Holy Week in Seville—What not to see—The Blessing of the Palms—Cathedral dignitaries—The Cardinal and the children—The Dean’s smile—The Cathedral steps—The Entry into Jerusalem—Light in dark places—Mozarabic ritual—The Display of the Banner—Our Lady of the Old Time—Mozarabic art—The Banner of theMenestrales—A portrait of San Fernando—The Roman eagles—The Entombment—The silver shrine and its golden key—Wheeled traffic forbidden—Brotherhoods, rich and poor.
Holy Week in Seville—What not to see—The Blessing of the Palms—Cathedral dignitaries—The Cardinal and the children—The Dean’s smile—The Cathedral steps—The Entry into Jerusalem—Light in dark places—Mozarabic ritual—The Display of the Banner—Our Lady of the Old Time—Mozarabic art—The Banner of theMenestrales—A portrait of San Fernando—The Roman eagles—The Entombment—The silver shrine and its golden key—Wheeled traffic forbidden—Brotherhoods, rich and poor.
I supposeMy Spanish Yearwould be incomplete without a chapter about the Holy Week ceremonies and the Seville Fair; but so much has already been written on these subjects from the tourist’s point of view that, if I am to say anything about them, I must try to describe some characteristic features which are apt to pass more or less unnoticed.
Every one knows that during Holy Week numerous Brotherhoods and Guilds pervade the streets of Seville and other Andalucian towns in procession, the original intention of which was to show images representing events in the Passion of Our Lord, in order to bring home to the illiterate people the tragedy of the Crucifixion. And every one who sees these processions in Seville remarks on the artistic merit of many of the images, the magnificent dresses, and the picturesque effects producedin the streets and in the Cathedral by the innumerable candles flickering round the platforms on which the images are borne.
These are the common-places of Holy Week in Seville. They catch the eye of every visitor who has the slightest knowledge of or feeling for art; but long before the week is out, those who come merely to see something new are sick to death of the eternal repetition of the same thing—the “Brothers” or the “Nazarenes” in their voluminous robes and tall peaked hoods, the brass bands, the Civil Guard, the firstpasodraped with velvet or satin, and surrounded with silver candelabra and vases of flowers, with an image of Our Lord in the centre; more Brothers or Nazarenes, more music, more Civil Guards, and then thepasoof Our Lady, which closes every procession save some which were instituted before the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin became a dogma of the Roman Church.
When one has seen between twenty and thirty of thepasos, all creeping along at a snail’s pace, with a pause every few yards for the bearers to rest and the people to admire, one does begin to get a thought weary of certain features in them. But we who know Seville have learnt what to see and what to avoid, and we are careful not to exhaust ourselves physically and mentally by attempting to watch the slow progress of a dozenpasospast the same point on the same day, for indeed the processions are but one feature in the manifold ceremonies of Holy Week, and if you set about it the right way you may vary your emotions almost every hour of the day.
Therefore I, who have often felt sorry to see my compatriots enduring the maximum of fatigue to see the minimum of what is most interesting in these curious survivals of the early Church, will try to indicate a few incidents in the long programme of ecclesiastical ceremonies which do not figure in the official account of what are incongruously described aslas fiestas de Semana santa.
The Blessing of the Palms on Palm Sunday is one of the most beautiful of all the Cathedral ceremonies. I go early—not later than 8 a.m., and as much earlier as I find convenient, and when the early Mass is over I go across to the Columbus monument in front of the south door, and there get a perfect view of the procession on its stately march down the long aisle to the door of San Miguel. First goes the bearer of the Cathedral cross, its brass gleaming above the curious round frame here used to drape the parish crosses with the ritual colour for the day. Then follow the minor clergy in black soutanes and stiffly starched rochets with flowing sleeves; the censer-bearers in beautiful dalmatics of old brocade, swinging chased silver censers worthy of a place in a museum; the choir boys in scarlet soutanes and white rochets; the beneficed clergy—recently granted, as a special favour to the Cardinalate of Seville, permission to wear red silk linings to their black silk cloaks (capa corál); the portly canons in purple silk, the officiant and his servers in magnificent embroidered vestments centuries old, and then, supported by the Dean and the Arch-priest of the diocese, the Cardinal-Archbishop.
