Chapter VII

PURGATORY--Deliverance from by devotions of survivors--Those devotions described--Difference between dogma of purgatory and other dogmas--Modes of drawing out souls--Masses for the dead--Legacies to pay for them--External representations of images and pictures--Day of All Souls and its practices--The Andalusian Confraternity of Souls--_Mandas piadosas_--Debtor and creditor account between the church and purgatory--How balanced--Bull of Composition--Soul-days--_Responsos_--_Cepillo_, or alms-box--Financial operation--Origin of bills of exchange and clearing house--Wax Candles--Their efficacy--Cenotaphs--Summary of funds, and reflections on their misapplication.

In the year 1802, the Inquisition of Granada celebrated an _auto-de-fe_ against a teacher of languages, who lived at Malaga, for having said and written that the true purgatory was the purse of the friars and clergy. All persons who have considered the immense gains which the Spanish clergy have drawn, and continue to draw, from the belief in purgatory, will agree that the unhappy professor did not wander far from the truth. According to the doctrine, generally admitted among the Roman Catholic clergy, upon this dogma, which the Roman Catholic Church alone receives, the liberation of souls suffering the torments of fire in purgatory, or, what is much the same, their admission to the joys of the celestial state, does not depend so much on the culpability of the defunct individual as on the devotion of those who survive. It is taught in the catechism, it is preached in the pulpit, and enforced in the comments of theological works, that the souls of those condemned to purgatory can be ransomed and drawn out by means of prayer, penance, alms, and religious rites; and that one of the works of charity, most meritorious in the eyes of the Almighty, is the use of those means to abbreviate the duration of punishment of the sufferers. Hence it is that what is called in Spain devotion, with reference to souls in purgatory, is one of the most striking characteristics of religious life in that country. Nobody there has hitherto ventured to examine whether this belief is or is not conformable to the sacred Scripture, and to the doctrines of the first centuries of Christianity.

Purgatory in Spain, and in all Roman Catholic countries, is a dogma as sacred as that of the Incarnation and that of the Trinity, with this difference,--that the latter mysteries, and all those relative to the Saviour, place man in a position of immense inferiority with respect to their object, whilst purgatory, on the contrary, gives him an effective power, the object of which is nothing less than the salvation of souls. It is scarcely possible to conceive that to a being so weak as man could ever be attributed a power equal to that of Divinity itself. This creature, man, whom we see occupied in his business or his diversions, impregnated with profane ideas, and perhaps on the very point of committing crime, or of abandoning himself to criminal excesses, is supposed to be capable, even in these very acts, to open the gates of heaven to the soul of a relative or of a friend, and this, too, without any effort of his conscience or his will, but simply by taking out a piece of money from a purse, laying it on the plate of the sanctuary, or saying a paternoster.

Many and various are the methods which have been invented "to draw out souls from purgatory." The principal of these is "the mass of the dead;" and it constitutes one of the most lucrative sources from which the Roman Catholic clergy derive their revenues. As a general rule, when a testator makes his will, he bequeathes a certain sum of money to be laid out in masses, which are to be said as suffrages for his soul. These sums are sometimes more than sufficient to pay for a thousand, or even two thousand, masses. The relatives or friends pay for other masses for the same object, and many devout persons contribute large sums to draw out, indiscriminately, those souls which are most ready to avail themselves of such generosity. In all acts of devotion, including the daily and common mass, a prayer is introduced in favour of departed souls; and in order to exalt the imaginations of the faithful, by means of external representations, which, as we have seen in preceding chapters, form the grand arm of Roman Catholicism, they present, in painting, or engraving, or in statuary, figures of human beings surrounded by flames, and extending the hands as if in the act of imploring the compassion of their friends. In truth, in order to see this there is no need to go to Spain; for even in London, that great centre of civilization, and at a few paces from Temple-bar, some of these impious caricatures are exhibited for the edification of the English public.

