HOLY WEEK IN SEVILLE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3381, 4 July 1927, Page 2

HOLY WEEK IN SEVILLE.

Nothing in Seville—not even the long and gorgeous Holy Week processions—is likely to impress the Prince of Wales so much as the greatest sight the city has to oiler; its wonderful cathedral.

The size of it alone is overwhelming. Twice as largo.as our own St. Paul’s, and loss only in area among cathedrals than St. Peter’s in Home, it seems a metropolis in itself to tlio.se who first wander about it. Its five great naves convey, as few buildings can, a realistic sense of man’s littleness : its magnificent higli altar, arrayed for an Easter festival, points the sensitive mind to God's greatness. The richness of its chapels, and, above all, the treasures of its sacristy, are never to be forgotten/" ' Its services, for majesty and beauty, are, even in Catholic Spain, all but unique. Even more impressive was the cathedra.! in the past, when, as its short period of (jay light was over —for it is refreshingly dark and cool in the long (Spanish summer —the gloom, which to the most insensible stranger conveyed an impression of mystery, was imperfectly relieved by the flickering light of candles. To-day it is lit by electricity—yet not that garishly, for the great vault is so far above the worshippers that the star-like lights far above may well suggest, to the popular mind at least, Hie vault of the heavens. Of ah the times when Seville Cathedral may well be visited, the Prince has chpsen the best. At Holy Week, and during the first days of Easter, it is clothed by- turns in the magnificence of simplicity and of display, and, in addition to the ceremonies common to all Catholic cathedrals, there are a few which Seville claims as her own.

Such is the Rending of the White Veil —a lino curtain of semi-transpar-ent taffetas, drawn right across the sanctuary, and rent from top to bottom during the High Mass of the Wednesday in Holy Week. As effective ami dramatic is the Display of the Sacred Banner, which is waved

slowly to ami fro from the altar steps over Ihe kneeling congregation, while in the darkness a single cantor sings that ancient hymn of the Church, the Voxilla Regis. Rut most of ail tire Sevilian loves an event which is famous all over Spain —the singing of Enslava’s Miserere in the crowded cathedral on the days before- Good Friday. The finest soloists in the- country have been commissioned for this service, and no oratorio in England could he listened to by so rapt, yet so critical an audience, and in such surroundings. The numbers present- are estimated at from twenty to thirty thousand, it is impossible to count them, and it is all but impossible to move. For once the cathedral is really dark, for 1 the Miserere is part of the solemn service of Tenehrae, and is sung by candlelight. Comments and even cries of praise arc swallowed up in the vastness of the gloom, and one can only be conscious of the unrealised drama latent in the world’s most moving cry of penitence.

Standing, or seated perhaps on small portable, rush-bottomed chairs, the enormous congregation listens, enraptured, to the close. Then through the mighty doors of the cathedral it troops out, into thoroughfares which are ablaze and crowded, for, though it is night, all Seville is keeping vigil, as the Jong processions which tell the story of the Passion in dramatic pictures, wend their way, to the accompaniment of music, and lit by thousands ol candles, through the inextricable maze of Seville’s minXiw streets.