Mexico and Its Religion: With Incidents of Travel in That Country During Parts of the Years 1851-52-53-54, and Historical Notices of Events Connected With Places VisitedWilson, Robert Anderson
Religion
Mexico and Its Religion: With Incidents of Travel in That Country During Parts of the Years 1851-52-53-54, and Historical Notices of Events Connected With Places Visited
Wilson, Robert Anderson
Mexico -- Description and travel; Mexico -- Religion
"All these hermits' holes and caves, which are some ten in all, are
within the bounds and compass of the cloister, and among orchards and
gardens, which are full of fruits and flowers, which may take two miles
in compass; and here among the rocks are many springs of water, which,
with the shade of the plantain and other trees, are most cool and
pleasant to the hermits. They have also the sweet smell of the rose and
the jessamine, which is a little flower, but the sweetest of all
others; and there is not any flower to be found that is rare and
exquisite in that country which is not in that wilderness, to delight
the senses of those mortified hermits.
"They are weekly changed from the cloister, and when their week is
ended others are sent, and they return into their cloisters; they carry
with them their bottles of wine, sweetmeats, and other provisions. As
for fruits, the trees do drop them into their mouths. It is wonderful
to see the strange devices of fountains of water which are about the
gardens; but much more strange and wonderful to see the resort thither
of coaches, and gallants, and ladies, and citizens from Mexico, to walk
and make merry in those desert pleasures, and to see those hypocrites,
whom they look upon as living saints, and so think nothing too good for
them to cherish them in their desert conflicts with Satan.
"None goes to them but carries some sweetmeats or some other dainty
dish to nourish and feed them withal, whose prayers they likewise
earnestly solicit, leaving them great alms of money for their masses;
and, above all, offering to a picture in their church, called our Lady
of Carmel, treasures of diamonds, pearls, golden chains, and crowns,
and gowns of cloth of gold and silver. Before this picture did hang, in
my time, twenty lamps of silver, the poorest of them being worth a
hundred pounds. Truly Satan hath given them what he offered unto Christ
in the desert.
"All the dainties and all the riches of America hath he given unto them
in that desert, because they daily fall down and worship him. In the
way to this place is another town, called Tacubaya, where is a rich
cloister of Franciscans, and also many gardens and orchards; but it is,
above all, much resorted to for the music in that church, wherein the
friars have made the Indians so skillful that they dare compare with
the Cathedral Church of Mexico."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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