On the day of All Souls (_el dia de difuntos_), in Spain, we find exhibited in the churches the most disgusting representations, such as human bones, skulls, and entire skeletons; the churches are kept in profound darkness; and nothing is omitted to inspire terror and move the hearts of the devout. In the middle of the church is placed a large table with a silver plate, two immense wax candles, lighted, and some of the figures just alluded to. A priest, seated by the table, is imploring, in the most pitiful language, the generosity of the attendants. "He who puts a half-dollar in this plate," said the priest in one of the churches in Cadiz, "draws out a soul from purgatory." An Andalusian, as great an epigrammatist and jester as are generally the natives of that agreeable province, on one of these occasions took out from his purse his half-dollar, and put it on the plate, saying that his intention was to rescue the soul of his father. At the end of a moment or two he asked the priest if the soul of his father was now drawn out of purgatory, and on being answered by the oracle in the affirmative, very quietly re-took possession of his coin, with this pungent observation, "Very well then, my father is not such a fool as to return to purgatory after having succeeded in entering heaven." Ridiculous and irreverent as this incident may appear, it cannot be denied that the logic contained in it is irresistible.

In every parish in Spain there is a confraternity of souls (_hermandad de animas_), whose treasure is composed not only of the contributions of the faithful, but of vast properties and metallic recompenses called _censos_, which always, in fact, consist of available money. The pious legacies (_mandas piadosas_), which abound in all the provinces of Spain, form a capital of incalculable amount. They call _mandas piadosas_ those rustic or urban securities which have been left by testators with the sole object of investing their products in masses to be said for the dead. The church receives these proceeds, and pays for the masses. It often occurs that the number of those masses is so immensely great that there is not a sufficient number of priests in the neighbourhood to discharge the duty of saying them; the incomes, therefore, received by the clergy accumulate, and are disposed of for other purposes. Thus the church becomes a debtor to purgatory for thousands of masses which, though paid for, remain unsaid. In these cases the clergy have recourse to the pope, and demand a bull called _bulla de composicion_, for which the datary at Rome exacts a considerable sum of money. In fact, this bull is to compress, by a science which appears very like that of chemistry, the virtue of four or five thousand masses unsaid into only one which _is_ said; so that if four or five thousand or more souls ought to be drawn out by means of the like number of masses, one single mass alone, through the medium of the bull, produces this grand result; and by this homoeopathic process the consciences of the debtors are pacified.

It may easily be imagined that these practices lead to the greatest abuse. Before the suppression of the friars, the convents were the great depositaries of this species of treasure. The bishops, and even the government itself, have often desired to look into these accounts in order to see whether the will of the testator had been exactly complied with in the application of the funds to their intended purposes. But the prelates of the respective orders have always most tenaciously resisted any such encroachment on their faculties and jurisdiction. It is quite certain that the incomes from these _mandas piadosas_ were frequently laid out in repairing convents, erecting new chapels, celebrating religious feasts, and purchasing rich ornaments, and other precious objects, for augmenting the splendour of the sacred rites and ceremonies. When, at the end of the year, the account came to be stated of this branch of the church's industry, and there appeared to be a vast disproportion of masses said in comparison with the sums received, the procurador of the order in Rome solicited a bull of composition. The account was thus balanced, and every thing nicely adjusted.

Although, on every day in the year, the suffrages of all classes may be offered in favour of souls in purgatory, there are some days especially privileged and set apart in the calendar for the purpose, with this note affixed to them, _dia de anima_ (Soul-day), and on which the effect of the suffrage is supposed to be infallible; that is to say, that each devout person draws out as many souls from purgatory as pieces of money which he draws out of his purse to pay for the like number of masses, or other acts of devotion to be performed. On those days, a large placard is erected at the church-doors, and bearing this inscription, "_Hoy se saca anima_," (To-day souls are drawn out). The churches are full of people, and the contributions of money are numerous and abundant.

The prayer especially consecrated to the drawing souls out of purgatory, and which forms an essential part of the office for the dead, is called in Spanish _responso_. It is composed of three anthems taken from the book of Job, a paternoster, and a collect, and ends with the formula, _Requiem eternam dona eis_, _Domine_. When the prayer is in favour of all souls, the _eis_ remains in the plural; but if it is in favour of one particular soul, then the singular _ei_ is used. On the day of All Souls, when an innumerable crowd of people assembles in the cemeteries, the priests also attend in great numbers to say _responsos_, at so much a-piece, for those who desire them. In a certain Spanish city, which we forbear to name, we have seen these priests rival each other in lowering the prices current of these precious performances. One was crying out, "I say a _responso_ for tenpence;" {148a} and another, "I say it for fivepence." {148b} This may appear incredible, but it is an undeniable fact.

