Crime and Society in Early Modern Seville
Mary Elizabeth Perry
Actors and Victims
[138] Shortly before Philip II died in 1598, he acceded to the pleas of Archbishop Vaca y Castro of Seville to prohibit comedies throughout his realm. Drama had become "scandalous" in Seville, as in many other cities, and it was often performed by ribald actors before crowds of raucous, jostling people. (1) But drama was also an integral part of religious ceremony, and many public entertainments were staid enough to support both God and political authority. In 1600 Philip III invited a group of theologians to determine the standards for dramatic performances. The problem was not to prohibit them but how to control them.
Both religious and political concerns affected public entertainments in the seventeenth century. The Counter Reformation had called for the separation of the holy from the profane, and churchmen urged authorities to curtail most drama and secular entertainment that had traditionally accompanied religious feast days. City officials generally cooperated, for they, too, were concerned that many feast days seemed to be degenerating into unrestrained license. The happy coincidence of interests strengthened the alliance of secular and Church authorities and increased their success in controlling popular entertainments. It also delineated even more sharply the lines between authority and underworld.
[139] Tensions arising from the struggle to control popular entertainments show that they were far more than mere spectacle or amusement. They were social rituals that unified the community and sanctified the social order, combining religion and theater to support the city oligarchy. On the other hand, some entertainments differed from the rituals favored by city fathers. These were "popular," presenting traditional folk culture and thinly veiled social criticism of authority. Popular entertainments were good business, creating commercial opportunities for artisans, street hawkers, and day laborers. In addition, entertainment fees supported both an itinerant entertainers' group and welfare programs of the city.
SOCIAL RITUAL
As social rituals, popular entertainments presented community events in traditional forms familiar to most people of the city. Public executions, for example, followed a well-known script. City and Church officials accompanied the condemned person in a procession to the Plaza de San Francisco. There law officers, executioner, victim, and clergy enacted a ceremony recognized by the spectators: presentation of the victim, the executioner's request for pardon from the victim, and the elevation of a crucifix to the condemned person's lips. The players rarely deviated from prescribed form.
Public executions were performed frequently and usually for a mass audience. Scarcely a week went by without a public execution in the heart of the city. By some estimates as many as 20,000 people would gather to watch an execution. (2) One contemporary described a scene in 1624 when the Plaza was so filled "with a world of people in the streets, plazas, and windows" that not a foot of space was unoccupied, and two companies of soldiers of the city militia marched in to keep order in the crowd. (3) Public executions attracted thousands of people because [140] they offered the relief of a ritual purging of evil. Spectators could identify together against the condemned criminal, reaffirm their social solidarity, and feel relief when he was executed. (4)
Those in the streets were not passive spectators at these executions, however; they frequently participated in vilifying the victim as he marched in procession to the gallows. The chaplain Pedro de León reported that people eagerly awaited the execution procession of Juan de Madrid so that they could shout insults at this famous criminal who had helped the authorities catch other thugs before he, himself, fell out of grace. The chaplain also described the uproarious procession of Francisco García, popularly called Manotas or "The Paws," who was the target of insults and pranks as he walked to the gallows. (5)
Executions could be as gruesome and scandalous as the crimes that had
been committed. In 1565 the Plaza was filled with people who wanted to
see the execution of an innkeeper's wife and her lover. By ancient law,
the wronged husband was permitted to execute his wife and her lover. Despite
the pleas of monks to pardon the guilty couple, the husband remained adamant.
He walked up to where they stood bound and repeatedly stabbed them with
a knife. Finishing them off with his sword, he threw down his hat and said,
"So much for the horns." (6)
Public punishment for sexual crimes had been a titillating event for years, a spectacle even when it didn't involve death. An engraving of Seville in a sixteenth-century book shows the public humiliation of an adulterous woman and her cuckolded husband. The horns of the cuckold were symbols of shame bestowed on a man who could not control his wife. He became a community joke and could regain his prestige only by demanding satisfaction as a wronged husband. The innkeeper who publicly stabbed his wife and her lover in 1565 was asserting his right to regain his [142] community, but other wronged husbands were less cruel. In 1624 an adulterous woman and her lover were brought to the Plaza to be executed publicly by her husband. She had not been bound and ran to throw herself at her husband, kissing his feet and begging him to forgive them. He refused to listen and was "like a tiger, full of rage." After an hour of this pleading, however, he pardoned them and they were released in "great contrition for their sins." (7) The public spectacle of the begging woman and angry husband had been enough to reestablish his honor and her subordinate position.