He is already very stout although hardly past middle life, but his unwieldy figure is counterbalanced by a strong face with a powerful jaw and friendly humorous grey eyes, and he looks magnificent in his white fur hood and robe of scarlet silk, with a train four yards long, borne behind him by two of the Seises, whose history has already been related. He has only been here four years, and came after a long interregnum due to two sudden deaths in the episcopate, but the way in which he has stirred up the diocese is surprising. The Cathedral music, from being the worst, now ranks among the best in Spain, the services begin punctually instead of at any hour that happened to be convenient, and above all, he has put a stop to the illicit sale by parish priests, monks, and nuns of objects of artistic value belonging to their churches. Formerly a brisk trade was carried on in such, but our energetic Cardinal has had every picture, carving, and church ornament in his diocese inventoried, and now not so much as a painted tile can be touched without a licence from the palace.
Yet he is a kindly man, this vigorous prelate. I once followed in his train at a charitable affair in which I had the privilege of presenting to him some twenty small children of the working class whom I had put into fancy dress, to their and my own great enjoyment. And for every child the Cardinal, as he gave them his ring to kiss, had a smile and a kind and a witty remark on their costume or the historical character it represented; so that all the little faces beamed behind him as he made his progressround the hall where they stood to attention. Kissing episcopal rings is hardly in my line, but Cardinal Almaraz’s kindness to the children always makes me remember my share in that ceremony with pleasure.
Next in gorgeousness of vestment to the Cardinal comes the Dean, a most courteous gentleman not much over forty, and blessed, like his Bishop, with a strong sense of humour. On one memorable Palm Sunday, as the procession passed the Columbus monument, the Dean caught sight of me standing there with a tall English girl, whose broken Castilian he had been helping out at a dinner party at our house a few weeks before, and his eyes began to twinkle and his fingers instinctively went up to give us an Andalucian salute. He recovered his gravity in an instant, and with great presence of mind converted his salute into a motion which the public would take for a blessing. But the deed had been done. When next we met outside the Cathedral we thanked him for his “blessing,” and now he can never look at us in the crowd during a procession without a twinkle in his eyes and a visible compression of his lips, lest he should indecorously smile at us again.
The attitude of a Spanish congregation during the Mass is remarkably reverent compared with the behaviour in many foreign Cathedrals: one really finds here an atmosphere of sincere devotion. But the processions are regarded from a different standpoint. The dignitaries there are in the midst of the crowd, and the crowd, although perfectly respectful, does its best to win a sign of recognition from its friends and acquaintances in the long lines of clergy,choir-men, andmonocillos(little monkeys), as the singing-boys are familiarly called.
The door of San Miguel—opposite to the College, or cloister of that name, in which dwelt all the Mozarabic priests who still survived when San Fernando entered Seville—is thrown wide open as the procession approaches, and a wonderful shimmering effect of light and shade is produced when the waving palms borne by the clergy move out from the dimness of the Cathedral into the blazing sunshine of the street. But I never follow the palms; one only gets lost in the crowd, and misses all the best of the picture. As soon as the last gleam of the Cardinal’s scarlet disappears through the door, I turn round and go to meet the procession on its way back.
