Religious Orders are a kind
of King Charles’ head, which I, a twentieth century Mr. Dick, am unable
to keep out of this book. The truth is that in an attempt such as this
to make intelligible the views and aspirations of the working classes of
Spain, the Religious Orders are the central and dominating fact which
overshadows everything else. Whether we discuss the material condition
of the poor, their education, their political disabilities, or whatever
it may be, and make any attempt to analyse the matter and discover the
reasons of their deplorably backward condition, we always get back to
the Religious Orders as the cause--if not in actual fact, at any rate in
the firm and unshakeable conviction of the people--of all their
misfortunes.
It must be remembered, in connection with the Religious Orders, that the
position of nearly all of them in Spain is illegal. According to the
Concordat, made before the expulsion of Isabel II., the only Orders
allowed in Spain are those of St. Vincent of Paul, St. Philip Neri, and
one other, to be nominated by the Pope by agreement with the Government,
while all closed Orders of nuns are prohibited. The Pope has never yet
named the third Order, and apparently no steps are ever taken to oblige
him to carry out his part of the bargain.
I will now give--generally in the words of the narrators--typical
instances of the way in which the Religious Orders are said to interfere
with the livelihood of the working classes, and of the manner in which
once wealthy families have been brought to ruin through their
machinations.
The porter of a Jesuit college--for the servants of these institutions
love their employers no better than do their friends and relatives
outside--told his brother, who told me, that every night during the
first two or three weeks in August, 1909, after the Barcelona riots,
refugees were admitted to the college. At least eighty, he said, came in
all. They slipped in secretly, after the lights were out, disguised in
lay dress, often of the poorest description, having travelled half dead
with fear [_muertos de miedo_] from Cataluña. That the porter’s story
was true was proved by the large purchases of provisions made by the
college during that month. A baker told me that the _frailes_ were more
insistent than ever that all the waste bread should be given to them
“for the poor.” And, he added, the “good Fathers” were already buying
twice their usual supply of him. “The _frailes_ always demand all the
bread we put by for the poor,” said my friend. “We would prefer to give
it direct to the poor ourselves, for we do not feel sure how much of it
they get from the _frailes_, whose house-keepers are great hands at
making _pasteles_ and _dulces_[7] for sale to good Catholic families.
These good Catholic families prefer to buy their _pasteles_ cheap from
the friars, who say that they are sold for the good of the Church. We do
not care to give our stale bread to be used in injuring the trade of our
companions the confectioners; for the friars, having no taxes to pay,
can naturally undersell ordinary tradesmen, and all the more when they
get the bread for their confectionery free. But if we said that we
wished to give our bread to our own acquaintances among the poor, the
Jesuits would ruin us. They would tell all their clients that we were
bad men and enemies of the Church, and we should lose all our trade. We
know this by experience. So we give our stale bread to the _frailes_
and they let us live. But the poor are getting no bread from the
_frailes_ since the Barcelona business.”
During the disturbances in Cataluña it was said that “shiploads” of
monks and nuns were being landed in the middle of the night at sundry
ports along the coast, and that they so effectually betrayed themselves
by their nervousness of manner that the country people had not the
slightest doubt as to who and what they were. But as the people had no
desire to injure them personally--notwithstanding a certain amount of
talk about cutting throats and hanging--they were permitted to pass
unmolested, though it is true that there were occasional scowls at
ill-clad individuals who wore their trousers “with a difference,” as
though they missed the flowing skirts of their cloth.
And it must be remembered that at the very time that these frightened
men and women were travelling the country in disguise, numbers of
families were sorrowfully bidding farewell to sons, brothers, and
husbands, on their departure to the war which, as the people will always
believe, was begun in the interest of Jesuit capitalists, sheltering
their ownership of the Morocco mines and the great steamer companies
behind the names of lay millionaires.
