If you ask upper-class Spaniards, priestly or lay, about the religion of the people of Spain, you will be told that half the nation are bigots and the other half free-thinkers and atheists, or at best indifferent Laodiceans: a sweeping assertion that has so often been made that it has become a commonplace with foreign journalists and magazine writers.

To accuse the nation at large of bigotry, atheism, or indifferentism, is nevertheless as unjust as to accuse the army of cowardice. Small though is the attendance of the working classes at Mass, and hostile though they are to the practice of confession, they are none the less deeply religious—firm believers in the efficacy of prayer, and loyal to the fundamental tenets of their faith, such as dependence on the will of God, gratitude for small mercies vouchsafed by a good Providence, and devotion to the Virgin and the saints.

In the middle class there is, no doubt, a good deal of rather shallow free-thinking, although it usually goes little beyond a scoff at superstition and contempt for miracles and images, and is confined to the men. The women usually follow in their mothers’ footsteps, attend Mass, run through the rosary, and thoroughly enjoy the processions which enliven so many Church festivals. Confession, however, is perfunctory even among middle-class women, and the poor avoid it altogether. For strict observance of the ordinances and for material support of the Church you must go to women of higher social position, ladies of title and the wives of rich men, whose political relations keep them hand in hand with the priests and the Religious Orders. They are the bulwark of the Church in Spain. Indeed, it is often said that if all the ladies of the aristocracy could be locked up for a few years, the Church of Spain would go to pieces, so little real hold has it on any other element in the national life.

These ladies attend Mass every day and confess with great regularity. They consider it the highest privilege to be “wardrobe keepers” for the santos (saints-images) in their favourite churches; they dress and undress the image of the Virgin with their own hands for festivals, and they keep in their own houses the jewels and other treasures belonging to her. In some cases they also look after the vestments of the priests and take charge of the altar linen. And they give or bequeath large fortunes to different monasteries and convents, and to religious houses built to receive orphans and old people, repentant Magdalens, and girls in training for domestic service. But no one is admitted to institutions supported by ladies of devout life save on condition of daily attendance at Mass and regular confession and communion. And therefore the people say that such charity is not dictated by love for their poorer brethren, but is merely given in order to prop up a decadent Church, and many will starve rather than ask for it.

The people have a word of contempt for the religious principles of women such as these. They call them beata, which according to the dictionary means “devout,” but which the poor translate as “canting.” There is a world of difference to them between the lady who is religiosa (religious) and the one who is beata. Religiosa is applied to a woman who devotes her life to God and works for the sake of doing good; beata means one who lives, moves, and has her being under the thumb of the priests and the Religious Orders.

The poor say that unless they are prepared to attend Mass and confess regularly, they can expect nothing from women, however rich, who are known to be beatas. For alms given unquestioningly and without insistence on previous compliance with the rules of the Church, the sick and needy turn by preference either to persons recognised as “religious” or to those who “have nothing to do with those follies.” That is how the practice of confession is characterised by the democracy in the privacy of their own homes. They dread and distrust the confessors, and no poor man or woman will speak freely in the presence of one of their own class who is in the habit of confessing.

Yet notwithstanding their antagonism to this primary dogma of their religion, the working classes, and especially the peasantry, are, as already stated, deeply and sincerely devout, and firmly uphold the Christian faith as they understand it.

One of the most remarkable features in the spiritual life of the nation is the clear comprehension of even the least educated among them that the sins of the priests and the Religious Orders stand apart from and leave unsmirched the national religion.

“What have I to do with those people?” said a young fisherman to the writer. “Confess to a priest? Never! I confess to God and my mother, and I want no priest to come between me and my God.”

“I? Confess to a priest? What for? Every night when I go to bed I confess my sins to the Virgin, and I can die as well after that as if I had received the holy oils,” said an old woman of deep and sincere faith.

“I do not allow my wife to go to confession,” said a master mason. “If she insisted I should refuse to provide for her. I will have no traffic with the gentry of the long skirts in my family.”

“No, I did not call in a priest when my husband was dying. He would have died all the sooner if I had, he hated them so. We poor people never call the priest if we can help it. We say ‘death gave us no time.’ The priests pretend to believe it; they are glad enough to be saved the trouble of coming to our houses because, if we send for them, they have to give the holy oils gratis. And we get buried all the same,” said a young widow who had lost husband and child within three months of each other.

“And you are not afraid the dead will stay longer in purgatory if they die without the holy oils?” I have frequently asked on hearing such statements.

“Why should they? My brother, may his soul rest in peace! was a good man. God will look after him without any priest putting in his oar. Yes, it is true that the priests talk of purgatory, but for my part I have never well understood what it is, and I do not care. I say a prayer for my dead on All Souls’ Day, and there is an end of it. There may be purgatory, God knows. But certainly I will not pay money to a priest on that account. I want it more than he does.”

