CHAPTER IITHE RELIGION OF THE PEOPLE

PEASANT WOMEN.[To face page39.

PEASANT WOMEN.

[To face page39.

Ifyou ask upper-class Spaniards, priestly or lay, about the religion of the people of Spain, you will be told that half the nation are bigots and the other half free-thinkers and atheists, or at best indifferent Laodiceans: a sweeping assertion that has so often been made that it has become a commonplace with foreign journalists and magazine writers.

To accuse the nation at large of bigotry, atheism, or indifferentism, is nevertheless as unjust as to accuse the army of cowardice. Small though is the attendance of the working classes at Mass, and hostile though they are to the practice of confession, they are none the less deeply religious—firm believers in the efficacy of prayer, and loyal to the fundamental tenets of their faith, such as dependence on the will of God, gratitude for small mercies vouchsafed by a good Providence, and devotion to the Virgin and the saints.

In the middle class there is, no doubt, a good deal of rather shallow free-thinking, although it usually goes little beyond a scoff at superstition and contempt for miracles and images, and is confined to the men. The women usually follow in their mothers’ footsteps, attend Mass, run through the rosary, and thoroughly enjoy the processions which enliven so many Church festivals. Confession, however, is perfunctory even among middle-class women, and the poor avoid it altogether. For strict observance of the ordinances and for material support of the Church you must go to women of higher social position, ladies of title and the wives of rich men, whose political relations keep them hand in hand with the priests and the Religious Orders. They are the bulwark of the Church in Spain. Indeed, it is often said that if all the ladies of the aristocracy could be locked up for a few years, the Church of Spain would go to pieces, so little real hold has it on any other element in the national life.

These ladies attend Mass every day and confess with great regularity. They consider it the highest privilege to be “wardrobe keepers” for thesantos(saints-images) in their favourite churches; they dress and undress the image of the Virgin with their own hands for festivals,and they keep in their own houses the jewels and other treasures belonging to her. In some cases they also look after the vestments of the priests and take charge of the altar linen. And they give or bequeath large fortunes to different monasteries and convents, and to religious houses built to receive orphans and old people, repentant Magdalens, and girls in training for domestic service. But no one is admitted to institutions supported by ladies of devout life save on condition of daily attendance at Mass and regular confession and communion. And therefore the people say that such charity is not dictated by love for their poorer brethren, but is merely given in order to prop up a decadent Church, and many will starve rather than ask for it.

The people have a word of contempt for the religious principles of women such as these. They call thembeata, which according to the dictionary means “devout,” but which the poor translate as “canting.” There is a world of difference to them between the lady who isreligiosa(religious) and the one who isbeata.Religiosais applied to a woman who devotes her life to God and works for the sake of doing good;beatameans one who lives, moves, and has her being under the thumb of the priests and the Religious Orders.

The poor say that unless they are prepared to attend Mass and confess regularly, they can expect nothing from women, however rich, who are known to bebeatas. For alms given unquestioningly and without insistence on previous compliance with the rules of the Church, the sick and needy turn by preference either to persons recognised as “religious” or to those who “have nothing to do with those follies.” That is how the practice of confession is characterised by the democracy in the privacy of their own homes. They dread and distrust the confessors, and no poor man or woman will speak freely in the presence of one of their own class who is in the habit of confessing.

Yet notwithstanding their antagonism to this primary dogma of their religion, the working classes, and especially the peasantry, are, as already stated, deeply and sincerely devout, and firmly uphold the Christian faith as they understand it.

One of the most remarkable features in the spiritual life of the nation is the clear comprehension of even the least educated among them that the sins of the priests and the Religious Orders stand apart from and leave unsmirched the national religion.

“What have I to do with those people?” said a young fisherman to the writer. “Confess to a priest? Never! I confess to God and my mother, and I want no priest to come between me and my God.”

“I? Confess to a priest? What for? Every night when I go to bed I confess my sins to the Virgin, and I can die as well after that as if I had received the holy oils,” said an old woman of deep and sincere faith.

