Let us turn from such an unpoetical scene as this, which that cheerful prison presents, to the convent of Santa Teresa, the most celebrated of all the ten or fifteen nunneries now in operation about the city of Mexico. In a cold, damp, comfortless cell, kneeling upon the pavement, we may see a delicate woman mechanically repeating her daily-imposed penance of Latin prayers, before the image of a favorite saint and a basin of holy water. This self-regulating, automaton praying machine, as she counts off the number of allotted prayers by the number of beads upon her rosary, beats into her bosom the sharp edge of an iron cross that rests within her shirt of sacking-cloth, until, nature and her task exhausted, she throws herself down upon a wooden bed, so ingeniously arranged as to make sleep intolerable.[69] ] This poor victim of self-inflicted daily torture, half crazed from insufficient food, and sleep, and clothing, has endured all this misery to accumulate a stock of good works for the use of less meritorious sinners, besides the amount necessary to carry herself to heaven; for penance, and not repentance, is this poor pagan's password for salvation.
The old Quakeress is not a fashionable saint, for she never dreamed of this huxter business in spiritual affairs. Out of the overflowing goodness of her heart, she had tried to lighten the miseries of life in her own humble and quiet way, and found her happiness in seeing all about her made comfortable. The money that others expended in buying masses for the repose of their own souls and those of their relatives after death, she expended in ministering to soul and body in this world, leaving to God above the affairs of departed spirits, to deal with them according to His mercy. She never presumed to add to the torments of this life, or undertook to lighten the torments of the departed. Her duties lay all in this world, and when her labors were ended, she quietly lay down in death, leaving her future condition to God. She never would pierce her bosom with an iron cross, though it had often been pierced by the trials of life. She has seen enough of real poverty and mortification, but never dreamed of such a thing as poverty and mortification self-imposed, by wearing upon her flesh a garment of sacking-cloth, or the ingenious invention of a bed so contrived as to deprive herself of wholesome sleep. Images and holy water occupy no place in her creed, though soap and water are almost too prominent. She did her good deeds from a sense of duty which she owed to her kind, and from the pleasure that it gave her to relieve misery while discharging the ordinary duties of life, and never dreamed of the sweet odor her good works left behind her—an odor which followed her to heaven—an odor more acceptable to the Almighty than all the endowments she might have left to pay for masses for the repose of her soul.
SELF-CASTIGATION.
There is so much that is monotonous in talking over the details of affairs of the different orders of these female monks, from the Sister of Guadalupe to the Sisterhood of Mercy, that it is as well to consider them as one, as divers households of single women, who, to win extraordinary favor of God, had separated themselves from their families, and devoted their lives, some to repeating prayers and acts of self-mortification, some to attending at the hospitals on the sick or the blind, the idiotic, the deformed, the deaf and the dumb, others to educating young ladies according to their peculiar notions of education, others again consecrating themselves to pauperism, and living upon charity; and when the daily supply of alms has failed, these self-made poor sisters collect together, and there wait and pray, and ring their bell, until some benevolent individual shall chance to hear the well-known signal, and come and relieve them.
Such is the system of religion of all countries which bear the Christian name, but where freedom does not exist, and where liberty can not thrive. There is a trifling difference in its phases as exhibited in the Greek and the Latin Churches, but the difference is too slight for us outsiders to notice. In Mexico it exists in its most unadulterated state, less contaminated than elsewhere with Protestantism or other foreign substances.
PENANCES.
The old farce of self-castigation is here still enacted, as it has been for three hundred years, but in the dark, of course; and blood, or some substitute for it, is heard to fall upon the floor by the few selected witnesses;[70] ] but a party of boys, report says, being somewhat skeptical about the quality of this blood, concealed themselves in the church, and when the pious farce began, took so active a part in the sport upon the naked backs of the fathers, as to inflict bodily injury, and break up the bloody entertainment. Still Protestantism has been felt in Mexico, if not embraced, and the common people look back to the happy time when the soldiers of their Protestant conquerors made money plenty among them, and when even-handed justice was dealt out alike to rich and poor, high and low. Though the foreigners laughed at the fables of the priests and ridiculed the monks, they yet were honest in their dealings with the people instead of taking by violence. As there are no people so besotted that they do not admire courage and honesty, so the Paisano looks upon the heretic as a man of a superior race to himself.
CHAPTER XXX.
The Necessity of large Capitals in Mexico.—The Finances and Revenue.—The impoverished Creditors of the State.—Princely Wealth of Individuals.