Nicaragua

THE PRIESTHOOD IN NICARAGUA—DECLINE IN THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHURCH—BANISHMENT OF THE ARCHBISHOP—SUPPRESSION OF THE CONVENTS—PROHIBITION OF PAPAL BULLS—LEGITIMIZATION OF THE CHILDREN OF PRIESTS—THE THREE ABANDONED CONVENTS OF LEON—PADRE CARTINE, THE LAST OF THE FRANCISCANS—RECEPTION, OR CLOCK ROOM—THE PADRE’S PETS; HIS ORATORY; PRIVATE APARTMENTS; WORKSHOP—A SKULL AND ITS HISTORY—THE EGLESIA DEL RECOLECCION—THE PADRE AS A LANDLORD; AS A PAINTER; AS AN UNCLE; AND AS NEGOTIATOR IN MARRIAGE—AN AUSPICIOUS OMEN—DEATH OF THE VICAR OF THE DIOCESS OF NICARAGUA—HIS OBSEQUIES—A FUNERAL ORATION—PRIESTLY ELOQUENCE—AN EPITAPH—GENERAL FUNERAL CEREMONIES—DEATH AS AN ANGEL OF MERCY—BURIAL PRACTICES—CAPELLANIAS; THEIR EFFECTS, AND THE POLICY OF THE GOVERNMENT IN RESPECT TO THEM—POPULAR BIGOTRY AND SUPERSTITION—AN ANCIENT INDULGENCE—THE POTENCY OF AN EJACULATION—REMISSION OF SINS—PENETENCIAS—RATIONALE OF THE PRACTICE—NOVEL PENANCES—TURNING SINS TO GOOD ACCOUNT—GOOD FROM EVIL—SYSTEM OF THE PADRE CARTINE—THE DIOCESS OF NICARAGUA, AND ITS BISHOP—GENERAL EDUCATION—PUBLIC SCHOOLS—THE UNIVERSITIES OF LEON AND GRANADA—A SAD PICTURE.

Although there is probably less religious bigotry in Nicaragua and San Salvador than in most of the Spanish American States, yet the priests still exercise considerable influence amongst the popular masses. To their credit, however, be it said, that many of them, although not highly educated, are not only men of liberal sentiments, but amongst the most active promoters of measures of general improvement. Previous to the Independence, the Church in Central America was well endowed, and quite as exacting as in any other part of the continent, or in Spain itself. For some time subsequent to that event, it retained much of its strength, and was active in the political affairs of the country. Unfortunately, its influence was seldom felt in behalf of liberal institutions, general or local.

It is not to be doubted that the men who were the promoters of the Independence, and most active in the establishment of the Republic, were very little under priestly influence; for one of the first acts of the National Constituent Assembly was to prohibit the sale of Papal indulgences, and to limit the exactions of the Church. This policy arrayed the priestly influence against the new order of things, and it was henceforth exercised in favor of the aristocratical, monarchical, or Servile faction, against the Liberals and the Republic,—thus becoming one of the causes of many of the disasters to which the country has since been subjected. Yet the zeal of the Priests did not fail to react upon themselves. They entered into the arena of politics, and were treated as partisans in the civil contests. They espoused the cause of an obnoxious faction, and came to share its odium as well as its misfortunes. The Liberals, emancipated from the machinery of the Church, soon began to look with incredulity on its doctrines, and with contempt on its forms; and although the people of Central America are still nominally Catholics, yet amongst those capable of reflection, or possessed of education, there are more who are destitute of any fixed creed, rationalists, or what are sometimes called free thinkers, than Catholics, or adherents of any form of religion. Many of the priests share in the general skepticism.

The first decided encounter between the Church and the Republic, was in 1825, when the people of San Salvador, the stronghold of Liberalism, dissatisfied with the political tendencies of the Bishop of Guatemala, under whose ecclesiastical jurisdiction they were, elected a Bishop of their own, in defiance of the Archbishop and the Pope. This example was soon after followed by Nicaragua. The ignorant priesthood, the friars of Quesaltenango, siding with the Archbishop and the Serviles, infuriated by this and other bold innovations, contrived to excite the Indians in Los Altos, who in their fury cruelly slaughtered the vice-president of the Republic; and for a time the Liberals were overwhelmed by the coalition. They, however, afterwards rallied under Gen. Morazan. During his enlightened and vigorous sway, in 1829, it was discovered that the Archbishop was intriguing against the government; and it was then the Church received a blow from which it can never recover. Morazan was not a man to be trifled with; he boldly seized the Archbishop, and sent him out of the country under a guard of soldiers, forbidding his return under penalty of death. The monks and friars belonging to the various convents and monasteries of Guatemala, who were deeply concerned with the Archbishop, were expelled in an equally summary manner. But the measures thus commenced did not stop here. The Legislature of Guatemala decreed the suppression of all the male convents, prohibited females from becoming nuns for the future, and appropriated the revenues of the suppressed monasteries. This act was ratified by the General Congress, which, catching the same spirit, within two months after the banishment of the Archbishop declared all religious orders at an end throughout the Republic. This decisive measure met with the almost unanimous sanction of the people, and was at once carried into effect in the several States. The Congress also decreed not only complete Religious Liberty, but that the appointment to church dignities pertained to the nation, and should be made by the President of the Republic; prohibited the promulgation of all papal bulls, unless they had received the previous sanction of the Federal Government, as also the sale or use of papal dispensations, of whatever character. The State of Honduras shortly afterwards passed a law, which, I believe, was also adopted by all the other States, legalizing the marriage of the priests, and legitimatizing their children, so as to permit of their succeeding to their fathers’ property.^[22]