“I do not allow my wife to go to confession,” said a master mason. “If she insisted I should refuse to provide for her. I will have no traffic with the gentry of the long skirts inmyfamily.”

“No, I did not call in a priest when my husband was dying. He would have died all the sooner if I had, he hated them so. We poor people never call the priest if we can help it. We say ‘death gave us no time.’ The priests pretend to believe it; they are glad enough to be saved the trouble of coming to our houses because, if we send for them, they have to give the holy oils gratis. And we get buried all the same,” said a young widow who had lost husband and child within three months of each other.

“And you are not afraid the dead will stay longer in purgatory if they die without the holyoils?” I have frequently asked on hearing such statements.

“Why should they? My brother, may his soul rest in peace! was a good man. God will look after him without any priest putting in his oar. Yes, it is true that the priests talk of purgatory, but for my part I have never well understood what it is, and I do not care. I say a prayer for my dead on All Souls’ Day, and there is an end of it. There may be purgatory, God knows. But certainly I will not pay money to a priest on that account. I want it more than he does.”

The popular idea of purgatory is very confused, and many declare that they do not believe in it, while betraying in every word that they pray heartily for the souls that they assume to be there.

“Do you think I could believe that my brother or my mother are in purgatory, or thatIshall go there, I, who would give the clothes off my back to the poor?”

You cannot pay a greater compliment to a sceptic of this kind than to say: “By your good deed of this or that kind you have certainly taken a soul (or two souls) out of purgatory to-day.” “Taking souls out of purgatory” is a favourite occupation. It is effected by prayer or by goodworks, not necessarily, so far as the popular belief can be understood, by both practices together.

“There are always seven souls clinging to the cloak of the Virgin—not the Virgin on any altar, but the real Virgin in heaven. They are all climbing up, one above the other, and by prayers or good works you can help the uppermost to get out and make room for the next.”

“And where do they go then?”

“I don’t know. To heaven, I suppose. Purgatory is not a very bad place to be in, it is pretty fair. The wicked people go to theTinieblas[tenebræ]. I do not know what that is, but it is very bad. It is always well to say a prayer for those inTinieblas.”

“But do you suppose that any ofyourfriends are there?”

“No, indeed; but you never know who may be clinging to the robe of the Virgin, and some one belonging to you might just be climbing up. At least, nothing is lost by saying a prayer.”

“If the souls in theTinieblasare allowed to cling to the Virgin, I suppose she also is there?”

“How do I know? Perhaps these are all lies—things of priests [mentiras, cosas de sacerdotes]. What does it matter? What is needfulis to share yourpuchero[5]with any poor man who is hungrier than you, and God knows I do that.”

The custom of attending a Mass for the dead on All Souls’ Day is very general. There are thousands of men and women who never set foot in a church during the rest of the year, yet rise an hour earlier than usual to go to Mass before beginning their work on November 2nd. But the proportion of communicants even on this occasion is very small. I have counted the congregations present at churches attended by the working and the lower middle classes on All Souls’ Day. At one early Mass, out of forty present, four communicated; at another, two out of thirteen; and so on. Communion involves previous confession, and the poor will not confess. Nevertheless, their faces show that this Mass is not a mere empty form to them. They do not, of course, understand a syllable of the words the priest mutters at the altar, but they are absorbed in earnest intercession for the dead whom they are commemorating. Then they go their way to take up the round of work, and probably do not attend another Mass until All Souls’ Day comes round again, whilethe rich celebrate the “Day of the Dead” by paying for and attending frequent Masses, and by taking or sending wreaths of flowers to adorn the graves of relatives in the distant cemetery.

Curiously enough, infant baptism bulks far larger in the religion of the poor than any other office of the Church, and the parents, and especially the mother, will make heavy sacrifices to obtain the fee demanded for the performance of this rite. The ceremony itself has some singular features, for the mother must on no account be present, and even the father remains in the background. But the social function which follows the ceremony in the Church is almost as important an event in the family life as a wedding, and the festivities are kept up far into the night. It may seem fanciful to trace these baptismal customs back to the time of Islam, but it is a fact that the accounts of the birth-feasts (buenas fadas) among the Moslems of Spain offer certain resemblances to those of to-day, while the term used to describe an unbaptized child among the peasantry links us directly to the time when to be a follower of the Prophet was to be an object of contumely. The explanation of the efforts made by the family and friends of a child of poor parents to scrape together the 7.50 pesetas demanded by the priestfor the performance of the baptismal office is: “I could not leave him a Moor” (No podia dejarle Moro).

