Footnotes:
Reading edition
“En provincias doscientas y setenta, Tiene Francisco doce mil conventos.” [59b]
Thus, it is not uncommon for a young lady to say to a suitor whom she refuses, and who imploringly asks her what he shall do to gain her favour, “Go and invoke Santa Rita.”
When her Majesty felt she was wounded by the poniard of this assassin, and saw him seized by her guards, her first words were, “Pray, spare the life of that man!” This is another proof of Isabella’s kind and forgiving disposition, especially when it is considered that she uttered the words spontaneously, without prompting or premeditation, but on the spur of the moment.
“Dies iræ, dies ilia, Solvens sec’lum in favilla, Teste David, cum Sybilla. . . . . . Tuba mirum spargens sonum, Per sepulchra regionum, Venient omnes ante thronum.”
We cannot resist the opportunity of giving the late Sir Walter Scott’s metrical translation of this sublime ode, a translation which, as a hymn, is generally sung in Protestant churches:—
I.
“The day of wrath: that dreadful day, When heaven and earth shall pass away! What power shall be the sinner’s stay? Whom shall he trust that dreadful day?
II.
“When, shriv’lling, like a parchëd scroll, The flaming heavens together roll, When louder yet, and yet more dread, Swells the high trump that wakes the dead,—
III.
“Oh, on that day, that wrathful day, When man to judgment wakes from clay, Be thou, O Christ! the sinner’s stay, Though heaven and earth shall pass away!”
We also find in this collection the hymn which is sung to the Virgin of Griefs in the Holy Week, and which begins thus:—
“Stabat mater dolorosa Juxta crucem lachrymosa, Dum pendebat filius.”
If we consider that the bull is printed on a small piece of very inferior paper, and that it is sold for 7½d., and that every Spaniard in the Peninsula and its colonies is bound to purchase it, at the risk of incurring a mortal sin every Friday in the year that he eats meat without this authorization, we may form some idea of the enormous revenue derived from this source by the Spanish Church, and by the Roman See, which has a profit in the speculation. The Spanish Peninsula contains at the present moment, on a very low calculation, fifteen millions of inhabitants, the Philippine Islands four millions, and Cuba and Porto Rico together something more than one million. In Spanish America, from Mexico to Cape Horn, there are nearly sixteen millions of inhabitants subject to the Catholic Church, and his holiness grants to them likewise the privilege of the Holy Crusade bull, with the further advantage of being allowed to cook their fish or vegetables with hog’s lard or beef and mutton fat, on those days too on which not even Spanish Catholics are allowed to eat meat.
“Gonzalvo Ferdinandez de Cordova, Hispanorum duci, Gallorum et Turcarum terrori.”