Festival of the Corpo de Deos.—Striking decoration of the streets.—The Patriarchal Cathedral.—Coming forth of the Sacrament in awful state.—Gorgeous Procession.—Bewildering confusion of sounds.
7th June.
A MOST sonorous peal of bells, an alarming rattle of drums, and a piercing flourish of trumpets, roused me at daybreak. You are too piously disposed to be ignorant that this day is the festival of the Corpo de Deos. I had half a mind to have stayed at home, turning over a curious collection of Portuguese chronicles the Prior of Avis has just sent to me; but I was told such wonders of the expected procession that I could not refuse giving myself a little trouble in order to witness them.
Everybody was gone before I set out, and the streets of the suburb I inhabit, as well as those in the city through which I passed in my way to the patriarchal cathedral, were entirely deserted. A pestilence seemed to have swept the Great Square and the busy environs of the Exchange and India House; for even vagrants, scavengers, and beggars, in the last state of decrepitude, had all hobbled away to the scene of action. A few miserable curs sniffing at offals alone remained in the deserted streets, and I saw no human being at any of the windows, except half-a-dozen scabby children blubbering at being kept at home.
The murmur of the crowds, assembled round the patriarchale, reached us a long while before we got into the midst of them, for we advanced with difficulty between rows of soldiers drawn up in battle array. Upon turning a dark angle, overshadowed by the high buildings of the seminary adjoining the patriarchale, we discovered houses, shops, and palaces, all metamorphosed into tents, and hung from top to bottom with red damask, tapestry, satin coverlids, and fringed counterpanes glittering with gold. I thought myself in the midst of the Mogul’s encampment, so pompously described by Bernier.
The front of the Great Church in particular was most magnificently curtained; it rises from a vast flight of steps, which were covered to-day with the yeomen of the Queen’s guard in their rich party-coloured velvet dresses, and a multitude of priests bearing a gorgeous variety of painted and silken banners; flocks of sallow monks, white, brown, and black, kept pouring in continually, like turkeys driving to market.
This part of the holy display lasting a tiresome while, I grew weary, and left the balcony, where we were placed most advantageously, and got into the church. High mass was performing with awful pomp, incense ascending in clouds, and the light of innumerable tapers blazing on the diamonds of the ostensory, just elevated by the patriarch with trembling devout hands to receive the mysterious wafer.
Before the close of the ceremony, I regained my window, to have a full view of the coming forth of the Sacrament. All was expectation and silence in the people. The guards had ranged them on each side of the steps before the entrance of the church. At length a shower of aromatic herbs and flowers announced the approach of the patriarch, bearing the host under a regal canopy, surrounded by grandees, and preceded by a long train of mitred figures, their hands joined in prayer, their scarlet and purple vestments sweeping the ground, their attendants bearing croziers, crosses, and other insignia of pontifical grandeur.
The procession slowly descending the flights of stairs to the sound of choirs and the distant thunder of artillery, lost itself in a winding street decorated with embroidered hangings, and left me with my senses in a whirl, and my eyes dazzled, as if awakened from a vision of celestial splendour.... My head swims at this moment, and my ears tingle with a confusion of sounds, bells, voices, and the echoes of cannon, prolonged by mountains and wafted over waters.