Authors: James Michener
At ten a large parade forms, composed of military units, the
civil officials, red-caped priests and green-clad members of the
Guardia Civil. These march about the plaza in a show of national
solidarity before heading for the cathedral, where at the Pórtico
de la Gloria a mitered bishop in red waits to grant permission to
enter, and all bow to kiss his hand.
I have not previously mentioned the extraordinary size of the
cathedral, but this parade of several hundred led by a brass band
will be absorbed in the vast expanse of pillar and chapel without
causing much stir. On this day the interior is redolent of past
glories: enormous throngs of worshipers crowd the aisles while
the massive organ thunders out Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D
Minor. Prior to the entrance of the parade a tall priest leads four
men clothed in red in a procession that moves along all aisles and
transepts of the church. They bear on their shoulders an ornate
reliquary containing a statue and memorials of St. James the Less,
and on his statue one sees a highly decorated silver collar which
has a most curious history: it was given to the cathedral in 1435
by that same Suero de Quiñones who held the bridge over the
Orbigo for thirty days. And as this strange gift makes its slow way
through the cathedral, it passes the chapel in which hangs the
bejeweled pendant delivered later by an equally famous Spaniard
of the heroic age, Don Juan de Austria, who came here on
pilgrimage after his crucial victory at Lepanto. In the left transept
the relics pass the little chapel of St. Andrew, where a niche was
recently let into the wall to house a sickly-sweet modern statue
of the Virgin dressed in robes of pale blue and white and framed
by a bouquet of asters and white lilies. A halo of small electric
lights illuminates the head of this very popular statue, for even
now with the procession in full swing a group of women prays
before the shrine. Before each woman kneels she takes from beside
the Virgin a printed slip of paper, and with a pencil hanging from
a cord ticks off the subjects in which she is most interested,
depositing the marked slip in the prayer box:
9.
Peace in the family.
The niche in the wall has a special appeal to women because the
statue of the extremely beautiful Virgin was given by Evita Perón.
Now the procession from outside the cathedral has completed
its entrance, and as it moves down the right aisle the organ
produces a new song, and eight men in red robes move into
action, ready for an exhibition seen in no other cathedral in the
world.
Two bear on their shoulders a massive pole from which hangs
an iron censer about three feet high. Silver-plated and of a
handsome design, it was made in 1850 by the silversmith Losada
and is the most recent of a long line of Botafumeiros
(Smoke-Throwers) to have been used in this cathedral.
The other red-clad men are busy with another detail. From
one of the nearby pillars they have released a very stout hempen
rope possibly three inches in diameter and a couple of hundred
feet long. This rope reaches up to the highest part of the cathedral,
where it passes over a complicated system of pulleys, dropping
down so that the Botafumeiro can be attached to its loose end,
which is passed through a huge iron ring at the top of the censer
and securely lashed. The eight men then grab the other end of
the rope and slowly pull the huge object a few feet in the air.
A priest now opens the top of the contraption and pours inside
a large bucketful of charcoal and incense and gives the censer an
initial swing to start it moving. What happens next I do not
understand, but by a series of skillfully timed pulls on their end
of the rope, the eight men succeed in getting the great silver chalice
to swing in ever-growing arcs until at last, in an unbelievable
surge of power, the enormous thing is flying right up to the ceiling
of the cathedral some ninety feet away, hesitating there a moment,
then roaring down with sickening speed, skimming over the heads
of watchers, only to be held in restraint by the rope and swung
up to the ceiling on the other side. And as the huge thing flies
through the air, perforations admit a flow of air and set the
charcoal ablaze, so that sparks fly out in the swift descent and
incense fills the cathedral. It is a most extraordinary sight, a
thrilling display of motion, power, fire and mystery.
I ask Father Precedo what all this signifies, and he says, ‘The
people like to believe that the custom started in the Middle Ages
when thousands of pilgrims slept in the cathedral and smelled up
the place. The incense was supposed to be a germ killer. Actually,
the custom may have started in the time of our great Archbishop
Gelmírez, who did everything possible to maintain the credentials
of Santiago de Compostela on a par with those of Rome. He
probably invented the huge censer as a gesture of Compostela’s
uniqueness within the Church.’
