The Shadow of the Cathedral

by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

"I repeat," continued the musical priest, looking back at the door from which they had come out, "that in there they do not love music and they do not understand it. The Church has only rendered one service to music, and that without wishing it: they have been obliged to have instrumentalists and vocalists for the services, and that made them support the chapels and choir-schools that have served for musical education in default of schools. We who represent art in the cathedrals are as much despised as were the minstrels in the old chapels, players of the clarion and bassoon. For the canons, all that sleeps in the musical archives is so much Greek, and we, the artistic priests, form a race apart, and are only just a step above the sacristans. The Chapel-master, the organist, the tenor, contralto, and the bass form the chapel. We are clergy like the canons, we become beneficiaries by appointment, we have studied religious science as they have, and, moreover, we are musicians; but in spite of this we receive less than half the salary of a canon, and to remind us constantly of our inferior position we have to sit in the lower stalls. We, the only ones in the choir who know anything about music, have to occupy the lowest places. The precentor is by right the chief of the singers, and the precentor is a canon named by Rome without competition, probably not knowing a note of the pentagramma. Oh! the anarchy, friend Gabriel! Oh! the contempt of the Church for music which has always been its slave and never its daughter! In many convents of nuns the organist and the singers are despised and called sergeants. There seems money for everything in the Church: the revenues of the building are ample for everything except for music. The canons look upon us as fools masking in ecclesiastical robes. When the feast of Corpus or that of the Virgin of the Sagrario comes round, and I dream of a fine mass worthy of the Cathedral, the Canon Obrero attacks me and begs for something Italian and simple, an affair of half-a-dozen musicians that I must pick up in the town, and then I have to conduct a few bungling musicians, raging to hear how the miserable orchestra sounds under these vaults, which were built for something grander. In the end, friend Luna, it is dead, quite dead."

The complaint of the Chapel-master did not surprise Gabriel. Everyone in the Cathedral complained of the miserable and sordid way in which the services were conducted. Some, like the Silver Stick, declared that it was due to the impiety of the age, others, like the musician, made that same religion responsible, but they did not dare to say so aloud. Respect to the Church and to the higher powers, instilled since their childhood, kept the population of the Cathedral silent. The greater part of the servitors of the Church were living morally in the sixteenth century, in an atmosphere of servility and superstitious fear of their superiors, feeling the injustice of their position, but without daring to give form, even in their thoughts, to their vague notions of protest.

Only at night, in the silence of the upper cloister, in the privacy of those families who were born and died among the stones of the Cathedral, did they dare to repeat the murmurs of the Church, the interminable tangle of tattle which grew over the monotonous ecclesiastical existence, the complaints of the canons against His Eminence, and what the cardinal said about the Chapter, an underground war which was reproduced at every archiepiscopal elevation, intrigues and heart-burnings of celibates, embittered by ambition and favouritism, primitive hatreds that reminded one of the time when the clergy elected their own prelates and ruled over them, instead of groaning as now under the iron rule of the archbishop's will.

Everyone in the cloister knew of these quarrels, and the remarks that the canons allowed themselves to make in the sacristy reached their ears; but these humble servitors kept silence when these murmurs were repeated in their presence, fearing to be reported by their neighbour, who possibly might covet their post. It was the terror of the Inquisition still alive amidst this little stagnant world.

The Perrero was the only one who seemed to have no fear, and who spoke openly about the Chapter and the cardinal. What did it matter to him! Possibly he may have wished to be turned out of "that den" to give himself up to his favourite pursuit, going to the bull-ring without any objections from the household. Moreover, he delighted in speaking evil of the gentlemen of the Chapter, who had given him more than one cuff when he was an acolyte.

He gave nicknames to all the canons, and pointing them out one by one to Gabriel, related the most intimate secrets of their lives. He knew the houses where each prebendary passed the evening after the choir time, and the names of all the ladies and nuns who crimped their surplices, and could tell of the fierce and deadly rivalries between these admirers of the Chapter, endeavouring to vanquish each other by the exquisite way in which they washed and ironed the canonical batiste. As the choir were coming out he pointed out the precentor, an obese prebendary with his face covered with red spots.

"Look at him, uncle," he said to Gabriel, "that rash on his face is a record of the past. He was a great gallant, never fixing himself long anywhere. The other evening he said to a chaplain of the chapel of the kings, 'Those captain professors at the Academy think that in point of women they cull the best in Toledo, but where is the Church! The seculars must lower their flag!'"

He laughed as he pointed out a group of young priests, carefully shaved, with their cheeks blue and shining, dressed in silk mantles that diffused a strong scent of musk as they moved. These were the dandies of the Chapter, the young canons, who often made journeys to Madrid to confess their patronesses—ancient marchionesses who, by dint of influence, had gained for them a seat in the choir. At the Puerta del Mollete they stopped a few moments to arrange the folds of their cloaks before they went into the street.

"They are going out to court the ladies," said the Tato. "Brrrum! make way for Don Juan Tenorio!"

When they had watched all the canons come out, the Perrero spoke to his uncle about the cardinal.