Maud Howe Elliott

CONCEPCION sitting in the patio under a golden shower of yellow Bankshire roses! That was our first impression of Seville. Pemberton, tall and lean, stood beside her, nervously twirling his stick. We hurried down to the courtyard; introductions followed.

“Mes amigos, Concepcion. She doesn’t speak a word of English—all the better for your Spanish. She is Sevilliana born. We will do our best between us to show you the town in—how many days or hours do you mean to stay?”

“Weeks or months, rather; you don’t know what you are letting yourself in for,” warned J.

“The longer the better. Concepcion is sometimes busy with the children, housekeeping, or millinery. I never have anything to do.”

Concepcion welcomed us with soft eyes, a gracious flurry of civilities, glanced at her watch, and looked meaningly at Pemberton.

“Yes,” he said, “it’s time to start. The

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OUR LADY OF O., SEVILLE.

ceremony of Rending the White Veil, the first act of the drama, begins at ten o’clock.”

It was the Wednesday of Holy Week. We had timed our arrival in Seville with an eye to that service. Had it not been for Concepcion, we might have missed it, after all. It was wonderful enough to sit in the patio with the paired Moorish columns, the green and blue azulejos, listening to the fountain, and the green love-birds in their gilded cage, looking at Concepcion, her little feet tucked under her chair, her fan gently agitated, her mantilla almost as black as her curls.

Outside, in the Plaza del Pacifico, the sun lay hot on the tawny earth; among the glossy green leaves of the orange trees, golden fruit and waxen blossom hung side by side. The air was sweet with the smell of them. A little boy took off his jacket and fluttered it like a muleta (the matador’s red cloak) in his companion’s face. In a moment the two boys were hard at it—playing at bull-fighting. We lingered to watch them.

“Seville is even better than I remembered,” said Patsy. “I must have been here before (I knew that he had not); I seem to have known it all my life. What a lot of our friends, dead and alive, came from here! The Emperor Trajan was a Sevilliano, so were Don Juan and Velasquez, so is Villegas. Figaro, brass basin, white apron, and all, met us at the gate last night when we arrived, and ran beside the carriage, pointing out the black arrows at the corners showing the way.”

Was Rossini ever in Seville? Not that it signifies; he devined it all, if he did not see it. His creatures, Figaro, Rosina, Don Bartolo, are of the glorious company of its ghosts.

Seville is a siren city. The river Guadalquiver throws an arm about her; genius, when it may, follows suit and embraces the darling of Andalusia.

“I’ll show you Figaro’s barber shop some day,” said Pemberton over his shoulder. “It’s near my place. Yes, I’m a householder. You know the proverb? ‘Whom God loves, he gives a house in Seville.’”

“Find us one, and we’ll settle here, too!” Patsy exclaimed.

“We will talk about that later,” said Pemberton. “Now, I am taking you to the cathedral. Before you see it, I ask you to consider the immortal resolution passed by its founders before the first stone was laid. ‘Let us build,’ they resolved, ‘a monument that shall make posterity declare that we were mad.’ That was a good bluff, wasn’t it?”

“The only thing about posterity that you can bank on,” Patsy sagely put in, “is that it won’t say what is expected of it!”

“Claro! Posterity, you and I and Concepcion here, say those men were the sanest of their time. They, their architects, and their artists support this city to-day. I don’t know how the taxes could get paid without the money you travelers bring. The cathedral is the thing that draws you, and the pageants and fiestas—they have all grown up out of it, are part and parcel of it. The ‘monument’ of those ‘madmen’ is the Heart of Seville. I wish we had a few such lunatics at home. They only thought about building the house of God. We waste ourselves in inventing ingenious devices for heating and lighting the churches of men, and let slip the great opportunity!”

We were walking, while Pemberton poured out his vehement torrent of talk, through a narrow, twisting calle, innocent of sidewalks, between tall Morisco houses with openwork gates, catching tantalizing glimpses of patios where roses riot, fountains sing, cedars whisper. If there be jealous iron-bound doors in gracious Seville, like those of grim, old Moorish Ronda, they stand hospitably ajar. As we turned a corner, Pemberton stopped us with a gesture:

“Look,” he said, “the Giralda!”

