We have often and often seen little children in the streets dressed like Franciscan monks—Cupids in cowls—whose pious parents had vowed to clothe them in the robes of this order, provided its sainted founder preserved their darlings during measles or dentition. Nothing was more common than that women, nay, ladies in good society, should appear for a year in a particular religious dress, called el habito, or with some religious badge on their sleeves in token of similar deliverance.
CURE OF SOULS.
One instance in our time amused all the tertulias of Seville, who maliciously attributed the sudden relief which a fair high-born unmarried invalid experienced from an apparent dropsical complaint to causes not altogether supernatural; Pues, Don Ricardo, “and so, Master Richard,” would her friends of the same age and rank often say, “you are a stranger; go and ask dearest Esperanza why she wears the Virgin of Carmel; come back and let us know her story, and we will tell you the real truth.” Vaya! vaya! Don Ricardo, usted es muy majadero,—“Go to, Master Richard, your Grace is an immense bore,” replied the penitent, if she suspected the authors and motive of the embassy.
The pious in antiquity raised temples to Minerva medica or Esculapius, as Spaniards do altars to Na. Señora de los Remedios, our Lady of the Remedies, and to San Roque, whose intervention renders “sound as a roach,” a proverb devised in his honour by our ancestors, who, before the Reformation, trusted likewise to him; and both thought, if Cicero is to be credited, that these tutelars did at least as much as the doctor. Alas! for the patient credulity of mankind, which still gulps down such medicinal quackery as all this, and which long will continue to do so even were one of the dead to rise from the grave, to deprecate the absurd treatment by which he and so many have been sacrificed.
However, by way of compensation, the saving the soul has been made just as primary a consideration in Spain as the curing the body has been in England. These relics, charms, and amulets represent our patent medicines; and the wonder is how any one in Great Britain can be condemned to death in this world, or how any one in the Peninsula can be doomed to perdition in the next: possibly the panaceas are in neither case quite specific. Be that as it may, how numerous and well-appointed are the churches and convents there, compared to the hospitals; how amply provided the relic-magazine with bones and spells, when compared to the anatomical museums and chemists’ shops; again, what a flock of holy practitioners come forth after a Spaniard has been stabbed, starved, or executed, not one of whom would have stirred a step to save an army of his countrymen when alive; and what coppers are now collected to pay masses to get his soul out of purgatory!
PHILOSOPHY OF RELICS.
Beware, nevertheless, gentle Protestant reader, of dying in Spain, except in Cadiz or Malaga, where, if you are curious in Christian burial, there is snug lying for heretics; and for your life avoid being even sick at Madrid, since if once handed over to the faculty make thy last testament forthwith, as, if the judgment passed on their own doctors by Spaniards be true, Esculapius cannot save thee from the crows: avoid the Spanish doctors therefore like mad dogs, and throw their physic after them.
The masses and many in Spain have their own tutelars and refuges for the destitute; the kings and queens—whom God preserve!—have their own especial patroness by prerogative, in the image of the Virgin of Atocha at Madrid, which they and the rest of the royal family visit every Sunday in the year when in royal health. No sooner was the sovereign taken dangerously ill, and the court physicians at a loss what to do, as sometimes is the case even in Madrid, than the image used to be brought to his bedside; witness the case of Philip III., thus described by Bassompierre in his dispatch:—“Les médecins en désespèrent depuis ce matin que l’on a commencé à user des remèdes spirituels, et faire transporter au palais l’image de N. D. de Athoche.” The patient died three days after the image was sent for.
SPANISH MIDWIFERY.
Although neither priest nor physician might credit the sanative properties of rags and relics, they gladly called them in, for if the case then went wrong, how could mortal man be expected to succeed when the supernatural remedy had failed? All inquests in awkward cases are hushed up by ascribing the death to the visitation of God. Again, if a relic does not always cure it rarely kills, as calomel has been known to do. This interruptive principle, one distinct from human remedies, is admitted by the church in the prayers for sick persons; and where faith is sincere, even relics must offer a powerful moral medical cordial, by acting on the imagination, and giving confidence to the patient. This chance is denied to the poor Protestant, nay, even to a newly-converted tractarian, for truly, to believe in the efficacy of a monkish bone, the lesson must have been learnt in the nursery. Their substitute in Lutheran lands, in partibus infidelium, is found in laudanum, news, and gossip; the latter being the grand specific by which Sir Henry kept scores of dowagers alive, to the despair of jointure-paying sons, from marquises down to baronets; and how much real comfort is conveyed by the gentle whisper, “Your ladyship cannot conceive what an interest his or her Royal Highness the —— takes in your ladyship’s convalescence!” The form of the moral restorative will vary according to climate, creeds, manners, &c.; it is to the substance alone that the philosophical physician will look. That chord must be touched, be it what it may, to which the pulse of the patient will respond; nor, provided he is recovered, do the means much signify.