CHAPTER VII.
THE VALLEY OF MEXICO.
WHERE stood the ancient pyramid and temple to the war-god in Tenochtitlan, today stands the great Cathedral facing the Plaza Mayor in the City of Mexico. Where stood Montezuma’s palace is now the National Palace; where was Montezuma’s treasure-house are now the Post-office and National Museum, with Montezuma’s shield, the sacrificial stone from the ancient temple, and a thousand gods and idols inscribed in the ancient Aztec and Toltec languages. Chapultepec, which was used as Montezuma’s summer-house, is still used as the “White House” of Mexico. Montezuma’s favorite cypress tree, which measures fifty feet in circumference, is as green today as any tree in the beautiful park of Chapultepec, and nowhere outside the pages of the Arabian Nights is there such an enchanting, living story as can be seen every day in the City of Mexico.
Unless you touched with your own hand, and saw with your own eyes, the very elements of this strange, fascinating history, you might doubt your reason and pronounce the whole story a figment of the imagination; but here is history personified.
Let us begin with the great Cathedral, the center-piece of Mexico and its past. Here on this spot stood the ancient temple on the top of the lofty pyramid, down whose bloody sides flowed the blood of a hundred and thirty thousand human sacrifices, and not two hundred yards from here, in the museum, you can put your hand upon the sacrificial stone that bore witness to every one. Here in front of this idol, an altar received the reeking hearts, torn with obsidian knives from the breasts of that dead army, and there at your back stand both the hideous god that exacted this sacrifice, and the blood-stained porphyritic altar itself.
Here is no room for doubt. The museum, or those in other lands, contain all that history has told us of, and they were dug from the ruins when the foundation of the cathedral was laid. The first church on the site of the pyramid was completed in 1523, but the present cathedral was not completed till 1573. The roof was put on in 1623, three years after the first mass was said, and it was forty-five years afterwards before it was dedicated. The towers were completed at a cost of $200,000 in 1791, two hundred and eighteen years after the foundations were laid. With the cheap and gratuitous labor with which it was built, its actual cost will never be known, but was in the millions. The length is 387 feet; width, 177 feet, and height 179 feet. The towers are 203½ feet, and built of cut stone, and the roof of brick tiles. Humboldt said that the view from the towers is the finest in the world. The group of forty or fifty bells in the towers are the finest in this country, but they are not set in chimes. The largest is the Santa Maria de Guadalupe, nineteen feet high and cost $10,000. It is next to the big Russian bell in the Kremlin. The second in size is the Dona Maria in the eastern tower. When these bells strike the hour of noon, every head in the street is bared. The interior of the cathedral is in the shape of a Latin cross. Ninety quadruple pillars, each thirty-five feet in circumference support the roof.
The vaulted roof with its rich decorations, massive altars of intricate carvings, the choir and organ, are grand beyond description. There are seven chapels on each side, separated by carved railings and gratings. The choir and main altar are enclosed by a massive railing of gold, silver and copper, valued at one million dollars. There are five naves and six altars; the altar of Los Reyes (the Kings) is the finest. Beneath it are the heads of Hidalgo, Allende, Jiminez and Aldama, brought here with great pomp and ceremony after the war of Independence had been fought and won. In the chapel of San Felipe de Jesus are the remains of Augustin Yturbide, El Libertador, the first Emperor of Mexico. The Chapel of San Pedro contains the remains of the first Archbishop of Mexico, Fray Juan de Zumarraga, and one of the characters of early Mexican history, Gregorio Lopez, the reputed son of Philip II. of Spain.
A number of fine paintings hang upon the wall, a genuine Murillo and a Michael Angelo. Those in the dome represent the Assumption of the Virgin. Over the stalls is the Immaculate Conception, by Juan Carreo. Near the choir and Altar of Pardon are two paintings by La Sumaya, the only examples by a woman. In La Capilla de las Reliquias are twelve pictures of the Holy Martyrs by Herrera. The Sacristy walls are covered by the great pictures of The Entry into Jerusalem, The Glory of St. Michael, The Immaculate Conception, The Assumption, The Triumph of the Sacrament and The Catholic Church, by Christobal de Villolpando and Juan Carreo. In another room may be found The Last Supper and The Triumph of Faith, by José Alcibar, and the portraits of all the Archbishops. In the Chapter Room are three of the best, John of Austria imploring the Virgin at Lepanto, and a Virgin, by Cortona, and the Virgin of Bethlehem, by Murillo. There are other paintings whose number is legion, and would require a book to describe them all.