Burial often takes place without the offices of the Church, for there are few among the working classes who can afford to pay for a funeral Mass, and very many are unaware that they can insist upon the attendance of a priest even without a fee. And since the charge for a marriage in church amounts in many parishes to as much as 25 pesetas—the average weekly wage of the agricultural labourer certainly not exceeding half that sum—it is only to be expected that the civil ceremony, which costs one peseta, or the stolen “blessing” snatched from an unwilling priest by the pair proclaiming themselves man and wife at the close of any Mass, should be more frequently resorted to than the orthodox function. Many couples, moreover, live all their lives as husband and wife, as faithfully as if married by the Church or the mayor, without any religious or legal tie at all.

“The women don’t like it,” said a working man to the writer, “but what is one to do? How can we pay twenty-five pesetas to get married? And the women are only now beginning to understand that the civil marriage is quite as good as the other, if there is any question of moneyto be left to the children. I could show you plenty among my neighbours who live as if married, and no one takes notice that they are not. The priests only say such couples are living in sin because they have not got the marriage fee out of them.”

“It is true that my daughter-in-law could leave my son if she liked,” said an old woman when discussing a quarrel between her hot-tempered son and his hotter-tempered “wife.” “There was no money for the marriage, so I consented to their marrying without going to church. They will never separate: it does not occur to them that it would be possible. It is not as if they were not faithful to each other. My son does not look at other women, and as for my daughter-in-law (mi nuera), he would kill her if she set her eyes on another man, and well she knows it. There is no sin in marriages like that, whatever the priests may say about it. Of course I would have preferred that they should be married in church, and so would my daughter-in-law, but what are you to do when there is no money?”

The use of the termnuerahere is significant. No social stigma attaches to these “wives” who are no wives at all, unless they leave one man to go to another. Then they are branded as“women of bad repute” by their neighbours, and shunned accordingly.

Thus the religion of the people seems to be entirely dissociated from the forms imposed by the Church upon its members, save only that of baptism, which is respected mainly owing to an unconscious traditional antipathy to the unbaptized;—the “Moor” or Moslem, of bygone days—and an almost complete indifference to the rites of marriage and death has sprung up as a consequence of inability to pay the fees demanded for their performance. In the towns perhaps few really care if their dead are buried without a prayer, but in the villages there still remains enough feeling about it to arouse an occasional growl of indignation when a coffin is borne through the streets attended only by the mourners, without the priest, the acolytes, and the censer-bearers, who lend distinction to the last journey of those who possess a few pesetas. As for the children, who are born and die like flies, the poor have become so accustomed to see the little coffins carried by on the shoulders of small elder brothers or school friends, led by the father or uncle of the dead child, that the piteous sight no longer calls forth a comment. It is often only one out of half a dozen of the same family who have gone the sameway, and notwithstanding the heartbroken lamentations of the mother when the breath leaves the little body, every one knows she will soon be consoled. The lot of the poor is too hard for indulgence in sorrow, and it is not uncommon to hear a woman who is approaching childbirth say with the utmost unconcern, “We shall see what happens. Perhaps it will please God to allow the infant to be born dead.” It is not heartlessness or want of love for her offspring, for Spanish parents of both sexes and of every class are very affectionate, and indulge their children to excess. It is simply that every extra mouth to feed means so much less to fill the stomachs of the rest, while the national custom of suckling the child for at least a year, and often for two renders the mother meanwhile weak and unfit for the washing, sewing, or charing which helps out the family resources. That a great effort should be made to baptize the new baby when it comes shows the strength of the feeling in regard to this religious duty, and would make the general indifference to the intervention of the Church in marriage and death doubly remarkable, were it not that the tradition connected with the first ceremony does not extend to the other two.