The burning of people convicted of sodomy attracted many spectators, particularly as attitudes about young men became more puritanical in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 1585 city authorities decided to make an example of a Negro who had been accused of sodomy and procuring young boys. They painted his face, dressed him in a large lace ruff, placed a huge curled wig on his head, and marched him through the city with two other dressed-up youths. (8)
Moralists decried the idleness and depravity of the sons of nobles. Juan de Mora described these young men as "poison of the cities, mutiny of the villages, iniquity of the citizens, suited to all sensuality and torpidity, greedy for all advantages belonging to others." (9) Another preacher railed against "men converted into women" and "effeminate soldiers, full of airs, long locks, and plumes." (10) In 1639 the city published a "Proclamation that His Majesty orders, because the abuse of long hair and hair pieces with which some men walk about, and the curls with which they set their hair, has come to be scandalous in [143] these kingdoms, no man can wear long hair nor hair pieces." (11) Mass burnings and cases involving young boys attracted large crowds. In 1597 the burning of Alonso Telles Giron was a major event. Giron, called el gran tío (the great uncle) because he was related to every noble in the province, had been convicted of killing his wife. The king ordered that this noble be strangled privately rather than endure public execution. However, Giron confessed to so many acts of sodomy that he was resentenced to burn publicly with one of his male partners. He was driven through the streets on a mule to the bonfire site in the Plaza. (12)
Blood and gore attracted many to the public executions, for authorities routinely mutilated the bodies of victims whom they wanted to make special examples. Gonzalo Xenis, the famous highwayman, was finally arrested and sentenced to death in 1596. When he was hanged, his body was quartered and his head cut off and placed in a niche in the tower beside the port called the Barqueta, a favorite gathering place of highwaymen. Royal treason was another reason for mutilation. A judicial officer of Seville, Francisco Mondexano, was condemned to death for conspiracy to support the "false" king of Portugal, Sebastian. He was dragged to the gallows and after he was hanged, his hands and head were cut off and displayed in the customs house and at the gallows, gruesome reminders of the power of the city and royal governments to carry out violence against those who challenged their authority. (13)
Religious symbolism in executions reinforced political authority because it sanctified the government's power to define crime and punish offenders. A chronicler of the late sixteenth century, emphasizing the role of religion in public executions, wrote that [144] condemned people were taken in a procession to their execution, led by the Niños de la Doctrina carrying a cross and singing litanies. Clerics, monks, and priests of the Society of Jesus walked at the side of the condemned person; and at the place of execution they helped him go to a "good death." (14) An execution without a crucifix was as unlikely as an execution without a victim.
City residents saw a spectacular example of the sanctification of public executions in 1625 when a Moor was converted to Christianity in prison while awaiting his execution. On the day of his execution, he was dressed in sumptuous clothing and taken in solemn procession to his baptism. Juan Gutierrez Tello, an important noble and member of the Order of Santiago, acted as his godfather. Then, in procession with richly vested clergymen and solemn nobles, with six sheriffs on horseback to part the crowds, he was taken to the Plaza de San Francisco and hanged. Afterward his body was carried to the sacristy of the Caridad, where all the nobles attended a service for his soul. (15)
Not all Moriscos showed such cooperation with city and Church officials. In 1585 a Morisco sentenced to hang for silver robbery scandalized the crowd at his execution. When he was asked if he had anything to say before he was hanged, he replied that he had nothing more to say except that a tavern in Triana owed him a half-measure of wine. When the hangman asked him for forgiveness, according to custom, he answered impudently. As the noose was placed around his neck, people in the crowd said they heard him call out for Mohammed. Incensed, a group of boys stoned his body as it swung from the gallows. The crowd seized his body, dragged it away, and set it on fire. (16)
Religion and secular authority also mingled in religious festivals, another form of popular entertainment. During this period, Corpus Christi in late May or June was the most popular. City officials marched in the procession of Corpus, together with [145] Church officials, regular clergy, and religious fraternities. Thousands lined the city streets to see the floats, dancers, musicians, players, and sumptuously dressed clergymen and officials with jeweled crosses and color-coordinated candles. Corpus celebrations included both secular and Church officials, participants who sometimes quarreled over the proper way to celebrate. The city council usually paid the acting companies that performed in the festival, awarding the leader of the company with la joya (the jewel), which was an object of gold, and a money payment. (17)
Fewer disputes arose over the religious processions that were prompted by floods, drought, famine, war, and epidemics. In the face of disaster, secular and clerical authorities marched together with religious images and lighted candles. These processions symbolized the unity of the community as well as the virtue of secular officials who used the rituals of the Church to seek relief for the city. Moreover, processions prompted by disasters welcomed all participants. Where Corpus processions were limited to clerical and secular authorities, religious fraternities and entertainers with the floats, processions of supplication included penitents of all kinds. Participants probably felt the social unity and sanctity of these events even more keenly than spectators. (18)
The single event in early modern Seville which best dramatized the marriage of religion and secular authority was the inauguration of the new Royal Chapel in the Cathedral in 1579. A long and colorful procession followed the same route as the Corpus processions, to carry the standards, images, and royal bodies that were to be placed in the newly constructed Chapel. One of the bodies was that of Ferdinand III, the "liberator" of Seville [146] in 1248, who had been canonized a saint. The procession included thirty religious fraternities, all the religious orders, the military orders of Alcantara and Calatrava and Santiago, the clergy and cross from each parish of the city, the council of the Cathedral, the Archbishop, the Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition, the faculty of the College of Santa María de Jesús, the consulate and members of the Cargadores á Indias (shippers to the Indies), the Tribunal of the Casa de Contratación, members of the city council, and the chief justice and judges of the audiencia. (19)
Religious processions enhanced the positions of both Church and secular officials and demonstrated their generosity, for bread and wine and clothing and money were traditionally distributed to the poor spectators at the end. When Philip III ascended the throne in 1598, a religious-political procession raised the royal standard in Seville in his honor, and the Marquis of Algava threw out handfuls of silver coins to people looking on. The coins, which had been especially prepared for this occasion, bore the likeness of Philip III on one side and a popular religious symbol, the Esperanza (Virgin of Hope), on the other. (20)