One has time to go out by the door of the Bells (campanillas), where formerly bells were rung to call loiterers to Mass, and walk round to that of los Palos—so-called because it once opened on to a grove of trees (poles,palos, now long cut down)—getting a good view of the procession as it comes round outside the Orange Court on the broad terrace raised by six steps above the level of the road. This terrace is a relic of the half-century during which the ancient Visigothic Cathedral was converted to Moslem uses. Every Mozarabic church that was used as a mosque has a raised terrace on one or more sides, like that of the mosque of Cordova. It was originally intended to accommodate the overflowing congregations during Ramadan, but after the reconquest the Christians allowed it to degenerate into a meeting-place for merchants to transactbusiness, like the money-changers in the Temple, until the scandal became too great, and the Casa Lonja (now containing the archives of the Indies) was built in the seventeenth century. The terrace forms a fine vantage-ground for those who want to see the Holy Week processions, the recent widening of the Calle Canovas del Castillo giving an uninterrupted view from the door of San Miguel, where they enter the Cathedral, right away to the Town Hall.
Just as the Palm Sunday procession reaches the door of the Palos it is closed, and the whole procession comes to a stop, while the Master of the Cathedral Ceremonies raps on it three times. This, with the palms and olive branches strewed before the Cardinal, represents the entry of Our Lord into Jerusalem. A verse is intoned and then in the midst of a dead silence the doors slowly open, and the many-coloured procession with its waving palms fades into the twilight within, while women and children try to secure an olive twig, for they, like the palms, are blessed. A palm branch hung on the balcony protects the house from lightning, and the olive branch brings peace and contentment if carried home and placed before your “Saints.”
Palm Sunday evening is devoted to the first of the street processions. These are late ones, reaching the stands of reserved seats in front of the Town Hall when night is falling. It is wise to get one’s first impressions from the Sunday eveningpasosafter their candles are lighted, so that the images of the Passion and of Our Lady convey the beautiful symbolical idea of carrying with them light intodark places. Formerly all the street lamps were extinguished on the line of march, so that the way of the people was literally lighted by their “Saints”; but that was a long time ago, and now we can only imagine how impressive the old custom was, from the glow that floods the street of Sierpes before the procession itself comes into sight.
It is impossible to compress into a single chapter all the interesting and beautiful ceremonies of Holy Week in this Cathedral, apart from their historic aspect. Seville does not retain the actual Mozarabic or Visigothic ritual in any of her chapels, as does Toledo, for when San Fernando got here the Popes for over a century and a half had been trying to suppress the rite of the Church, which from force of circumstances had been so long cut off from and almost independent of Rome, and therefore the rite was not retained after the reconquest. But it is clear that the sainted king permitted the faithful Mozarabic priests of the College of San Miguel to take a leading part in the offices of the transformed mosque when it once more became the Cathedral of Seville, for the Oriental survivals we see to-day could never have been introduced in the middle of the thirteenth century by priests and bishops from Castile.
Many such survivals are mere details, more interesting to ecclesiastical archæologists than to laymen. But others are so striking that no visitor of intelligence should miss them.
One of these is the so-called “Rending of the White Veil” after the nine o’clock Mass on the Wednesday of Holy Week. This is represented by drawingapart immense curtains of beautiful old whitetafetán, a fine soft silk of the kind worn by Moslem princes when Seville was celebrated for her manufacture of velvets, brocades, and satins, all of which were lined with this filmytafetán. No one knows exactly why the White Veil is rent on this day, though I am told that it is another heritage from the Mozarabs. It is torn from the rod on which it hangs, so that when divided one curtain falls in a heap on either side of the altar, whence they are drawn into the sacristy by the Seises.
At 3.30 on Tuesday in Holy Week we have what is known as the Display of the Banner, another ceremony foreign to the ritual of Rome. Two priests kneel on the altar steps, while a third waves over them a voluminous banner of the same soft gauzytafetánas the White Veil. The banner is of a dark green, so dark as to appear black in the dim Cathedral, where all the painted windows are shrouded with black curtains during this season of penitence. Formerly the two priests used to prostrate themselves; now they only kneel. No one can explain the ceremony, which takes place four times in all, from the eve of Passion Sunday to Holy Tuesday, but it is supposed to have some connection with the MozarabicVirgen de la Antigua, a twelfth-century fresco in the chapel of that name, whose history is worth relating.