The popular suspicion of Jesuit interference in these, as in almost all
the other big commercial concerns in the Peninsula, may or may not be
justified, but its effect on the attitude of the people towards the
Religious Orders cannot be over-rated. Not the least extraordinary
feature in the situation is that the Religious Orders profess to
disregard the feeling that exists against them, although it is apparent
on every hand to any one who goes about with eyes and ears open.
For years past I have noticed that no member of the working classes
salutes a priest or friar in the streets. Day after day one summer I saw
the same priests taking their afternoon walk along the same by-way,
where the same artisans, to the number of twenty or thirty, watched the
“long skirts” from the doors of their workshops. I never saw an artisan
greet a priest or friar, or vice versa. The flowing robes of the
ecclesiastics swept against the patched garments of the workmen, but no
glance was exchanged. The priests kept their eyes bent on the ground,
one hand grasping the skirts and the other pressed on the breast, a
typical attitude, which is jeered at by the poor as “canting.” The
workmen kept their eyes fixed on the work on which they were engaged. It
is impossible to imagine anything more hostile than the silent defiance
of the men, as they turned to watch the “long skirts” out of sight. I
have seen single instances of the same thing elsewhere in many places,
but here I had special facilities for observing the daily exhibition of
armed neutrality, owing to the accident of my room at the back of the
little country hotel looking out on the by-path. “I hate to see them,”
one of the men said to me; “they are the ruin of us and our country.”
What made it the more significant was that these same workmen had a
pleasant word of greeting for every lay person, man or woman,
acquaintance or stranger, who passed by them.
The economic question bulks largely among the causes of the popular
hostility to the Religious Orders, and if only half the complaints
generally made are based on fact, the people have reason on their side.
Formerly, say the women, it was easy to obtain a day’s wage by washing
in well-to-do houses, and a laundress could make a decent living. Now in
every town of any importance there are one or more convents called
“Domestic Colleges,” where orphans or servants out of place are
received, and these girls repay the nuns for their board and lodging by
doing laundry-work for rich Catholic families. If the girls were allowed
to keep even a portion of what they earn, the women say that they would
not feel the system to be so unjust. But they declare that this is not
the case. Whatever is paid goes to the nuns, and as they, having no
taxes or wages to pay, can undersell the laundresses, who are called
upon to provide both charges, the lay laundry trade is steadily
declining, although the quality of the work is on a par with that done
in the convents.
The nuns teach their protégées every class of needlework, lace-making,
and a kind of embroidery or net-work which is largely used for priests’
vestments, altar-cloths, &c. This competition, which was one of the
reasons given for the presence of women (if, indeed, they were present)
in the attack on the convents in Barcelona, is felt in every part of
Spain, but perhaps especially in the south and south-west, where skilled
needlework, which is almost the only employment of women above the
domestic servant class, is exceedingly common and badly paid at best.
Nowadays, say such women, it is increasingly difficult to obtain
employment of this kind at any price, owing to the quantity done in the
convents and the reduced prices at which the nuns undertake it.
And finally, although this does not so directly affect women, the nuns
do a large trade in the sweetmeats and _patisserie_ already referred
to.
The grievances against the nuns, then, are chiefly related to their
interference with the industrial market, and this, although a very real
source of hardship, has not yet, except in a few isolated instances,
given birth to anything like the active hostility that is expressed
against the male Religious Orders. The closed Orders of nuns are
regarded with aversion and contempt, as living at the expense of the
nation and leading lives which, to the working classes, seem purely idle
and self-indulgent--“doing nothing all day but pray for their own souls,
or worse,” as they describe the life of contemplation. I have never
heard working women express any desire to injure the nuns, much though
they dislike them as a class. But when we come to the Jesuits, Maristas,
Carmelites, Franciscans, Dominicans, and all the long list of Orders
lumped together in one condemnation by both men and women under the
derisive name of “long skirts” (_sayones_), we find a much worse state
of affairs.
