The Church in Spain, 1910
"The Church in Spain! Though one or two chapters must suffice me here, how many would be required to enable a writer to deal even briefly with such a stupendous…
From: 1910 C.E. To: 1910 C.E.
Location: Spain
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
The Church in Spain
The Church in Spain! Though one or two chapters must suffice me here, how many would be required to enable a writer to deal even briefly with such a stupendous scheme? When the mind turns to the subject there passes before the mental vision a long procession of kings, princes, popes, cardinals, founders of brotherhoods—some militant, some purely clerical, and others combining both—saints, the record of whose lives thrills us to the heart even now, conquistadores carrying the sword and the cross to new worlds, there to leave marks on the tablets of time that the traveller may see to-day, ascetics, martyrs, inquisitors—a company whose lines seem to "stretch to the crack of doom."
Idealism, statecraft, bigotry, love, mysticism, cruelty, the cunning of the Jesuit and the simplicity of the little child—all stand on record, and we are left with the overwhelming impression that in all the history of the world the seeds of faith never fell on more prolific soil. Some of the seed ripened into splendid fruit, of which any civilization may be proud, but the greater part of it produced monstrous growths that thrust their roots among the foundations of the Empire and overturned them. Spain's greatest glories and Spain's greatest shame are associated with her religion. It helped her to conquer the world but compelled her to force illiteracy upon her own people; helped her to rear the tree of faith and impelled her to nourish its roots in blood; enabled her to create a great Empire and then brought about its downfall. Even today, when the Church in Spain is no more than "a remnant most forlorn of what it was," it proves comfort for thousands of sick souls and stifles the moral and intellectual development of millions.
The traveller in Spain will be quick to see that, although free-thought is spreading, old-time superstitions retain their grip upon the national mind, and that, while agnosticism flourishes most in progressive districts like Catalonia, the life of the Spanish village is shadowed from the cradle to the grave by the representatives of a once dominant faith. Political parties have attacked the Church again and again; they have reduced its wealth, cut down its privileges, and restricted the area of its influence. But all these efforts have failed to do more than prune a vigorous tree, and while Castile continues to govern Spain and the leading ladies of the Royal house are more accessible to Church influence than to any other, there will be little change.
Should the republicans realize their ambitions, the very foundations of ecclesiastical influence will be uprooted, but the regionalism rampant throughout the country makes united action practically impossible. When the Ethiopian can change his skin and the leopard his spots, all Spain, the north, south, east, and west, will unite in the common cause of progress; until that day it is at least exceedingly likely that the Church will remain the strongest institution. When Portugal enforced its old Law of Associations a few years ago, and across the Pyrenees France did the same, some attempt was made in Spain to follow suit, but the effort ended in complete failure, and may be said to have strengthened the hold of the Church upon the people.
The matrimonial alliance between Spain and Austria, when Alfonso XII married Queen Maria Cristina, was a tower of strength to the ecclesiastical party, and has remained so ever since to the despair of those who hold a perfectly honest belief that the country's future will depend upon the Church's downfall. It may be noted here that the Church moves nowadays with more caution than it has practised hitherto, though the influence of the Jesuits is very marked in Court and Cabinet. But the iron hand needs a thicker velvet glove than it has ever required before, for while Liberalism is only beginning to rise from its low estate in Spain just now, Commercialism is at a premium, and in the wake of commercial development hundreds of remote country districts are coming into practical touch with life for the first time in their history. Nor is the literary activity of Catalonia to be despised. The printing presses are hard at work; there are books in plenty for the small but ever-growing circle that will read them, and as new ideas permeate into a soil wellnigh choked with superstition, a few at least spring up into active life.
Let us consider for a moment the influence of the Church upon the Spaniard from his cradle to his grave. A few days after his birth he is taken to the church for baptism, and though in a poor parish, where the priest gets little or nothing for his pains, the ceremony is but a brief one, its neglect would create a sensation. It may be said that convention rather than faith is responsible for the ceremony, for there never was a country in which superstition and convention outweighed faith as they do in Spain.