Among the upper classes more attention seemsto be paid to the religious funeral ceremony than to the actual committal to the grave. When a death takes place in a family of social position, all the friends and relatives are invited to attend the funeral Mass, which takes place in the parish church of the defunct, and it is expected of the guests that they shall accompany the funeral procession on foot as far as the outskirts of the town or village, the cemetery generally being some little distance beyond. There, however, the party disperse; few attend the coffin to the grave itself, and very often it is shuffled into its last resting-place with what to English eyes seems indecent haste and carelessness.

Indeed, whatever be the reason, small respect is shown for the empty shell, once the spirit of life has fled. The rich buy a freehold grave for themselves and their family, but the poor can seldom afford to pay for more than a six years’ concession, if that; and if they do not renew payment the bones of their dead are disinterred and thrown on a heap in theosarioor bone-house, a building with a locked door built for the purpose within the walls of the cemetery.

The mental attitude of the people towards images is intricate and difficult to disentangle. Even persons who have had what ought to be a liberal education in many cases believe inthe miraculous virtues of the images, scapulars, and medals of their particular devotion.

“If you would only wear this medal,” a devout lady said to the writer, “I know you would be converted to the true faith, for it is very miraculous, and has converted many. But you would not wear it, so it is useless to give it to you.”

The speaker was a woman of culture, artistic, and fairly well read for a Spanish lady, yet she was obviously sincere in her belief in the virtues of the little cast-lead medal washed over with silver.

Nor is this singular simplicity confined to women. Every year men of the upper classes (never, I think, of the lower) may be seen during Holy Week walking barefoot before the images carried in procession through the streets; and since their faces are covered and there is nothing to reveal their identity to the world at large, it cannot be supposed that the act of penance is performed for political reasons, as, unfortunately, is too often the case with public demonstrations of adherence to the Church. Moreover, these processions are attended by men of Liberal as well as Conservative opinions. That the particular image plays an important part is shown by the fact that the act of penitence is neverperformed save in connection with its appearance in the streets. The penitent walks barefoot before or after the platform on which is carried the Virgin of his adoration, and although it may be one among fifty representations of the Virgin in his city, it is understood that no other would have the same efficacy in cleansing his particular sin. It must be a genuinely penitential experience for a man used to luxury to tramp barefoot over badly paved streets at a rate of progress which makes the two or three miles of distance occupy twice as many hours of time, and sometimes these aristocratic penitents reach the end of their journey in a state of complete exhaustion. But there does not seem to be any sentiment of shame or disgrace attached to the act, as though there were some great sin to purge, for it is not unusual to hear a young man of orthodox proclivities say to a girl whom he meets in society shortly before Holy Week: “You must look out for me at such a place in the route of the procession; I am going in penitence and I will lift my hood there for you to know it is I.” Yet, frivolous as such penitence may appear, the rich man shares with his poor and ignorant brother a personal feeling for the image of his devotion, which leads him to disregard even danger to life in connection with it, should theneed arise. This is quite dramatically shown in the case of the fires which frequently occur in churches and chapels, where lights burn continually before images adorned with lace and other combustible fabrics. Thesantosare always the first thought of the crowd on these occasions, and even men who scoff aloud at “all those fooleries” in daily life will be seen risking personal injury to save “the Virgin of Hope” or “Our Lady of Miracles” from destruction.

One very puzzling question in connection with this worship of the images is how far even the better educated Spaniards recognise the fact that the different images,e.g., of the Virgin—the Virgin of Sorrows, of Miracles, of the Pillar, of the Kings, and hundreds more—are all representations of one and the same Virgin Mary, and how far they consider them to be distinct individuals. Probably the worshippers themselves are not at all clear on the point: that the prayers offered before these images are in most cases addressed, not to the Person represented, but to the image itself, there seems little doubt. In the case of the populace the images certainly seem to be distinct individuals; indeed, I have been pitied more than once by kindly peasants for having “only one Christ.” “Wehave many: there is the Christ of the Descent from the Cross,and the Christ of the Waters, besides the Christ of the Flagellation in the Parish Church, all very miraculous.”