Subsequently to the dissolution of the confederacy, and under the direction of the Serviles, the convents of Guatemala were re-established, but the other States have persisted in the prohibitory action of 1829, or rather no attempt has been made to revive the monasteries suppressed under it. There were formerly, as I have already said, three convents in Leon; that of San Juan de Dios has been converted into a hospital; that of La Merced is only used by the government in case of need as a cuartel, or barracks. The largest, the Franciscan, although in a state of hopeless decay, is still watched over faithfully by the Padre Cartine. He has thus far preserved its precincts sacred from profane intrusion, and lingers silently amongst its dilapidated corridors, and weed-infested courts, like the antiquary amongst the tombs, the last of the powerful fraternity of San Francisco in Leon.

The Padre Cartine is a learned man, in the continental acceptation of the term of two centuries ago. That is to say, he reads Latin and the Fathers, and is familiar with the Natural History of Pliny,—the latest book on the subject with which he is acquainted, and which is his sole authority. The Padre is withal a mathematician, has a Latin edition of Euclid, and reads it once a year by way of amusement, and to refresh his memory. He is an architect, and has made a plan for the restoration of the convent, on a scale of splendor which would beggar a prince to carry out, and feels as anxious about its accuracy as if the masons were to commence to-morrow, and any defect in the plan would ruin the architectural effect of the structure for ever.

I am not likely to forget my first visit to Padre Cartine. I found him seated in a broad arm-chair, in the principal room of his house. He had been a man of fine proportions, but was now a little corpulent, a defect only to be observed when he was standing. His head was of fine outline, large, and massive, and his face had an expression of intelligence, dignity, and equanimity, at once pleasing and impressive. He wore a dress of coarse, gray serge, bound at the waist by a rough pita cord, for he still kept up many of the austere practices of his order. The furniture of the house was plain and simple, and I believe all of the Padre’s own manufacture. Upon a low bench extending around two sides of the room, was a most incongruous assortment of clocks, of every date, pattern, and country, from a tall cupboard contrivance of the last century, dingy with age, in the corner, through every intermediate variety, to a little German or French concern, which ticked spitefully from the opposite wall. There were cases without clocks, and clocks without cases; besides a wilderness of weights, cords, pulleys, wheels, and springs; for the Padre was so passionately fond of clocks, that he not only kept an extensive variety of his own to tinker, but borrowed all of his neighbors’, and encouraged the distant villagers to bring him theirs for gratuitous cleansing and repair. No Jew’s second-hand furniture-shop in Chatham street could afford more than a very faint counterpart of this curious collection. The Padre observed that they attracted my attention, and commenced a philosophical lecture on horology, which I hastily brought to a close by suggesting a walk through the old convent and the church which had been attached to it. In the first courtyard were half a dozen deer, tame as kittens, which came bounding up at the sound of the Padre’s voice; they licked his extended hand, and held down their heads to have them rubbed, but failing to cajole the Padre out of a plantain or tortilla, butted him playfully, and struck at him with well-feigned malice. Upon one side of this court the Padre had fitted up a private chapel. It contained a marble altar, a wax figure of Christ, and a great variety of valuable ornaments saved from the wreck of the monastery, and with which no earthly consideration could prevail upon the Padre to part. An expression, half of sorrow, half of pride, passed over the Padre’s face as he held the door open that we might see the precious contents of his oratory. From this he took us to a large room, his own private apartment, in which was the rough hide bed whereon he slept, and which contrasted strangely with a rich set of travelling wine and liqueur bottles, which he complacently displayed to us, (not badly filled, by the way), in a secure closet. In another room the Padre had his workshop. In one corner was a foot-lathe of his own construction, in which he turned beads from the arm-bones of defunct Señoras, to be strung on consecrated rosaries, and sold for the benefit of piety and the church—whose interests have always wonderfully accorded. Here were kettles containing purified sulphur from the volcanoes, nitre, and charcoal, to be compounded for the glorification of the saints, the service of the Lord, and the utter desperation of heretics, in the form of bombas. Here, too, was a machine, also of the Padre’s invention and construction, for grinding and polishing the glasses of spectacles, for the Padre, amongst his multifarious accomplishments, was an optician, the only one, probably, in all Central America. He had, in fact, constructed a telescope for the University of Leon, and astounded the citizens by showing them the rings of Saturn! “You are a most accomplished man, Padre,” said I, glancing at his mechanical achievements. “Juguetes,” playthings, mere playthings, responded the Padre, with a complacent smile, which was intended to be depreciatory. In the third courtyard, next the church, grew a magnificent mango tree. At its foot a mozo had been digging, to extirpate some burrowing animal, and had thrown up a variety of human bones, and amongst them a skull. Its delicate proportions attracted my attention, and I stepped aside and picked it up.