Among the upper classes the function of baptism is associated with a mass of ceremonials that is eminently pleasing to the Spanish mind. The ceremony takes place in the nave; a full choir is employed and the organist is in attendance; the godmother holds out the infant to receive the holy water on the forehead, oil on the neck, and the cross on its lips; the prayers are said in Latin, but the necessary questions are asked and answered in Spanish; then the names are entered in the parish register and the priest receives his douceur. It has already been remarked that no Spanish child can receive a name that does not figure in the calendar of saints.
This church service, though customary, is not obligatory, and free-thinkers—a growing class in Spanish towns—register their child in the local alcaldia and contrive to give it some name that no saint has ever enjoyed. It is on record in Barcelona that a gentleman, who combined the principles of free-thought with the practice of anarchy, endeavoured to have his boy named "Acid sulfurico " (Sulphuric Acid), after the chemical that is so undeniably useful in carrying out the propaganda of his belief. For reasons best known to themselves, the Government officials refused to saddle the babe with such a burden, and the indignant father was compelled to choose one less significant.
After baptism comes an entertainment at the house of the parents—an entertainment in which the alluring, irresistible pastry of Spain plays a worthy part, and the sugar-coated almonds associated with marriage ceremonies are also to be found.
Throughout his childhood, the young Spaniard lives on intimate terms with Church ceremonial. He sees the ecclesiastical influence entering into all festivities; there will be a miniature altar in his mother's bedroom, surrounded by her chain of beads; he will go once or twice to church on Sunday; his attention will be called to the religious aspect of the feria; nuns will be among his mother's visitors, and he will be taught to regard them as privileged people.
There will be few rooms in his parents' house free from some highly coloured picture of saint or martyr—one of Murillo's most famous Assumptions, often as a vile oleograph in a cheap frame, prominent among them. He will hear the Deity and the Virgin invoked daily and see the sign of the cross made on every possible occasion, even upon a loaf before cutting. He will feel even in his earliest years that the Church rules no small part of his parents' lives and will in turn rule his own; nor will the influence of the priest fail to make itself felt during his schooldays. It may even be that some of his aunts or cousins have already taken the veil and that the prospects of his sisters' doing the same are frequently discussed before him. He will not fail to see that, although the Church does not lay open claim to omnipotence, its power to rule the lives around him is not disputed.
As far as is possible he is kept away from any influence that may tend to corrupt his beliefs, and he learns to regard the Church as the high power to which the order of his present life and the destiny of the future one are irrevocably committed. At the most impressionable period of his young life he will be taken on certain days in the year to visit relatives and friends in the religious houses, to find himself in vast sombre buildings still adorned with more than a little of their old splendour, still following the very letter of the regulations laid down by some pious founder, and still possessing to all outward seeming the spirit of tranquillity and contentment that seems to breathe a higher life than ours.
He will be taken to see holy relics handled with supreme veneration, and will be taught how, through many centuries of strife and unrest, the religious house has fulfilled its destiny and opened for the elect a path to the world to come. Let us not forget that the Spanish child is highly imaginative, and that life in cities, watched over by an ardent sun, stimulates the imagination to an extent not to be easily realized by dwellers in colder climes.
The lad passes on to puberty, and finds that the same force that directed his childhood will control his youth. He has walked rather self-consciously through the streets, wearing the white badge of confirmation on his sleeve, in company with other lads of his own age and girls all clad in white, and the parish priest has prepared him for his entry into the larger life that the years of puberty spread out before him. He knows that his sisters go regularly to confession, and he believes that the intercession of the local saint can save the current of any ambition from turning awry. It may be that he himself will make an occasional visit to the confessional, if the local priest should chance to be a man of commanding personality, although it is only fair to add that the average Spanish boy prefers to entrust nobody but himself with the story of his pecadillos.
Of the light love which comes in his way we need take no account in this place, merely remarking that sun-stricken lands are not conducive to a high standard of sexual morality, and the Spanish boy has far fewer opportunities than an English lad for the active exercise which tends to produce a healthy mind in an active body. But when the time for marriage comes, and the young Spaniard seeks a permanent alliance, he knows that it must be confirmed and regulated by Mother Church, whose influence overshadows this, the most important moment of his life.