An intelligent man of middle age, better educated than most of his class, said to me in reference to the affection of the Spanish peasants for their images of the Virgin.

“You would be shocked if you could hear what we say to the Virgin in our houses and when we see her in the streets. But it is not irreverence or disrespect, as you would consider it. It is that we feel towards her as one of the family and talk to her as we should to one of ourselves.”

The return of certain confraternities after carrying their images through the streets in Holy Week presents an extraordinary spectacle. This is especially the case with images belonging to the poorer quarters. In one town the procession of one of these images returns early on the morning of Easter Eve, after moving slowly through the streets, from its church to the distant cathedral and back, all through the night. The bearers of the platform, which is a great weight, the members of the confraternity, the soldiers—for the Army always has a place in these functions—and the band in attendance, are all worn out with fatigue, but when they reach the threshold of the church they revive, the band strikesup an animated march, and the whole crowd assembled to do honour to “Our Lady” seem to go crazy with joy at having brought her safely back to her “home” (á su casa). The richly dressed life-sized image is lifted down from the platform by many eager hands, and swayed to and fro in time to the music almost as if dancing, and the whole atmosphere of the scene is that of a rejoicing welcome to a beloved being who has returned to her family after a long absence fraught with danger. Nothing brings home to the observer the intense reality of the people’s feeling for theirsantoslike such a scene as this. It is, however, seldom witnessed by foreigners or even by the well-to-do of their own nation. It is so much a matter of course in Spain that no one goes out of his way to see it, and I was present on such an occasion only by the merest chance.

A bright, clever woman of the working classes, with a strong sense of humour, told me that she could only pray to a certain Christ. “All the others are only sticks (palos) to me. I can never pass our Lord of Pity without kneeling down, and I know by the look in his eyes if he is going to grant my prayer, but I cannot pray to any of the others.”

“Then when you pray to that image of Our Lord, it really is the Christ to you?”

“No; the Christ is in heaven with His Mother, but I pray to our Lord of Pity, and he always answers me. No other is the same. When I pass Our Lord of the Miracles, for instance, in the Church of San José, I have to say: ‘Excuse me, Lord, but you are only a stick to me, and I cannot pray to you. I do not know why this should be so, Lord, but that is how I find it.’”All this was said quite gravely, and the prayer addressed to “Our Lord of Pity” was recited with sincere piety.

A good old widow of my acquaintance finds St. Anthony of Padua particularly sympathetic, and feels constrained to pray for the soul of her husband at 7 a.m. on All Souls’ Day before one particular St. Anthony in one particular chapel at a quite inconvenient distance from her home. On any other occasion the first St. Anthony of Padua she comes across serves her purpose, and I once saw her stop short and break into a fervent prayer under her breath at the sight of an abominable penny chromo of the saint which suddenly attracted her attention in a shop window.

NEWSPAPER SELLERS IN MADRID.(At the offices of theNuevo Mundo.)[To face page61.

NEWSPAPER SELLERS IN MADRID.

(At the offices of theNuevo Mundo.)

[To face page61.

Thatit is a duty to speak the truth is a proposition practically unrecognised in Spain. This is chiefly, if not entirely, due to the influence of the Church, for, as a great historian says in reference to this question, “when credulity is inculcated as a virtue, falsehood will not long be stigmatised as a vice.”[6]I have heard the peasant’s creed on this point put into a nutshell, thus:

“Very often it is necessary to lie, either for your own or for some one else’s benefit. There is nothing wrong in that. But to tell an unnecessary lie is a sin.”

This sophism, which I have translated word for word, seems altogether too subtle to be instinctive, and we trace in it some echo of the Church’s teaching, instilled into the mind of the uneducated, who have come to adopt it as an axiom of common morality.

The honesty of the Spaniard is, according to our views, relative. It is very rare for a working man or woman to take cash which does not belong to him. But the same people—e.g., servants—who would consider it a disgrace to steal a peseta in coin, will have no hesitation in falsifying their accounts and cheating their employer out of ten or twenty times that amount.