The people declare that in many places the leading industries have been
completely ruined by the competition of persons in the employ of the
Jesuits--for they call all the friars indiscriminately Jesuits, although
they are perfectly aware of the distinctions between the various Orders.
And they will point out to you one family after another who have been
reduced to penury by the “good Fathers,” and will relate innumerable
instances of the methods they believe to have been employed to this end.
Perhaps the best way to explain these will be to give a literal
translation of one or two of the stories I have heard from the people,
which, told as they are with an absolute conviction of their truth, show
what ground the working classes have for distrusting and detesting those
who ought to set an example of virtue and self-abnegation.
“A man I know saved 5,000 _duros_ [about £1,000], and he lent it all to
the Jesuits for a building they were putting up, a building attached to
the monastery, so that he looked upon it as a work for God. Some years
went by, and my friend was growing old and wished to retire from his
little business and live on his capital. So he asked the Jesuits to
repay his loan. ‘Oh, no!’ they said, ‘do you not know, my son, that he
who lends to God must expect no return? A loan to God is a gift for the
salvation of thy soul.’ As I say, he was an old man, and he found
himself ruined, without hope of earning more money. He left the good
Fathers and went and cut his throat.”
“Why is the old Marquesa de Fulano starving? I will tell you. When
her father, the last Marquis, was dying, the Jesuits never left him
for a moment, and at last they persuaded him that his soul was of
more consequence than his daughter’s livelihood, and he made a will
by which he left all his money to found a college for boys in ----.
When he was dead his daughter discovered that all she had was the
family land, and not a farthing of the capital her father had
invested. Soon afterwards a famine came, and there was no rain for
nine months. The Marquesa gave food to all the labourers on the
estate, although there was no work for them, for she is a very
charitable lady. She spent all the money she had, and then sold all
her jewels and other valuables to buy them food. You see, she is a
widow without family to advise and help her. Of course she was too
proud to betray her poverty, but even if she had told her friends
they could have done nothing, for many landowners were ruined that
year. Now the estate is mortgaged to the last acre, and she has
sold everything she has and is almost without food for herself. If
you wish to hear about the Jesuits, ask the Marquesa de Fulano! And
you will understand that all the people employed on the estate lost
their livelihood too, for it is now long since she has been able to
afford to have it cultivated.”
“Yes, it is a pity to see that fine old oil-mill falling to ruin.
It used to belong to a very rich man, but when he died the Jesuits
got hold of his widow and induced her to build a large new chapel
in the monastery of ----. Millions of pesetas they squeezed out of
her for the work, and when it was finished, there was nothing left
of the business. One of the sons meanwhile became a Jesuit, and as
they have a big business in oil over there he naturally took the
olive-groves for his share of the property. This happened twenty
years ago: the younger brothers are married and have children to
bring up. They have to earn their bread as they can. One of them
rents ten acres and cultivates them himself, so he does not starve,
but the other poor fellow has taken to drink, and he and his family
mostly go hungry. It is all the work of the Jesuits.”
There are many such stories of gifts made to the Church _in articulo
mortis_. The priests are said to urge the dying penitent to save his
soul by benefiting the Religious Orders instead of providing for his
family, on the ground that if he acts as his duty and instincts dictate
he will lengthen his stay in purgatory. There seems no room for doubt
that many once wealthy families have been reduced to poverty in
consequence of such legacies to the Church. Indeed, it almost seems as
if a new class of society is gradually arising among the very people who
formerly were the strongest supporters of the Church--people of good
birth and gentle breeding, with a family tradition of injury at the
hands of the Jesuits, which has alienated them for ever from a Church to
which they owe their worldly misfortunes, and is converting them into
earnest recruits to the cause of Free Thought. From these men of gentle
breeding will eventually come the leaders of the people in their final
struggle against the Ultramontanes.
The ways which the Jesuits are reputed to employ in order to ruin those
who defy them are many. The following story shows how easily it can be
done, if it is true that the Company of Jesus condescends to such
contemptible action against the industrial and working classes.