An alliance of political and religious authorities was also apparent in the many autos de fé that were held during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. When these ceremonies were public, they became mass public expressions of penance and faith. Everyone who attended an auto de fé was granted an indulgence for forty days. Psychologically this ceremony was very impressive; a solemn religious mood permeated its procession and ritual. Spectators saw the awesome power of religious authorities who here publicly pronounced sentence on their enemies. Secular authorities in places of honor solemnly witnessed the ceremonies, sometimes seeing people of their own class subjected to public [147] penance. The widow of a veinticuatro, for example, was penanced at the auto de fé of December 22, 1560. (21)
Autos de fé had their less solemn aspects, too. An example is the auto of 1627 at which Joan de Villapando and Catalina de Jesús were penanced. This couple had been accused of the Alumbrado heresy, but their great attraction was that they were also accused of engaging in sexual misconduct during their mystical experiences. The public delighted in the Inquisition's ability to dig up evidence of that exciting combination of religious heresy and sexual impropriety. For its part, the Inquisition found sexual impropriety a convenient way to discredit enemies. On the night before Villapando and Catalina were to be taken in procession to a convent for their auto, people began lining the streets at midnight. By the time the penitents were marched from their prison at 7:00 A.M. so many people crowded the streets that Inquisition officials could hardly move their procession to the convent. People stayed in their places on the streets all day, hoping to catch another glimpse of the famous couple as they left the convent. (22)
Thousands thronged the streets to watch Holy Week processions because these events also combined religion with less solemn and spiritual concerns. Although many spectators and participants found deep religious significance in the floats and processions of penitents, many others were attracted by the scenes of gore and violence. The suffering Jesus was depicted in bloody realism with nail holes, a gaping pierced side, and forehead torn by thorns. Only the scores of penitents whipping themselves with leather thongs could rival the scenes of the dying Jesus as demonstrations of sanctified, ritualized, authorized violence.
The parallel between Holy Week spectacles and public executions is striking. On Holy Saturday figures of Judas were erected in the streets and burned and vilified in the most horrible ways, scenes reminiscent of the hanging and burning of the uncooperative Moor in 1585. In both cases, people came to see the ritual [148] of authorized violence carried out against one who symbolized evil. Continuous repetition of these familiar dramas deepened a collective feeling of unity and acceptance of the authority that was permitted to identify victims and carry out ritual violence.
Usually Church and city officials managed to maintain these ceremonies as popular events even while imposing censorship over them. The students of the Colegio de Maestro Rodrigo of the University of Seville had traditionally celebrated Saint Nicholas' Day with a fiesta and procession led by one of the students elected to be "bishop" for the day. In 1641 the son of a very rich Genoese was elected bishop, and students marched the city streets carrying forbidden weapons and shouting blasphemies. The fiesta degenerated into a brawl between some sixty students and many townspeople. The royal court in Seville fined the father of the bishop and forbade the students from ever again having a bishop in their celebration. (23) The combination of rowdy student behavior, forbidden weapons, and the son of a rich foreign merchant was too much for the nobles and churchmen of Seville, who wanted to use religious celebrations for their own purposes.
Even before this incident Church and city officials had tried to prevent religious celebrations from degenerating into popular secular holidays. In the 1570's the city council demanded that sheriffs patrol the streets on fiesta days to see that people went to Mass and did not spend their time idly visiting and playing in the streets. In 1643 the Pope reduced the numbers of religious feast days, and people of Seville lost nineteen of the fiestas traditionally celebrated in the city. While Church officials argued that this reduction was a solution to the problem of poor workers who could not afford so many days off for religious festivals, they could have added that reduction [149] in festivals also prevented many from becoming popular holidays uncontrolled by Church or city officials. (24)
Corridas, the tournaments and bullfights of Spanish nobles, remained under the control of city authorities because they were public events limited to noble participants. Manuscripts describing a corrida in 1620 reported that the event opened with a procession of officers of the city council and audiencia, accompanied with trumpets, symbols, and drums. The sheriffs had dressed so magnificently that they looked like veinticuatros, the leading citizens of the city. Each man rode a handsome horse that was richly ornamented, accompanied by colorfully costumed lackeys, including some mulattos and a Chinese. Forty-eight nobles took part in the games of the tournament; they were of "illustrious blood, almost all related to one another." (25)
Even though the corridas were limited to noble participants, they were popular city events. They were often held in honor of a religious feast day or significant royal event. In Seville corridas were usually held in the Plaza de San Francisco or the plaza of the town palace of the Duke of Medina Celi. The streets leading to the plaza were closed off and special seats were placed so that honored dignitaries could watch in safety the brave men and bulls. Noble ladies filled the windows and balconies around the plaza. Lesser people of the city crowded into the other places, eager spectators if not participants in this ritual. Here they saw local nobles play the games of tradition, acting out legends of bravery as they faced the bulls or the long jousting sticks of their opponents. The strict separation of participant and spectator in these rituals reinforced the social structure of [150] the city. Many city fathers believed that these spectacles were more advantageous than sermons on feast days, for they diverted some people from idleness and "less honest occupations," such as the gang fights that the young men of the city held so often on Sundays and holidays. (26)
Underworld people played many roles in popular entertainments. They were often the victims in public executions, but sometimes they were cynical onlookers. An example is the case of the highwaymen who came to the Plaza de San Francisco to watch the hanging of four Moors convicted for the robberies that the highwaymen themselves had committed. "Well," said one of the highwaymen, "if they are thieves, hang them from the gallows." (27)
Underworld people were also spectators in religious festivals and corridas, although it is doubtful that they were merely passive. Brawls and knife fights broke out in many of these public events. An account of the inauguration of the Royal Chapel of the Cathedral in 1579 reported in surprise that this festival, unlike most in the city, was peaceful and free from scandal. There had been no quarrels or bad words among the people waiting to see the procession on the streets. There were usually forty or fifty people imprisoned each festival day, but there were none on this occasion. (28)
In contrast, the religious processions of Holy Week in 1642 erupted in a great uproar on the steps of the Cathedral. Several knife fights broke out, and when one badly wounded man entered the Cathedral, a rumor ran through the crowd that the Portuguese in the city had revolted. Women ran screaming into the chapels and choir of the Cathedral, and the men came running after them, swords in hand, to defend the Cathedral. [151] Religious fraternities milled around tilting their floats in great confusion. Hysteria reigned inside the Cathedral until the city council sent a guard of soldiers to impose order. (29) As quarrelsome spectators, underworld people provided churchmen and city fathers with a reason for extending their control over public entertainments.
