If There Are Any Doubters, Let Them Go And See
The Chapel, As I Did.
When the allied armies of the Christian kings of
Spain were seeking for a passage through the hills to the Plains of
Tolosa, a shepherd appeared and led them straight to victory and endless
fame.
After the battle, which broke the Moorish power forever in Central
Spain, instead of looking for the shepherd and paying him handsomely for
his timely scout-service, they found it more pious and economical to say
it was San Isidro in person who had kindly made himself flesh for this
occasion. By the great altar in the Cathedral of Toledo stand side by
side the statues of Alonso VIIL, the Christian commander, and San Isidro
brazenly swelling in the shepherd garb of that unknown guide who led
Alonso and his chivalry through the tangled defiles of the Sierra
Morena.
His fete is the Derby Day of Madrid. The whole town goes out to his
Hermitage on the further banks of the Manzanares, and spends a day or
two of the soft spring weather in noisy frolic. The little church stands
on a bare brown hill, and all about it is an improvised village
consisting half of restaurants and the other half of toyshops. The
principal traffic is in a pretty sort of glass whistle which forms the
stem of an artificial rose, worn in the button-hole in the intervals of
tooting, and little earthen pig-bells, whose ringing scares away the
lightning. There is but one duty of the day to flavor all its pleasures.
The faithful must go into the oratory, pay a penny, and kiss a
glass-covered relic of the saint which the attendant ecclesiastic holds
in his hand. The bells are rung violently until the church is full; then
the doors are shut and the kissing begins. They are very expeditious
about it. The worshippers drop on their knees by platoons before the
railing. The long-robed relic-keeper puts the precious trinket rapidly
to their lips; an acolyte follows with a saucer for the cash. The glass
grows humid with many breaths. The priest wipes it with a dirty napkin
from time to time. The multitude advances, kisses, pays, and retires,
till all have their blessing; then the doors are opened and they all
pass out, - the bells ringing furiously for another detachment. The
pleasures of the day are like those of all fairs and public merrymaking.
Working-people come to be idle, and idle people come to have something
to do. There is much eating and little drinking. The milk-stalls are
busier than the wine-shops. The people are gay and jolly, but very
decent and clean and orderly. To the east of the Hermitage, over and
beyond the green cool valley, the city rises on its rocky hills, its
spires shining in the cloudless blue. Below on the emerald meadows there
are the tents and wagons of those who have come from a distance to the
Romeria. The sound of guitars and the drone of peasant songs come up the
hill, and groups of men are leaping in the wild barbaric dances of
Iberia. The scene is of another day and time. The Celt is here, lord of
the land. You can see these same faces at Donnybrook Fair. These
large-mouthed, short-nosed, rosy-cheeked peasant-girls are called
Dolores and Catalina, but they might be called Bridget and Kathleen.
These strapping fellows, with long simian upper lips, with brown
leggings and patched, mud-colored overcoats, who are leaping and
swinging their cudgels in that Pyrrhic round are as good Tipperary boys
as ever mobbed an agent or pounded, twenty to one, a landlord to death.
The same unquestioning, fervent faith, the same superficial good-nature,
the same facility to be amused, and at bottom the same cowardly and
cruel blood-thirst. What is this mysterious law of race which is
stronger than time, or varying climates, or changing institutions? Which
is cause, and which is effect, race or religion?
The great Church holiday of the year is Corpus Christi. On this day the
Host is carried in solemn procession through the principal streets,
attended by the high officers of state, several battalions of each arm
of the service in fresh bright uniforms, and a vast array of
ecclesiastics in the most gorgeous stoles and chasubles their vestiary
contains. The windows along the line of march are gayly decked with
flags and tapestry. Work is absolutely suspended, and the entire
population dons its holiday garb. The Puerta del Sol - at this season
blazing with relentless light - is crowded with patient Madrilenos in
their best clothes, the brown-cheeked maidens with flowing silks as in a
ball-room, and with no protection against the ardent sky but the
fluttering fan they hold in their ungloved hands. As everything is
behind time in this easy-going land, there are two or three hours of
broiling gossip on the glowing pavement before the Sacred Presence is
announced by the ringing of silver bells. As the superb structure of
filigree gold goes by, a movement of reverent worship vibrates through
the crowd. Forgetful of silks and broadcloth and gossip, they fall on
their knees in one party-colored mass, and, bowing their heads and
beating their breasts, they mutter their mechanical prayers. There are
thinking men who say these shows are necessary; that the Latin mind must
see with bodily eyes the thing it worships, or the worship will fade
away from its heart. If there were no cathedrals and masses, they say,
there would be no religion; if there were no king, there would be no
law. But we should not accept too hurriedly this ethnological theory of
necessity, which would reject all principles of progress and positive
good, and condemn half the human race to perpetual childhood. There was
a time when we Anglo-Saxons built cathedrals and worshipped the king.
Look at Salisbury and Lincoln and Ely; read the history of the growth of
parliaments.
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