“Ah, Padre, this is a woman’s skull, a girl’s skull, I am sure! Padre, how came it here?”

The Padre took it quickly from my hand, looked at it, and then gazed in an abstracted, reflecting manner upon the spot which it had occupied. After a few moments’ silence, he spoke, deliberately removing the earth from the eye sockets with his fore-finger;

“Ah, Señor! she was very beautiful, this girl. She was the youngest daughter of Señora M——! Heaven rest her soul! She died of the cholera in the year ’37. Five thousand of our people died in four short months, Señor! The Señorita Inez! She was only sixteen years old, Señor; but yet a woman, and beautiful, very beautiful!”

And the Padre held the delicate skull before him, as if it was clothed with flesh again, and he gazed upon the smiling face once more.

“Very beautiful,” he soliloquized. “She was amongst the first; there are five hundred buried in this very court, Señor,” said the Padre rapidly, turning towards me, and crossing himself. “Five thousand in four months! in four short months!”

The expression of the old man’s face, as the memory of those four months came back upon him, showed how terrible and ineffaceable were the scenes which they had witnessed. “She was very beautiful!” and the Padre placed the skull gently in the earth again, laid the delicate bones carefully around it, and with his naked hand scraped the loose earth above them.

The interior of the Eglesia del Recoleccion, which has a most elaborate façade, covered with shields on which are exhibited all the prominent devices of the church, was dark and gloomy. The altar was a fine one, and the Padre kept a lamp burning constantly before an image of the Virgin, which looked spectral enough beneath its feeble rays. A number of pictures were suspended upon the walls, among which were a variety of saints frying complacently upon gridirons, smiling from stakes of impalement, or sailing smoothly away amongst a swarm of baby angels and bodiless cherubs, to a most substantial looking heaven, elevated only a few yards above the earth. We ascended into the tower by a series of rickety stairs, with gaps here and there ranging from one to four steps, up which the prudent Padre did not essay to go. From this tower we obtained a fine view, second only to that to be had from the top of the Cathedral. As we descended, a huge owl, which we had startled from his roost in some dark corner of the tower, nearly knocked us over in his flight. We returned through the Golgotha, to the grand reception or clock room, where the Padre showed us his plan for restoring the convent, in red and black ink, which required only a single thing to its realization, and that was precisely what the Padre did not know how to obtain, viz., money! We nevertheless made him happy before leaving, by promising to write to the United States, on his behalf, to obtain a grand clock for his church, which should exhibit three dials, and strike the hours. “Con tres frentes!” repeated the Padre, calling after us as we passed down the street, “with three dials!”

The Padre ultimately became my landlord. I hired a house of him, which he had himself designed and built, opposite the old convento. It had a grand sala and two rooms on the street, with quarters for the servants, and a kitchen, arranged after the usual plan,—altogether one of the most desirable buildings in Leon. It had before rented for six dollars per month, but as I was a particular friend of the Padre, I got it for nine. The Padre was really ashamed to ask that sum, but then he had written a religious pamphlet, which he wanted to publish, and I told him that I should be too happy to contribute to that laudable object, and that the house was worth twice the money,—which was pretty good, considering that the best house in Leon rented for but fourteen dollars per month. The Padre had achieved a great triumph in painting the interior of this house. It was done in fresco, in a style as novel as complicated, and with as many colors as could conveniently be compounded. But the Padre’s chef d’œuvre was the menagerie, as we called it, upon the wall of the servants’ corridor. His models had been the figures of animals and objects represented in the Child’s First Primer, or illustrated alphabet, a copy of which he must have obtained from the United States or England, for there was the entire series commencing “A was an Ape that ran after his tail,” down to “Z was a Zebra who came from the Cape,” all depicted of large size, and in flaming colors. This fact will perhaps sufficiently illustrate the state of decorative art in Nicaragua.