In certain matters there is extreme sensitiveness to any suspicion of dishonesty, but it is not clear that any conscious religious principle underlies this feeling. It seems rather an instinct of self-protection; for when we learn that it is a common practice for employers to examine their servants’ boxes when they leave a situation, even although their good conduct has not been called into question, we see that the friendliest relations between master and man do not necessarily imply confidence in the honour of the latter. The result of assuming evil where there is none is to encourage its genesis. I have heard working-class Spaniards say bitterly: “The rich people believe that we are all thieves, so what is the use of being honest? Yet most of us are honest, even though we go hungry for being so.” Stealing is considered by the poor as a sin, but I am inclined to think that the degree of sinfulness depends in the criminal’s eyes upon the nature of the theft.Thus, while no respectable peasant will steal money or clothes, servants have no hesitation in appropriating sweets and wine, to which, indeed, they think they have a right, very possibly dating from the time when domesticated aliens were fed on the leavings of their masters’ table. It would be difficult to convince them that to drink their employer’s wine without permission is just as immoral as to steal his cash.

The instruction given by the Church on these points is hardly ambiguous, if one may judge by a parish leaflet in my possession. It contains the following questions of conscience resolved under the head of “Consultations.”

“May a servant give to the poor the food which remains over, without asking permission of her master?”“She may do so when her master does not make use of or dispose of it.”“And may she give it to her poor relations?”“Without any doubt; butit is betterto consult her master” (italics mine).

“May a servant give to the poor the food which remains over, without asking permission of her master?”

“She may do so when her master does not make use of or dispose of it.”

“And may she give it to her poor relations?”

“Without any doubt; butit is betterto consult her master” (italics mine).

Such moral teaching as this would quite account for the conduct of a pious cook once in my employ, who fed her entire family for some time at my expense. She, it is perhaps needlessto say, did not “consult her master” on the point. She may have consulted her priest, for all I know, and if she did was probably told that it was a meritorious act to rob a heretic.

To turn to another branch of the subject, it will probably be news to many people that a “Bull of the Crusade” is still largely sold in Spain. This indulgence was first instituted in the days of the Moorish wars, to permit those who were fighting the infidel to keep up their strength by eating meat whenever they could get it. Few or none of the poor purchase this or any other indulgence nowadays, but it is still freely sold to people of means, and the day of its issue is kept as a minor feast day. It now costs the modest sum of pesetas 1.75, having been gradually reduced from pesetas 7.50, and is a source of income to the Government, producing, according to the Budget for 1909, 2,670,000 pesetas, or, say, £106,800. Any one can obtain it, as no questions are asked as to the religion of the purchaser.

An interesting survival is the penitential purple dress, with yellow cord and tassels round the neck and waist, which is worn on occasion by women of all classes in the rural districts, and by the poor in many cities. It is not, generally speaking, a penance imposed by thepriest, but a free-will offering to the Virgin, made on behalf of some one dear to the wearer. A woman will promise to wear thehábitoor penitential robe for a specified number of months, or a year, or sometimes even for life, if the Virgin will intercede for her invalid husband; or a girl will undertake to wear nothing else until the dress is torn or worn past repair, when the sacrifice is completed. A girl of seventeen explained that she had volunteered to assume thehábitoshe was wearing because her only sister was very ill.

“But my sister got better and persuaded me to put it out of my head. Then she suddenly became very ill again; all one night she seemed to be dying, so I knew I must keep my promise to the Virgin, and after that I would not let any of them put it out of my head.”