When the Almohade Moors took Seville and appropriated the old Gothic Cathedral for their new mosque, this mural painting of Our Lady was left in its place. AlfonsoX.in hisCántigas de la Virgen Maria(Hymns of the Virgin) says that more thanonce the fanatic Almohades wished to destroy the image, but such a glory shone from it as to dazzle their eyes and they retreated, afraid to touch it. The truth probably was that the Almohade ruler, who was dependent on Sevillian artists for his alterations and additions to his mosque and his Alcazar,[9]did not venture to risk a revolt among his Mozarab subjects, for the Christian community was always more numerous here than anywhere else in Moslem Spain. Therefore, although he appropriated or perhaps bought the old Cathedral, as AbderrahmanI.had done with that of St. Vincent in Cordova, he left this venerated image and its chapel to the Christians, who made an entrance to it from the street and closed the former door, which otherwise would communicate with the mosque.
It is related in the sameCántigasthat when San Fernando was besieging Seville, he was miraculously admitted one night through the Jerez gate—the nearest to the Cathedral—into the Chapel of N’ra Señora de la Antigua (Our Lady of the Old Time), and being discovered there by the Moors he hardly escaped with his life. Tradition suggests that Our Lady of the Old Time was walled up after this by the Moslems, probably from indignation at what must have seemed to them treachery on the part of the Mozarabs within the walls, for they alone could have admitted the Christian king into their own chapel. The city surrendered not many weeks later, and there is at present nothing to show when the picture was uncovered. But reference is made to it fromthe thirteenth century onwards, and my own impression is that the chapel was reopened immediately, for there had certainly not been time to forget its situation, as happened elsewhere in the case of images buried to save them from desecration.
In the sixteenth century the fresco was removed from the wall on which it was painted to the altar of the present chapel, which had been built to receive it. It was at that time unfortunately “restored,” “renovated,” and “beautified” as well as removed, as a contemporary account tells us, and much of its mediæval character was thus lost. But the Child still has the characteristic round bullet head with stiff black curls, which is seen in all the Mozarab work in this region, and is in every case so curiously inferior in technique to that of the Mother that one can only accept it as a type, venerated and copied from one generation to another from primitive times. The Virgin, on the other hand, as in all the work of the twelfth century, is beautiful in technique as well as in feature, and her strange drapery with its stiff diagonal folds is singularly reminiscent of the drapery of some of the Egypto-Tartessian figures found in the Cerro de los Santos several years ago, and now in the Archæological Museum at Madrid.
Long and bitter have been the quarrels of local art critics over the period and origin of this fresco, but once the history of the Christians of Seville under Islam has been made clear, all combines to show that Our Lady of the Old Time was here when San Fernando came, and that the image was worshipped by the Mozarabs throughout the Almohadeoccupation. And in the light of present knowledge it seems highly probable that the Display of the Banner is a reminiscence of some act of humiliation imposed on the faithful priests who, even after their last Bishop fled in 1239, still lived in the Cloister of San Miguel and continued to exercise the rites of their religion. The Moors may perhaps have made the ceremony a condition of the retention by the Christians of their chapel within the precincts of the mosque; and it is by no means impossible that something conclusive on the subject may come to light one day, when the mass of unexamined documents in the Cathedral archives are at length sorted and read.
Though so little is known about it as yet, the interest of this curious Display of the Banner is seen to be great when one realises that it is a direct link with the Moslem dominion in Seville, taking us back six centuries to the time when the splendid ritual which now delights the eyes and ears of thousands was represented in this ancient basilica by a few poor priests who said Mass in the Chapel ofLa Antigua, perhaps at the risk of their lives.
Most of the remaining ceremonies of Holy Week are the same as in Rome and elsewhere, save in minor details which need not be described here. But the processions in the streets date from the thirteenth century, and we can hardly doubt that they too have survived from the early Christian Church.