SOCIAL CRITICISM
Although city and Church authorities tried to control popular entertainments, they were never wholly successful. In her study of youth celebrations of "misrule" in sixteenth-century France, Natalie Davis found that these rowdy rituals were tolerated not only because they drained off excess youthful energy that might otherwise erupt more rebelliously, but also because they imposed informal social controls on people who had transgressed local codes of behavior. (30) City fathers of Seville must have tolerated student celebrations and nocturnal street-singing with a similar resignation. Let youth expend itself in noisy songs and raucous play that ridiculed the misbehavior of others. In the case of the Saint Nicholas Day celebration and student "bishop" of 1641, however, Church and city authorities came down hard against such misrule, for the charade had ridiculed authorities in the city far more than it had criticized some temporary lapses in the community's moral code.
Authorities also suspected social criticism in the entertainments of musicians and acting groups who traveled from city to city, easily escaping prosecution for blasphemy or libel. Always outsiders, these traveling musicians and players were commonly suspected of theft and prostitution. In addition, they often relied on unwritten lines and impromptu exchanges with the audience, difficult evidence for prosecutors attempting to prove blasphemy. Augustín de Rojas Vilandrando, who traveled through [152] Spain with a group of traveling actors in the early seventeenth century, acknowledged the poor social reputation of acting groups in his rather breezy description of them. Frequently poor, these groups would perform for "a loaf of bread, a bunch of grapes, a cabbage stew. . . and anything else that happens along (not refusing the most worthless gift)." (31) These travelers resembled the vagabonds that city officials distrusted so intensely, except that actors were very clever in getting people to run to listen to them and watch them perform. They delighted their street audiences with ribald imitations of nobles and churchmen. Their bawdy songs poked fun at authority and at those who had money. Townspeople might consider them immoral, but they always gathered as an eager, happy audience for their unauthorized street performances.
Drama, music, and dance were usually performed by traveling companies, but all three were also an integral part of religious liturgy. The mixture of theater and religion reached its zenith with the founding of the Jesuits' houses in Seville. Many Jesuits used theater and drama to teach virtue and dramatize the life of Jesus and the saints. Students who were taught in the Jesuits' schools became stars in the acting companies in sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Spain. (32)
The festivals of Corpus Christi were famous for combining theater and religion. Singers, dancers, and actors accompanied the floats in the Corpus processions and performed periodically in the streets, as well as in the Cathedral. One dance, the Seises, is still performed before the high altar of the Cathedral in Seville on the feasts of Corpus Christi and the Immaculate Conception. Another dance, the zarabanda, was a traditional part of the Corpus celebration that became notorious. It was so provocative, the Jesuit priest Mariana warned, that it inflamed "even very honest people." (33) Like the escarramán, the zarabanda was a dance that represented the "abortions of Hell." (34) Its frenzied [153] rhythms and violent movements were more contagious than awe-inspiring, however, and spectators frequently joined in the dancing.