Civil marriage of the kind so increasingly popular in France and so often met in this country is hardly known in Spain, though of course it obtains in the republican region of Catalonia where the people as a class are opposed to the Church. In the remote villages, where the hand of the parish priest lies so heavily upon the community, civil marriage is unknown, and the couple proposing to embark upon the sea of matrimony without the preliminary blessing of the Church, would have a very poor time indeed. Their marriage would not be regarded as legal. It is not so much an act of religious faith that stands in the way; it is the tradition and convention that are so much more deeply rooted than belief.
A fortnight before the intended marriage the banns are published in the church, and ere the great day arrives the ceremonies of confession and communion have been gone through by both contracting parties. The marriage celebration seems to be limited only by the purse of the family of bridegroom and bride, and varies from a quaint simplicity that takes due heed of local custom, and is extremely picturesque, up to a heavy, cumbersome, and cosmopolitan ceremonial which must be extremely trying to those chiefly concerned. The Spaniard can hardly be called an ostentatious man, but there are times in his life when he likes to fling restraint to the wind and to impress upon his neighbours the full extent of his capacity for spending money. Marriage is one of these rare occasions and often leaves a little load of debt behind.
After marriage the Spaniard places the burden of prayer upon his wife's shoulders and hands her over cheerfully to a Church for which he himself has little more than toleration. The average Spanish woman has a large measure of what, for lack of a better term, may be called devotion. She is the most regular patron of the priest. She enters church with covered head; for failing a hat or the mantilla that she wears with such exquisite grace, she covers her head with a handkerchief. As she enters she dips her hand in the font of holy water, and any companions may receive the full effect of its efficacy by touching her fingers and making the sign of the cross with the thumb of the right hand. The action is very rapid and briefer than the elaborate sign that
is common in France. Forehead, chin, left cheek, and right cheek mark in turn the limits of the cross, and then the thumb is kissed and the simple ceremony is over. Unless you look carefully at the woman who enters a church her rapid, furtive action may escape your notice altogether.
In France and Italy the wayside cross is a common object in the countryside, and it is often a very ugly erection designed to stimulate the sense of faith rather than the sense of beauty. In Spain they contrive to make a more fitting appeal to the devout wayfarer. On convent walls, in corridors of great factories, like the famous home of Carmen, one encounters little shrines with perhaps rather more scarlet and tinsel than is absolutely necessary to stimulate our sense of colour, and a figure of the Virgin—the local Virgin one might say—with a little lamp before it.
The term "local Virgin" will doubtless puzzle many people who do not know that the intensely regional patriotism of the Spaniard classes the Virgin under many heads. There is the Virgin of Pilar and the Virgin of Dolores, the Virgin of Carmen and many others who need not be enumerated, and the Spaniard who worships one of these regards the others as strangers, and will take no account of them. In fact, though his theology teaches him that there is no more than one Virgin, he will be heard to speak very disrespectfully indeed of all Virgins save his own. Throughout Andalusia the full number of Virgins can only be known to the experts of the Church, and it is on this account that the country is called La Tierra de Maria Santisima.
In the gloomy north, where fear lays its griping hand upon the rank and file, the prospects of death create a consternation that is one of the Church's most valuable assets. Even in the laughter-loving south the approach of the King of Terrors is dreaded, but in the north people fear to die save on the battle-field. Few sights can be more impressive than those that accompany death in a city of Northern Spain.
When the priest walks in his robes through the dim streets attended after nightfall by acolytes bearing torches, the passers-by kneel at the summons of the bell that is carried in the procession, and they say a credo for the soul now passing beyond all the care and joys of mortal life. Sometimes the priest travels in a closed carriage, moving at a slow pace and surrounded by attendants. The business of the thoroughfare is suspended; a wave of devotion seems to surge along the narrow way and all the people fall on their knees. On balconies and miradores the women who only a moment ago were holding animated conversation as they scanned people below, relapse into silence and sink upon their knees. In that moment some sense of what awaits one and all penetrates every heart, and even in the districts where the influence of the Church is at its lowest the majority succumb to the passing of death, while the minority bares its head.