Across a plaza where fringed palms rustle, at the end of a calle still in faint lilac shadow, stood a tall square tower of tenderest rose color. The Giralda, once the minaret of old Abu Yacob’s mosque, dominates Seville as the Giglio of Giotto dominates Florence, by its imperial right of beauty. The bronze Victory on the summit turned lightly with the breeze; her Roman helmet, her standard, and the olive branch in her hand sharply etched against the fiery blue sky. In the belfry the old green bells—all Christians baptized—San Miquel, el Cantor, Santa Maria, la Gorda, swung to and fro, calling the people to prayer as their predecessor, the muezzin, once called them.

“It is very late,” murmured Concepcion. She spoke slowly, distinctly; I understood her then and after. My Spanish was “coming back to me:” at sixteen I could chatter like a magpie in West Indian Castilian. We hurried on, losing the Giralda to find it again standing like a tall sentinel beside the cathedral. This was our first meeting with Gothic architecture in Spain. The pure lines of pointed window and door, the airy, flying buttresses, the graceful parapet crowning the roof rose stately above us, solemn and inspiring, a very gospel carven in warm gray stone.

“The cathedral is the Heart of Seville,” said Pemberton, “it is a unique thing. No church in Christendom, no Greek temple or Buddhist shrine can compare with it. Not because it is the largest Gothic cathedral and the third largest church in the world, but because it has breath, because it is alive.”

An aged beggar, clean and respectable, lifted the heavy leathern curtain that hung over the door. “Una limosna por el amor de Dios,” he whispered. Concepcion dropped a perro chico (literally a small dog, a copper coin worth one cent) into his trembling old hand.

“Dios se lo paga a V.,” said the beggar, a neat, self-respecting mendicant whose voice lacked the whine of Italy. God himself will pay it to you!

In the rich, dusky spaces of the nave, near the puerta mayor, a marble slab is let into the pavement. Carved upon the slab are the familiar device of the three brave caravels and the proud motto, “Á Castilla y Á Leon, mundo nuebo diÉ Colon.”

“This is the tomb of that good son, Ferdinand Columbus,” said Pemberton. A cord tightened round my heart. “That’s a link with the past that holds, isn’t it?”

From that moment it seemed as if we all caught fire from Pemberton, saw through his eyes, felt with his intensity of feeling. The sweeping aisles, the steadfast columns, the soaring arches of that cathedral seemed elemental things, like their prototypes, the forest lanes, the giants of the primeval wood. We could almost feel the spring of pine needles underfoot, smell the resin, see the sunlight striking through the tops of tall pines swaying together, arching the forest path.

The coro the distinguishing feature of Spanish cathedrals—it is like a chapel set down in the middle of a church—interferes less with the impression of the whole building at Seville than in any other cathedral we saw. In the outer aisles, which are free of the coro, you have an uninterrupted view of the entire length of the building, and can realize its sublime proportions, get a sense of the harmony of the whole; the ease with which the vast columns uphold the roof, and divide the whole space into its proper parts. In itself, the coro is like an exquisitely wrought gem in a chaste and simple setting. It is shut off from the nave on the side of the puerta mayor, by a marble faÇade containing fine bas-reliefs, and a painting of the Virgin by Francesco Pacheco, father-in-law and teacher of Velasquez. On the side towards the capilla mayor and the high altar, the coro is isolated by a magnificent wrought-iron screen where, high up in groups of threes, hang the golden mass bells. Around the interior of the coro runs a double row of choir stalls, marvels of wood carving, in part grotesque, where the carver’s fancy ran riot and reproduced the faces of the men, beasts, and devils that had haunted his childish dreams.

SEVILLE CATHEDRAL.

Those goblin, demon heads are carved low down, where the hand rests, the knees push. They are worn away, polished smooth by the rubbing of the palms and the calves of generations of monks. Safe above, where the uplifted eye strikes, are the heavenly visions,—angels, saints, prophets, the Virgin in glory, fresh as the day old Nufro Sanchez carved them. In the middle of the coro stands the tall facistol holding the yellow vellum music books open at the page where the monkish illuminators painted their most beautiful miniatures.

“There’s Villegas’s picture,” J. whispered, as we passed the coro, “the old choirmaster holding up his baton, scolding the choristers. I know every inch of this church; there’s not a corner he has not painted.”

“And how he has painted it!” sighed Pemberton; “as a man paints the portrait of his mother. How you feel the artists, dead and alive, who have worked here; that’s part of the fascination of the place.”

