All right.
We’re in Caceres, Spain (moving on tomorrow) and today I want to share with you a bit about the celebrations of Corpus Christi we’ve experienced in Seville and, as it turns out, here.
When I booked and “planned” this trip, I didn’t think, “Oh, let’s do Seville during Corpus Christi.” But as I researched, I noticed that, well, Corpus Christi would happen during our time there, and it’s a Thing in Seville. Of course, it’s a Thing in most traditionally Catholic communities, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. It’s not at the same level as their Holy Week extravaganza, but it was a big deal, indeed.
It began, it seems with music. Tuesday and Wednesday night, local bands (that is, community marching bands, of which there are many) marched and played concerts in the Plaza de San Francisco near the Cathedral. There was a big concert, it seems, which we did not attend. My interest in doing so was cut off at the knees when I saw the program and noted the final piece being played.
Makes complete sense, doesn’t it?
Things start getting intense on Wednesday afternoon, as local businesses, households and churches decorates storefronts, balconies and street corners with altars. Wednesday night, the crowds throng the streets. One of my sons and I ventured out – it was a mob scene of all sorts of people from everywhere doing the usual evening strolling and gnoshing with the added attraction of windows done up with Jesus, Mary, angels, chalices and bread to look at.
The owner of our apartment had advised purchasing tickets for seats for the Thursday morning procession. Doing so wasn’t easy, but eventually I figured it out, and snagged some Wednesday late afternoon. The man in the ticket office asked where I’d like to sit, and of course I had no clue, so I just nodded at the first spot he pointed to on his chart.
Turns out…they were pretty good seats! Right in Plaza de San Francisco, which is considered the beginning and center stage of the procession. There’s a big altar set up, the choir is there, and from there prayers are led.
It begins early – 8:30 – and as the morning wears on, you can clearly see – and feel – why. For this is Seville, and while I have lived in the South – including Florida – for much of my life and vastly prefer heat to cold, this southern Spanish heat is something else. It was fine under that canopy for about two hours, then the sun got high enough to start heating up our backs and I started counting the floats – or – .
The procession itself was quite interesting, but not what I expected. I expected, for some reason, I don’t know – bands. Maybe more objects processing. But that’s not how it was. This, rather, is how it was: Most of the procession was composed of members of confraternities and other groups, most carrying long (like 4 feet long) lighted candles or symbols of their particular group. Many, many people young and old. Scads of them, women dressed to the nines, men mostly in what seems to be the Spanish male dress-up uniform – a blue suit. Sometimes black, but mostly blue – not exactly a style you’d see in the US. It went on and on, and led me to understand something about this type of thing: it’s a spectacle, but it’s not intended to be watched. It’s intended to be a spectacle in which you get to participate. For in its origins (and still in smaller places and parishes) the Corpus Christi procession is an action of the entire community. Keeping that in mind, I dug up a little more patience.
And that was that – about three hours later. At which point everyone breaks and heads for lunch, and as you see the confraternity members leaning at tables with their tapas and cervesas, finding refreshment in the hot sun after escorting Christ through the busy city on a weekday morning, you (or at least me) are grateful for where ever the “reformers” were resisted.
A couple of notes: One of the glorious moments occurred when the bells of the ….tower started ringing wildly. It was, we decided, the moment when the float bearing the monstrance emerged from the Cathedral.
Secondly, the final group in the procession, after the Eucharist had passed, was the military. Men and women of all branches, marching solemnly, were greeted – as no one else the entire procession had been – with applause and scattered shouts of Viva Espana!
And then here we are, Sunday morning in Caraces. Our hotel is on the Plaza Mayor, so all we have to do for Mass at the Cathedral, is walk across the plaza, up some steps and down some medieval stone streets.
The church was packed – it was to be the community’s Corpus Christi celebration, followed by, yes, a procession. A bishop presided at Mass, and while the liturgy was a little scattered, the Mass parts were in Latin in settings we knew and what a pleasure that was. After Mass, a man got up to the microphone and began organizing the procession, calling out the various confraternities, who got themselves to the middle aisle and out. We waited a bit and then went around them and down to the plaza, where an altar had been set up. The path of the procession was marked – as it had been in Seville – by a path of rosemary.
Members of confraternities, children who’d received First Communion – girls in long white dresses, boys in suits, many of a vaguely military style, religious, priests and the rest of us, including a brass band – led Christ through the town. For a time, we sat at a cafe on the plaza, eating a light breakfast while we waited for the procession to make its round. We moved back to get a good view as the monstrance returned, and in a lovely moment, a family emerged onto a balcony and tossed flower petals to celebrate Christ as he passed.
Later, we drove to Trujillo – about thirty minutes away. In the late afternoon, even there, little girls in long white dresses appeared, walking around the plaza as the adults ate and drank. In general, it was an immensely civilized scene, so beautifully structured to allow everyone the freedom to do what they want – adults to enjoy each other’s company, children to be around and safe, but also on their own, exploring and just being. The girls in white dresses and boys in their suits, racing around with popsicles and soccer balls told me that here, too, there’d been a procession, a celebration, that here he’d been welcomed, too.
Charlotte was Both 