To all you rejoicing in the light of the Resurrected Christ, have I got a place for you!
I just spent Palm Sunday, Holy Week and Easter Sunday in the bustling Spanish town of Seville and my time there was both a blast and blessed indeed! Seville is pretty much one of the most popular places in Europe to be over this week-long span of liturgical and Christo-Marian goodness! There are many parishes in the town of Seville and nearly every parish supports a brotherhood (comprised of men women and children). These brother hoods involve themselves in the city’s honoring of the Paschal Mystery by having processions through town. Now these are unlike any other processions in that their garments are quite unique.
Now I know what you are all thinking…thanks to the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) of racial imbalance…but these chaps are the originators of this garment design, seriously! Moving on… These processions have two different types of members 1) Nazarenos, those who march in procession carrying candles, and 2) Costaleros, those who carry the Paso (religious float) upon their backs. Each procession which was mentioned in our weekly guide has as few as 300 and as many as 2500 Nazarenos with 2 to 3 Pasos wherein 20 to 45 Costaleros rotated in their laborious duties which lasted for as little as 6 hours or as long as 13 hours! In my weekly guide there were upwards of 60 brotherhoods outlined but there was a rumor of over 158 of these groups in existence…in Seville alone!
Now I do not know how to explain it but there was something very powerful to see these processions occurring in person. Was it the sheer size of the procession, was it the undivided attention that tens of thousands of citizens and visitors paid to the specific brotherhood, was it the solemn music which accompanied each Paso? I’m not sure if it was one thing alone but I’m sure it was a combination of them all and at all times of day and night!
On Holy Thursday evening the processions ceased at 230am and at 235am they began for Good Friday. So what did Trowbridge do? Yep, that’s right! he stayed up 36 hours straight not to miss any of the fun and I have to tell you there were some amazing processions.
All of the processions begin at their respective churches and process toward and through the Cathedral. Once they arrive in the cathedral all of the Nazarenos reverence the Eucharist and when the Pasos process through the Cathedral they even turn from their normal formation and drop to indicate a kneeling reverence to Our Lord and then the Paso rises and turns into its proper formation to process out of the Cathedral. It is amazing! One little tidbit about the Nazarenos: A large majority of the Nazarenos process through town, and the Cathedral, with a huge candle. Picture this: 10 processions a day with an average of 1,000 Nazarenos per procession equals an approximate 10,000 dripping candles a day covering the streets of Seville and the floor of the cathedral. Granted, this is a thought which would send chills up the spines of those priests back home who get all worked up at an Easter Vigil wax-dripping! Ha ha! At the end of the week you can barely see the natural color of the Cathedral floor! Luckily the Cathedral was built between the 13th and 17th Centuries so and we not wreck-ovated in the 70s and 80s with carpeted floors and sanctuaries (yuck!) and still had their stone / marble floors so on the last day the cleaning crews came in with tools which resemble ice chippers (to those of us still getting ice in April the image should be fresh in your mind) and they scraped the wax from the floor of the Cathedral like we would scrape the frost off of our windshields in the morning! It was quite the process to witness!
Enjoy these pictures from the various Pasos during Seville’s Holy Week Processions!
if you do not see any pictures here wait a day or so, come back and you will not be disappointed!
Your traveling brother in Christ!
Jeremy!