San Fernando himself gave a banner with his portrait embroidered on it to the Brotherhood of theMenestrales(Mechanics: the Guild was of working tailors); and that too must have existedbefore the reconquest, for the King died only four years later, and we are not told that he founded the Brotherhood in the interval. Indeed, if he had done so it would have been very carefully recorded in their annals, as was his gift of the banner. They, as the oldest of the Brotherhoods and favoured by the King, were given the privilege of watching beside his coffin when he died, and they maintained their right to this place of honour on the anniversary of his death until their Guild dissolved for lack of funds not many years since. Another and richer Guild tried to oust them two or three centuries ago, but theMenestraleswent to law and won their case. The banner given by San Fernando now hangs in a glass case in the church of St. Isidore. Very little is left of the portrait, and what little there is was hidden in the sixteenth century by an embroidered head of CharlesV.which was sewn over it. This was removed for examination a few years ago, and the thirteenth-century portrait was found beneath. Although, like the banner of San Fernando in the Town Hall, it has been so much repaired and restored that very little of the original remains, enough can be seen to convince any expert in embroidery that it is Mozarabic work of the period in question.
The strongest evidence of the early origin of the Brotherhoods lies in the fact that the Roman eagles and a standard with S.P.Q.R. are borne in advance of everypaso, while “Roman soldiers” ride after some few of them. These cannot have been “put on the stage” in the thirteenth century, forilluminated MSS. of that period, including the exceedingly valuable contemporary works of AlfonsoX., all depict sacred characters in the costumes of the day. Nor were they introduced in the fourteenth century, for there is a missal of that date in which the Roman soldiers at the Crucifixion wear the dress of the fighting-men of AlfonsoXI., and one of the men casting lots for the coat of Our Lord is dressed in parti-coloured hose with cap and bells, like a court jester.
The consecration of the Holy Oils, the great procession with the Host to the “Monument” erected at the west end of the Cathedral (over the tomb of the Columbus family), the washing of the feet of twelve poor men by the Cardinal-Archbishop in the Cathedral, the dinner given to them in the Archbishop’s palace, the Miserere on the night of Holy Thursday, the Adoration of the Cross, when the clergy and the Dean and Chapter walk barefoot round the nave, the consecration of the Paschal candle, which weighs about 70 lb., and the Rending of the Black Veil, when the Host is returned to the high altar—all these things are described in the programmes hawked about the streets, and only one of them calls for notice here.
This is the ceremony of Holy Thursday, when the Host is taken to the “Monument,” symbolising the burial of Our Lord. In silence the pyx is removed, its shrine is left open, and the cloth is dishevelled in careless folds across the altar, to show that the sacred elements are gone from it. The procession, all clad in funeral vestments, moves slowly andsilently down the nave to the west end, where the sixteenth-century “Monument” towers almost to the roof, its white and gold columns supporting life-sized saints and angels, while beneath its tall dome gleams the great silverCustodiain which the Host is to lie until the day of Resurrection. This shrine, which is ten feet high, is one of the master-pieces of that master of Spanish silversmiths, Juan de Arphe, and the idea of its representing the tomb of Christ is one more among many anomalies. The golden pyx is placed in theCustodia, the doors are closed and locked with a golden key, and the key is handed to the Civil Governor, who hangs it on a gold chain round his neck. It will remain in his keeping until Easter Eve, because, so we are told, the body of Christ was laid in unconsecrated ground after the Crucifixion; and therefore, while the Host is within the tomb, the Chapter transfers the care of it to the lay authority.
During Holy Thursday and Good Friday the lights on the “Monument” are kept burning day and night. Then on the Saturday morning the gold key is returned to the priests, theCustodiais opened, and the Host is taken out and carried in procession back to the altar. And the moment the pyx is replaced in the shrine the organ peals out, all the bells are rung, and guns are fired.
