Читать книгу Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate - Charles M. Skinner - Страница 16

Table of Contents

If the Spanish colonies have been immoral, it must be granted that they have been religious. This fact has made them easier to govern, for the words of the priests and friars have been accepted as divinely inspired at times when, as a matter of fact, they have been inspired only by the governor or the garrison colonel. The church in the colonies is nothing like the modern and American institution that we know. It is a survival from the Middle Ages. Yet it has shown shrewdness in Porto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines, its prosperity proving that the Spaniard can be a thrifty mortal whether he wears a monkish cowl or a military uniform. Much money has been demanded by the church, but much of it has been honestly spent in the beautifying of altars and the dressing of the statues. Our Lady of the Remedies, in the Church of La Providencia, San Juan, for example, wears a cloak worth fifteen hundred dollars, and is emblazoned with twenty thousand dollars’ worth of jewels; but then, she is the patron of the island. The priests have been quick to see an advantage in benefits or disasters and have often impressed the natives by lessons drawn from natural phenomena. Thus, in 1867, a conspiracy for the overthrow of Spanish rule had been organized, and violence was hourly expected: but on the eve of an uprising the island was shaken by an earthquake. The priests made the most of this, assuring the natives that it was a warning from heaven never to interfere with Spaniards; so the insurrectos stealthily laid down their arms and stole away to their various substitutes for employment, leaving their Lexington unfought.

In one way this willingness to keep out of fights has been a bad thing for the island, because insurrection became a matter of business with some of the natives. They used it as a mode of blackmail. These insurrectos would throw a wealthy planter into a state of alarm by pretending to hold meetings on his premises. He knew that if the authorities got wind of this it might go hard with him, for if he were suspected of being a member of a lodge of the White Saber or the Red Hand, it could mean imprisonment, perhaps death; so he paid the revolution something to move on and occur on some other man’s land. By levying thus on fear and policy a few members of an alleged junta managed to live quite comfortably without work, and it is whispered that the padres of certain villages received their share of the reluctant tributes.

Porto Rico has been the place of abode of some noted fathers of the church, including two martyrs who were canonized by Pius IX. as saints: Charles Spinola and Jerome de Angelis. They left Portugal for Goa in 1596, but having been blown far out of their course, they put in at this island to repair their ship, and there for two months they preached with success. On their return to Lisbon they were captured by English pirates, who treated them kindly, however, and set them safely down in London. They reached Portugal eventually, and ended their work in Japan, where the people killed them. These and other saints receive the prayers of the people on stated occasions, for in Porto Rico the saints have not only their special days, but their special crops, and guard them from special injuries. Thus, the farmer prays to St. James, it is said, when he asks for deliverance from tobacco-worms, while he must address St. Martial if he wants to free his field from ants.

Of the holy hermits who have resided on the island, several have dwelt in the caves where Caribs or Arawaks buried their dead, but the best-known shrine is that of Hormigueros. The Church of Our Lady of Monserrate, which crowns a hill and is a conspicuous landmark, is said to have been copied from the chapel of a Benedictine monastery in Barcelona, which is famous in Spain for its statue of the Virgin, carved by St. Luke and carried to Barcelona in the year 50 by St. Peter. The Monserrate church was founded in 1640 by a poor farmer. He had been ploughing over the hill-top, though weak with fever, and before he could finish his work he fell to the ground exhausted. After he had partly recovered, and had gone back to the plough, he turned a tile up from the earth, on which was engraved a portrait of the Virgin, and no sooner had he taken this object into his hands than his pain, his fever, his lassitude disappeared. Convinced that the relic was sacred, he carried it to his priest, and on that very day he gave the land he had ploughed for a votive church. It has become the best known sanctuary in Porto Rico, for the large painting of the Virgin, copied from the smaller portrait on the tile, is just as potent as the original in curing diseases. In the last half-century a hundred miracles have been performed, and the silver and golden arms, legs, ears, eyes, fingers, feet, livers, and hearts that have been given to the church, in thanks and testimony, amount in value to sixty thousand dollars; for a patient who has been cured or helped is expected to send a little model, in precious metal, of the part of him that needed mending. At intervals these offerings are melted up for the altar service and decorations, and few churches in America have such resplendent candlesticks, chalices, draperies and vestments. The altar is of silver plates, and the gold cross upon it weighs thirteen pounds. Pilgrims to Hormigueros go from all parts of the West Indies. They are lodged, free of charge, in an old house behind the church, each cripple or invalid receiving a bed and chair, but no food. The pilgrims must supply their own sustenance. On entering the church, in procession, they are sprinkled with water from the Jordan, and then kneel before the cross, where the cures are worked.