Madrid formally accepted Isidro as patron in the summer of 1232, when the labors of the husbandmen, on the point of perishing from drought, were saved by the body of the Holy Peasant, which, borne in priestly procession, called down floods of rain; but it was not until the times of Philip III, some four centuries later, that the actual canonization of Isidro was granted by Rome. On May 15, 1620, the Plaza Mayor, that handsome square which has been the theatre of so many tournaments, executions, and autos de fe, the scene, two years later, of the beatification of Loyola, was inaugurated by a splendid festival in honor of San Isidro. From that day to this his worship has not waned. The miracle-working bones, which were carried to the bitter death-bed of Philip III, and comforted the passing of the great and generous spirit of Charles III, are still held to be more potent than physicians. Churches, oratories, and chapels have been built to him all over the Peninsula, the Franciscan Friars founded a convent of San Isidro in Rome, and his name is a part of our new geography lesson in the Antilles and the Philippines. Only four years ago his urn was borne in penitential procession through Madrid, with double supplications for rain on the parched country, and for a swift and happy ending of the Cuban war. All priestly, military, civic, and governmental pomp went to make up that stately escort, the ladies of Madrid showering the train as it passed beneath their balconies with flowers, poems, and confetti. The saint did what he could. The procession had been so skilfully timed that the rains began that very night, but the Cuban war was a matter out of his province. His dealings had always been with water, not with blood.
There is significance in this devotion of proud Castile to San Isidro. Spain is essentially as democratic as America. Her proverbs tell the story: "Many a man gets to heaven in tow breeches;" "Do what your master bids you, and sit down with him at table;" "Nobody is born learned, and even bishops are made of men;" "Since I am a man I may come to be Pope;" "The corpse of the Pope takes no more ground than that of the sacristan;" "Every man is the son of his own works."
"Said the leaf to the flower: 'O fie!
You put on airs indeed!
But we sprang, both you and I,
From the selfsame little brown seed.'"
Pedler, porter, beggar treat you as social equals and expect a full return of courtesy. It is told in Madrid how a great diplomatic personage not long ago was eating his picnic luncheon in a hired carriage. The driver, lunching also, leaned back from his seat, clinked glasses, and drank the gentleman's health. The dignitary glared with astonishment and wrath. "Man! I am the Imperial Ambassador of Nation So-and-So." "What of it?" returned the driver, taking another bite of his peppery Spanish sausage; "I am the Head Hostler of Stables Such-and-Such."
Again and again, in recent times as in ancient, have the rank and file of the Spanish nation asserted their dignity of manhood. An edict of Charles III, forbidding the Madrileños to muffle themselves in their beloved long cloaks and hide their faces under their big slouch hats, raised a furious riot in the capital. Should a king dictate the fashion of a man's garments? And when the stupid weakness of Charles IV and the baseness of his son Fernando had delivered Spain over to Napoleon, when French armies held her fortresses, and Murat, with twenty-five thousand troops, ruled Madrid by logic of steel and iron, it was the Spanish people who, from Asturias to Andalusia, sprang to the defence of a country abandoned by princes, councils, and grandees. The Spanish people, not the Spanish nobles, preserved the independence of the nation and actually broke the career of the Corsican conqueror. The Italian king, Amadeo, so much better than his fortunes, was welcomed at Valencia in 1871 with simple verses, spoken by a child, that breathe even from their opening stanza this native spirit of democracy:—
"The High Lord of the Heavens
Created men one day,