“Put the camp chairs there,” said Concepcion. She had found us the perfect position, between the coro and the capilla mayor. “Did he tell you that screen is gilded with the first gold that came from the Americas?”

The ship that brought that first gold must have been the size of the Mayflower, from the amount of “first gold” it is supposed to have brought to Spain.

There was no crowd, only a few women dressed like Concepcion, all in black; some poor bodies, a sprinkling of tourists, and one brown Franciscan. The sunlight pouring through the painted window of the Assumption stained the nearest columns blood-red, sapphire, emerald. In the coro, sombre and rich, the crimson and scarlet cloaks of the old canons, sitting slumbrous in the stalls, glowed like jewels in the dusk. Grouped in couples about the facistol were the choir boys, their black-letter scores held between them. The high altar of the capilla mayor was covered by a thick, White Veil, that hung from the groined roof to the floor. Two by two the tonsured acolytes in long purple gowns, with tassels of gold and violet, prepared for the service, dressed the pulpits, laid ready the missals. The three officiating priests appeared, each preceded by a pair of altar boys in scarlet and ivory, carrying silver candlesticks twice as tall as they. The priest at the middle pulpit was a big, powerful man, with a fine resonant voice. His intoning of the gospel was masterly; Concepcion said the finest in Seville, if not in Spain. The old priest with the delicate, spiritual face, like a wax mask with jewel eyes, and the high treble voice, must have been as good at intoning in his day. The little boys who held the candles close for his old eyes to see, leaned towards him with a pleasant, human tenderness. It was easy to see there was love in their service.

“Et posuit eum in monumento,” the old priest quavered out the last words of the story, as it is told by Luke; the three celebrants left the altar with much ceremony of book and bell and kiss ecclesiastical, and took their stand before the white veiled altar; the purple acolytes swung their gold censers till we saw the glowing coals; the smoke of frankincense and spice rose up in clouds. There came a moment of strained silence. The only sound was the clinking of the censer chains. The air between priests and people was thick and blue with incense.

Brrrrrrrrrrm, brrrrrrrrrrrm! The silence was shattered by a loud clap of thunder, another and another, as if a fierce tempest had sprung up outside. While the thunder rolled and echoed through the aisles, the White Veil was rent from top to bottom, fell to the ground, and disappeared as if by magic. In its place hung the Black Veil. Before this stood in studied attitudes the big priest, the old priest, and a little priest. The brown Franciscan kneeling by the great tenabrium had thrown back his head in ecstasy.

“Look,” whispered Pemberton, “the Saint Anthony of Murillo; I will show you the picture in the baptistry; it’s the one the figure of Anthony was cut out from and sent to New York. They have put the piece back, but the ‘joining’ shows.”

We came out of the cathedral into the light and perfume of the Court of Oranges, sat down upon a sun-warmed marble bench, and looked up at the pigeons flitting about the Giralda. A little cloud floated before the face of the sun, a shadow fell upon the fountain.

“That fountain where the women are gossiping is the old Moorish midhÂ, where the musselmen washed before prayer, as I have seen them do in Turkey. Women weren’t allowed in the Court of Oranges then,” mused Pemberton. “Where we sit, the temples of Astarte and of Salambo once stood. It’s curious how you catch the echoes of the older religions in these ceremonies of Holy Week. Some of the rites were practiced before Rome was. The mosque, the Moors who worshipped there, seem things of yesterday, in comparison.”

“Almost of to-day, that cry, that man are more than half Arab.”

“Agua, agua fresca!” The cry twanged of the Orient. The water seller, lean and brown, with impenetrable black velvet eyes, turned into the courtyard. He was dressed all in white, with

odd, hemp-soled shoes,—a grave man who offered water from his clean cup, then passed on his way, his cry growing faint, fainter, till it was drowned in the clangor of el Cantor, the great, green, bronze bell of the Giralda.

The afternoon of Holy Wednesday found us in the Plaza de la Constitucion. Before the florid faÇade of the Casa de Ayutamiento a grand stand had been built. In the center was a dais hung with crimson velvet, garlanded with flowers. Under a gold embroidered canopy stood three gilded thrones.

