Similar ceremonies and customs were observed in old Toledo (see the Ordinances of this city, dated June 24th, 1423, renewed and amplified in 1524).[68] Here also the silversmiths agreed to meet and celebrate the festival of their patron saint upon one day in every year, “for ever and for ever” (para siempre jamás). On these occasions the image of the saint was carried in procession, and a repast was given to the brothers themselves, as well as to all persons who were “willing to receive it for the love of God.” Every brother who failed to present himself at this solemnity was fined one pound of candle-wax; but if he were merely unpunctual, and arrived “after the singing of the first three psalms,” the fine was only half a pound. A pound of candle-wax was also the statutory tribute for admission to the Brotherhood, together with a hundred maravedis and other unimportant sums in cash.
The history of the gremios of Valencia has been traced in an instructive essay by Luis Tramoyeres Blasco. Early in the fifteenth century guilds were established here of nearly thirty trades, including tailors, millers, carpenters, shoemakers, silversmiths, weavers, tanners, dyers, swordsmiths, and bonnet-makers. These guilds developed greatly in the sixteenth century, expanding into powerful and wealthy bodies, who practically controlled the entire commerce and commercial products of their native town. Among the gremios instituted at a later date were those of the firework-makers, basket-makers, twisters of silk, stiffeners of dress fabrics, bell-founders, and painters of chests and boxes, each of these corporations being enrolled by law, and possessing a code of regulations for the government and guidance of its members. Sometimes, however, owing to diminution in its trade, a guild became extinct, as happened with the guadamacileros (see Vol. II., pp. [38] et seq.), and with the clothmakers, of whom, in 1595, but three remained in all Valencia. Or else a gremio would purposely amalgamate with, or merge insensibly into, another. Thus in 1668 the tailors and the makers of trunk-hose united in a single corporation, just as, at other times, the glovers and the parchment-dressers, the clog-makers and the shoemakers.
Those of the Valencian guilds which possessed the greatest influence and resources, and enjoyed the highest privileges from the city or the crown, were called colegiados. Among them were the velvet-makers, hatters, bronze-founders, wax-makers, confectioners, dyers, and makers of silk hose. The earliest to obtain this coveted and honourable title were the booksellers, in 1539, followed by the wax-makers in 1634, the confectioners in 1644, the velvet-makers also in this year, and others in succession, terminating with the dyers in 1763, the hatters in 1770, the bell-founders in 1772, and the makers of silk stockings in 1774.
According to Tramoyeres, most of the Valencian trade-guilds owned a building in fee-simple, and often gave the title of their craft to the entire street in which that edifice was situated. Nor did the gremios, in their evolution from the simpler and less mercenary form of brotherhood or cofradía, wholly abandon the religious ceremonies of their prototype. In almost every instance the guild erected and maintained a chapel within its private domicilio, chose a particular saint to be its patron, and held, with fitting pomp and liberality, a yearly celebration of that patron's holy-day.
On these occasions masses and other services were said or sung, and the embroidered banner of the guild, together with the image (which was often of silver) of its tutelar saint, was carried in procession through the streets of this bright city of the south, abounding at all seasons in flowers and sunshine, and famed, from the remotest days of Spanish history, for the splendour and munificence of her public festivals.
Our earliest record of the formal attendance of the gremios of Valencia at one of her fiestas, goes back to the visit to this capital of King Pedro the Second, in 1336, when the guilds were marshalled in military fashion, company by company, each headed by its pennon “á la saga dels primers,” that is, next to the group or company immediately in front of it. In 1392, upon the visit of another monarch, Juan the First, who was accompanied by his queen, Violante, a more elaborate character was given to the welcome. Jongleurs and dancers were hired to perform, while several of the gremios constructed decorative scenes or allegorical tableaux on a platform or a waggon, which was wheeled along the street in slow procession, surrounded by the marching members of the guild. One of these structures represented the winged dragon or drach-alat which figures so conspicuously in the records of Valencia (see Vol. I., p. [210]), and was attacked and overcome in mimic combat by a body of knights armed cap-à-pie. The mariners of the port built two large galleys, also moved on wheels and simulating an attack, and the freneros or bit-makers presented a gathering of folk disguised as savages. Nor was the bullfight—that most characteristic of Spanish sports—omitted from the entertainment, judging from the following entry in the city archives: “Item. Sien aemprats los prohomens carnicers a procurar e haver toros e fer per sos dies feta la dita entrada joch ab aquells specialment en lo mercat com sia cert quel Senyor Rey se agrada e pren plaer de tal joch.”