The popular idea of purgatory is very confused, and many declare that they do not believe in it, while betraying in every word that they pray heartily for the souls that they assume to be there.

“Do you think I could believe that my brother or my mother are in purgatory, or that I shall go there, I, who would give the clothes off my back to the poor?”

You cannot pay a greater compliment to a sceptic of this kind than to say: “By your good deed of this or that kind you have certainly taken a soul (or two souls) out of purgatory to-day.” “Taking souls out of purgatory” is a favourite occupation. It is effected by prayer or by good works, not necessarily, so far as the popular belief can be understood, by both practices together.

“There are always seven souls clinging to the cloak of the Virgin—not the Virgin on any altar, but the real Virgin in heaven. They are all climbing up, one above the other, and by prayers or good works you can help the uppermost to get out and make room for the next.”

“And where do they go then?”

“I don’t know. To heaven, I suppose. Purgatory is not a very bad place to be in, it is pretty fair. The wicked people go to the Tinieblas [tenebrÆ]. I do not know what that is, but it is very bad. It is always well to say a prayer for those in Tinieblas.”

“But do you suppose that any of your friends are there?”

“No, indeed; but you never know who may be clinging to the robe of the Virgin, and some one belonging to you might just be climbing up. At least, nothing is lost by saying a prayer.”

“If the souls in the Tinieblas are allowed to cling to the Virgin, I suppose she also is there?”

“How do I know? Perhaps these are all lies—things of priests [mentiras, cosas de sacerdotes]. What does it matter? What is needful is to share your puchero[5] with any poor man who is hungrier than you, and God knows I do that.”

The custom of attending a Mass for the dead on All Souls’ Day is very general. There are thousands of men and women who never set foot in a church during the rest of the year, yet rise an hour earlier than usual to go to Mass before beginning their work on November 2nd. But the proportion of communicants even on this occasion is very small. I have counted the congregations present at churches attended by the working and the lower middle classes on All Souls’ Day. At one early Mass, out of forty present, four communicated; at another, two out of thirteen; and so on. Communion involves previous confession, and the poor will not confess. Nevertheless, their faces show that this Mass is not a mere empty form to them. They do not, of course, understand a syllable of the words the priest mutters at the altar, but they are absorbed in earnest intercession for the dead whom they are commemorating. Then they go their way to take up the round of work, and probably do not attend another Mass until All Souls’ Day comes round again, while the rich celebrate the “Day of the Dead” by paying for and attending frequent Masses, and by taking or sending wreaths of flowers to adorn the graves of relatives in the distant cemetery.

Curiously enough, infant baptism bulks far larger in the religion of the poor than any other office of the Church, and the parents, and especially the mother, will make heavy sacrifices to obtain the fee demanded for the performance of this rite. The ceremony itself has some singular features, for the mother must on no account be present, and even the father remains in the background. But the social function which follows the ceremony in the Church is almost as important an event in the family life as a wedding, and the festivities are kept up far into the night. It may seem fanciful to trace these baptismal customs back to the time of Islam, but it is a fact that the accounts of the birth-feasts (buenas fadas) among the Moslems of Spain offer certain resemblances to those of to-day, while the term used to describe an unbaptized child among the peasantry links us directly to the time when to be a follower of the Prophet was to be an object of contumely. The explanation of the efforts made by the family and friends of a child of poor parents to scrape together the 7.50 pesetas demanded by the priest for the performance of the baptismal office is: “I could not leave him a Moor” (No podia dejarle Moro).

Burial often takes place without the offices of the Church, for there are few among the working classes who can afford to pay for a funeral Mass, and very many are unaware that they can insist upon the attendance of a priest even without a fee. And since the charge for a marriage in church amounts in many parishes to as much as 25 pesetas—the average weekly wage of the agricultural labourer certainly not exceeding half that sum—it is only to be expected that the civil ceremony, which costs one peseta, or the stolen “blessing” snatched from an unwilling priest by the pair proclaiming themselves man and wife at the close of any Mass, should be more frequently resorted to than the orthodox function. Many couples, moreover, live all their lives as husband and wife, as faithfully as if married by the Church or the mayor, without any religious or legal tie at all.

“The women don’t like it,” said a working man to the writer, “but what is one to do? How can we pay twenty-five pesetas to get married? And the women are only now beginning to understand that the civil marriage is quite as good as the other, if there is any question of money to be left to the children. I could show you plenty among my neighbours who live as if married, and no one takes notice that they are not. The priests only say such couples are living in sin because they have not got the marriage fee out of them.”

