Spanish Life in Town and Country

by L. Higgin; Eugène E. Street

The natural bent of the Spanish mind is religious. Taking the nation as a whole, with all its marvellous variations in race and character, no portion of it has ever been reproached for insincerity in its religious beliefs. It has been often held up to reproach for bigotry and superstition; but the people have in past ages been penetrated by a sincere reverence for what they have believed to be religion, and perhaps no other nation has been more thoroughly imbued with an unwavering faith in the dogmas taught by its religious instructors. English Roman Catholics—especially those who have seceded from the Anglican Church—are fond of declaring that Spain is "a splendid Catholic country," "the home of true Catholicism," and so forth. To a certain extent this has been true of it in the past, and "dignity, loyalty, and the love of God" are still the ideals of the people at large, although in Spain, as in some other Continental nations, the practice of religious duties is now, to a great extent, left to the women of the family and to the peasantry. Young Spain, and the progressive party in it, can no longer be said to be under the domination of the Church, even in outward appearance. It will be well if the swing of the pendulum does not carry them very far from it, and into open revolt.

The history of the Church in Spain and of its relations with Rome is a curious one. It can scarcely be said to have been much more amenable to the Papacy than that of the Church of England, though it has remained always within the pale of the Roman Catholic persuasion. In the old time the kings aspired to be the head of the Spanish Church, and were none too subservient to the Pope. The Inquisition and the Society of Jesus were distinctly Spanish, and not Roman, and were at times actually at variance with the Vatican. Probably from their long struggles with the barbarians, and later with the Moors, Spaniards have a habit of always speaking of themselves as Christians rather than Catholics, which strikes strangely on one's ears.

The evils which have been wrought in Spain by the terrible incubus of the Inquisition, and by the domination of the Jesuits and other orders, who obtained possession of the teaching of youth, have been little less than disastrous, because their power has been deliberately used for ages past to keep the lower classes in a state of absolute ignorance, slaves of the grossest superstition, and mere puppets in the hands of the priesthood. Even well within the memory of living people it was thought a pity that women should be allowed to learn even to read and write,—safer to have them quite ignorant,—while the peasantry and the inferior classes believed anything they were told, and could be excited to any pitch of fanaticism by the preaching of their religious teachers. The Inquisition was often used as a political machine, and was sometimes only clothed with the semblance of religion; but by whomsoever it was directed, and for whatsoever purpose, it was a vile and soul-destroying institution. It deliberately ground down and destroyed every spark of intelligence, of liberty, of attempt at progress; it dominated the whole nation like the shadow of the upas tree, manufactured hypocrites, and led to the debasing of a naturally fine people of good instincts to an ignorant and fanatical mob, who, in the name of religion, were entertained with gigantic autos-da-fé, as the Roman populace were with the terrible spectacles of their gladiatorial shows and the immolation of Christian victims in the arena.

It was the people themselves who rose against this hateful tyranny; it was their better instincts that put an end to the "Holy Office" and its enormous crimes. Shortly after the Revolution of 1868, when religious liberty had been established, and the people, for the first time in their long history of disaster, were breathing the air of freedom, certain improvements which were being made, in the shape of laying out new streets, pulling down old rookeries, and building better houses, led to a new road being cut through the raised ground outside the Santa Barbara Gate. The exact spot of the great Quemadero—the oven of the Inquisition—was not known, but it chanced that the workmen cut right through the very centre of it. A more ghastly sight, or an object-lesson of more potency, could scarcely be imagined. The Government of the day found it advisable to cover it up as quickly as possible; the excitement of the people was thought to be dangerous; and though those at the head of affairs were no friends to the priests or the Jesuits, there was no desire to reawaken the passions and let loose the vengeance which led the populace in 1834 to murder them wholesale.

I happened to be returning from a ride with a companion when, quite accidentally, we came upon this excavation, and even passed down the new road before we realised where we were. The Quemadero had evidently been in the shape of an immense basin. There in the banks at each side were the stratified layers of human ashes; between each auto-da-fé it was evident that the remains had been covered with a thick layer of earth; finally, at the top of all these smaller bands of black, horrible ashes, came one huge deposit, which marked the awful scene of the last gigantic auto. This ghastly bonfire was sixty feet square, and seven feet high, as history records, when one hundred and five victims were slowly tortured to a frightful death in the name of Christ, while the King, Charles II., and his Court and the howling rabble of Madrid looked on with savage enjoyment. Nothing can ever obliterate the impression of that scene, nor make one forget the deadly clinging of those ghastly black ashes, which the wind scattered about, and which it was impossible to escape or to get rid of. The fell work of the "religious" authors of the holocaust had been well done—nothing was left but ashes; and the next day, by order of the Government, sand or soil had been thrown over all that could bear witness to this horrible episode in the history of the Church in Spain, while the people who inhabit the houses built over the spot probably know nothing of the records of human agony and brutal bigotry that still lie beneath their homes.

We hear of these things and read of them in history, but one needs to have seen that awful memorial to realise what share the Inquisition has had in transforming a naturally heroic and kindly people into the inert masses which nothing, or almost nothing, would move so long as they had pan y toros (bread and bulls). Thanks to the horrors of the Inquisition and the Autos-da-fé, the whole people have acquired a character which assuredly they do not deserve. The blind bigotry and cynical cruelty of Philip II. and his lunatic successors have been identified with the races over which, unfortunately for Spain, they ruled for so many years. When one remembers that this is the view taken of the Inquisition, and of the domination of the Church in effacing all kinds of culture, by the liberal and educated Spaniard of to-day, and that there is, even now, an extreme party which would fain see the "Holy Office" re-established, with all its old powers, it is easy to understand at what a critical point the clerical question has arrived in Spain; nor need one wonder at the feeling which in all parts of the kingdom has been aroused by the recrudescence of the religious orders, more especially of the determined struggle of the Jesuits to retain and even to reassert their power.

The Madonna, who is always spoken of as "La Vírgen," never as "Santa María," is the great object of love and of reverence in Spain, while the words Dios and Jesus are used as common exclamations in a way that impresses English people rather unfavourably. It is a shock to hear all classes using the Por Dios! which with us is a mark of the purest blackguardism, and the use as common names of that of Our Lord and of Salvador, or Saviour, always strikes a disagreeable note. There is in Madrid a "Calle Jesus," and the sacred name, used as a common expletive, is heard on all sides. One of the most charming of Yradier's Andalusian songs, addressed by a contrabandista to his novia, runs thus:

Pero tengo unas patillas.

Que patillas puñála!