The Padre had a niece (de facto, oh skeptic!) who, with her mother, occupied a detached part of his own house, and over whom, as she was exceedingly pretty, he kept most rigorous watch. He gave out, for the benefit of gallants, that he would shoot the first who should be seen around the premises, and really kept a loaded musket for the purpose. The Padre was a man of his word, and the threat was effectual in its object; the gallants kept away. The last time I heard from Leon, a young American, from Boston, was diplomatizing with the Padre for the hand of his sobrina; it went hard to resign her to a heretic, but the Padre’s heart is soft, and even rocks yield to time. Boston and Leon; Massachusetts and Nicaragua; the omen is auspicious and significant!

I have elsewhere mentioned the name of the Vicario of the Bishopric, Don Desiderio de la Quadra, who was the first of the clergy to pay his respects to me, upon my arrival in Leon. He was then ill, and died on the 4th of October following. His funeral was conducted with great ceremony and solemnity. On the morning of the 5th, circulars, of which the following is a copy, were directed to all the principal inhabitants, and left by a messenger bearing a silver cross shrouded in crape, from the Cathedral.

At the appointed hour we proceeded to the house which the Vicar had occupied. It was a large building, furnished in the simplest manner, for the Vicar was a practical as well as professed follower of Christ, and was faithful to his vows of poverty. All of his income, except the small sum necessary to supply his frugal wants, was devoted to charity. The courtyard and the corridor were already filled with people; and the clergy occupied the grand sala in which the corpse was lying. The ceremonies of the funeral had already commenced, we could hear the chants and prayers, and see the wax lights, but the place was overcrowded, and we did not attempt to enter. After a while a passage was opened through the assemblage for the bearers of the dead, preceded and surrounded by priests, full robed and with uncovered heads. The people in the courtyard knelt, as the remains were carried by. In the street was a sort of car, covered with drapery, upon which the corpse, dressed in the vicarial robes, was placed. Here another prayer was chanted; and when it was concluded, the car, surrounded by the entire body of the clergy, and preceded by the empty ecclesiastical carriage, moved towards the Cathedral. All the officers of State, and a large number of the principal citizens, bearing wax candles, followed; and then came the mass of the people, without order, but silently and decently. The cortege stopped at each corner, where a prayer was repeated in low recitative by the priests, who walked slowly around the car, and sprinkled the ground with holy water. The troops were drawn, up with arms reversed, in the plaza, which the procession entered amidst the tolling of the muffled bells of the Cathedral. The body was carried up the main aisle, and placed upon an elevated platform, immediately in front of the great altar, while the choir filled the vast building with the solemn tones of the chant for the dead. The light fell from the dome full upon the rigid face of the corpse, calm and cold as marble, surrounded by earnest groups, standing silently in the shadows of the lofty arches. An extempore funeral oration was pronounced by the SeñorSeñor Presbitero Dean D. Remijio Salazar, of the town of El Viejo. It was founded on the passage in the eleventh chapter of Leviticus, “Sed santos, porque yo soy santo.” “Be ye holy, for I am holy,” and was given with good oratorical effect and much feeling, and was altogether impressive and appropriate. Its tenor was to show that the deceased, from his observance of the requisitions of God and the church, was entitled to be regarded as a saint. The analysis of what constitutes “the Israelite indeed,” was made with great clearness and eloquence, and in more pretending countries than those of Nicaragua, would have stamped its author as a man of no ordinary abilities.

“The true saint,” said the speaker, “walks apart from the glittering road trodden by the proud and selfish world. His is the path in the valley of humility. He pants not for the glory of the soldier, or the fame of the statesman, the splendor of wealth, or the dignity of social position. Has he talents? He consecrates them to our holy religion. Has he wealth? It is a free offering at the feet of Charity. Has he a lofty lineage, and illustrious name? He humbly surrenders them at the shrine of the Church. All this did the venerated dead! He was a man who feared God, and adhered steadfastly to his service; irreproachable in conduct, a faithful son, a true friend, an obedient citizen, a man disinterested in his views and actions, moderate in his desires, uncomplaining in adversity, humble, in prosperity; purified in the fire, weighed in the balance, by the loftiest standard of the Holy Law, he is proved a saint! And now, amidst the glorious array of saints and martyrs, beyond the clouded atmosphere of earth, in the eternal sunshine of Divinity, dwells that pure and immortal spirit whose rejected tenement, cold and motionless, we have assembled to consign to the silent house appointed for all living. Our tears fall on the earth, but our smiles are reflected in Heaven!”

Amongst the many epitaphs and fragmentary poetical tributes elicited by the death of this Vicar, the subjoined may be taken as a very fair example. With what has been presented elsewhere, it will no doubt satisfy the reader that the tropical muse seldom rises to lofty flights.