“Francisco Mengano used to have a very good business. He employed
nine men to work for him. But he hated the friars, and he used to
talk against them to a man who pretended to think as he did and
came to sit with him every day, and encouraged him to say he would
never let his daughters go to confession because he was afraid the
priest would make love to them, and many other things. That vile
man always talked in the same sort of way himself, and poor
Francisco looked upon him as a friend. But when his eldest girl was
old enough for her first Communion and Francisco refused to let her
go to confession, he discovered that the man he trusted was himself
a Jesuit, and had told the Jesuits everything Francisco had said.
They waited to be sure his daughter was not going to confession,
and then set to work to ruin him. It was quite simple. He was a
cart-builder and wheelwright, and depended on the landowners in the
neighbourhood for most of his work. The Jesuits merely sent word
round that he was charging too much and doing bad work, and his
trade was ruined and he became what you see--a poor old jobbing
carpenter, who cannot even afford to employ a boy to do his heavy
work.”
When I heard this story I recollected that about a year earlier, when
passing Francisco’s workshop in company with a gentleman reputed to be
friendly with the Jesuits, he had remarked, _apropos des bottes_, “Don’t
employ Francisco if you should want any carpentering done; his work is
bad and he overcharges abominably.” It naturally did not occur to me
that this observation could have any other object than to save me, as a
foreigner, from being cheated, and, all unconscious of what I afterwards
discovered to be its injustice, I gave my work elsewhere.
Not only do the people accuse the Religious Orders of depriving them of
employment by underselling them and destroying their trade by slanders,
but they also bring grave charges of indifference, if not actual
brutality, to the poor who ask them for help of any kind.
It seems to be a fact that no assistance was volunteered by any
Religious House during the epidemic of typhus in Madrid in 1909. In
another town, where a seminary for priests was temporarily converted
into a hospital for the sick and wounded from Melilla, the cisterns ran
dry one night owing to the unusual quantity of water used for the
invalids. Not a man or a boy among the seminarists would take the
trouble to pump more water, though a quarter of an hour’s work would
have done all that was needed for the time, so workmen had to be fetched
in the middle of the night to supply what was immediately required for
the sufferers. This I heard from one of the men who did the work.
The working classes have as yet no plan of campaign against the
Religious Orders. They are waiting in the hope that at no distant day
they will have the suffrage in fact, not, as at present, in name only.
But the bitterness of their hostility may be judged from the following
incident, related to me by an eye-witness.
Three country people, dealers in charcoal, were sitting in a tramcar. My
informant was sitting immediately behind them, and at his side was a
priest. One of the charcoal-merchants, pretending to be unaware of the
priest’s presence, related how he had been overtaken by night on the
mountains, where he was buying wood in pursuit of his trade, and how he
had gone to a large Jesuit college standing alone on the hillside, to
ask permission to sleep under the portico, the season being mid-winter
and the weather bitterly cold. The “good Father” who opened the door at
his knock refused to admit him, telling him that “the college was not a
house of call for tramps, and he could go and sleep under a tree by the
roadside.” The narrator had no option but to do this, for the door was
shut in his face, and “he thought he would have died of cold before
morning.” “I wish,” he concluded, “that all the _frailes_ in Spain would
come to my house some cold night and ask for shelter. Before morning I
would leave every one of them under my trees with his throat cut.”
I have no doubt that the charcoal merchant uttered his theatrical threat
on purpose to frighten the priest, and if that was his object he
certainly succeeded, for the poor man turned white and trembled with
alarm; but it is certain that no one of his class would have dared to
express such sentiments before a priest or a monk previous to the
Barcelona affair.
I have heard a gentle-looking old woman say deliberately: “I wish all
the _frailes_ were going out to be shot this morning! How I should enjoy
seeing them killed!”
And I have heard an artisan remark as a couple of “long skirts” went by:
“How I hate those vermin! It makes me sick to see them near me.”