“For the King, the Queen Mother, and the Infanta Maria Teresa,” Concepcion explained. Opposite, across the plaza, Pemberton pointed out the Audienza, a handsome Renaissance building, over whose door were the arms of Charles V, the Pillars of Hercules with the old motto borrowed from the old hero, ne plus ultra. A marble column shows where the public executions once took place. The plaza, scene of tournaments, bull-fights, and carnival fÊtes, was crowded by those who could afford the best seats for the processions of penitence, the famous pageants of Holy Week. The audience assembled in twos and threes, the dark, full-bosomed Andalusian women, with fan and mantilla, the men in uniform or afternoon dress. In a neighboring box sat a young girl with a lovely oval face, masses of wavy black hair, and eyes like cool, brown agates.

“That is Luz,” said Pemberton, “called the prettiest girl in Seville.” He looked at Concepcion as he said it.

“There is a woman who is as beautiful,” I said, truthfully, and knew that Pemberton was my friend for life.

Luz had many visitors (the seats in her box were never empty), they came and went like moths about a candle. One remained, a monk in a brown habit, the Franciscan of the cathedral. In spite of his rope girdle, his bare sandaled feet, he had once belonged to that world of fashion where Luz rules, and where he was still at home.

A fanfare of trumpets rang out above the babble and the laughter. Fans were closed, flirtations broken off. Luz turned in her seat; all eyes were fixed on the corner where the Calle de Serpientes turns into the plaza. Down the narrow street, out into the full light of the square, rode a troop of resplendent cavalry,—white Andalusian horses with delicate, high-stepping feet, men who sat straight in the saddle, in spite of rich trappings and gorgeous uniforms. The penitentes followed, sombre, masked men in long, purple velvet gowns, the train folded over the arm, showing violet silk stockings and silver-buckled shoes. From their tall, pointed caps hung down the antefaces covering the entire head, falling low upon the breast: through the eyeholes one caught the flash of dark eyes. In their gloved hands they carried silver staffs of office ten feet high. Behind walked the Nazerenos. The foremost carried a large cross; the others, standards of the order, or flaming torches that smoked and flickered as they walked. Before the penitentes passed in front of the grand stand, they spread out their trains that trailed behind them on the ground. In the midst of these maskers strode a band of Roman centurions,—helmets, cuirasses, spears, and standards with the familiar S P Q R glancing in the sun. The music to which they marched had a melancholy refrain, a sort of insistant grieving that knocked at the heart.

“The funeral march of Eslava; you will know it well before Easter,” said Pemberton.

“Ai, ai!” A great sigh breathed by a thousand people as the first paso came in sight,—a huge float moving, as if miraculously, down the Street of Serpents out into the plaza. On a base of wrought silver, at the height of a man’s shoulder, stood a life-sized statue of the Virgin.

“Nuestra SeÑora de la Vittoria,” murmured Concepcion.

The statue, of painted wood, was sumptuously dressed. The front of her robe was of costly lace; over this fell from the shoulders a train of black velvet, two yards long, heavily embroidered in gold arabesques. The hair was real. On the head sparkled a stupendous diamond crown. Slowly, slowly the float drew near, wrapped in a cloud of incense from the censers of the penitentes. A rain of flowers fell from window and balcony; the velvet and gold baldequin over the Virgin’s head was almost hidden by lilies and roses. At her feet were flaunting daffodils in silver vases, and row on row of blazing candles at various heights. She was covered from throat to waist with superb jewels, strings of pearls, diamonds, and sapphires. Her wrists were laden with bracelets, in her hand she carried a lace pocket handkerchief. As she entered the plaza a tremendous peal shook the soft air; the vast green bells of the Giralda seemed to fling themselves like live creatures towards Mary. The glitter of the gewgaws, the glow of the candles lighted up the face, showed the tears (pearls of great price) on the cheeks, the beauty and tenderness of the expression.

“A masterpiece by the sculptor, MontaÑes, the friend of Velasquez,” said Pemberton. In spite of all the frippery of the dress you feel the hand of the master sculptor in the painted statue. The

loving, tender face, the feminine outstretched arms divinely express the eternal womanly.

“MirÉ, MirÉ, Vd! el Rey y la Reina!” whispered Concepcion. She had not been too much engrossed to see the young King and his mother take their places. The paso turned slowly as if on a pivot till the queen celestial faced the queen terrestrial. The King uncovered and saluted, the Queen Mother, Cristina Maria, courtesied,—so they stood facing each other for a single heart-beat, then the King left the dais, walked down into the plaza, and took his place at the head of those masked men.