The funeral of the Vicar was far more solemn than any other which I witnessed in the country. In most instances the funeral ceremony has few of those gloomy accessories which our customs prescribe as no more than decorous. Youth, innocence, and beauty, like ornaments on the brow of age, or on the withered limbs of deformity, serve only to heighten the terrors of our grim conception of death, the gloomy and remorseless tyrant who gloats, fiend-like, over the victims of his skeleton arm. Theirs is a happier conception. Death mercifully relieves the infant from the sorrows and the dangers of life; and withers the rose on the cheeks of youth, that it may retain its bloom and fragrance in the more genial atmosphere of Heaven. The tear of grief falls only for those whose long contact with the world has effaced the stamp of divinity, whose matured passions have cankered the heart, and whose misdirected ambitions have diverted the aspirations of the soul and the energies of the mind from heaven to earth, from the grandeurs of Eternity to the frivolities of Time.

The youngest daughter of the Licenciado D. died and was buried in the latter part of October. She was young, scarce sixteen, and the idolized child of her parents. Her funeral might have been her bridal, in its total freedom from outward manifestations of grief. The procession formed before my window. First were musicians playing a cheerful strain, and next the priests chaunting a song of triumph. After them, on the shoulders of young men, was borne a litter, covered with white satin and loaded with orange branches, amidst which, dressed in white as for a festival, her head wreathed with pure white flowers, and holding in her hands a silver cross, was the marble form of the dead girl. The bereaved parents, the sisters and relations of the deceased followed; their eyes were tearless, and though the traces of sorrow were visible on their faces, yet over all there was an expression of hope, and of faith in the teachings of Him who has declared “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

The funerals of infants are much the same. The body is invariably dressed in white, and covered with flowers. Men firing rockets, and musicians playing lively airs, precede the corpse, and the parents and relatives follow. The rationale of this apparent want of feeling is to be found in the Romish doctrine of baptismal regeneration, according to which the departed spirit being in heaven, there is more cause for happiness than grief.

When an adult is dangerously ill, or dying, a priest is called, who goes for the Viaticum. An altar is hastily erected in the sick chamber; a crucifix is placed upon it, surrounded with lighted candles and flowers, a place being left for the Costodia, a vessel generally of gold and richly jewelled, containing the consecrated wafer. This is brought by a priest in a litter or carriage, surrounded by soldiers and boys bearing lighted candles, and preceded by music,—sometimes consisting only of a single violin. The people kneel as the procession passes through the streets. Arrived at the sick chamber, the sacrament and the last rites of the church are administered to the dying one, whose friends, gathering close around the bed, whisper “Jesus te ampara,” “Jesus te auxilie,” “Maria te favoresca,”—Jesus protect thee, Jesus help thee, Maria favor thee,—and then, when they suppose the final struggle transpiring, they ejaculate, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!”

“Among the more refined inhabitants,” says Mr. Crowe, in his interesting book on Guatemala, (and the same practice is followed throughout the country,) “after the coffin, covered with black velvet, has been removed from between the gigantic candles which cast a pale glare upon it in the sombre apartment, it is followed by a long train of friends on foot, bearing lighted candles, to the church, and then to the cemetery. When the corpse has been finally deposited, the friends return slowly and in groups to the house of mourning, where the chief mourner has remained, and is now waiting to receive them in a large room or hall, hung with black cloth, at one end of which he sits, supported on his left or right by two near kinsmen or special friends. The visitors sit silently before him for a few minutes, on seats which are placed for them on either side of the room, and having thus manifested their participation in the grief of the family, they rise, one after another, gently press the hand of the chief mourner, and, if they are intimate friends, perhaps add a word or two of condolence. They then retire, and are succeeded by others in the same manner.”^[23]

There is, however, much that is repugnant in the burials, particularly as practised in Leon. Near most of the towns is what is called the Campo Santo, an enclosed consecrated cemetery, in which the dead are buried upon the payment of a small sum, which is devoted to keeping the grounds in order. But in Leon the practice of burying in the churches has always prevailed, and is perpetuated through the influence of the priests, who derive a considerable fee from each burial. The consequence is, that the ground within and around the churches has become (if the term is admissible) saturated with the dead. The burials are made according to the amount paid to the church, for from ten to twenty-five years, at the end of which time the bones, with the earth around them, are removed and sold to the manufacturers of nitre! The government has opposed the entire practice for many years, and during the period of the cholera prohibited it. But the instability of affairs in the country has been such, that the authorities have hesitated to provoke the hostility of the entire priesthood by putting a peremptory end to the practice. Coffins are rarely used. The corpse is placed at the bottom of the grave, the earth rudely thrown in, and beaten hard with heavy rammers, with a degree of indifference, not to say brutality, which is really shocking, and which I never permitted myself to witness a second time.