The Spaniards have two distinct ways of crossing themselves. One, described by the verbsantiguar, consists in making the sign of the cross with the first and middle finger from the forehead to the breast and from the left to the right shoulder, invoking the Trinity. The other, calledsignar, consists in making, with the thumb and first finger crossed, or with the thumb alone, the sign of the cross on the forehead, mouth, and breast, praying God by the sign of our Redemption to deliver us from our enemies. In someparts a third method is often employed, which peasants will tell you “is from the times of the Moors.” In this the nose is touched as well as the forehead and mouth, with the thumb-nail, which is kissed at the end. The two forms are usually combined (persignarse), and the invocation is divided as follows:

Bythe sign of the HolyCrossfrom our(forehead) (nose) (L. cheek) (R. cheek) (nose) (chin)enemiesdeliver usLord.(L. cheek) (R. cheek)(L. shoulder)(R. shoulder)In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.(breast)(L. shoulder)(R. shoulder)Amen.(thumb kissed).

A good Catholic, say the peasants, mustpersignarsethirty-three times in the course of the Mass, “and that would be very well if we understood the language and knew why we were doing it.”

In the south people always take up a handful of water and cross themselves before bathing in the sea or in a river, some even before taking an ordinary bath at home. It will be remembered that the Moslem, when preparing for prayer, washes his nose, mouth, and ears, as well as his hands and feet, and possibly this elaborate mode of making the sign of the cross may be a survival of the Moslem ceremonial of purification, especially when combined with the water. One distinctly Islamic tradition is seen in the custom of touching anything unclean, if it has to be touched, with the left hand, the right being put behind the back. A woman of Andalusia when washing the dead for burial always begins operations with the left hand, just as the Moslem does, and will not use the right until it becomes necessary. Thus it is not impossible that the curious sign of the cross described, like the traditional reason for insistence on infant baptism, even when the other offices of the Church are viewed with indifference, may be connected more or less closely, as the peasants say, with Mohammedan practices.

In the south and west the peasants never put on clean underlinen without thepersignar, and previous to the crossing they recite the following prayer:

“Blessed and washed be the most holy Sacrament of the Altar, pure and clean, of the always Virgin Mary, Our Lady, conceived without spot of original sin from the first instant of her most pure human nature. Amen.”

No matter how great their aversion from the Confessional and indifference to the offices of the Church, the most careless never omit this invocation when they change their underclothes.

Another prayer, which is universal, reminds one of the—

“Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,Bless the bed that I lie on”

of our own peasantry in bygone days. It runs thus:

“Con Dios me acuesto,Con Dios me levanto,Con la Virgen Maria,Y el Espíritu Santo.”

(“With God I lie down, with God I arise, with the VirginMary, and the Holy Ghost.”)

As will be observed, the Virgin here takes the place of Christ in the Trinity. I have inquired of a number of people how the verse goes, and find it does not vary. They say that evil would befall them if they failed to recite the lines every morning and night.

The Radicals, Republicans, and Socialists, who are all branded alike as atheists by the Ultramontanes, understand the people’s faith better than their priests do. The cry of the Church is that the nation is indifferent to all things holy. But men like Melquiades Alvarez, the novelist Galdos, Sol y Ortega, and many other leaders of the Lefts, continually explain that the national quarrel is only with the priests and the Religious Orders, not with the Church as an institution,for they recognise and proclaim that religion is an essential part of Spanish national life.

There is, indeed, no room for doubt that the mass of the people love God, Christ, the Virgin, and the saints with a warmth and sincerity rare in these materialistic days. His God is a living God to the peasant of Spain, his Virgin a mother always prepared to protect him, her image and those of the saints the most beautiful things in the world to his unsophisticated eyes. This may seem to the enfranchised intellect a degrading superstition. But the fact remains that the religion of the working classes of Spain in the mass does what many a more advanced creed cannot do, for it carries conviction and comfort to its possessors.

Somethingmust now be said about the way in which the people refer to the confessional, and this I will endeavour to do in their own words, premising that I offer no opinion as to the truth or falsehood of their stories, most of which have been told me by women. The abuse of the confessional is such a heinous sin that Catholics of other nations will not believe what is currently said as to its prevalence in Spain; they hold that such things are impossible, and it is to be hoped, for the sake of the Church, that prejudice distorts the popular view, and that what the working classes in town and country assert to be of frequent occurrence does not in fact take place. But whatever be the actual truth, it is impossible to doubt that the people are convinced that the confessional is habitually abused, and this conviction—which nothing can shake—constitutes a peril which must ultimately endanger the very existence of the Church in this country.