“Don Alfonzo is the Elder Brother of the Confraternity of the Cigar Makers,” whispered Concepcion. “See, he escorts their patron, our Lady of Victory, through the plaza.”

To the mournful grieving of Eslava’s dirge, the Virgin of the cigar makers, escorted by the King, disappeared on the way to her station in the cathedral.

“Te dea major eris!” murmured Pemberton, “so they carried Salambo through Seville. I hope you admired the dress; it was new this year, a present from the ladies of Seville. It cost one hundred and fifty thousand pesetas; I know because I helped pay for it. You saw there were bread riots last week, not fifty miles from here? It’s the old spirit of Seville, the spirit that built the cathedral during the hundred years when Spain was pouring out blood and money like water in defence of the faith. We can always get what we really want in Seville, and most other places!”

During the long waits between the acts of the drama of the Passion, the little dramas of every-day life went on all around us. In the boxes the young people looked into each other’s eyes, the duennas manoeuvred, encouraged the eligible, frowned on the ineligible. A slim young officer in a cloak slipped a note into Luz’s hand as he passed her box, and only the Franciscan saw it. In the crowd below, the flirt of an orange skirt challenged beauty in the grand stand.

“Imperio, the dancing girl,” said Pemberton. “She’s come home for the fÊtes. That old fellow, her father, is the crack matador tailor; he makes all Bombito’s toggery.”

“MirÉ,” whispered Concepcion, “The Lord dressed in a handsome tunic of cloth of silver, embroidered in gold.”

The entry into Jerusalem, a realistic float, was passing. It represented the Master mounted on an ass, Peter, John, and Sant Iago kneeling before him. This was followed by a large paso, illustrating the Betrayal in the Garden. Peter, sword in hand, Judas—he was always dressed in yellow, the color of treachery—the Roman soldiers as well as the Christ, are all the work of MontaÑes. It is said that MontaÑes while he was at work on this, often got up at night to look at it, and was once overheard to say, “How could I have done anything so beautiful?” In spite of the Master’s ruby velvet robe and the tawdry gilt rays behind his head, the thing took hold of one, the picture “bit” into the memory plate and will not easily be erased. There was a moment of silence as the scenes of the Passion were presented in these wonderful vivid pictures, but as soon as each paso swung by the grand stand, the laughter and flirtation began again. The tragic paso of the Crucifixion was escorted by a brotherhood of boy penitentes followed by a band of child musicians. Directly behind the cross marched a tiny drummer in uniform, beating a big drum. If he was not a dwarf, he could not have been more than four years old.

“What a funny little boy!” murmured Concepcion, wiping the tears of laughter from her eyes. The supreme scene of the Crucifixion, the figures all by Roldan, the sculptor who spares no grim detail of pain, was followed by stifled laughter. The merriment struck an awful anti-climax.

“Remember,” Pemberton explained, “you are seeing this thing for the first time; these people have seen it all their lives; familiarity breeds, not contempt, but a certain callousness. The young women are so strictly guarded, you must not blame them if they ‘make eyes’ a little. This is one of their few chances to see and be seen.”

“Do you make as much of Christmas as of Holy Week?” I asked Concepcion, to turn the conversation. “Which is the greater fiesta?”

“There are three great fiestas of the Church,” she answered, “but Christmas is, undoubtedly, the greatest. There is a saying, ‘Who does not fast on the vigil of Christmas is either a Turk or a dog.’ This is true for people of our religion, for at midnight the NiÑo Jesus was born. I do not know how it is with you, for we are Catholics and you are Christians.”

“In what does the difference lie?”

“In the manner of baptism. You are baptized all over in a great vat with water only; we, with water, oil, and salt that is put in the mouth. There are also other ceremonies,—there is the godmother who holds the candle.”

“What are the Christmas services like?”

“Ah, you must return, if only to see the dancing of the seises in the cathedral. I am told this can be seen only at Seville. The seises are boys, who wear curious dresses and long blond curls. It is an ancient custom,—my husband says, in memory of the Israelites dancing before the ark, but I think differently.”

“At one time there was an effort to break up the dance of the seises,” Pemberton interrupted. “Some busybody complained to the Pope that it was a heathenish thing. The result of the meddling was a papal bull ordering that the dancing should stop when the dresses were worn out. That was long and long ago; the dresses have not worn out yet. They are renewed a piece at a time, one year a sleeve, another year a cap, so the day has never come when they are completely outworn. Our seises still dance at Christmas, Corpus Christi, and the feast of the Conception—that’s my wife’s fiesta, you know.”