Dance was also a secular entertainment. Great dancers, such as the Marquis of Valencia and Antonio de Burgos, taught at famous dancing schools here in the seventeenth century. Many other dance teachers were "little masters" who accompanied themselves with a guitar as they gave lessons in small bars, taverns, and the city's plazas. Despite the fame of a few dance schools, dance was not an elite art. Many dance forms originated in the countryside, in rural pilgrimmages (romerías), and small taverns and local festivals. They were passed then from taverns and bars to the theater and salons of Seville. (35)
Although drama was presented on the streets and in the plazas of Seville, the city also had three famous theaters in the early modern period. The Corral de Doña Elvira, which was built in the sixteenth century, was a patio for performances, covered and surrounded by theater boxes and a gallery in back. The city council decided to build the Coliseo in the early seventeenth century so that it could control the performances and profits of the theater. The first Coliseo, finished in 1607, was a modest wooden building. It was replaced by a second Coliseo that was built much more lavishly in 1614. Rich marble and paintings by Diego de Esquivel and Gonzalez de Campos decorated the theater, and a handsome crest of the city council dominated the entry. This Coliseo burned in 1620 and was rebuilt in greater splendor in 1641. After fire destroyed the Coliseo once more in 1659, the city council lacked funds to rebuild it. It agreed to permit Laura de Herrera and her company to use the Coliseo rent-free for the next forty years in exchange for her financing the reconstruction of the theater. (36)
In 1626 the city built the theater of La Montería for the visit of Philip IV to Seville. Constructed in the shape of an oval, this theater had three floors and much more space than the Corral de Doña Elvira. La Montería and the Coliseo replaced [154] the old Corral, which was converted by stages into a tavern, gambling rooms, a center for thieves and vagabonds, and, finally, a refuge for poor, old, and disabled priests. (37)
The city council's attempt to control drama by owning the theaters failed to convert this popular entertainment into an activity limited to the social elite. One reason was that people continued to go to the theater without paying admission charges. In 1632 one company failed to collect enough money at the door of the Coliseo to pay for its expenses in Seville. Leases for using the theater of La Montería included a provision that two sheriffs had to be stationed at the door, but even these officials could not prevent the brawls at the door and the clever people who sneaked into the theater. (38)
The audience seemed to be as responsible for the scandalous reputation of the theater as the actors were, and the city government's efforts to control the audience failed. Custom dictated that men and women be separated in theaters, but separation had not been enforced. In 1627 a city council member declared that permitting women to sit with men in city theaters had resulted in many "offenses to God." He proposed that the city government require men and women not only to sit in separate sections in the theaters, but also to enter through different doors. (39) These regulations only promoted more scandals, like the uproar in 1654 when one man sneaked into the women's section in La Montería and lifted skirts and "touched legs." (40) Although he was imprisoned and then exiled from the city for two years, the women's gallery (called the cazuela, or stewing pan) remained one of the rowdiest sections of the theaters.
People came to the theater for fun and celebration. Customarily they brought fruit and cucumbers, and they pelted the actors who displeased them. They also used rattles, whistles, and metal keys to register their approval and disapproval as noisily [155] as possible. In 1643 an audience in La Montería was outraged when the comedy they had come to see was censored by the Inquisition and replaced by a less offensive comedy. The city chronicler who reported the incident said that "lower and popular" people filled the audience on this feast day. Shouting in protest, they jumped up and began breaking the chairs and benches. They threw the pieces around the theater and tore up all the costumes and scenery they could find. The actors, according to the chronicle, fled from "the rabble." (41)
Students and young people who went to the theaters routinely protested against authority. Most of the incidents began with a refusal to pay the entry fee. In February 1633, for example, five or six young men who appeared to be students tried to force their way into the theater without paying. They got past the first sheriff, but when the second sheriff demanded that they pay, they drew their swords. In the ensuing brawl, the sheriff was wounded and the young men fled. Another uproar occurred in 1639 when a clergyman and a student cheered for the wrong person in the play and got into a shouting match with another man in the audience. Knives and swords flashed, and in the fracas the student was mortally wounded. (42)
City fathers were particularly concerned about youthful challenges to their authority. Young men came from many parts of Castile, the Canary Islands, and Andalucía to study at the University of Seville. Far from home, they lived in the city without parental restraints. Many had to live on meager allowances, and they felt separate from the wealthy residents of Seville who tried to impose restraints on them. (43)
In contrast, some young men of Seville did not even pretend to study. In the tradition of la Garduña, the picaresque heroine of a novel by Castillo Solórzano, these young people grew up [156] with little parental control, free to roam the streets. (44) City residents recognized them as mozos de barrio (young people of the neighborhood) and virotes (young blades). (45) They usually had some money and delighted in trying forbidden games. They also liked to force their way into theaters and start fights in the rowdy theater sections.
Increasingly rigid moral attitudes reflected the increasingly rigid determination of Church and secular officials to maintain authority in the face of growing problems. By 1598 Philip II agreed to the repeated pleas of Archbishop Vaca y Castro of Seville to prohibit all dramatic performances. In 1600 the Crown called a meeting of theologians, who determined that dramas should be presented only under these conditions: they were not to deal with lascivious material, nor include lascivious dances, "wagging of the tail," melodies, or poems; they would be performed by only four licensed companies; no women would be permitted in these companies, and boys who represented them in plays would do so "honestly" and properly; comedies would not be presented in Lent or on certain other feast days, and no company could stay in one place for more than a month out of the year, nor perform more than three days in the same week, nor perform in the same place with another company; drama performed in churches and convents should be purely devotional. The Royal Council agreed to these conditions, except that it declared that women could continue in acting companies so long as they were in the company of their husbands or fathers. They also increased the number of licensed companies from four to twelve in 1615. (46)
The controls imposed by churchmen and Crown did not satisfy the city fathers, however. Between 1615 and 1648 Seville had suffered disastrous floods and droughts and a severe reduction in trade with the Indies. Repeated devaluations of vellon money had hurt most of the people of the city. Seville had had to send all available men and a large amount in taxes to help [157] the Crown put down the revolts in Catalonia and Portugal. Maintaining political power was increasingly difficult in a city suffering so many misfortunes, and city fathers tried to buttress their positions by strengthening moral regulations. In 1629 the city prohibited charivaris or other songs or "dirty" or dishonest words in the streets or roads. Nineteen years later the custom of calling out requests for dances or songs in the theater was forbidden by law. (47) Moral restrictions such as these unified the community by identifying the evil practices that it would not tolerate. They also muffled criticism of authorities that had been expressed in the popular entertainments of drama and music.
