Spanish Highways and Byways

by Katharine Lee Bates

Con piedad, con fe, con celo,

Tierras, virtudes y cielo."

Spain seems actually skied over with the wings of guardian angels. The traditional tutelar of the nation, Santiago, counts for less, especially in the south and centre of the Peninsula, than might be expected, and was long since officially superseded by the Virgin; but cities, hamlets, families, individuals, all have their protecting saints. Some are martyrs, some bishops, some apostles, while Cordova rests secure beneath the shining plumes of the angel Raphael. Towns and townlets hold festivals for their celestial patrons, honoring them with fairs, horse-races, processions, dances, and whatsoever else may be appropriate to the season and characteristic of the locality, as ball games, bull-fights, or even a miracle play. Only Seville, mirth-loving Seville, who makes holiday on the slightest provocation, can never invite her two beautiful guardians, Santa Justa and Santa Rufina, to a jubilee. These holy maidens used to keep a pottery booth in Triana, now the gypsy quarter of the city, where, refusing to worship the Roman Venus, they won the crown of martyrdom. But their industrious habits cling to them still, and, by night and by day, while the centuries pass, they uphold the Giralda. An anointed vision, like Murillo's, may see their graceful forms hovering in mid-air on either side of the famous tower, which their strong brown arms hold firm even in tempests. If the ladies should let go, the Giralda would fall, and so the Sevillians are driven to the ungallant course of ignoring these really useful patrons and gadding off to adjacent towns whose saints are at leisure to be entertained.

A Spanish Monk

By the eternal contradiction that prevails in all things Spanish, it has come to pass that Madrid, the elegant capital and royal residence, is under the guardianship of a peasant saint. Here, in the eleventh century, Isidro was born, say the priests, of poor but Catholic parents. If not precisely a hewer of wood and a drawer of water, he was next door to that humble estate, being a digger of wells and cellars. He dug with such piety that God aided him by miracles, causing troublesome rocks to melt like wax at the touch of his spade, and springs of healing water to leap in the pits of his fashioning. He was a tiller of the ground, besides, a hireling farm servant, whose agricultural methods, though seemingly irregular, caused his master's granaries to overflow. As he went to the fields in the fresh spring mornings, the young Isidro would scatter handfuls of seed for the birds, saying, "Eat, God's little birds, for when our Lord looks forth in dawn, He looks upon us all." And as he dropped the wheat and barley in the furrows, ever he murmured, "This for God, and this for us; this for the birds, and this for the ants." "For the ants, too?" mockingly asked the rustics who planted beside him, but Isidro steadfastly replied, "For the ants, too, since they are God's ants, and His royal bounty is for all His household." No wonder that the Almighty had Isidro's fields in special charge, sending sun and rain in due season that the harvest might suffice for every claimant. Such divine care was the more necessary, because this dreamy plough-boy spent most of his time in the churches, or on his knees in the shadow of the fruit trees, until his profane companions called him Lazybones.

Isidro was no effective patron of Madrid as yet, but ran away from the Moors, when they invaded the city, finding farm service in a neighboring village. Here he married a maiden whose lovely soul, according to Lope de Vega, shone through her guileless face like a painting through its glass. She was no less devout than her husband, and went every evening to trim the altar in a lonely shrine of the Virgin. There was a stream to be crossed on the way, and in times of freshet Our Lady would appear in person and lead her by the hand over the tops of the waves. Such dainty stepping as it must have been! And once, when Isidro accompanied his wife, they both crossed in a boat suddenly improvised from her mantilla, which was not a thread the worse for the experience.

The miracle-working power that developed in San Isidro was first exercised, as became a farmer, on suffering beasts and bad weather. His early influence over water grew more and more pronounced, rain refreshing the thirsty fields at his bidding, and medicinal fountains gushing from rocks at the stroke of his hoe. And when, one sunshiny morning, his wife let their baby boy slip from her arms into the depths of the well and ran in distress to her husband, the saint, who for once was working on the farm, did not scold her, as the priestly authors seem to think would have been the natural course, but calmly said, "My sister, what is there to cry about?" And when, after a season of prayer, these exemplary parents proceeded to the well, its waters had risen to the brink, lifting the little John, as on a silver-tissue cushion, safe to their embrace. Isidro still retained his youthful peculiarities as a laborer, often praying all day long in the churches, while his yoke of oxen did the ploughing just as well without him. On one occasion, when he arrived too late for mass, the gates of heaven opened to his vision, as he knelt before the closed church door, and he was permitted to witness a celestial mass, where Christ was both priest and wafer, with choirs of angels chanting the holy service. Even his charities cost him little, for when the olla of vegetables and fish, that his wife made every Saturday for the poor, had all been eaten, a word from Isidro was enough to replenish the pot. If he emptied his sack of corn on the snow for a flock of hungry pigeons, the sack was full when he reached the mill; and when he threshed his master's wheat a second and a third time for the beggars, the very chaff turned into golden grain.

His best quality, which almost makes his cult desirable in Spain, continued to be his love for animals, especially for birds. These sang their sweetest songs as he passed by, and often flew down from the poplar branches to brush their little wings against his blouse. And he, who had raised his master's daughter from the dead, did not disdain to work miracles of healing and of life on maltreated horses. Madrid would do well to give her guardian saint a season ticket to the bull-ring. Even the despised and cudgelled ass had a share in his protection. A sacrilegious wolf that thought to make a meal of Isidro's donkey, left to graze outside a church where the saint had gone to pray, was struck dead—perhaps by the donkey's heels. This kindly rustic, who had separated from his wife for greater sanctity, died on St. Andrew's Day and was buried in the cemetery of St. Andrew's Church in Madrid. Such sepulture was not to his liking, and twice his ghost appeared to ask that the body might be removed to the church, as was presently done, all the bells of St. Andrew's ringing of their own accord to give it welcome. The tomb immediately began to work miracles, and Isidro became such a favorite with the people that when, in 1212, a shepherd guided Alfonso VIII, lost with his vanguard in the wild passes of the Sierra Morena, to the great battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, where the armies of the Holy Cross broke forever the dominion of the Moors in Central Spain, nothing would do but the story that this shepherd was Isidro himself. Above the tomb of the saint a chapel was erected, perhaps by Alfonso, perhaps by Isabel la Católica. There seems to be a conflict of authorities here, but all testimonies agree that the angels used to come down and sing in the chapel Saturday afternoons.