“The Christmas ceremonies in the villages are also interesting,” said Concepcion. “I once saw a procession when the NiÑo Jesus was carried through the streets. It was a very large image, the size of a big baby. It had a beautiful head, and was nicely swaddled. One Christmas as they were carrying him on his procession (this was years and years ago), there was a quarrel in the crowd and one man stabbed another. The NiÑo Jesus grew pale and turned his head on one side, so that he might not see that dreadful sight. He has remained in that attitude ever since. I myself have seen the NiÑo. Yes, it was a wonderful happening. It is a much venerated image and has always remained in the care of the good Franciscan monks.”

Concepcion saw that I was interested, that Pemberton was busy explaining things to the others, and, out of the immense goodness of her heart, she went on to speak to me of religious matters.

“I have always heard it said,” she began, “that there are seven religions.”

“I, too, have heard it, indeed, my pastor has written a book on the subject;[1] can you tell me their names?”

“Not all of them. There are Catholics, Christians, and those who worship Mahomet. There are the Israelites,—they have the strangest religion! They worship a calf’s head. In their church they put on the queerest garments, gather round a great calf’s head in the middle, and sing such a curious hymn, ‘Wow, Wow!’ It sounds like that. It would make you laugh, only they will not let you into the synagogue, and if you do just manage to peep in, they drive you out.”

I told her of the wailing of the Jews outside the wall of Jerusalem, hoping to rouse some sympathy for them, but Concepcion could feel none.

“Though,” she acknowledged, “our Lord was an Israelite. He did not become a Catholic till he was thirty-three years old, when He had Himself baptized by San Juan Battisto. Before that He occupied Himself with preaching His religion.”

I asked Concepcion which of the saints was her especial patron.

“The blessed saints are all very good,” she answered, “but I myself do not put much dependence on them. I place all my hopes on the Virgin.”

As Concepcion talked, the sun went down; long shadows fell across the plaza. The pale rose-colored Giralda glowed a deeper pink in the sunset, and then faded. The new moon came up in the faint lavender sky and hung, a golden scimitar, the evening star beside it, over the tower. In the minaret where the muezzin once cried his shrill “Allah il Allah,” San Miquel and el Cantor, rocked and pealed, saluting each float as it passed.

“See, the crescent and the star over the Giralda,” said Pemberton; “the cross gleams red on the cathedral. Mary reigns in Mahomet’s place, and her robe is worked in the arabesques of the Moors.”

Walking home, we came upon a paso at rest in a side street. The velvet hangings that fall from the base to the ground were parted. We caught a glimpse of the hidden motive power, twenty-five or thirty men, with quaint, padded turbans on their heads, the ends hanging down and covering the shoulder. The water seller in his white garments was in attendance. He filled and refilled his glass, passing it to the thirsty bearers, who drank, and mopped their faces silently. The masked penitentes stood at ease, fanning themselves, the Nazerenos trimmed their torches.

“Vamos!” The leader struck the ground with his silver staff; the velvet hangings fell in place (the embossed pattern was so contrived that the air holes were invisible), and the heavy paso moved steadily down the calle on the heads and shoulders of those hidden men.

In the processions of Holy Thursday and Good Friday afternoons, the mysteries of the Passion were represented again and again with endless variations. The pasos seemed to grow more splendid, the dresses and accessories more lavish. The brotherhoods, called hermandads or cofradias, have charge of the floats, called pasos or andas, the statues, and all the paraphernalia of the pageants. There is a certain rivalry between them; some excel in one particular, some in another. One of the treasures I remember was a huge and very beautiful crucifix of tortoise shell and silver. The dresses of penitentes and Nazerenos were never alike; some were in white with blue masks, some in black and silver. They all followed the same plan, the head and face were so disguised that it was impossible to recognize the man in the penitent’s dress. The Hermandad of Nuestro Padre Jesus de la Passion, founded in the sixteenth century, is the oldest brotherhood. In its early days the Hermanos de Sangue scourged themselves as they walked barefoot through the streets. Those who carried the torches were distinguished from the flagellants by the title Hermanos de Luz.

“Brothers of light,” Pemberton translated it. “Who would not be glad to deserve such a title? To be a true ‘Brother of light!’”