In the 1670's local churchmen made several more attempts to control the theater. Seville had suffered a terrible epidemic in 1649, and several epidemics later threatened to spread to the city from other parts of Spain. Preachers declared that the city could avoid the evils of plague and hunger only by purging itself of things of the devil, such as drama. In 1679 the city council agreed with a letter written by a pious churchman who declared that drama had offended God and that prohibiting it would please God and lessen the sufferings from hunger, poverty, and pestilence within the city. The city council passed the prohibition, observing that these were "calamitous" times of "general distress," requiring special concern for idleness. (48)
Other forms of entertainment that were also social criticism were those involving the occult. The sorcerer, witch, fortuneteller, and sabia (wise woman) threatened the power position of priests and secular officials who posed as the only legitimate intermediaries between the people and God or secular authority. Magic, which is closely associated with religion, was not in itself repugnant to the Church so long as it was controlled by the Church. Religious custom even used such magical agencies as holy water and the sign of the cross. However, the neighborhood sabia competed with the priest when she performed magical [157] rites or called on supernatural powers. (49) Implicit in her popularity was a form of anticlericalism, an insistence that common people could perform the rites that priests had sought to monopolize.
Priests and secular authorities tried to counteract popular seers and magicians by pointing to the numbers of charlatans who cheated other people under the guise of magic. Underworld people were not above using a trick or two, and they delighted in finding gullible people who would pay them for magic potions and hexes. "Seeing" the future was particularly easy for those who were constantly moving and could not be held to their predictions. The shadowy line between underworld and the occult permitted officials to discredit many sabias.
Through the Inquisition, the Church charged popular magicians and seers with being sorcerers and heretics. Although Inquisition tribunals did not prosecute witches as vigorously as secular courts, the Inquisition accepted responsibility for prosecuting "bad Christians" who took demons as familiars or made pacts with them and invoked superstitions. (50) They also prosecuted those who claimed to foresee the future. Heresy was a broad umbrella that could cover many forms of folk medicine, popular religion, and occult entertainments. It could discredit any popular movement that threatened to break away from official control.
Underworld people did not monopolize the practice of the occult or the traveling groups of players and musicians, but they must have found it easy to pass into these groups. The appeal of travel and visiting many cities was great for people who tended a little crime on the side. Moreover, little money was required to become a traveling player or palm-reader. Young boys were in great demand to play women's parts, and many must have gladly joined a traveling troupe to escape hardships and the law. These people had no formal program of social criticism to present through music and drama, but their very ribaldry and popularity suggest that public entertainments could ridicule and snipe at political authority as well as bolster it.
[159] COMMERCIAL OPPORTUNITIES
Public entertainments offered both licit and illicit commercial opportunities. Legitimate local industries, such as candlemaking, flourished with the demands of frequent religious processions. The 1579 procession inaugurating the Royal Chapel of the Cathedral, for example, consumed 25,000 pounds of wax candles. (51) Candlemakers thrived when the Inquisition held an auto in Seville, and so did carpenters, weavers, lawyers, guards, and day-laborers. Expenses for two autos held in the city included these items:
Auto of January 30, 1624
| General expenses | 28,076 maravedís |
| Benches, carpets, etc. | 36,552 |
| Cloth for sanbenitos | 17,136 |
| Candles | 23,366 |
| Advocates for criminals | 26,520 |
| Building scaffold | 264,724 |
Auto of March 29, 1648
| General expenses | 84,184 maravedís |
| Painting effigies, clothing | 37,400 |
| Militia | 10,200 |
| Building scaffold | 351,560 |
| Meals for soldiers and effigy bearers | 21,148 |
| Candles, shawls, hats | 82,416 |
| Transporting accused from Cordova | 68,000 |
| Meals | 156,680 |
Street-hawkers who sold food always looked for a good business day when a public execution drew a huge crowd to the Plaza de San Francisco, or a corrida attracted people to the city from near and far. Selling seats or positions at a window also [160] became big business for a special corrida or procession. According to one chronicler, seats cost 50 reales for the corrida held in October 1620, and they couldn't be found "for a treasure" within eight days of the event. A place on an ordinary balcony overlooking the plaza of the corrida cost 500 or 600 reales, and some places on a nearby street cost 150 reales even though they offered only a rear view of the entrance of the nobles' procession. (53)
Entertainment fees were used by the city to finance some of its welfare programs. When streets were closed off for a corrida, places in them were sold for a small amount that was given to the poor prisoners of the royal prison. (54) From the admission fee of each person who attended the theater in Seville, the city collected eight maravedís and gave this money to the poor in prison or in hospitales. City officials complained in 1611 that they were not getting their share of theater proceeds, and they sent inspectors to stand at theater doors to collect the eight-maravedí charity fee. From their careful records, they found that 526 plays were performed in the Coliseo and Corral de Doña Elvira between April 1611 and April 1614. Of the 53,346 reales brought in by these performances, 854 went to the leaders of the acting companies, and 716 went to the administrators. (55)