Half of the double entrance door is shut in the house of death, and the bedroom in which the deceased rests is turned into a capella ardiente where the corpse lies in an open coffin with candles burning at the head and foot and the cross upon its breast. Round the bed the nuns in the garb of their order, white Carmelites or brown Franciscans, pray ceaselessly for the soul gone to the bourne from which no traveller returns.
Burial follows upon the heels of death, and in the country districts men and women follow the coffin, while in the town the women remain at home. The funeral ceremonial varies from extreme simplicity to a display that seems to mock the occasion. Among the very poor the State is the undertaker. A one-horse vehicle without attendants carries the coffin to the foso comun, and the dead disappears utterly without so much as the tribute of a wooden cross. High up in the social scale the order of procedure is very different and simplicity would not be tolerated for a moment. Perhaps one of the great dignitaries of the Church will accompany the procession; torches and candles in silver candlesticks issue their feeble challenge to the sun; the coffin, richly decorated, is carried in a hearse that glitters with silver and glass and is almost covered by masses of beautiful flowers. The trappings of the six or eight horses that take the dead to his last home are as brilliant as money can make them. In the case of a statesman or a great soldier or a Prince of the Church, the military are called out to take part in the procession, and when a Senator, a Deputy, or an Academician departs this life, the comitativa, as the procession is called, starts from Senate House, or Academy where, by the permission of the family, the body has lain in state.
If the dead should have chanced to have been a great torero, the authorities must be represented to keep in order the vast concourse that has assembled from every part of the city, quite indifferent to the calls of daily labour, to pay the last honours to one who has so often "conferred honour upon the city" by the certainty of the stroke that drove the glittering "espada" through the bull's lungs and heart.
In Spain, as in other Catholic countries, there is a day of All Saints, and it is set aside by all classes, from the lower middle class upwards, to visit the graves of their dead. The well-beloved of the very poorest have no memorial; there is no sign by which willing feet and eager eyes can travel to the spot that is above all others sacred. The foso comun will yield its secret, if at all, to the Angel of the Resurrection, and the prayers that may shorten the period of purgatory for the departed are said by the parish priest who prays for one and all.
At the same time those who have the wherewithal can not only secure the extra service known as the novena, nine days after the ordinary burial service, but can also order special masses for departed friends. These vary in length, and presumably in efficacy, from the single mass that costs no more than the widow's mite can purchase, up to perpetual masses guaranteed for all time to the donor of an altar. All Saints' Day is marked in Spain by rather more reserve than we find in France. Spain has few beautiful cemeteries, nothing to compare with the Campi Santi of the great Italian cities, or the Pere Lachaise in Paris. Certainly the cemetery of San Lorenzo in Madrid has family vaults crowned with fine groups in marble and bronze, and Spain has its Pantheon for those distinguished in State and the Arts, while kings sleep in peace in the lordly Escorial, but the rest of Spain is not endowed with great burial grounds.
As soon as the country began to recover from the financial depression caused by the troubles in the Philippines and the American War, a great enthusiasm for sculpture declared itself; not only the dead who were illustrious—or would have been illustrious if they could—were singled out for distinction and such immortality as marble may confer, but the living were caught in the net of popular enthusiasm—if they did not deliberately seek to be entangled in its meshes.
It is a custom in Spain for a city to give the honourable title of hijo predilecto (chosen son) to one of its citizens who has gained special distinction in some walk of life. The custom corresponds to the British ceremony of conferring the freedom of a city upon some worthy gentleman who would, as often as not, rather be without it. In the case referred to above the hijo predilecto was a sculptor whose estudio was not exactly groaning under the weight of commissions, and it occurred to him—or let us be charitable and say to his admirers—that if he could carve his own statue at the expense of the city, he would provide himself with present occupation, adequate remuneration, and immortality of which he could gather the assured foretaste.
Unfortunately, as Robert Burns remarked, "the best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley". The story reached some witty members of the Fourth Estate, and in place of occupation, emoluments, and immortality, the poor hijo predilecto was forced to content himself with a very large allowance of ridicule. But there is something in the idea that deserves attention. There are several men and women in our own country who know full well that they deserve a statue from the town they have honoured by their birth or residence. May the simple little story just told give them the necessary precedent and impetus.
