He is already very stout although hardly past middle life, but his unwieldy figure is counterbalanced by a strong face with a powerful jaw and friendly humorous grey eyes, and he looks magnificent in his white fur hood and robe of scarlet silk, with a train four yards long, borne behind him by two of the Seises, whose history has already been related. He has only been here four years, and came after a long interregnum due to two sudden deaths in the episcopate, but the way in which he has stirred up the diocese is surprising. The Cathedral music, from being the worst, now ranks among the best in Spain, the services begin punctually instead of at any hour that happened to be convenient, and above all, he has put a stop to the illicit sale by parish priests, monks, and nuns of objects of artistic value belonging to their churches. Formerly a brisk trade was carried on in such, but our energetic Cardinal has had every picture, carving, and church ornament in his diocese inventoried, and now not so much as a painted tile can be touched without a licence from the palace.
Yet he is a kindly man, this vigorous prelate. I once followed in his train at a charitable affair in which I had the privilege of presenting to him some twenty small children of the working class whom I had put into fancy dress, to their and my own great enjoyment. And for every child the Cardinal, as he gave them his ring to kiss, had a smile and a kind and a witty remark on their costume or the historical character it represented; so that all the little faces beamed behind him as he made his progress round the hall where they stood to attention. Kissing episcopal rings is hardly in my line, but Cardinal Almaraz’s kindness to the children always makes me remember my share in that ceremony with pleasure.
Next in gorgeousness of vestment to the Cardinal comes the Dean, a most courteous gentleman not much over forty, and blessed, like his Bishop, with a strong sense of humour. On one memorable Palm Sunday, as the procession passed the Columbus monument, the Dean caught sight of me standing there with a tall English girl, whose broken Castilian he had been helping out at a dinner party at our house a few weeks before, and his eyes began to twinkle and his fingers instinctively went up to give us an Andalucian salute. He recovered his gravity in an instant, and with great presence of mind converted his salute into a motion which the public would take for a blessing. But the deed had been done. When next we met outside the Cathedral we thanked him for his “blessing,” and now he can never look at us in the crowd during a procession without a twinkle in his eyes and a visible compression of his lips, lest he should indecorously smile at us again.
The attitude of a Spanish congregation during the Mass is remarkably reverent compared with the behaviour in many foreign Cathedrals: one really finds here an atmosphere of sincere devotion. But the processions are regarded from a different standpoint. The dignitaries there are in the midst of the crowd, and the crowd, although perfectly respectful, does its best to win a sign of recognition from its friends and acquaintances in the long lines of clergy, choir-men, and monocillos (little monkeys), as the singing-boys are familiarly called.
The door of San Miguel—opposite to the College, or cloister of that name, in which dwelt all the Mozarabic priests who still survived when San Fernando entered Seville—is thrown wide open as the procession approaches, and a wonderful shimmering effect of light and shade is produced when the waving palms borne by the clergy move out from the dimness of the Cathedral into the blazing sunshine of the street. But I never follow the palms; one only gets lost in the crowd, and misses all the best of the picture. As soon as the last gleam of the Cardinal’s scarlet disappears through the door, I turn round and go to meet the procession on its way back.
One has time to go out by the door of the Bells (campanillas), where formerly bells were rung to call loiterers to Mass, and walk round to that of los Palos—so-called because it once opened on to a grove of trees (poles, palos, now long cut down)—getting a good view of the procession as it comes round outside the Orange Court on the broad terrace raised by six steps above the level of the road. This terrace is a relic of the half-century during which the ancient Visigothic Cathedral was converted to Moslem uses. Every Mozarabic church that was used as a mosque has a raised terrace on one or more sides, like that of the mosque of Cordova. It was originally intended to accommodate the overflowing congregations during Ramadan, but after the reconquest the Christians allowed it to degenerate into a meeting-place for merchants to transact business, like the money-changers in the Temple, until the scandal became too great, and the Casa Lonja (now containing the archives of the Indies) was built in the seventeenth century. The terrace forms a fine vantage-ground for those who want to see the Holy Week processions, the recent widening of the Calle Canovas del Castillo giving an uninterrupted view from the door of San Miguel, where they enter the Cathedral, right away to the Town Hall.
Just as the Palm Sunday procession reaches the door of the Palos it is closed, and the whole procession comes to a stop, while the Master of the Cathedral Ceremonies raps on it three times. This, with the palms and olive branches strewed before the Cardinal, represents the entry of Our Lord into Jerusalem. A verse is intoned and then in the midst of a dead silence the doors slowly open, and the many-coloured procession with its waving palms fades into the twilight within, while women and children try to secure an olive twig, for they, like the palms, are blessed. A palm branch hung on the balcony protects the house from lightning, and the olive branch brings peace and contentment if carried home and placed before your “Saints.”
Palm Sunday evening is devoted to the first of the street processions. These are late ones, reaching the stands of reserved seats in front of the Town Hall when night is falling. It is wise to get one’s first impressions from the Sunday evening pasos after their candles are lighted, so that the images of the Passion and of Our Lady convey the beautiful symbolical idea of carrying with them light into dark places. Formerly all the street lamps were extinguished on the line of march, so that the way of the people was literally lighted by their “Saints”; but that was a long time ago, and now we can only imagine how impressive the old custom was, from the glow that floods the street of Sierpes before the procession itself comes into sight.
It is impossible to compress into a single chapter all the interesting and beautiful ceremonies of Holy Week in this Cathedral, apart from their historic aspect. Seville does not retain the actual Mozarabic or Visigothic ritual in any of her chapels, as does Toledo, for when San Fernando got here the Popes for over a century and a half had been trying to suppress the rite of the Church, which from force of circumstances had been so long cut off from and almost independent of Rome, and therefore the rite was not retained after the reconquest. But it is clear that the sainted king permitted the faithful Mozarabic priests of the College of San Miguel to take a leading part in the offices of the transformed mosque when it once more became the Cathedral of Seville, for the Oriental survivals we see to-day could never have been introduced in the middle of the thirteenth century by priests and bishops from Castile.
Many such survivals are mere details, more interesting to ecclesiastical archæologists than to laymen. But others are so striking that no visitor of intelligence should miss them.