When first I was told, several years ago, that the secrets of the confessional were betrayed, as a matter of course, in the interests of the rich as against the poor, I flatly said that I did not believe it. The thing was unthinkable to one brought up in the belief that such secrets were inviolate. I was given actual instances of domestic servants sent to confession “so that the mistress might learn from the priest what the maid had been doing wrong.” As my informant was a young foreigner, born and bred a Catholic, in the employment of a family of title, and with a somewhat limited knowledge of Spanish, I found it easier to assume that he had misunderstood what was said in his presence than to believe that he had accurately repeated his employer’s words, although he declared that the above remark had been made in his hearing on several occasions. It should be said that he was in a house noted for its clerical leanings.

A similar assertion was made to a member of my family by the daughter of a professional man, better educated than most of her class, and touched with the superficial scepticism prevalent among clever young Spaniards, whose hatred of the priests and the Religious Orders tends to alienate them altogether from the religion in which they were brought up. In this instanceI attributed the accusation to prejudice, and attached no more importance to it than to the young man’s story. And as it is not a matter that can be discussed with practising Catholics, the two mentioned, and one other, who confirmed their statements, are the only educated persons whose opinions I can quote.

But among the poor this offence is spoken of freely, and they accuse the priests, not only of betraying their trust by repeating what is told them under the seal of the confessional, but also of using the opportunities it offers to ruin young and foolish women who obey the Church’s order to confess with frequency. Indeed, many working men have gravely assured me that such is their distrust of the priests that nothing would induce them to allow their women-folk to go to confession on any pretence whatever.

The following are some among many stories of this kind, which I give as they were told me, only omitting the expressions of anger with which some of them were punctuated:

“I was laundress in a priest’s house for several years. His sister lived with him, and she really was his sister, for a wonder; not the sort they generally call their ‘sisters.’ They also kept a young girl to help in the house, for the priestwas well off. One day my fellow-servant committed a sin, for the devil tempted her to steal a ring belonging to the Señora. But she could not rest happy with it, and at last she went to a priest and confessed that she had stolen it, and asked what she should do. He told her to put it back, and gave her a penance. So she put it back. And the priest went and told her mistress, and she sent the girl to prison.”

“There are several maidservants in the house of Doña Dolores, and one of them goes to confession frequently. The others all have to be very careful what they say before her, for the priest repeats it all to Doña Dolores, and then it is ‘into the street’ with those who have done anything silly or wrong in the kitchen or elsewhere.”

A friend of mine—a foreigner—was begged by her servants not to engage an attractive-looking housemaid from one of the convent training schools who applied for a situation. “She will repeat everything that is done in the house to her priest, and he will make unpleasantness for you and us too. That is done every day here. We who have not had the misfortune to be brought up in a convent never, if we can help it,take a situation where a convent-trained girl lives.”

“Juan Cabrito was hung through the priest telling the authorities that he had confessed that he was a murderer. The priest went straight to the Governor and told him everything Cabrito had said. He well deserved hanging, and no one thought anything of the priest betraying his confession. We are quite used to that in Spain.”

“I often used to be called in to help to wait in the evening in the house of a priest who had atertuliafor priests every week. His niece kept house for him. I have often heard the priests laughing and joking about the confessions of the nuns. They would imitate their voices, speaking high up and whining: ‘Father, I lost my temper and spoke harshly to the dog or the cat to-day.’ ‘How tedious they are with their dogs and their cats and their tempers!’ the priest who confessed the nuns would say, and then they all laughed together, very much amused. But it was wrong, for the priest is forbidden to repeat a confession. I am not very fond of the nuns myself, but I did not like to hear those coarse men [nombres brutos] making jokes about their penitence.”“It is many years since I have confessed. When I went to confess before my wedding the priest asked me a question which no man should put to a decent woman, so I never went again.”

“It is many years since I have confessed. When I went to confess before my wedding the priest asked me a question which no man should put to a decent woman, so I never went again.”

Back to Index Next