One of these is the so-called “Rending of the White Veil” after the nine o’clock Mass on the Wednesday of Holy Week. This is represented by drawing apart immense curtains of beautiful old white tafetán, a fine soft silk of the kind worn by Moslem princes when Seville was celebrated for her manufacture of velvets, brocades, and satins, all of which were lined with this filmy tafetán. No one knows exactly why the White Veil is rent on this day, though I am told that it is another heritage from the Mozarabs. It is torn from the rod on which it hangs, so that when divided one curtain falls in a heap on either side of the altar, whence they are drawn into the sacristy by the Seises.
At 3.30 on Tuesday in Holy Week we have what is known as the Display of the Banner, another ceremony foreign to the ritual of Rome. Two priests kneel on the altar steps, while a third waves over them a voluminous banner of the same soft gauzy tafetán as the White Veil. The banner is of a dark green, so dark as to appear black in the dim Cathedral, where all the painted windows are shrouded with black curtains during this season of penitence. Formerly the two priests used to prostrate themselves; now they only kneel. No one can explain the ceremony, which takes place four times in all, from the eve of Passion Sunday to Holy Tuesday, but it is supposed to have some connection with the Mozarabic Virgen de la Antigua, a twelfth-century fresco in the chapel of that name, whose history is worth relating.
When the Almohade Moors took Seville and appropriated the old Gothic Cathedral for their new mosque, this mural painting of Our Lady was left in its place. Alfonso X. in his Cántigas de la Virgen Maria (Hymns of the Virgin) says that more than once the fanatic Almohades wished to destroy the image, but such a glory shone from it as to dazzle their eyes and they retreated, afraid to touch it. The truth probably was that the Almohade ruler, who was dependent on Sevillian artists for his alterations and additions to his mosque and his Alcazar,[9] did not venture to risk a revolt among his Mozarab subjects, for the Christian community was always more numerous here than anywhere else in Moslem Spain. Therefore, although he appropriated or perhaps bought the old Cathedral, as Abderrahman I. had done with that of St. Vincent in Cordova, he left this venerated image and its chapel to the Christians, who made an entrance to it from the street and closed the former door, which otherwise would communicate with the mosque.
It is related in the same Cántigas that when San Fernando was besieging Seville, he was miraculously admitted one night through the Jerez gate—the nearest to the Cathedral—into the Chapel of N’ra Señora de la Antigua (Our Lady of the Old Time), and being discovered there by the Moors he hardly escaped with his life. Tradition suggests that Our Lady of the Old Time was walled up after this by the Moslems, probably from indignation at what must have seemed to them treachery on the part of the Mozarabs within the walls, for they alone could have admitted the Christian king into their own chapel. The city surrendered not many weeks later, and there is at present nothing to show when the picture was uncovered. But reference is made to it from the thirteenth century onwards, and my own impression is that the chapel was reopened immediately, for there had certainly not been time to forget its situation, as happened elsewhere in the case of images buried to save them from desecration.
In the sixteenth century the fresco was removed from the wall on which it was painted to the altar of the present chapel, which had been built to receive it. It was at that time unfortunately “restored,” “renovated,” and “beautified” as well as removed, as a contemporary account tells us, and much of its mediæval character was thus lost. But the Child still has the characteristic round bullet head with stiff black curls, which is seen in all the Mozarab work in this region, and is in every case so curiously inferior in technique to that of the Mother that one can only accept it as a type, venerated and copied from one generation to another from primitive times. The Virgin, on the other hand, as in all the work of the twelfth century, is beautiful in technique as well as in feature, and her strange drapery with its stiff diagonal folds is singularly reminiscent of the drapery of some of the Egypto-Tartessian figures found in the Cerro de los Santos several years ago, and now in the Archæological Museum at Madrid.
Long and bitter have been the quarrels of local art critics over the period and origin of this fresco, but once the history of the Christians of Seville under Islam has been made clear, all combines to show that Our Lady of the Old Time was here when San Fernando came, and that the image was worshipped by the Mozarabs throughout the Almohade occupation. And in the light of present knowledge it seems highly probable that the Display of the Banner is a reminiscence of some act of humiliation imposed on the faithful priests who, even after their last Bishop fled in 1239, still lived in the Cloister of San Miguel and continued to exercise the rites of their religion. The Moors may perhaps have made the ceremony a condition of the retention by the Christians of their chapel within the precincts of the mosque; and it is by no means impossible that something conclusive on the subject may come to light one day, when the mass of unexamined documents in the Cathedral archives are at length sorted and read.
Though so little is known about it as yet, the interest of this curious Display of the Banner is seen to be great when one realises that it is a direct link with the Moslem dominion in Seville, taking us back six centuries to the time when the splendid ritual which now delights the eyes and ears of thousands was represented in this ancient basilica by a few poor priests who said Mass in the Chapel of La Antigua, perhaps at the risk of their lives.
Most of the remaining ceremonies of Holy Week are the same as in Rome and elsewhere, save in minor details which need not be described here. But the processions in the streets date from the thirteenth century, and we can hardly doubt that they too have survived from the early Christian Church.
San Fernando himself gave a banner with his portrait embroidered on it to the Brotherhood of the Menestrales (Mechanics: the Guild was of working tailors); and that too must have existed before the reconquest, for the King died only four years later, and we are not told that he founded the Brotherhood in the interval. Indeed, if he had done so it would have been very carefully recorded in their annals, as was his gift of the banner. They, as the oldest of the Brotherhoods and favoured by the King, were given the privilege of watching beside his coffin when he died, and they maintained their right to this place of honour on the anniversary of his death until their Guild dissolved for lack of funds not many years since. Another and richer Guild tried to oust them two or three centuries ago, but the Menestrales went to law and won their case. The banner given by San Fernando now hangs in a glass case in the church of St. Isidore. Very little is left of the portrait, and what little there is was hidden in the sixteenth century by an embroidered head of Charles V. which was sewn over it. This was removed for examination a few years ago, and the thirteenth-century portrait was found beneath. Although, like the banner of San Fernando in the Town Hall, it has been so much repaired and restored that very little of the original remains, enough can be seen to convince any expert in embroidery that it is Mozarabic work of the period in question.
The strongest evidence of the early origin of the Brotherhoods lies in the fact that the Roman eagles and a standard with S.P.Q.R. are borne in advance of every paso, while “Roman soldiers” ride after some few of them. These cannot have been “put on the stage” in the thirteenth century, for illuminated MSS. of that period, including the exceedingly valuable contemporary works of Alfonso X., all depict sacred characters in the costumes of the day. Nor were they introduced in the fourteenth century, for there is a missal of that date in which the Roman soldiers at the Crucifixion wear the dress of the fighting-men of Alfonso XI., and one of the men casting lots for the coat of Our Lord is dressed in parti-coloured hose with cap and bells, like a court jester.