The High Altar was once the richest in the world, but has been many times plundered in the many revolutions, yet still holds much of its former magnificence. The solid gold candlestick, heavier than one man could lift, the statue of the Assumption made of solid gold and inlaid with rubies, diamonds and precious stones worth a million dollars, and many other costly things have been plundered, and still it is doubtless decorated more costly than any other church in America. It was from the tower of the pyramid in the same place that Montezuma pointed out to Cortez the beauties of the city and valley.
The group of churches about the Cathedral, but not a part of it, is interesting. La Capilla de las Animas (the Chapel of Souls) where masses are said for the souls in Purgatory, is in the rear. El Sagrario Metropolitano is in the east and was the first parish church in Mexico. Its foundations were laid in 1521, and it is now one of the most beautiful churches in Mexico. Its rich facades and decorations are superb. La Capilla de La Soledad is between this and the cathedral and near by is the parish church of San Pablo.
Four squares north is Santa Domingo, the house of the Spanish Inquisition, now used as a medical college. Near the south end of the same plaza is a fountain marking the spot where the eagle came down in 1325, and picked up the snake and lighted on the cactus as is now seen in Mexico’s coat of arms. One square west of the Alameda is the church of San Hipolito of the Martyrs, built on the spot where so many Spaniards were slaughtered in the retreat on the night of noche triste, (dismal night) July 1, 1520.
In a corner of a wall at the juncture of a little side street is a curious tablet, showing in relief an eagle carrying an Indian in its talons. The inscription in the medallion above asserts: “So great was the slaughter of the Spaniards at this point by the Aztecs, July 1, 1520, called for this reason Noche Triste, that having in the following year triumphantly re-entered the city, the victors resolved to build a chapel here, dedicated to San Hipolito, because the capture of the city occurred on that Saint’s day.”
The City of Mexico has 375,000 inhabitants and hundreds of churches worth a king’s ransom, and they are still being enriched, and by whom? The paupers! The more ignorant a person is, the more gullible, and these well-groomed priests, by keeping the people ignorant, play upon their credulity. In the Chapel of Lost Souls, where prayers are said for souls in Purgatory, a priest named Concha carried on this farce until he was eighty-seven years old. The cheapest mass even for the paupers is one dollar, and the rich are squeezed for all they are worth. Father Concha during his lifetime celebrated forty-five thousand masses at so much a say, which must have netted him a million dollars! No priest can celebrate more than one mass a day and two on Sunday, which makes about four hundred and fifty in a year. Suppose he accepts two hundred dollars from two hundred poor people at a dollar a mass, and accepts five hundred dollars from the wealthy; he accepts more money than he can legally earn in a year. Does he return that money? Not much. And how is the poor deluded creature to ever know that the prayer he paid for will ever be said, to help the late departed friend in Purgatory? He has absolute faith in the process, and it never occurs to him to figure out the possibility of his particular prayer being laid upon the shelf on account of press of business.
Most priests make engagements or “intentions” for more masses than they can perform, and if he is honest, he will sell his surplus to a less favored brother priest with few “briefs” at a handsome profit. Technically they are supposed to do that, but who ever knew a priest to do so?
O no, he knows a good thing when he sees it and the “dear people” will never know the whole thing is a humbug. To be sure, when the priest finds a tough case he will charge a good round sum to pray him out of Purgatory, and he usually collects from Mr. T. C. while he is alive and in good health, clothed and in his right mind.
Reprobate sinners who had a tough time on earth and no hopes for better in the future, generally fix the future all right with the padre before they start to the house-warming. Now these good fathers do not believe a word of the doctrine they preach, because they are all well educated, but they teach it to the people and threaten with excommunication if they do not find the shekels, so the poor beggars will go naked to find their assessment.
And not only in Mexico. I know a poor woman in Michigan who had to sell her only cow to raise a forty dollar assessment on a new church, and she did it under fear of a threat. I have had a poor cancer-eaten pilowa hold out her skinny hand to me and beg in the name of God for “un centavo, Señor,” for her starving children, and I have followed her back to the vestry to see her buy candles to burn before the altar of her chosen saint for value received from that defunct in times past. What does the priest care for the price of blood-money? Follow me to Jinks and see.
Jinks is a licensed gambling house, that I was told on good authority paid the city twenty thousand dollars a year to run the faro bank, three card monte and the roulette wheel. In search after knowledge, I went to Jinks. It is as public as a theater and good order is preserved by policemen who sit to the closing hour and see the lights out. There at a late hour I saw barrels and barrels of silver dollars change hands. Neither bank drafts, paper money nor gold are accepted—only silver.
Great brawny armed porters are there whose only duty is to carry boxes of silver from the vaults to the table, and from the table to the vaults, and at every table sit the clean faced priests who gamble with stacks of silver till the wee sma’ hours, and tomorrow they will go among their parishioners and beg more money for Mother Church. They teach the people that absolute obedience to church behests can only be had in obedience without will and will without reason.
