CORPUS CHRISTI.
This is the only day in the year when the consecrated Host is exposed, about the streets, to the gaze of the adoring multitude. The triumphal character of the procession which issues forth from the principal church of every town of note in the kingdom, and a certain dash of bitter and threatening zeal which still lies disguised under the ardent and boundless devotion displayed on this festival, shew but too clearly the spirit of defiance which suggested it in the heat of the controversies upon the real presence. It is within my memory that the taste for dignity and decorum which this Metropolitan Church has ever evinced in the performance of religious worship, put an end to the boisterous and unbecoming appendages which an inveterate custom had annexed to this pageant.
At a short distance in front of the procession appeared a group of seven gigantic figures, male and female, whose dresses, contrived by the most skilful tailors and milliners of the town, regulated the fashion at Seville for the ensuing season. A strong man being concealed under each of the giants and giantesses, the gaping multitude were amused at certain intervals with a very clumsy dance, performed by the figures, to the sound of the pipe and tabor. Next to the Brobdignag dancers, and taking precedence of all, there followed, on a moveable stage, the figure of a Hydra encircling a castle, from which, to the great delight of all the children of Seville, a puppet not unlike Punch, dressed up in a scarlet jacket trimmed with morrice-bells, used often to start up; and having performed a kind of wild dance, vanished again from view into the body of the monster. The whole of this compound figure bore the name of Tarasca, a word of which I do not know either the meaning or derivation. That these figures were allegorical no one can doubt who has any knowledge of the pageants of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It would be difficult, however, without the help of an obscure tradition, to guess that the giants in perriwigs and swords, and their fair partners in caps and petticoats, were emblems of the seven deadly sins. The Hydra, it should seem, represented Heresy, guarding the castle of Schism, where Folly, symbolized by the strange figure in scarlet, displayed her supreme command. This band of monsters was supposed to be flying in confusion before the triumphant sacrament.
Mixed with the body of the procession, there appeared three sets of dancers; the Valencianos, or natives of the kingdom of Valencia, who, in their national costume of loose waistcoats, puffed linen sleeves, bound at the wrists and elbows with ribbons of various colours, and broad white trowsers reaching only to the knees, performed a lively dance, mingling their steps with feats of surprising agility: after these followed the sword-dancers in the old martial fashion of the country: and last of all, the performers of an antiquated Spanish dance—I believe the Chacona, dressed in the national garb of the sixteenth century.
A dance of the last-mentioned description, and in a similar costume, is still performed before the high altar in the presence of the chapter, at the conclusion of the service on this day and the following se’nnight. The dancers are boys of between ten and fourteen, who, under the name of Seizes,[41] are maintained at the college which the Cathedral supports for the education of the acolytes, or inferior ministers. These boys, accompanied by a full orchestra, sing a lyric composition in Spanish, which, like the Greek chorusses, consists of two or three systems of metres, to which the dancers move solemnly, going through a variety of figures in their natural step, till, ranged at the conclusion of the song, in two lines facing each other as at the outset, they end with a gentle caper, rattling the castanets, which hitherto lay silent and concealed in their hands. That this grotesque performance should be allowed to continue, is, I believe, owing to the pride which this chapter take in the privilege, granted by the Pope to the dancers, of wearing their hats within view of the consecrated host—a liberty which the King himself cannot take, and which, if I am not misled by report, no one besides can boast of, except the Dukes of Altamira, who, upon certain occasions, clap on their hat, at the elevation of the host, and draw the sword, as if shewing their readiness to give a conclusive answer to any argument against transubstantiation.
The Corpus Christi procession begins to move out of the cathedral exactly at nine in the morning. It consists in the first place of the forty communities of friars who have convents in this town. They follow one another in two lines, according to the established order of precedence. The strangeness and variety of their dresses, no less than their collective numbers, would greatly strike any one but a Spaniard, to whom such objects are perfectly familiar.—Next appears the long train of relics belonging to the Cathedral, placed each by itself on a small stage moved by one or more men concealed under the rich drapery which hangs on its sides to the ground. Vases of gold and silver, of different shapes and sizes, contain the various portions of the inestimable treasure whereof the following is an accurate catalogue:
A tooth of Saint Christopher.
An agate cup used at Mass by Pope Saint Clement, the immediate successor of Saint Peter.
An arm of Saint Bartholomew.
A head of one of eleven thousand virgins.
Part of Saint Peter’s body.
Ditto of Saint Lawrence.
Ditto of Saint Blaise.
The bones of the Saints Servandus and Germanus.
Ditto of Saint Florentius.
The Alphonsine tables, left to the Cathedral by King Alphonso the Wise, containing three hundred relics.
A silver bust of Saint Leander, with his bones.
A thorn from our Saviour’s crown.
A fragment of the true cross.
Last of all appears the body of prebendaries and canons, attended by their inferior ministers. Such, however, is the length of the procession, and the slow and solemn pace at which it proceeds, that, without a break in the lines, it takes a whole hour to leave the church. The streets, besides being hung up with more taste than for the processions of the Passion Week, are shaded all the way with a thick awning, and the pavement is strewed with rushes. An article of the military code of Spain obliges whatever troops are quartered in a town where this procession takes place, to follow it under arms; and if sufficient in number, to line the streets through which it is to pass.
Under all these circumstances, the first appearance of the host in the streets is exceedingly imposing. Encircled by jewels of the greatest brilliancy, surrounded by lighted tapers and enthroned on the massive, yet elegant temple of silver already mentioned when describing the Monument,[42] no sooner has it moved to the door of the church than the bells announce its presence with a deafening sound, the bands of military music mix their animating notes with the solemn hymns of the singers, clouds of incense rise before the moving shrine, and the ear is thrilled by the loud voice of command, and the clash of the arms which the kneeling soldiers strike down to the ground. When the concealed bearers of the shrine[43] present it at the top of the long street where the route commences, the multitudes which crowd both the pavement and windows, fall prostrate in profound adoration, without venturing to rise up till the object of their awe is out of sight. Flowers are often scattered from the windows, and the most beautiful nosegays adorn the platform of the moveable stage.
Close behind the host follows the archbishop, surrounded by his ecclesiastical retinue. One of his chaplains carries a large double cross of silver, indicative of metropolitan dignity. The train of the purple mantle is supported by another clergyman. These, like the rest of the prelate’s attendants and pages, are young men of family, who disdain not this kind of service, in the expectation of high church preferment. But what gives all this state the most unexpected finish is an inferior minister in his surplice bearing a circular fan of richly embroidered silk about two feet in diameter, and attached to a silver rod six feet in length. At a convenient distance from the archbishop this fan is constantly waved, whenever during the summer months he attends the cathedral service, thus relieving him from the oppressive effects of his robes under the burning sun of Andalusia. This custom is, I believe, peculiar to Seville.