“But we have one word more yet to say on the subject of these wounds, to convince our readers of the ridiculous farce that was enacted at the convent. The medical men were not singular in denying their supernatural origin. The saint herself, when she found she was in the power of justice, and out of the hands of nuns and friars, made the following most curious and decisive statement. Our readers will imagine that they are perusing a romance of the middle ages.
“‘On the 7th of February, the further declaration of Sister Patrocinio was taken, who, after having made an avowal of being truly penitent, and that she cast herself upon the mercy of her Majesty the Queen Protectress, declared that from the time of her taking the veil, down to the 7th July when the convents were suppressed, her confessor was friar Benito Carrera.—That she afterwards had for confessor the vicar of the convent; for although friar Joseph de la Cruz wished to be her confessor, and spoke to her once or twice to that effect, she did not consent, because from the first she knew that he was not of very strong understanding, for he had proposed to her to leave the convent, in order to go to Rome, and ask permission to found and establish a convent, with many other extravagant propositions; showing her at the same time a very rare print, which contained many allegorical devices.—That no doubt her confessor, friar Benito Carrera, knew what were the ideas of friar Joseph de la Cruz; and he had told the abbess that she ought not to permit declarant to go to confess to him; and for that reason she did not see him again.—That one of the nuns being taken ill during her (declarant’s) noviciate, Father Alcaraz, a capuchin of the padro, came to attend her; and then she saw him, and had a conversation with him upon different matters.—That a few days afterwards, she was called into the visitor’s parlour, and found that said father Alcaraz was there alone; that he addressed her in a solemn tone, as if he was preaching, and said that St Paul was very urgent on the subject of penance; [200] and then he took out a little purse which he carried in his hood, and told her that it contained a small relic that would produce a wound if applied to any part of the body; that this wound ought to be kept open, so as to occasion suffering and mortification, that so, by offering to God our pain by way of penance, we might obtain pardon for sins already committed or future.—That after this he gave her a most solemn injunction, commanding her to apply the relic to the palms and the back of her hands, to the soles of her feet, to the left side, and all round her head in the manner of a crown; and charged her most strictly upon her obedience, and upon peril of the most terrible punishments in the next world, not to disclose to anybody how the wounds had been caused; and if she was asked, she must say that she had found them upon her supernaturally.—That being terrified by the threats of eternal punishment and the divine anger, she obeyed his command, and never disclosed the matter either to the abbess or to her confessor, or to any other person whatever.—That it was believed by the community in all good faith, that it was a miracle; that she never attempted to apply ordinary medicines for the healing of the wounds, which, though they closed apparently, broke out again, always being attended with pain, until she left the convent and had them cured.”
CONCLUSION.
The picture which we have sketched of the religious state of Spain, explains all the history, all the peculiarities, and all the vicissitudes of that great nation, from its conversion to Christianity down to our own times. It was the religious principle which inspired Spaniards in all the great actions by which their name has been immortalised during their sanguinary struggles of six centuries against the Saracenic power; but in that magnificent epoch of their national existence, there were many circumstances which concurred in drawing forth the great failings of the Roman Catholicism of the present day. In the first place, all Christendom was Catholic, but that creed was not stained with the abuses and errors which, many ages afterwards, provoked the grand work of reformation. In the second place, society in general was wanting in those energetic attractions which led, in our age, to the cultivation of the arts and of the sciences, to the exercise of lucrative professions, and to speculations in credit, commerce, and industry. Finally, the time of the popes’ aggrandizement had not yet arrived; as yet, Rome had not begun to exercise over the Western nations that pernicious influence which afterwards degraded her religious doctrine, nor that proud preponderance which
threw back kings and governments to the class of humble subjects of the Vatican. In Spain, at least, religion was not so material nor so dramatic as it became in subsequent ages; the mendicant orders, which contributed so much in later epochs to the corruption of religious doctrine, had not been founded, nor had the multitude of new devotions, which afterwards complicated the simplicity of worship and converted it into a code of forms and ceremonies, been invented.
Before the conquest of the Moors, as has already been observed in the body of this work, Spaniards were truly Catholics, and nothing more than Catholics. At that period, they had no other knowledge than that acquired from the study of Christian truth; excepting the military, there was no profession but that of the ecclesiastic; the arts, still rude, and almost denuded of invention and of ideality, were limited in their application to religious objects; and even architecture itself was not ostentatious of its grandeur and its beauties, nor were its plans and resources developed in great dimensions, except in the erection of those proud cathedrals, which, like those of Burgos, Seville, Palma, and Toledo, still excite the admiration of foreigners, and continue to be objects of study to the artist. [202]
Animated by so vigorous a principle of action, the only one which was capable of exciting the enthusiasm of their energetic but simple minds, Spaniards became the admiration of the world for their prowess, for the elevation of their sentiments, for their conquests in the East, where the Arragonese humilitated even the throne of the Cæsars, and, above all, for the innumerable series of exploits and sublime feats of valour and patriotism with which they succeeded in expelling from Europe the Saracenic dominion, then about to extend itself from the shores of the Garonne to those of the Tiber.
What a difference do we perceive between the Spaniard of those times and the abject and degraded vassal of the princes of the Austrian dynasty! Religious sentiment was not less energetic, it was not less profound, in the second epoch than in the first; but it was a sentiment perverted by superstition, envenomed by fanaticism, and which, far from associating itself, as before, with the propensity to illustrious deeds and grand enterprises, consecrated itself exclusively, moved by the former, to the most puerile rites and ridiculous exterior practices, and, influenced by the latter,
to the most abominable excesses of persecution and intolerance. Thus it is, that from the time of Philip II. down to that of Charles II., the history of Spain presents nothing but an uninterrupted series of blunders in the government, of intrigues and disorders in the court, and of crosses and misfortunes in the national affairs. In a word, it sets before us a treasury without credit and without money, an army without discipline and without organization, tribunals sold to power:—and everywhere we perceive recklessness, ignorance, poverty, and immorality, which are the inseparable accompaniments of mal-administration.
It was not possible that a nation forming part of the great European family could long continue in such a condition. At the present time we distinctly discern that the progress of civilization keeps pace with the perfection of religious ideas. The most cultivated nations, the richest and most nourishing, are those which have most purified their creeds,—those which have put farthest from them the material element introduced to worship by superstition and fanaticism,—those who come nearest to the spirit and letter of the gospel in the relations of man with the Divinity. Spaniards have begun to penetrate these truths; they have compared their actual condition with that of other nations which have embraced the doctrines of the Reformation, and, above all, have felt that great void left in their religious and moral condition by the want of true Christianity, of the pure dogma taught by its Founder, and of the truth to be discovered only in those inspired pages containing the treasures of revelation.
This exchange of ideas is one of the most striking