[11] The formula is worded thus: “Quisquis ille fuerit qui talia commiserit, sit maledictus coram Deo et Angelis ejus, mendicitas et lepra prosapiam teneat suam et extraneus persistat a sancta communione, quatenus cum Juda, Christi proditore, ardendus permaneat in æterna damnatione.”
[12] To keep the dust or rain from entering these trunks, they were covered, when on the march, with stout square cloths called reposteros, which were often richly worked and bore the owner's arms or monogram. The same word subsequently came to mean the tapestried or other decorative cloths displayed in Spain on gala days from balconies of public edifices, or the mansions of the aristocracy; but dictionaries which were printed at the close of the eighteenth century still define the repostero as “caparison, a square cloth with the arms of a prince or lord on it, which serves to cover a led-horse, or sumpter-horse.”
[13] The wood-carving and decorative leather-work of older Spain will be described a little later on. As to the use of decorated leather by the Moors, in the small chamber of the Alhambra opening into the Mirador of Daraxa, and known as the Sala de los Ajimeces, is a bare space about nine feet in height, which runs the whole way round beneath the copious ornament of the remainder of the wall. Contreras says that the Moorish sultans used to hang these spaces with decorated leathers, tapestry, and armour. Sometimes the tapestry or leather would be worked or painted with hunting-scenes (tardwahsh—the chase of the lion, panther, or wild boar), or even with portraits of the sultans. Among these latter is the celebrated painting on the ceiling of the Hall of Justice, executed, as are its companions at each side of it, upon a leather groundwork with a plaster coating.
[14] I think this shows why to this day a Spaniard who professes to be an educated person will often wipe his or her mouth upon the tablecloth. Not many weeks ago I saw the elegantly dressed daughter of a Spanish member of Parliament perform this semi-oriental feat in an hotel at Granada. Montaigne would judge this señorita with benevolence; not so, I fear, my compatriots. Similarly, it is considered rude in Spain to stretch yourself; but not to spit upon the dining-room floor, or pick your teeth at table.
[15] Mr Cunninghame Graham, visiting a Caid's house in present-day Morocco, noted, as the only furniture, “leather-covered cushions, the cover cut into intricate geometric patterns; the room contained a small trunk-shaped box.”
[16] West Barbary, p. 150.
[17] Annales d'Espagne et de Portugal, vol. iii., pp. 324, 327.
[18] “Hónrale el Sr Roberto, alma del Rey, y le ha dado Silla, y le tuvo á su lado.” Lope de Vega's comedy, The Key of Honour.
[19] The covers would be fastened by a lock and key, as a defence, not against poison, but against theft. “A little afterwards Don Federico de Cardona, who had gone out to see how matters were proceeding, returned, bearing a large silver vessel, the cover of which was secured by a lock and key, as is the custom in Spain.”—Countess d'Aulnoy's Travels. As late as the year 1792, Townsend, in his “Directions to the Itinerant in Spain,” recommends (vol. i., p. 2) that the vessel to boil the traveller's meat should be provided with a cover and a lock.
[20] The purpose of these Spanish city laws was in its essence unimpeachable; namely, to guard the intensely ignorant Christian populace—the same which fugitive Moriscos of the kingdom of Valencia had readily prevailed upon to barter tons of brass and pewter trash for sterling gold and silver coin—from being imposed upon by manufacturers and merchants. But the power of discriminating between a genuine or well-made object and a piece of counterfeit or worthless rubbish is, among all peoples, better sought for and developed by experience than by legislation; and there was something noxiously prosaic in a code of city ordinances which forbade the craftsman to prepare his own design, or choose his own material, or establish his own prices. How violently, or at least how primitively, hostile to the sense of art must not have been these Christian sons of Spain to need—or think they needed—so impertinent and tyrannous a system of protection!