The people who say these things are not Socialists nor Anarchists, nor
even Republicans. They are decent, quiet, industrious working people,
who know and care little about current politics, and simply judge of the
priests and the Religious Orders by what they see. Once the confidence
of such people is won, you will hear similar remarks by the score
wherever two or three of the working class are gathered together,
whether in town or country. Nor are their wives and daughters one whit
behind the men in their expressions of hostility.
Here is an outburst which I took down word for word from a clever but
quite illiterate working woman. The reference to the “ovens,” as will be
seen, tallies with what I have quoted about the bakers, although the
speakers were in different provinces, far apart.
“While we have that lot here we cannot live. The alms which ought
to be given to the poor are given to them. I don’t believe they
give to the poor the bread which they beg from the ovens. I believe
they use it all to make _alforjillas_ and _piñonates_ for sale.[8]
They cannot make them without bread. The Jesuits do not make them
themselves. All the monasteries keep _amas de gobierno_[9] to cook
and wash and mend and do everything required. They are quite
independent, answerable to nobody. They eat us up as if they were
ants. They let no one live, meddling with everything that doesn’t
concern them. They tack themselves to a lady, an acquaintance, and
she has linen to launder, and they order her to send it at once to
be washed in one of the [religious] houses where poor unfortunates
are taken in. Many of them are the children of the friars
themselves and of the priests. There is a family in ---- Street whom
they call ‘Curitas,’ five brothers and sisters, all children of one
parish priest [_cura_]. Their ‘Uncle Cura,’ as they called him,
brought them up and educated them and left them all he possessed.
They were all the children of one mother; it was the same as if the
priest had been married to her. He lived with her and maintained
her all his life. But that is a great sin for the priest! They say
that in your country the priests are allowed to marry. If it were
the same here the Church would be purged of many sins, for all the
priests live with women. If they are faithful to one woman I do not
see what sin there is in it. It is natural. But it is more usual
for them to have many women. I know that one old priest had at
least ten or twelve children in ---- [a low quarter of the town], all
by different women. He brought them all up, and gave them every
year enough for their food. He was very rich. They called him ‘the
Prior.’ The mothers said to the children: ‘Run along; the Prior
will give thee money to buy food.’ I know this because my father
used to work for him. The priest often said to him: ‘Look, what
pretty children mine are!’ He was not in the least ashamed of
owning that they were his.”
And here is another statement made by the father of growing lads whom he
was educating as best he could to try for appointments in the Civil
Service.
“You should be careful not to say anything about the Jesuits in
those letters you are always writing,” he said. “In Madrid or
Barcelona it may be all very well, but in a little country town
like this you can never be sure how much the ‘good Fathers’ will
find out. It is well known that Paco, who attends to the registered
letters here, is the son of a Jesuit. Many of the clerks in the
post-offices are the sons of priests or _frailes_, and that is why
honest lads like my sons have no chance of getting a place there.
The Jesuits have a plan by which their sons slip in without the
examination imposed on others. Do you think that fool Paco would be
where he is if he had had to pass a competitive examination? But be
warned! He has been clever enough to learn how to open letters and
seal them up again. The ‘good Fathers’ have taken care of that. And
if they suspect that you write stories about them, they will take
care to read your letters before they leave the post-office.”
In this connection I may mention a curious incident. A book sent to me
from England went astray, and some six months later, after inquiry made
by the English post-office, reached me minus its wrapper, with a note of
apology from the local post-office, explaining that it had been
recovered from a Jesuit college at least fifty miles from the place to
which it had been addressed and registered by the publisher. Why it was
delivered at the college instead of to me was not explained. I thought
at the time it was merely a piece of characteristic Spanish
carelessness, but I was reminded of the occurrence by my friend’s
remarks about “Paco” and the post-office.
THE MONARCHY AND THE PEOPLE
[Illustration: THE QUEEN AND THE QUEEN-MOTHER OF SPAIN.
[To face page 111.]