Amongst the sources of revenue to which the priesthood has adhered with greatest tenacity, and the gradual abolition of which is one of the leading measures of the Government policy of Nicaragua, is what is called the capellania, or lien on property, conveyed to the priests by proprietors at their death, to secure certain masses or other priestly interpositions on behalf of their souls, or conveyed to churches for the same laudable objects. Thus Don Fulano finding his end approaching, gives to his priest a lien of twenty dollars a year on his estate, in consideration of which a certain number of masses shall be said for him annually. Next year the Doña Fulano dies, and, not to be outdone in piety, she secures to her favorite church another annual sum to be invested in “villainous saltpetre” for the glorification of her protecting Santa, and the benefit of her own “alma.” It will readily be seen that the continuance of this process through a series of years must, in the end, seriously embarrass the real estate of the country, and prove an effectual check to the improvement of that species of property. Thus the most desirable portions of Leon, once covered with squares of palaces, are now waste and unoccupied, in consequence of the accumulation of the capellanias, which exceed in amount the market value of the ground.

During my stay in Leon, and in spite of the opposition of those interested in maintaining them, the Legislative Chambers decreed the abolition of ten per cent. of the capellanias, excepting those dedicated to educational purposes. Previously, I believe, fifteen per cent. had been appropriated by the Government, and offered for commutation at a nominal sum. The entire extinction of the capellanias, and the release of the property which they have so long burthened and rendered valueless, will be the ultimate and happy result of these advances.

I have said that the masses of the people still cherish something of their original religious bigotry. It is, nevertheless, fast giving way to more liberal sentiments, and no objection is made to foreigners on the score of religion, so long as they preserve a decent respect for the ceremonies of the church, and do not outrage the prejudices which education and custom have created, and which are no more numerous nor stronger than with us, although they have a somewhat different direction. That there is much of ignorance and superstition amongst the people, is unfortunately true; nor is the fact at all surprising, in consideration of their antecedents, and the circumstances under which they have been placed.^[24]

It is somewhat difficult to ascertain how far the faith of the better classes in papal infallibility, and other matters to which an apparent entire deference is accorded, really extends. We can hardly conceive that the following antiquated indulgence should be posted upon every door in the houses of the most intelligent familiesfamilies, except in politic conformity to prejudices, not shared by those families themselves, but which they do not care to oppose. Yet it met my eye almost everywhere, in the houses alike of the rich and the poor, of the Indian and the Caballero:—

“Bendito y alabado sea el Santo Sacramento del Altar,” Blessed and praised be the holy Sacrament of the Altar, is the common ejaculation of the servant who in the evening, first brings lighted candles into the occupied rooms of the various houses. It is uttered mechanically, in a drawling, nasal tone, and was formerly always responded to by the members of the family; but like many other customs, the latter part of the practice has now become obsolete. The recipient of a favor acknowledges it by “Dios se lo pague,” God repay you; if an engagement is made, it is with the qualification, “si Dios quiere,” if God wills; and when a bond is entered into, it is always with the reservation, “Primero Dios,” i. e., if my first duty to God will permit. The “higher law” is always recognized, in form if not in spirit. “Dios sobre todos,” God over all, is the commonest of proverbs.

The public Penitencias, or Penances, afford striking illustrations of the strength of the popular superstitions, and of the priestly influence. I witnessed one of these, shortly after my arrival in Leon. It consisted of a long procession of men and boys, one or two hundred in number, barefooted and stripped to the waist, their heads and faces covered with veils so as to prevent recognition, who marched through the public streets, from one church to another, flagellating themselves with raw hide thongs. They were preceded by a life-size figure of Christ on the cross, a score of musicians, and a crowd of priests and women, (all of the latter barefooted and some bearing heavy crosses on their shoulders,) who chanted prayers, while the penitents beat time with the thongs over their own shoulders. Each one carried a little cross before him in his hand, with his head bent forward as if in earnest contemplation of the sacred symbol. It was a singular spectacle; for there were black bodies, and brown, and white bodies, and yellow, and the sharp strokes of the thongs in the pauses of the slow and mournful music, fairly made the flesh of the spectator creep. There was, however, no special occasion for sympathy, for each penitent had it in his power to graduate the force of his own blows to his own notions of the enormity of his moral offences. Some laid it on gently,—moderate sinners!—merely as a matter of form; but there were others who punished themselves lustily, and drew blood from their quivering flesh at every blow, which ran down to their very heels, and purpled the ground where they trod.

It seems almost incredible that these heathenish practices, only one remove from human sacrifices, should yet be perpetuated amongst nations claiming to be civilized. Still, when we reflect that fasts and other mortifications of the body are prescribed by the rituals of our own churches, and proclaimed from the executive chair of our own nation, we ought not to be surprised at any manifestation of human folly, or wonder that the popular conception of God is not yet purified from the horrible and detestable features with which it was invested in the darkest ages of the world, and in the most debased stages of the human mind. The belief that the all-good and omnipotentomnipotent Ruler of the Universe can be pleased with the self-inflicted punishment of his creatures, whether it be through fasting or flagellation, differs in no respect from that which actuates the frantic Hindoo, who prostrates himself before the crushing wheels of Jaggenath, or that inflamed the poor Mexican, who offered his willing breast to the knife of the Aztec priest, that his palpitating heart might bathe the lips of the idol which was the visible representation of his sanguinary God!

