PAGAN SPAIN, part 2

on saturdays, come mid-afternoon, the streets outside of the historic churches of the city overflow with wedding guests, the men dressed smartly in lightweight grey and blue woolen suits (this summer is poised to continue well into november) and the women, they’re dressed of course, but these weddings are much less about their dresses and their shoes (in which they do miraculously -- glory be! -- manage not to have to hobble over the cobblestones) as about their hats. they’re really, REALLY something. and the trails of them through the center of the city come mid-afternoon on any given saturday will almost invariably lead you to a set of studded doors in front of which a bride waits patiently with her father while, inside, a vaulted hall full of guests waits, turned towards the doors, less in expectation of the beginning of the familiar wedding march than in anticipation of the procession of latecomer hats that have yet to make their formal debuts in front of the virgin. accustomed to the ceremonial lack of ceremony (as such), some dozens of the guests mill under the umbrellas on the patios of the nearby bars even as the bride waits.

and such was the case at the church of san juan bautista (de palma is apparently his mor vulgar moniker) yesterday afternoon, where at half past noon a young wife to be waited patiently (her father probably wanting to be with his brothers and cousins at the bar across the street) for her friends or their wives or girlfriends to make their plays to show her up in front of the crowd. but at eleven o’clock mass this morning, the same grand church was occupied by only twenty or so of the devoted, at least a quarter of which were elderly and enfeebled and waited of their own volition, unacknowledged, to go to the end of the communion line so that they’d need to spend less time on their canes. there were neither a processional nor a recessional of the priest -- he had no attendants to escort him in any case -- and the luster of the church’s obvious historical and art historical importance was obscured by the motion of the four sputtering wall mounted oscillating fans that protruded from the below the red velvet that covered the top halves of the pillars located closest to the apse.

as soon as the mass was finished (and after the priest had retreated backstage and cut the brighter of the lights that had lit the altar), a crowd rushed in to take pictures of the statue of our father jesus del silencio (located in the alcove to the left of the altar, the right hand of the cross), have their pictures taken with the virgin and her attendant saint john and then to line up at the back of the church to be shown into the reliquary by the male parishioner who had so wholeheartedly appealed the devotions to the faithful few twenty minutes before. it’s difficult not to marvel only at the brilliance of the art in the church of san juan bautista in sevilla, and i was personally rapt by the statues of the two angels that guarded the stairs to the apse, symmetrically suspended by no apparent system of suspension as they themselves held pendant two giant lanterns -- the only two lighting fixtures in the church not to have been converted to electric. and those elderly who had struggled through the communion rite were probably the most disserviced by the catholic hierarchy of all of those who stood in line for the sacrament. but even so, as it was, caught between those wedding hats and the gaggles of tourists, i couldn’t help but feel for the parish of san juan bautista. even for all of the gold (and the apse of the church is glutted with it), i couldn’t help but pity the poor, meek catholic church. but then also to wonder, if by some cosmically beatific irony, it might not, after all, end up inheriting the world.