However, entertainment receipts also helped to support the traveling actors' groups that many city fathers feared and hated. In 1609 the director of one acting company declared that the city had taken so much from theater receipts that he was not even able to pay for expenses. He petitioned the city council to direct the administrator of funds for poor prisoners to reimburse his expenses from the amount he had taken from the theater for welfare. (56) The city's desire to control the entertainment of Corpus processions also meant that it had to pay participating actors and musicians. The head of an Italian acting company [161] petitioned the city council to pay him a fee for appearing in Corpus, adding wistfully that he had had great expenses in making this appearance and his company was eager to continue on their travels. (57)
Gambling is a good example of the many opportunities for illicit profit in public entertainment. Certain games were officially banned, but they were played in the most luxurious casinos as well as at the meanest little street table. Gambling was a lucrative business for the owners of royal-licensed casinos, and it also brought in quick profits for some small local innkeepers who set up a gaming table in a rear room. There were games like lansquet, a card game that originated with mercenaries in the Middle Ages, and taba, a game played by throwing the knuckle bone of a sheep. Gambling attracted many onlookers as well as players, for it was customary for winners to distribute some of their winnings among the spectators. (58) Pedro de León, who talked with many gamblers during his ministry to the poor and prisoners of Seville, described a spirit of comradeship among gamblers. A player down on his luck could find food or a small handout from his luckier companions. Gamblers made a lot of money, according to this priest, and they cared about nothing except eating and playing. (59)
Crowds that gathered at public entertainments increased criminal opportunities. Whenever processions or public executions attracted big crowds, thieves found it very easy to lift valuables from onlookers or from empty houses. They also found it easy to resell stolen goods quickly among crowds. Old scores could be settled with a quick knife thrust hidden by the press of a crowd, and sheriffs were more easily evaded when they were diverted to carrying out their official roles in religious processions or public executions. Some traveling players specialized in holding street audiences enthralled while one of their members mingled with the crowd, stealthily relieving them of their [162] valuables. People enjoying a spectacle or amusement were the best kind of clients for much of the business of underworld people.
An account of the 1620 fire in the Coliseo described the underworld's talent for finding profitable opportunities. As the fire spread from the backdrop of the stage, the audience ran to the doors in panic. Thieves in the audience demanded that women give them their jewels, and these "poured out in a flood" as the terrified women gave up anything in order to run from the fire. Some of the thieves even ventured into the fire and picked up ornaments and clothing that had not burned. (60)
Public entertainments were profitable to both underworld people and
city officials. If the fees charged for these events helped to support
a subculture that ridiculed authority, they also supported the position
of the city government as kindly benefactor of the poor in prisons and
common houses. More important, these entertainments provided social rituals
that buttressed the power of the ruling elite and symbolized the unity
of the community.
1. José Sánchez-Arjone, Noticias referentes los anales del teatro en Sevilla desde Lope de Rueda hasta fines del siglo XVII (Sevilla, 1898), pp. 99-102.
2. Pedro Herrera Puga, Sociedad y delincuencia en el Siglo de Oro (Madrid, 1974), p. 104. M. Chaves, pp. 108-111.
3. AMS, Papeles del Conde de Aguila, Sección Especial, Tomo 64, en folio, No. 3.
4. Victor Turner, Schism and Continuity in an African Society; A Study of Ndembu Village Life (Manchester, 1957), discusses this aspect of ritual. See esp. pp. 128, 298.
5. Pedro de León, appendix 1 to Part II, Cases 70, 285.
6. "Serie historical," Memorias eclesiásticas, BC, 84-7-19, folios 46V-47.
7. AMS, Papeles del Conde de Aguila, Sección Especial, Tomo 64, en folio, No. 3; the engraving is in Georgius Braun, Civitates Orbis Terrarum (Cologne, 1574).
8. Pedro de León, appendix 1 to Part II, Case 122.
9. Juan de Mora, Discursos morales (Madrid, 1598), quoted in Viñas y Mey, Problema, p. 47.
10. Francisco de León, 1635 sermon quoted in Viñas y Mey, Problema, p. 47
11. Quoted in Herrera Puga, pp. 315-316.
12. "Algunas cosas," Memorias eclesiásticas, BC, 84-7-19, folio 102. Pedro de León, appendix 1 to Part II, Cases 7, 8. AMS, Efemérides, "Noticias y casos," No. 1. "Casos raros," Papeles varios, BC, 85-4-11.
13. Ariño, pp. 39-40. Francisco Pacheco, Libro de descripción de verdaderos retratos, de ilustres y memorables varones (Sevilla, 1599).
15. "1616-1634," Papeless varios, BC, 85-4-11. AMS, Papeles del Conde de Agulla, Sección Especial, Tomo 64 en folio, No. 4.
16. Pedro de León, appendix 1 to Part II, Case 116.
17. Sanchez Gordillo, "Religiosas estaciones que frecuenta la devoción sevillana," in Memorial de historia eclesiástica de la cuidad de Sevilla, BC, 82-6-19, folios 92-92V. Ortiz de Zuñiga, 4:493. "Serie historical," Memorias eclesiásticas, BC, 84-7-19, folios 37"-38. Sánchez-Arjona, p. 96. Santiago Montoto de Sedas, "El teatro, el baile, y la danza en Sevila," Archivo Hispalense, Series 2, 32-33 (1960), 372.
18. Processions of supplication are described in Ortiz de Zuñiga, 3:325-327, 4:523, 707-710; and in Christian, Person, p. 70.
19. "Casos raros," Papeles varios, BC, 85-4-11.