There were other Penitencias, not public, but which were perhaps more severe. A hundred or more of the penitents are sometimes locked within a church, where they remain for nine days, sleeping but four hours out of the twenty-four, and eating but once in that period. The rest of the time is divided between the various ceremonies prescribed by the rigid rules of the penitencia, upon their knees, or prone on the rough floor of the dark church in which they are confined. While I resided near the Eglesia de la Merced, one of these penitencias took place, and I was several times awakened in the dead of night by the wailings of the penitents, mingling harshly with the low and cheerful melodies of that Nature which harmonizes with its great Author, and upon whose laws kingcraft and priestcraft, the world over, and in every age, have waged a constant and most unnatural and unholy war. The horrible doctrine of original sin, and the efficacy of austerities, penances, and immolations, parts of one system, find the best evidence of their truth in the fact of their existence amongst men! I saw the enthusiasts when they came out of the church, pale, haggard, and filthy; some, in fact, so exhausted that they could not walk without assistance, and who tottered from the scenes of their debasement to beds of sickness and death.

Very novel penances are sometimes prescribed by the priests by way of atonement for individual iniquities. The Padre Cartine was particularly ingenious and happy in imposing them. Lazy fellows and bon vivants, to whom he thought exercise and fasting would prove beneficial, he sent bare-footed and alone to El Viejo, or some place at a distance, under the restriction to speak to no human being on the way, nor to eat, nor yet to sleep, until their return. A heavy stone, rough and angular, had sometimes to be carried on the naked shoulders of the penitent, or a cross of heavy wood, according to the more or less heinous nature of the poor devil’s offences. Carpenters, masons, and all other valuable sinners, whose labor could be turned to good account, the Padre set to work in repairing or improving his church and the buildings attached to it, and never failed to put the good workmen “well in for it.” Occasionally he got hold of a stupid fellow who failed to perform a profitable day’s labor. In such cases the Padre had a whip, made of the skin of the dante, or tapir, which he scrupled not to apply to the delinquent’s back, for the benefit of his soul, and the acceleration of the particular job in hand. And it is reported that these applications are sometimes accompanied with terms more forcible than complimentary; but I don’t vouch for the truth of that.

For one or two months during my stay in Leon, the Padre had under his surveillance a priest, suspended for licentious conduct, with whom he was extremely rigorous. I was an accidental witness of his severity on one occasion, when the Host was passing. The suspended Padre, in common with all the people, came to the door, but instead of bending like the rest on the hard threshold, he knelt comfortably in a soft-bottomed chair. The indignant monk saw the dodge, and rising hastily, with a vigorous blow of his foot knocked the chair from underneath the delinquent, who came down with a force which must have jarred every bone in his sinful body. The course of fasting and prayer through which that priest was “put” by the Padre Cartine, if report speaks true,—midnight vigils, and noonday masses,—would have reformed Silenus, and made a saint of Bacchus.

Nicaragua and Costa Rica together constitute a Diocess of a very ancient date. It was organized as early as 1526. For the period intervening between 1832 and 1849, the Bishop’s chair was vacant; but in the latter year Don George Viteri y Ungo, once Secretary of State of Guatemala, and subsequently Bishop of San Salvador, received the appointment, and is now in discharge of its functions. I have already described him as a man of great intelligence, and polished manners. He has travelled much, and never fails to leave a favorable impression on the minds of foreigners. Yet in the country he is accounted an intrigante, and does not seem to enjoy the full confidence of the leading inhabitants, who nevertheless treat him with all respect and courtesy. While Bishop of San Salvador, he is said to have taken an undue interest in political affairs, and this was the cause of his deposition from that diocess; for the people of San Salvador are quite as liberal in religion as politics, and will tolerate no interference in public affairs by the clergy, as such. They nevertheless concede to them the utmost latitude as individuals, and while making no distinctions in their favor, make none against them.

In respect to Education, both amongst the clergy and the people of Nicaragua, little need be said, except that the standard is exceedingly low. I spare myself the painful necessity of writing upon the subject, by translating the following impartial passages from a private letter on this point, addressed to me by one of the best informed and patriotic citizens of Leon. A knowledge of their own deficiencies and wants, by any people, is indispensable to secure a remedy; and the fact that some of the best men in Nicaragua are looking the evils of ignorance full in the face, is one of the best signs in the horoscope of the country.