The men who pull the ropes are employed as caretakers by the
cathedral, and their origin, according to legend, antecedes that
of the present building. When Alfonso III was king of the north,
Bishop Adaulfo of Compostela was accused by three men of the
village, Isadón, Cadón and Ensión, of ‘nefarious vices too ugly to
be announced.’ The king’s judgment ordered Adaulfo to be
thrown before a wild bull, but when this was done the animal,
knowing that the bishop was blameless, came and placed his head
in the good man’s hands, whereupon the king thundered, ‘Isadón,
Cadón and Ensión and all their offspring are sentenced to
perpetual servitude at the cathedral which they have shamed.’ It
is their descendants who pull the ropes.
Now they stop, for if they continued they’d send the censer
banging into the ceiling and then down into the crowd, as
happened in 1499 when ill-fated Catalina, youngest daughter of
Fernando and Isabel, stopped here on her way to London to marry
Arthur, Prince of Wales. Again in 1622 the Botafumeiro fell,
landing in the middle of a large crowd without injuring anyone.
It is now time for the solemn high Mass celebrating Santiago
as patron protector of Spain, and what happens next is so strange
to Americans reared on a theory of separation between Church
and state that I had better translate a portion of the speech which
Admiral Francisco Núñez Rodríguez makes to the massive stone
statue of Santiago, addressing him personally as if he were present
in his role of Matamoros:
Glorious Apostle of Spain, Señor Santiago, in obedience to the
most honorable responsibility given me by the Chief of State, I
come here to present you with the traditional offering whereby
our people wish to testify to their gratefulness for the protection
and aid which they continue to receive from you.
Spain will never forget that she received the Light of Faith and
the Doctrine of Christ from your lips nor that you selected these
marvelous lands of Galicia for the repose of your glorious remains.
Every year on this day we come to hear your message of apostolic
impatience, which is like a sunrise testimony which reaches into
our blood and fills it with fidelity and missionary zeal.
It was in continuance of your example, O Glorious Apostle,
that in the past we sanctified our power and sublimated our
ambition, orienting them toward difficult enterprises like the
recovery inch by inch of your national heritage and the
evangelization of half the globe. A new world we brought you,
and later an eighth part of the earth.
We will never permit either error or false doctrine to snatch
away our great treasure of Religious Unity, the foundation of our
political and social unity, which thanks to you, O Glorious Apostle,
we have enjoyed during these past thirty years.
Mighty and tall in his red robes and biretta, Cardinal Fernando
Quiroga Palacios, primate of Santiago, and because of the
advanced age of the Cardinal of Toledo, president of the council
of cardinals governing the Church in Spain, replies on behalf of
Santiago, accepting the homage of Spain and promising that as
long as the nation is faithful it shall prosper. At this moment the
pealing of the organ, signifying the majesty of government, is
joined by the sound of bagpipes marching to the cathedral on the
shoulders of the common people. All Spain appears united under
a single banner, that of Santiago, and dedicated to a single ideal,
that of the Catholic Church.
At this point it is appropriate to consider the role of the Church
in modern Spain, and I shall be drawing only upon conversations
conducted outside of Compostela. The central fact of Spanish
history in the past five hundred years has been the country’s
willingness to sacrifice for the welfare of Catholicism, and if one
doubts the sincerity under which Isabel, Cisneros, Carlos V and
Felipe II did so, there is no chance for him to understand Spain.
The cost in gold, in armies, in commerce and in freedom has been
stupendous; the rewards have been a sense of mission and the
building of a nation committed to one Church. Most Spaniards
deem the bargain to have been a good one and the cost not
excessive. In various parts of Spain I was told what I believe to be
true: ‘Eighty percent of the men of Spain, as contrasted to the
women, inwardly ridicule the involved ritual of the Church, but
of those who scoff, eighty percent would take arms to fight anyone
who tried to change our religion to something else.’ One fatal
miscalculation of the Republic in 1936 was its underestimation
of the number of Spaniards who would defend Catholicism if it
were threatened.