It has been pointed out that superstition enters largely into the measure of observance accorded to Church ritual in Spain. But superstition is so widespread in its range and so gross in its character, that some examples may well be set down in detail.
In the Monastery of Guadelupe there is a fine collection of pictures by Zurbaran, the great mystic of Spanish art, and a few years ago, when an exhibition of the master's work was held in Madrid, it was decided by the authorities to borrow these pictures. The monastic heads were quite willing, but the villagers were well assured that misfortune would follow if they were removed, and it was necessary to send a company of the Guardia Civil to the spot to protect those who were entrusted with the removal of the works around which a perfect network of most fanciful superstitions was woven.
Although the Church looks askance at the belief in witchcraft, and does all it can to discourage it, the countryman in Spain has a devout belief in wizards and witches. Dreams are full of significance for him; he seeks protection from evil spirits and from the Evil Eye; some natural events betoken good fortune, others are held to be the precursors of disaster. In the south, where superstition is no whit less rampant than in the north, snakes are regarded with special horror; the mere mention of their name is sufficient to make the hearer cry "lagarto, lagarto" (lizard), and stretch out the first two fingers of his right hand. Only in this way can some terrible disaster be averted.
Your bull-fighter is the most superstitious of men, and although he will face a bull that is mad with pain and fury, he will turn pale with terror if one of the bulls emerges from the toril in an unconventional manner. The matador himself, when he takes espada and muleta for his final encounter with the bull, wets the tip of his finger with his tongue and applies that finger to the point of the sword, knowing that in this fashion alone can he avoid the dreaded cogida. Cogida is a portmanteau word, and is used to express the accident that befalls when the bull manages to reach the matador. Every great diestro has endured a cogida, and to a few the experience has been fatal.
Superstition enters into some alliance with the Church in the frequent use of the sign of the cross to avert disaster, imaginary or real. This sign is often made when startling intelligence is conveyed to women even of the educated classes.
Far worse than these forms of superstition are those that obtain in the very remote country districts where priest and doctor—to say nothing of the schoolmaster—are quite powerless to deal with customs that would seem to precede the dawn of civilization. In such places the influence of the local wise man or wise woman is a terrible power for evil. Parents take their sick children to these people and follow horrible prescriptions that cannot be set down here, with the result that the small sufferers can have no better fortune than to die quickly.
Witchcraft, like everything else in Spain, is regional and consequently exercises a far more potent sway in the gloomy north than in the sunny south; here one finds a measure of native humour that acts as a more potent counterblast to the words of wise men and wise women than all the thunders of the Church.
It is impossible to close this chapter without reference to the sinister part played by the Jesuits in Spain. Their influence rules Court and Cabinet even to-day, and it extends through all classes of the community: the confessional being beyond a doubt the medium through which their work is done. Once the Jesuit has gained the ear of the house, he will retain it for all time. Indeed, there is a Spanish saying to the effect that the Jesuit can always have the ownership of the house in which he has been permitted to hang up his hat.
Some of the Jesuit confessors in Madrid have an extraordinary following among women of the highest class and it is notorious that they use their influence for purely political purposes. If it were not that the personal note is out of place in a work like this, chapter and verse could be given. At the same time it must be confessed that there is nothing in Spain so finely ordered, so splendidly controlled or carried out with a clearer conception of vital aims regardless of the means to the end, than the order of Jesuits. The hand that is nowhere seen is everywhere felt, and if the tremendous forces of Jesuitism had been devoted with equal success to Spain's progress, the country would probably compare favourably with any in Europe.
As things are, the organization, pertinacity, and loyalty of the Jesuits has postponed their downfall indefinitely, and while their practical qualities remain as they are today, he would be a bold man who would venture to predict the downfall of the order in Spain. Indeed, it has received valuable and unexpected support in high places during the past few years, and is stronger now than it was some years ago. But if Señor Maura was in earnest when he denounced the famous treaty between Liberals and Conservatives, the treaty that has kept progressive parties out of power in Spain, the day of reckoning may come within our time.
Bensusan, Samuel Levy. Home Life in Spain. MacMillan, 1910.
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