At last evensong is over and their moment of moments comes. Preceded by the Pertiguero with his silver wand of office, in tie-wig, wide falling collar, and sixteenth-century robe of black serge, the Chapter marches in solemn procession down the railed gangway from the choir to the high altar, the Cardinal-Archbishop in his magnificent scarlet robe with a Seis at each side bringing up the rear. The dignitaries all kneel down beside broad wide-armed sixteenth-century chairs placed to the right at the foot of the altar steps, and remain on their knees throughout the dance; the orchestra strikes up and the Hymn of the Seises begins. It is never accompanied by the organ, but always by a string band composed of laymen, placed opposite the seats of the dignitaries, to the left of the altar steps. And this lay band suggests that the dance was initiated before organs were used in the primitive Spanish Church.
There is nothing Oriental either in the hymn or in the music of the dance which follows it; all is sweet, tender, and reverent as a religious ceremony performed by children in a church should be. But at the close of each couplet we are suddenly reminded of the East by the rattle of castanets held all this time hidden in the palms of the boys’ hands, and now played by them with a mastery of crescendo and diminuendo, that shows how the castanets may be made instruments of music, not merely of rhythmical noise. Here strikes the note of tradition once again, for the castanets are Oriental and must have been introduced into the Cathedral service, like the dance itself, by the Arabicised Christians of Seville under Islam.
The hymn has two verses and the dance is gone through twice; then the ten little boys run lightly up the steps, five on either side of the altar, make their reverence to the Elements shut away from sight in the golden pyx above the image of “Mary most pure”—a fine sculpture in wood by Martinez Montañes—and disappear into the sacristy at the back of that wealth of silver and brocade provided by the long-forgotten Don Gonzalo. But before the music of the Benediction begins half the congregation seated in the transept rise and hastily make their way to the Door of the Poles under the Giralda tower, for that is the way the Cardinal goes out to his palace across the square, and the pious Sevillians think an especial blessing will be their portion if they can intercept his passage and kiss his beautiful amethyst ring as he leaves the Cathedral after the Dance of the Seises in the Octave of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady.
The next time the boys dance is during the three days of Carnival, and if we ask why this very secular occasion be chosen, the archives of the Chapter give us the explanation.
In 1682 there died in Seville one Don Francisco de Contreras de Chaves, Knight of the Order of Santiago, Gentleman of the King, Familiar of the Holy Order of the Inquisition, and one of the Veintecuatros (twenty-four), an order of nobility granted to Seville and Seville alone, in the thirteenth century. This distinguished individual was distressed at the vain and worldly amusements indulged in during the Carnestolendas (the Latin carnis tollendus), which are the three days in which meat is eaten in preparation for the forty of abstinence beginning with Ash Wednesday; and he fondly hoped that by introducing the Dance of the Seises into the Cathedral services of those three days, the tide of profane entertainment might be stemmed. So he willed that after his wife’s death all his “large fortune” should be bestowed on “the triduum of Carnestolendas” in order that these days should be celebrated in the Cathedral with as much pomp and magnificence as the Conception and Corpus Christi.
When his estate came to be cleared up it was found that thirteen thousand pesos escudos de plata (about £1260) were available for the purpose, and in testimony of gratitude to their generous benefactor the Chapter ordered all the minor clergy and dependants of “the holy House” to attend his funeral, half of them bearing yellow candles and half white, while the bier was covered with the pall used at interments of prebendaries. Further, a requiem Mass was celebrated in the church of San Francisco (now the Town Hall) where the defunct Inquisitor was buried, and the Chapter attended this in copes and birettas, and the Cathedral musicians sang the Mass, which was recited by three dignitaries, the sermon being preached by a fourth.
“In such wise,” says a contemporary writer, “the Chapter did honour to Don Francisco de Contreras for having left all his fortune to improve the worship of God, from whom he will have received his reward.”
Don Francisco died the same year as Murillo, but we are not told that the Chapter bestowed any such funeral honours upon him. Presumably they thought that having paid for his pictures they had done their duty by the artist, although he had devoted his life to the service of religion, painted thirty-two pictures of the Conception, and turned his back upon worldly honours and rewards lest he should offend the Holy Office by producing works other than religious.
The dresses provided for the Seises by the bequest of Don Francisco are of the same style and materials as those worn for the Conception, but where the latter are blue the Carnival garb is red, and these red and white costumes are worn also at Corpus Christi, which takes place early in June. There is, however, a notable difference between this ceremony and the two former ones, for whereas they take place within the Cathedral, that procession of Corpus goes out with the Host into the streets, passes the Town Hall where all the rank and fashion of the town assemble to receive it, on stands erected for the occasion, and makes a long round through the heart of the oldest part of Seville before returning with its sacred burden to the Mother Church.
The feast of Corpus Christi, although officially instituted in the thirteenth century, and probably a survival of one of those pagan ceremonies which the early Fathers, instead of quarrelling over, so wisely adapted to Christian worship, was not developed in its full splendour until 1613, and then the benefactor who endowed it was none other than that interesting historical character, Don Mateo Vazquez de Leca, Archdeacon of Seville, known in poetry and romance as “Don Juan.”