Says Charles Lampriére: “The Mexican church, as a church, fills no mission of virtue, no mission of morality, no mission of mercy, no mission of charity. Virtue cannot exist in its pestiferous atmosphere. The cause of morality does not come within its practice. It knows no mercy and no emotion of charity ever nerves the stony heart of the priesthood, which, with an avarice that knows no limit, filches the last penny from the diseased and dying beggar, plunders the widows and orphans of their substance as well as their virtue, and casts such a horoscope of horrors around the death-bed of the dying millionaire, that the poor, superstitious wretch is glad to purchase a chance for the safety of his soul in making the church the heir of his treasure.”
The reader may get the impression that I am rather hard on the Catholic Church. Of the church in the United States I know but little, but when the reader has seen as much of the church as I saw in Mexico, he will at least be charitable to the writer. There in the Catholic Church the worship of Christ is hidden behind the theatricals of gaudily dressed priests, incensed sanctuaries, ornamented images of the Virgin Mary, beautiful pictures, frescoed paintings, scapulars, medals, relics, and Agnus Deis, with their accompanying indulgences; and associated with most entrancing music, fragrant flowers, lighted candles, gorgeously dressed altars, surpliced acolytes, blessed ashes, holy water, consecrated wafers, holy oil and chrism.
There are also the attractive ceremony of extreme unction, confession, satisfaction, besides the lenten feasts, the days of abstinence, genuflections and stations of the cross, the crozier, and mitres, with the pontifical high mass, decorations, Latin liturgies, illuminated missals, gold and silver ciboriums, ostensoriums and chalices, candelabras and vases, crosses and precious stones, costly laces and fine linens, and the royal purple and the countless ceremonies which the blind follower is not meant to understand.
The bible and Christ are left out of the above enumeration, and never have I seen the bible in the hands of a Mexican layman. They are discouraged from owning a bible and are told that the priest will read and interpret it for them. What can a Mexican Indian get for his peace of soul and conscience out of the above enumeration, when probably five hundred words constitute his entire vocabulary and Latin is no part of it? All these insignia must he go through before he gets to Christ, and then he is told he is not worthy to go to Him, but must pray the Holy Virgin and the Saints to intercede for him, else he will be eternally damned in the fires of Purgatory. Some particular Saint is chosen and assigned him, and he is assured that if he buy candles enough and burn them on the altar before that particular saint, the said saint will prosper his undertaking, and if it succeed, he must ever afterward give the credit to the saint.
We were looking at the statue of the patriot, Hidalgo. My young Mexican friend said: “Hidalgo is our patron saint, he freed us from Spain; who is yours?” I said that I was a protestant and had no patron saint. “But,” he said, “you must have one. We were subjects of Spain, and Hidalgo started the revolution that made us free. Therefore he was canonized and became our patron, and now we pray to him when we want favors. Your people were once slaves and got your freedom from the Americans, and you must have had a leader, else how could ten million slaves vanquish sixty million Americans?” “But,” I said: “you don’t read American history. We did not get our freedom by a revolution, but by a civil war with Americans fighting on both sides.” “But you were bound to have a leader, who was he?” “Oh!” I said, “it was Frederick Douglass.” A beam of satisfaction crossed his countenance as he handed me his hand: “We have both been in the toils and our good saints have made us free. Viva Douglass y Viva Hidalgo!”
And so these poor deluded people are taught that every good and perfect thing cometh from above, but—through the hands of a saint or the Mother of God, and the only honor that redounds to Christ and his Father is the fact that they are members of the same family as the Holy Virgin. And so by a system of black-mail, more tyrannical than was the brigandage of twenty years ago, priest-ridden Mexico has built three magnificent piles of rock and marble and alabaster and chalcedony with the blood of widows and orphans.
The world was shocked a few years ago because Mtesa did the same thing in Africa. The only difference I see is that Mtesa killed his victims outright and mixed mortar with the blood of young girls, but here the process is a lingering torture of body and mind, and a life of abject poverty and misery for the living that overwhelms the stranger with its omnipresence. The Catholic faith has changed these people’s ceremonies, but not their dogmas. The bowing to the statues and altars and images of the apostles, and the veneration of the shrines and the absolute faith in the incantations of the priests to the power they do not understand, is exactly what the Aztecs did in the temple of the war-god six hundred years ago.
His public ceremony is changed and he no longer offers human sacrifice upon the altars, but there are Indians in Mexico today who will secretly celebrate their ancient festivals, and slyly hang wreaths of flowers upon the huge idols on exhibition in the City of Mexico.