A typical fiesta and procession of these trade-guilds is described by Tramoyeres. “Formed in two long lines, the members of the guild advanced along the tortuous and narrow highways of the town, adorned with tapestries and altars. Each gremio was preceded by a band of cymbal-beaters, pipers, and jongleurs, sometimes accompanied by a comparsa allusive to the ceremony now being celebrated. Next came the standard of the master-craftsmen and apprentices, each group of whom attended its divisa or distinguishing emblem. Close after followed the banner of the craft in general, carried by one or two of the oficiales, who made display of their dexterity and strength by supporting the staff of the banner upon their shoulder, the palm of the hand, or the under-lip. The cords of the banner were held by the officers of the guild, denominated mayorales, clavarios and prohombres; behind these came the masters, and last of all, a triumphal car on which were represented scenes relating to the craft. Thus, in the year 1655, at the commemoration of the second centenary of the canonization of Saint Vincent Ferrer, the gremios showed particular ingenuity and novelty in these devices.” Don Marco Antonio Ortí, who wrote an account of the festival in question, thus describes a few of them. “The millers were preceded by a waggon drawn by four mules and covered with boughs and flowers. On it was the imitation of a windmill, wheel and every other part, contrived so cunningly that although the wheel went round at a great speed, the artifice which caused it to revolve was kept from view, and in the time that the procession lasted, it ground to flour a whole caliz of wheat.” Another invention, says the same chronicler, was that of the masons. “The scene devised by these was a triumphal car, handsomely adorned, on which was borne the great tower (of the cathedral),[69] imitated so skilfully that it seemed to have been rooted from its foundation, and replanted in the car aforesaid; and so enormous was its size that a special spot required to be chosen in which to set it up. This was in the garden of La Punta; and when the tower was finished and ready to be taken forth, a breach for its passage had to be opened in the garden wall. It even contained a peal of bells, which rang by turning round and round, and this invention of the bells, besides its ingenuity, was rarely fitted to this festival, seeing that the clock-bell of the cathedral (that is the greatest of them all) was given, when it was baptized, the name of San Vicente's bell, as well as of Saint Michael the Archangel; whence the tower itself is called the Micalet, this, in the language of Valencia, being the diminutive for Michael. It were impossible to imagine the stir and the applause excited in all quarters of the city by the passage of this tower.”
The same writer describes the decorative car or waggon of the flax-weavers. “Upon it were a woman seated beneath a canopy, weaving at a frame, and representing Santa Ana, the child Jesus making cañillas, and an aged man, for San Antonio, dressed as a hermit, with a live sucking-pig at his side. Before these went Our Lady riding on a jennet, with a child in her arms, her right hand held by a man of venerable age representing Saint Joseph. This artifice was symbolic of the weavers' trade, receiving for this reason great applause, as well as for the lavish decoration of, and curious details that were in, the car.”
Tramoyeres further explains that the guild which took first place in the procession was that which had been most recently created, the oldest and most honoured coming last. At Valencia this proud position was held from the remotest period by the clothmakers; but from time to time, when these for any cause were absent from the festival, their place was taken by one or other of two companies almost as ancient and as honourable—the tanners or the tailors.
Each guild selected an official dress or livery, distinguished from the others by its colour or design:—the tailors, purple and white; the weavers, rose with black sleeves; the cutlers, crimson with green sleeves and sprinkled with golden roses; the millers, white with crimson-striped sleeves; the silversmiths, crimson with silver trimming; and so forth. Their banners, too, were quite in harmony with the rich apparel of the vain agremiados. According to an author of the seventeenth century, these flags were “not of war, but of a different workmanship, and greatly larger. All are of damask, most being coloured crimson, and the poles sustaining them, and terminated by an image of the sainted patron of the guild, are longer than the longest pike of war. Truly, a splendid show these banners make, displayed with fringes of drawn gold, and shields embroidered with the same material.”