“It is true that my daughter-in-law could leave my son if she liked,” said an old woman when discussing a quarrel between her hot-tempered son and his hotter-tempered “wife.” “There was no money for the marriage, so I consented to their marrying without going to church. They will never separate: it does not occur to them that it would be possible. It is not as if they were not faithful to each other. My son does not look at other women, and as for my daughter-in-law (mi nuera), he would kill her if she set her eyes on another man, and well she knows it. There is no sin in marriages like that, whatever the priests may say about it. Of course I would have preferred that they should be married in church, and so would my daughter-in-law, but what are you to do when there is no money?”

The use of the term nuera here is significant. No social stigma attaches to these “wives” who are no wives at all, unless they leave one man to go to another. Then they are branded as “women of bad repute” by their neighbours, and shunned accordingly.

Thus the religion of the people seems to be entirely dissociated from the forms imposed by the Church upon its members, save only that of baptism, which is respected mainly owing to an unconscious traditional antipathy to the unbaptized;—the “Moor” or Moslem, of bygone days—and an almost complete indifference to the rites of marriage and death has sprung up as a consequence of inability to pay the fees demanded for their performance. In the towns perhaps few really care if their dead are buried without a prayer, but in the villages there still remains enough feeling about it to arouse an occasional growl of indignation when a coffin is borne through the streets attended only by the mourners, without the priest, the acolytes, and the censer-bearers, who lend distinction to the last journey of those who possess a few pesetas. As for the children, who are born and die like flies, the poor have become so accustomed to see the little coffins carried by on the shoulders of small elder brothers or school friends, led by the father or uncle of the dead child, that the piteous sight no longer calls forth a comment. It is often only one out of half a dozen of the same family who have gone the same way, and notwithstanding the heartbroken lamentations of the mother when the breath leaves the little body, every one knows she will soon be consoled. The lot of the poor is too hard for indulgence in sorrow, and it is not uncommon to hear a woman who is approaching childbirth say with the utmost unconcern, “We shall see what happens. Perhaps it will please God to allow the infant to be born dead.” It is not heartlessness or want of love for her offspring, for Spanish parents of both sexes and of every class are very affectionate, and indulge their children to excess. It is simply that every extra mouth to feed means so much less to fill the stomachs of the rest, while the national custom of suckling the child for at least a year, and often for two renders the mother meanwhile weak and unfit for the washing, sewing, or charing which helps out the family resources. That a great effort should be made to baptize the new baby when it comes shows the strength of the feeling in regard to this religious duty, and would make the general indifference to the intervention of the Church in marriage and death doubly remarkable, were it not that the tradition connected with the first ceremony does not extend to the other two.

Among the upper classes more attention seems to be paid to the religious funeral ceremony than to the actual committal to the grave. When a death takes place in a family of social position, all the friends and relatives are invited to attend the funeral Mass, which takes place in the parish church of the defunct, and it is expected of the guests that they shall accompany the funeral procession on foot as far as the outskirts of the town or village, the cemetery generally being some little distance beyond. There, however, the party disperse; few attend the coffin to the grave itself, and very often it is shuffled into its last resting-place with what to English eyes seems indecent haste and carelessness.

Indeed, whatever be the reason, small respect is shown for the empty shell, once the spirit of life has fled. The rich buy a freehold grave for themselves and their family, but the poor can seldom afford to pay for more than a six years’ concession, if that; and if they do not renew payment the bones of their dead are disinterred and thrown on a heap in the osario or bone-house, a building with a locked door built for the purpose within the walls of the cemetery.

The mental attitude of the people towards images is intricate and difficult to disentangle. Even persons who have had what ought to be a liberal education in many cases believe in the miraculous virtues of the images, scapulars, and medals of their particular devotion.

“If you would only wear this medal,” a devout lady said to the writer, “I know you would be converted to the true faith, for it is very miraculous, and has converted many. But you would not wear it, so it is useless to give it to you.”

The speaker was a woman of culture, artistic, and fairly well read for a Spanish lady, yet she was obviously sincere in her belief in the virtues of the little cast-lead medal washed over with silver.

