His Mosque Had Displaced The
Early Christian Basilica Of San Vicente, Which The Still Earlier Temple
To Venus Salambo Had Become.
Then, after the mosque was rebuilt, the
good San Fernando in his turn equipped it with a Gothic choir
And
chapels and turned it into the cathedral, which was worn out with pious
uses when the present edifice was founded, in their _folie des
grandeurs,_ by those glorious madmen in the first year of the fifteenth
century.
IV
Little of this learning troubled me in my visits to the cathedral, or
even the fact that, next to St. Peter's, it was the largest church in
the world. It was sufficient to itself by mere force of architectural
presence, without the help of incidents or measurements. It was a city
in itself, with a community of priests and sacristans dwelling in it,
and a floating population of sightseers and worshipers always passing
through it. The first morning we had submitted to make the round of the
chapels, patiently paying to have each of them unlocked and wearily
wondering at their wonders, but only sympathizing really with the stern
cleric who showed the ceremonial vestments and jewels of the cathedral,
and whose bitter face expressed, or seemed to express, abhorrence of our
whole trivial tourist tribe. After that morning we took our curiosity
into our own keeping and looked at nothing that did not interest us, and
we were interested most in those fellow-beings who kept coming and going
all day long.
Chiefly, of course, they were women. In Catholic countries women have
either more sins to be forgiven than the men, or else they are sorrier
for them; and here, whether there was service or not, they were dropped
everywhere in veiled and motionless prayer. In Seville the law of the
mantilla is rigorously enforced. If a woman drives, she may wear a hat;
but if she walks, she must wear a mantilla under pain of being pointed
at by the finger of scorn. If she is a young girl she may wear colors
with it (a cheerful blue seems the favorite), but by far the greater
number came to the cathedral in complete black. Those somber figures
which clustered before chapel, or singly dotted the pavement everywhere,
flitted in and out like shadows in the perpetual twilight. For far the
greater number, their coming to the church was almost their sole escape
into the world. They sometimes met friends, and after a moment, or an
hour, of prayer they could cheer their hearts with neighborly gossip.
But for the greater part they appeared and disappeared silently and
swiftly, and left the spectator to helpless conjecture of their history.
Many of them would have first met their husbands in the cathedral when
they prayed, or when they began to look around to see who was looking at
them. It might have been their trysting-place, safeguarding them in
their lovers' meetings, and after marriage it had become their social
world, when their husbands left them for the clubs or the cafes.
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