The next point is difficult to explain, for although Spain has
been the chief defender of the faith, it has often given popes a bad
time. Fernando and Isabel were not loath to rebuke the Pope
when he issued edicts they didn’t like. Stout Gelmírez, Archbishop
of Compostela, openly opposed the popes of his day. Many a law
promulgated by Rome was denied proclamation in Spain, for
Spaniards have usually done pretty much as they like in governing
their Church. Even today the Pope has a more difficult time
appointing a bishop in Spain than in any other country where
the Church is recognized, for the government, in consultation
with the Papal Nuncio, draws up a panel of six acceptable names.
These are submitted to the Pope, who designates the three who
are most acceptable to him, and from this list the Spanish
government selects its new bishop. In many parts of Spain, as we
have seen, the memory of Pope John XXIII is poorly regarded
and his more revolutionary ideas of ecumenism are opposed by
at least half the clergy. It is common to hear a Spanish priest say,
‘It is now the role of the Spanish Church to save Rome from itself.’
What percentage of the ecumenical reform of the past decade will
operate in Spain remains to be seen.
The extent to which the Church dominates civil life is often
surprising to visitors. Marriage, family life, education, publishing,
health and motion pictures are only a few of the areas in which
religious control is supreme. The Church is vigorously supported
by the other members of the ruling triumvirate, the army and the
landed families, and by the Guardia Civil and the police as well.
A citizen is ill advised to tangle with any agency of this group, for
the others will jump on him. A man I know was visiting Valencia
when a religious procession passed and he alone of the bystanders
refused to rise and doff his cap as the Virgin went by. He was
arrested and asked by the police, ‘What are you, some kind of a
radical or something, not paying homage to the Virgin?’ He
escaped serious trouble only by claiming that his knee had been
damaged in an automobile accident. He was warned that in the
future he must be more worshipful.
This kind of interlocking directorate between the right-wing
politicians and the Church has existed for two centuries and
explains why, at recurring intervals, the people of Spain, judging
the Church to be indifferent to their needs, have risen blindly to
slay their priests and burn their churches. This has happened so
often and in such identical patterns that one must consider the
killings and burnings following the outbreak of the Civil War in
1936 as merely the latest in a doleful sequence. It is misleading
for the Franco government to place marble tablets in churches
proclaiming that it was Marxists who killed the priests. Most of
these atrocities occurred months before Marxists were in control
and should more accurately be considered a typical explosion of
Spanish resentment. One incident not related to the war typifies
those that were. In July, 1834, a cholera epidemic threatened
Madrid, and when a rumor spread that Jesuits and friars had been
poisoning wells, a mob swarmed into the Puerta del Sol and
fanned out to burn churches and slaughter more than eighty friars
and monks. In 1835 similar burnings and killings broke out,
almost as if by prearrangement, in all the major Spanish towns.
During the Civil War it was natural and necessary for the
Church to ally itself with the army and the landholders, but the
continued alliance for more than thirty years has encouraged the
lower classes to believe that the nineteenth century is being
repeated and that the Church continues to be their enemy. This
is why many younger priests and possibly half the seminarians
want to create a Church which is divorced from the army and
landholders. In Barcelona, as we have seen, priests agitating for
social liberalism were clubbed publicly by the police and won
much sympathy from the public. In Sevilla sixty seminarians
struck for a more liberal interpretation of Church law. In Madrid
priests wanted to know what was being done to implement the
decisions of the Ecumenical Council, and petitions were circulated
within the Church. I never knew, when I began talking with
Spanish priests, what unpredictable thing they might say, and
among them I found a wider spectrum of opinion than I do
among my neighbors at home. Older men seemed determined to
keep Spain as it has always been and to defend the country against
what they regard as the recent errors of Rome; some of the
younger men were surprisingly outspoken liberals.