Nor is this singular simplicity confined to women. Every year men of the upper classes (never, I think, of the lower) may be seen during Holy Week walking barefoot before the images carried in procession through the streets; and since their faces are covered and there is nothing to reveal their identity to the world at large, it cannot be supposed that the act of penance is performed for political reasons, as, unfortunately, is too often the case with public demonstrations of adherence to the Church. Moreover, these processions are attended by men of Liberal as well as Conservative opinions. That the particular image plays an important part is shown by the fact that the act of penitence is never performed save in connection with its appearance in the streets. The penitent walks barefoot before or after the platform on which is carried the Virgin of his adoration, and although it may be one among fifty representations of the Virgin in his city, it is understood that no other would have the same efficacy in cleansing his particular sin. It must be a genuinely penitential experience for a man used to luxury to tramp barefoot over badly paved streets at a rate of progress which makes the two or three miles of distance occupy twice as many hours of time, and sometimes these aristocratic penitents reach the end of their journey in a state of complete exhaustion. But there does not seem to be any sentiment of shame or disgrace attached to the act, as though there were some great sin to purge, for it is not unusual to hear a young man of orthodox proclivities say to a girl whom he meets in society shortly before Holy Week: “You must look out for me at such a place in the route of the procession; I am going in penitence and I will lift my hood there for you to know it is I.” Yet, frivolous as such penitence may appear, the rich man shares with his poor and ignorant brother a personal feeling for the image of his devotion, which leads him to disregard even danger to life in connection with it, should the need arise. This is quite dramatically shown in the case of the fires which frequently occur in churches and chapels, where lights burn continually before images adorned with lace and other combustible fabrics. The santos are always the first thought of the crowd on these occasions, and even men who scoff aloud at “all those fooleries” in daily life will be seen risking personal injury to save “the Virgin of Hope” or “Our Lady of Miracles” from destruction.

One very puzzling question in connection with this worship of the images is how far even the better educated Spaniards recognise the fact that the different images, e.g., of the Virgin—the Virgin of Sorrows, of Miracles, of the Pillar, of the Kings, and hundreds more—are all representations of one and the same Virgin Mary, and how far they consider them to be distinct individuals. Probably the worshippers themselves are not at all clear on the point: that the prayers offered before these images are in most cases addressed, not to the Person represented, but to the image itself, there seems little doubt. In the case of the populace the images certainly seem to be distinct individuals; indeed, I have been pitied more than once by kindly peasants for having “only one Christ.” “We have many: there is the Christ of the Descent from the Cross, and the Christ of the Waters, besides the Christ of the Flagellation in the Parish Church, all very miraculous.”

An intelligent man of middle age, better educated than most of his class, said to me in reference to the affection of the Spanish peasants for their images of the Virgin.

“You would be shocked if you could hear what we say to the Virgin in our houses and when we see her in the streets. But it is not irreverence or disrespect, as you would consider it. It is that we feel towards her as one of the family and talk to her as we should to one of ourselves.”

The return of certain confraternities after carrying their images through the streets in Holy Week presents an extraordinary spectacle. This is especially the case with images belonging to the poorer quarters. In one town the procession of one of these images returns early on the morning of Easter Eve, after moving slowly through the streets, from its church to the distant cathedral and back, all through the night. The bearers of the platform, which is a great weight, the members of the confraternity, the soldiers—for the Army always has a place in these functions—and the band in attendance, are all worn out with fatigue, but when they reach the threshold of the church they revive, the band strikes up an animated march, and the whole crowd assembled to do honour to “Our Lady” seem to go crazy with joy at having brought her safely back to her “home” (Á su casa). The richly dressed life-sized image is lifted down from the platform by many eager hands, and swayed to and fro in time to the music almost as if dancing, and the whole atmosphere of the scene is that of a rejoicing welcome to a beloved being who has returned to her family after a long absence fraught with danger. Nothing brings home to the observer the intense reality of the people’s feeling for their santos like such a scene as this. It is, however, seldom witnessed by foreigners or even by the well-to-do of their own nation. It is so much a matter of course in Spain that no one goes out of his way to see it, and I was present on such an occasion only by the merest chance.

A bright, clever woman of the working classes, with a strong sense of humour, told me that she could only pray to a certain Christ. “All the others are only sticks (palos) to me. I can never pass our Lord of Pity without kneeling down, and I know by the look in his eyes if he is going to grant my prayer, but I cannot pray to any of the others.”

“Then when you pray to that image of Our Lord, it really is the Christ to you?”

“No; the Christ is in heaven with His Mother, but I pray to our Lord of Pity, and he always answers me. No other is the same. When I pass Our Lord of the Miracles, for instance, in the Church of San JosÉ, I have to say: ‘Excuse me, Lord, but you are only a stick to me, and I cannot pray to you. I do not know why this should be so, Lord, but that is how I find it.’” All this was said quite gravely, and the prayer addressed to “Our Lord of Pity” was recited with sincere piety.

A good old widow of my acquaintance finds St. Anthony of Padua particularly sympathetic, and feels constrained to pray for the soul of her husband at 7 a.m. on All Souls’ Day before one particular St. Anthony in one particular chapel at a quite inconvenient distance from her home. On any other occasion the first St. Anthony of Padua she comes across serves her purpose, and I once saw her stop short and break into a fervent prayer under her breath at the sight of an abominable penny chromo of the saint which suddenly attracted her attention in a shop window.