20. Sanchez Gordillo, folio 175. See also Victor Turner, "Ritual Aspects of Conflict Control in African Micropolitics," in Marc J. Swartz, Victor W. Turner, and Arthur Tuden, eds., Political Anthropology (Chicago, 1966), p. 246. "La forma que se tuvó en levantar el estandarte real en la ciudad de Sevilla por la Mag. del Rey don Phelipe Tercero," Poesías, BC, 82-3-26, folios 188-189.
21. Kamen, Inquisition, pp. 183-185. Menéndez y Pelayo, 5:114-115.
22. Auto de fée, BC, 64-7-118, folios 124V-125.
23. "Diferentes casos," Memorias eclesiásticas, BC, 84-7-19, folios 218V-219. For a general Counter Reformation concern with controlling festivals and lay participation in the Church, see John Bossy, "The Counter Reformation and the People of Catholic Europe," Past and Present, No. 47 (May 1970), 51-70.
24. AMS, Siglo XVI, Sección 3, Escribanías de Cabildo, Tomo 11, no. 77. "Diferentes casos," Memorias eclesiásticas, BC, 84-7-19, folios 227-228V.
25. "Relación de las fiestas reales de toros y cañas que se hicieron en Sevilla a 2 de octubre del 1620 años hecha por don Francisco Morbeli y Puebla, cavallero de ella," and "Segunda relación de las cañas y toros que los cavalleros de Sevilla hizieron en 2 en octubre de 1620, por junta de sus altezas los principes herederos de España," Papeles varios, BC, 83-7-14, folios 279-287. These manuscripts are also presented in Archivo Hispalense, Series 1, Vol. 3 (1887).
26. Turner, Schism, p. 297. "Relación de las fiestas" contains the observation on the advantages of corridas over sermons. See the "Relación de las fiestas" in Archivo Hispalense, Series 1, Vol. 3, p. 130. Gang fights were described by Pedro de León in his Compendio and are discussed in Domínguez Ortiz, "Vida," pp. 165-166.
27. Pedro de León, Part II, chapter 27, folio 204.
28. "Relación de la translacion de las imagen," Papeles varios, BC, 85-4-13,folios l77-l77V.
29. "Diferentes casos," Memorias eclesiásticas, BC, 84-7-19, folios 2l9V.-220.
30. Natalie Zemon Davis, "The Reasons of Misrule: Youth Groups and Charivaris in Sixteenth-Century France," Past and Present, No. 50, (1971), 41-75. This essay is chapter 4 in Davis, Society.
31. Villandrando, Viage entretenido, quoted in Rennert, pp. 132-140.
32. Sánchez-Arjona, pp. 28-29. Montoto de Sedas, p. 371.
33. Quoted in Sánchez-Arjona, p. 85; see also Montoto de Sedas, p. 381.
36. Ibid., pp. 374-376. Sánchez-Arjona, pp. 64-65.
37. Montoto de Sedas, pp. 375-376. Sánchez-Arjona, pp. 257-258.
38. Rennert, p. 281. Sánchez-Arjona, p. 251.
39. Sánchez-Arjona, pp. 255-256. AMS, Papeles del Conde de Aguila, Sección Especial, Tomo 7 en folio, No. 134.
41. Rennert, pp. 117-120; "Diferentes casos," Memorias eclesiásticas BC, 84-7-19, folio 225.
42. Sánchez-Arjona, pp. 283, 334-335.
43. Richard L. Kagan, "Universities in Castile 1500-1700," Past and Present, No. 49 (1970), 50. For a more complete discussion of students in Spain at this time, see Richard Kagan, Students and Society in Early Modern Spain, (Baltimore, 1974).
44. Castillo Solórzano, La Garduña, pp. 2 3-24.
45. Rodríguez Marín, Miscelánea, p. 19.
46. Sánchez-Arjona, pp. 100-101, 166-169.
47. Guichot y Parody, 2:208-209. Sánchez-Arjona, p. 381.
48. Mañera, "Motibo," BC, 80-1-92. "Teatros de comedias en Sevilla," Memorias eclesidsticas, BC, 84-7-19, folios 241V-242V. AMS, Papeles del Conde de Aguila, Sección Especial, Tomo 62 en folio, No. 40.
49. Pitt-Rivers, People, pp. 189-194.
50. AMS, Papeles del Conde de Aguila, Sección Especial, Tomo 4 en folio, No. 43.
51. AMS, Efmérides, Cuadra 2. "Casos raros," Papeles varios, BC, 85-4-11.
52. Kamen, Inquisition, pp. 195-196.
53. "Segunda relación de las cañas y toros," Papeles varios, BC, 83-7-14.
55. Sánches-Arjona, p. 147. AMS, Papeles del Conde de Aguila, Sección Especial, Tomo 62 en folio, No. 39.
56. AMS, Siglo XVII, Sección4, Escribanías de Cabildo, Tomo 5, No. 69.
57. AMS, Siglo XVI, Sección 3, Escribanías de Cabildo, Tomo 6, No. 5.
58. Quevedo, pp. 138 and 146. Deleito y Piñuela, Mala, pp. 221-236. Ordenamiento de la Tafurias, quoted in Clifford Stevens Walton, The Civil Law in Spain and Spanish-America (Washington, 1900), p. 44.
59. Pedro de León, Part I, chapter 13, folio 32.
60. AMS, Efemérides, "Enzendio del corral de comedias llamado El Coliseo de Sevilla año 1620," cuadro 2.