“Education in Nicaragua,” says my correspondent, “is generally much neglected; particularly in the departments of Chontales and Segovia, where there are some towns without a single teacher of any grade. Here the elements of education are only taught, if taught at all, by the fathers of families to their children, in the evening before going to bed; but this instruction seldom reaches beyond learning them to repeat their catechism. In these places, as also in some others where there are teachers, it is a common thing for parents to send their children to the house of some poor neighbor, where they are taught the catechism, and to make certain pot-hooks, called writing. These apologies for teachers have no recompense beyond an occasional small present. The mode adopted by them is to repeat the lesson once or twice viva voce, with the children; and their principal occupation consists in permittingpermitting the latter to do what they please, and in assisting them in doing it!

“In the towns where there are teachers, there are seldom more than one or two public schools; in the larger places there are, perhaps, a few more, but unfortunately all of pretty nearly the same character with those above described. In these schools are taught only the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, reading and writing; nor is this done in accordance with any good system, but generally by a process which is little better than a burlesque. The lesson is repeated after the master, simultaneously by the whole school, and it is difficult to say which shouts loudest, the master or the scholars; but it is always easy to tell the proximity of a schoolhouse, from the noise. The localities of these schools are generally bad and filthy, as is also the clothing of the scholars, which often consists of nothing more than a shirt. In some of the towns, as Masaya, Managua, and Chinandega, the public schools are filled to overflowing, and as each one has no more than a single teacher, he can only bestow a very superficial attention upon the individual scholars. In these towns there are also some higher schools, in which Latin is taught, after the old method, painful alike to teacher and student, and generally with no result except the knowledge that Señor Fulano has studied this language for so many years! There are also, in these towns, phantom classes in what is called Philosophy, the extent of whose acquirements consists in studying badly, and understanding worse, some paragraphs in Lugdunensis.

“Besides their public schools, both Granada and Leon have each a University. That of Leon is oldest, having been founded in the year 1675.

“In these Universities are taught the following branches: Latin and Spanish Grammar, Philosophy, Civil and Canonical Law, and Theology. Lately a class in English has been organized in that of Leon; and a class in both English and French in that of Granada. Of Mathematics and other cognate branches nothing is taught, nor scarcely anything known. The authority in Spanish is Alemany; in Latin, Nebrisa; in Philosophy, Lugdunensis; in Civil Law, Salas; in Canonical Law, Devoti; in Theology, Larraga. The time devoted to these studies is, to Spanish, Grammar, and Latin, two years and a half; to Philosophy, two years; Civil and Canonical Law, and Theology, three years. But many have not the patience to go through the prescribed time, and leaping over these various branches of study, succeed in securing their titles. There are priests, in orders, who have never so much as read the Padre Larraga!

“In order to obtain the degrees and secure the tassel, it is not necessary to know much; it is enough to have a general idea or two, to stand well with the professors, be able to pay the fees punctually, to spread a good table of refreshments, and to have a blazing display of fireworks. I have known instances in which the candidate did not answer well more than a single question, and yet obtained unanimously the degree which he sought. There are more Bachelors than men; Doctors swarm everywhere; and there are families of wealth and influence in which the tassel goes (practically) by descent!

“The professors of Languages and Civil Law in 1850, in Leon, were very good; but the professor in the latter department, occupied with other matters, has permitted his place to be very poorly filled by certain Bachelors. In fact, all the professors do but little; principally because their salaries are insignificant in amount, seldom exceeding $200 per annum. Their lectures are got through with very rapidly, rarely occupying more than an hour each, and are scarcely ever illustrated, or enforced by examples in point.

“Concerning the University of Granada, I am not well informed, but it is doubtless on about the same footing with that of Leon; or, if any comparison may be instituted, something worse.

“To the defects in the system of Education in Nicaragua is to be ascribed, in great part, the troubles with which the State has been afflicted. There is nothing practical in the lessons which are taught in the schools; the studies are all abstract, and the fixedness of character and liberality of views which follow from a knowledge of the present condition and relations of the world, an understanding of modern sciences, Geography, Chemistry, Mineralogy, Mathematics, Engineering, etc., etc., are never attained. The men of education, so called, are therefore mere creatures of circumstances and impulses, in common with the most ignorant portion of the population, and fully as vacillating in their ideas. Their education is just sufficient to give them power to do mischief, instead performing the legitimate office of truly comprehensive acquirements, that of a balance-wheel. What may be called the moral effect of an education, that which contributes to form the character of the man and mould it upon a just model, is wanting in the system, or rather no-system, not only of Nicaragua, but of all the other Spanish American States.

“In Nicaragua, therefore, in the absence of teachers, methods, books, instruments, and of nearly all the elements of teaching, there is nothing which can properly be called education.^[25] Not because there are no latent capacities or dispositions for learning amongst the people; nor do I mean to say that there is a total absence of really cultivated and well-educated men. On the contrary, there arethere are a number who have had opportunities of acquiring education through the assistance of private teachers, or who have perfected themselves abroad; but these are lost in the mass of ignorance and shallow acquirements which surround them.