In all Roman Catholic churches there is a _cepillo_ (alms-box), nailed to the wall, and having this inscription upon it, "_Para las benditas almas del purgatorio_," (For the blessed souls in purgatory), for the reception of contributions: and the circumstance has given rise to an operation of mercantile character which is certainly very ingenious, and to which some Spaniards attribute the origin of bills of exchange. The priest of a parish of Andalusia, for example, has occasion for a certificate of the baptism or of the burial of some person in a parish of Arragon or in Navarre. The fee for this document is usually two pesetas. As it is almost impossible to send so small a sum from one extremity of the Peninsula to the other, the priest of Arragon or of Navarre draws two pesetas from the _cepillo_, or alms-box of his parish, and the Andalusian priest puts the same sum into the _cepillo_ of his parish, _or he says two masses as an equivalent_. In this way purgatory is converted into a kind of clearing-house, which wonderfully facilitates the transaction of business in the funds of the ecclesiastical market.

A circumstance peculiar to the worship celebrated in favour of souls in purgatory is the prodigality of lighted candles which are consumed on those occasions. There is no doubt that the object of this practice is to expose to the view of the faithful a lively image of the flames by which these souls are tormented in their probationary state. A traveller, worthy of credit, assures us that the wax consumed with this object in the city of Granada alone (in which there are about forty churches), on the day of All Souls, amounted, a few years ago, to the incredible sum of 10,000 pounds.

The cenotaphs placed in the churches when the funeral rites of some rich man are celebrated, are, in truth, nothing but perfect pyramids of burning flames produced by wax candles. It is a common belief, maintained in the pulpit and in the confessional, that the brighter these candles burn the more efficacious will be the suffrages. The royal family of Spain has had the good taste to avoid this error. In the magnificent monastery of the Escurial, where the remains of deceased members of the royal family are deposited, all show is reduced to a sumptuous carpet of black velvet, worked with gold, and spread out upon the floor, on the centre of which is a cushion of the same materials, and upon that a royal crown of gold. At the extremities are placed four immense candelabra of solid silver, called _blandones_, with their corresponding wax candles of various diameters and sizes.

From what has been said in this chapter the reader may form some idea of the immense sums of money which the clergy absorb by virtue of this belief in the dogma of purgatory. When he reflects that those contributions are upon a more liberal scale than any others which the Spanish nation pays, and that the product is sunk by the most unproductive of all the classes in society, he will then be able to arrive at some conjecture as to who and what are the Roman Catholic clergy of Spain. These contributions, be it remembered, are paid, on every day in the year, in all parts of the Peninsula, and by persons of every category in the nation, from the very meanest to the most elevated in rank. The means employed to wring these sums from the contributors are infallible in their effects. The attack is made, indiscriminately, by appeals to charity, family affection, and reciprocal duties of parents, children, brothers, and sisters. The act of liberating a Christian soul from the dreadful torments which purgatory is supposed to inflict, however opposed to reason may be the idea of operating by material fire upon the incorporeal essence of the soul, is considered superior, in the estimation of every sensible and Christian heart, to any succour which can be given to hunger, misery, nakedness, or other numerous corporal afflictions. In this way the money which might be spent in wiping the tears from the cheek of the widow and the orphan, and be applied to the erection of useful human institutions, is prodigally spent in a mysterious and incomprehensible operation, which, after all, is a purely human invention, and which, by its practical results, and the great amount of wealth it draws to the Roman Catholic Church, bears a greater affinity to a financial operation than to any religious duty.

It would be almost impossible to calculate the advantages which would have resulted to the Spanish nation from those great resources, if the product had been applied in the construction of roads, canals, or other useful labours. But this immense capital being thus spread about in small fractions, the inevitable consequence has been a continual draining of the public wealth, the perpetuating of a theological error (contradicted by Holy Scripture, and by the true doctrine of the church of Christ), and that pomp and splendour which the clergy are enabled to assume by such abundant means, in addition to the funds received by them from other sources.