It will be noticed that the Church in Seville anticipates both the Crucifixion and the Resurrection by a day, celebrating the former on Thursday and the latter on Saturday. The Sevillian divines profess to explain this, but I am bound to say Icould never understand their explanation, which connects it in some way with the mystery of the Eucharist. The people have their own account of the matter. They say that “in old times” the fast was kept from Wednesday until Easter morning, during which days no wheeled traffic was permitted in the streets, the shops were closed, and all business was suspended. After a time the four days’ fast was found so inconvenient that it was reduced to three, and in order to make this possible it was arranged that the Resurrection should be celebrated on Easter Eve instead of on Easter Day! Many people implicitly believe this, and the explanation was given to me in such good faith that I actually accepted it at first, although it seemed a strange way out of the difficulty. Wheeled traffic is still forbidden in the streets on Holy Thursday and Good Friday even in “modern” Seville, and in other places in Andalucia not so much as a donkey can be hired at any price on Good Friday.
“I should bemal mirado” (sent to Coventry), said a villagearrieroto me one Good Friday, “if I took money for my beast on the day Our Lord died. On that day rich and poor alike must walk in penitence, no matter how tired they may become.”
In Seville people do not trouble so much about beingmal miradoon ecclesiastical grounds, and strenuous efforts were made one year by the Radical party to induce the authorities to withdraw the prohibition of driving, even at the cost of altering the route of the processions. But such an outcry was raised by the public at the proposal that it hadto be dropped; for Seville business people know very well that any interference with the processions would injure trade by diminishing the influx of tourists, who flock here every year for Holy Week, far more than is done by closing the central streets to cabs and tram-cars during the two days.
Indeed, the slightest change in the time-honoured regulations stirs up sentiments which are anything but pious, as I have already shown in regard to the Corpus Christi festival.
For years past there has been a latent enmity between a wealthy Brotherhood, whose name it is kinder to suppress, and a very poor one. The hours of their respective appearance at the “Stations” (as the route taken is called, because in former days the progress of the processions represented the Stations of the Cross) are fixed by the Dean and Chapter, for if two processions meet at any “Station,” hopeless confusion results; and the two Brotherhoods in question have long been liable to meet if the first is unpunctual. Two years ago the rich Brotherhood arrived an hour late at one of the “Stations,” and were met by the poor one from the other side of the town. The poor Brothers were in the right of it, for this was the hour at which theirpasowas due to cross that street, but the others were determined to take precedence, as they would naturally have done had they started at the proper time. These particular Brothers are largely of the aristocracy, and expect to be obeyed without question by their inferiors in worldly position. Their leader autocratically commanded the poor mento stand back and make room for him and his followers to pass. But the poor men refused, as they had every right to do in the circumstances, whereupon the aristocrat, regardless of his gorgeous velvet mantle and satin hood, forgot all the penitence and humility he was supposed to be feeling, and attacked the other man with his fists.
What might have happened had the leader of the poor procession hit back, no one can say; but the belligerent “noble” was quickly brought to his bearings, for the “Elder Brother” of the poor Guild with presence of mind laid their great processional cross on the ground before the feet of the would-be fighters. No Sevillian, however angry, would dream of desecrating the cross, so the irate aristocrat had to retire, while the other procession passed on. Pride, I fear, swelled the hearts of the Brothers under the homely calico habits, bought out of their poor wages at the cost of long thrift and self-denial, which thus for once took precedence of their wealthy rivals.
Personally I find the poor Brotherhoods far more interesting than the rich, for they all have history behind them, and sometimes modestpasoswhose Brothers are dressed in cheap calico, are draped with ancient damask and brocade more valuable and far more beautiful than the stiff new gold-embroidered mantles with which the modern Brotherhoods deck their “Virgins,” regardless of cost. Some day I shall write a book about the stories of thepasos, grave and gay, but I must not begin upon them here, for I have already dwelt too long perhaps on these aspects of Holy Week in Seville.
DRESSED FOR THE FAIR.
DRESSED FOR THE FAIR.