Saint Sebastian and the Blue-Eyed Blacks

Saint Sebastian and the Blue-Eyed Blacks Corpus Christi in Cusco, Peru Max Harris Falling variously between 21 May and 23 June, the early summer festival of Corpus Christi has been, for many centuries, the occasion for vibrant street the- atre throughout the Roman Catholic world. First promulgated by the bishop of Lie`ge in 1246 and established as a universal feast by papal decree in 1264, Corpus Christi officially celebrates the belief that the eucharistic bread contains the real presence of Christ. Recent scholars have understood the development of the doctrine of transubstantiation, beginning in the 9th century, as an effort to suppress the familiarity and diffusion of sacred power that characterized the much older cult of the saints. Widely dispersed cultic relics were the dismembered parts of holy men and women; the whole body of the living Christ was present in the consecrated bread. While relics generated their own power, the efficacy of the mass depended on the priestly power of consecration. The doctrine of transubstantiation thus concentrated the scattered channels of cultic sacred power, confining them to a formal rite presided over by clergy (Rubin 1991:14–82; Zika 1988). Every saint has his day, Urban IV observed in his papal bull Transiturus (1264), and all the saints together share a day of “general commemoration.” All the more reason why “this marvelous sacrament of the body and blood of Jesus Christ, which is the glory and crown of all the saints,” should have its own surpassing feast day. Henceforth, he decreed, clergy and people everywhere should assemble in church on the second Thursday after Pentecost1 to celebrate, with particular “de- votion and solemnity,” the saving miracle of Christ’s real presence in the eucharist (Franceschini 1965; see also Rubin 1991:164–212). The choice of date may have been a mistake, for the fair weather festival soon moved outdoors into a sphere less easily controlled by clergy. By the early 14th century, the solemn mass in church had been eclipsed in importance by a lavish procession through the city streets. As the official source of sacred power, the consecrated bread, or host (from Latin, hostia, sacrifice), was displayed in an ornate gold or silver monstrance beneath a richly embroidered baldachin. The clergy en- joyed a nominal authority over the procession, retaining for their highest-ranking The Drama Review 47, 1 (T177), Spring 2003. Copyright ᭧ 2003 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 149 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/105420403321250062 by guest on 24 September 2021 150 Max Harris member the right to carry the monstrance, but the poles supporting the baldachin were borne by civic dignitaries. Various members of the clergy and the city’s rul- ing elite flanked the canopied host. Others carried processional banners, candle- sticks, and crosses, while individual parishes, chapters, and guilds competed for the right to bear their own relics as close as possible to the consecrated bread that officially outranked them. Relative status in the procession was conferred (and displayed) by proximity to the host. As the procession spread and grew, it began to dramatize a story. Pageant wag- ons, depicting a narrative sequence of tableaux vivants, expanded the procession. In Barcelona, by 1424, a series of 108 “representations” was being carried through the city streets ahead of the host. Their story began with the creation of the world, the fall of Lucifer, the dragon of Saint Michael, and a sword fight between devils and angels. Episodes from the Old Testament followed, including Adam and Eve, Noah and the Ark, David and the giant Goliath, “the twelve tribes of Israel march- ing two by two,” and several prophets. Then came a nativity sequence, starting with angels singing the annunciation to the Virgin Mary and ending with the slaughter of the innocents. The remaining pageants, almost two-thirds of the total number, officially extended the theme of suffering innocence into the history of the church and unofficially relativized the power of the host by portraying a multitude of saints and martyrs. Out of chronological sequence, amidst the saints, was “the res- urrected [Christ] alone with his cross,” the archetype of victorious Christian suffering and the necessary precedent of the host (Mila´ y Fontanals 1889–95, 6:376– 79; see also Very 1962:37–39; Shergold 1967:56–57). In York, by about the same period, the pageants had become a fully scripted dramatization of the Christian history of the world from Creation to Last Judgment. Separated from the procession, they took up a whole day of their own, their performance lasting from dawn until long after dark (Beadle 1982 and 1994; Kolve 1966). Although still the formal highlight of the procession, the host beneath its can- opy, together with its escort of civic and ecclesiastical leaders, was eclipsed by the more spectacular elements of the dramatic narrative. In Barcelona, the opening battle between angels and devils armed with swords, the stilt-walkers who played giants Goliath and Christopher (Harris 2000:196), the pyrotechnic dragons that attacked saints Margaret and George (the latter on horseback), the devils that tempted two saints and the impenitent thief on the cross, the eight Christian knights on hobby horses who fought 24 Turkish infantrymen in the street during the pageant of Saint Sebastian (Harris 1997), the bestiary of papier-maˆche´ animals, and, bringing up the rear, “two wild men carrying a bar to hold back the people,” (Mila´ y Fontanals 1889–95, 6:379) would all have surpassed the static host in festive audience appeal. By the late 16th century, clergy throughout Spain were ob- jecting vigorously to the “disorder and confusion” caused by the intrusion of so many “profane” elements into a procession devoted to “the Holy Sacrament.” Even worse, they said, the masked figures and the dancers were invading the sacred space of the church and interrupting the liturgy (Very 1962:106–07, 114–17). In northern Europe, the Protestant Reformation put an end to the Corpus Christi procession and its attendant drama. But, in Catholic Spain and its former empire, despite intermittent clerical objections and the efforts of various rulers to tame it or to bend it to their own uses, the pageantry of Corpus Christi has con- tinued to thrive in one form or another. Nowhere does it do so more spectacularly than Cusco, Peru, where the solemn pomp of clerical Corpus Christi still vies with more popular modes of performance. Fifteen images of saints and virgins take to the streets, accompanied by dancers whose mockery of pretension invokes the inversive spirit of Carnival. To add to the fun, the week of Corpus Christi festivities runs concurrently with the massive civic parades that precede the recon- structed Inca solstice festival of Inti Raymi (Sun Festival) on 24 June. This misce- Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/105420403321250062 by guest on 24 September 2021 Corpus Christi 151 genation of festive traditions befits the celebration’s multiple ethnic referents, invoking the several heritages of Spain, the Incas, the rural Indians of the Amazon and the Andes, and the urban mestizos who make up the majority of the festivals’ participants. I was in Cusco for Corpus Christi and Inti Raymi in June 2001.2 High in the Peruvian Andes, Cusco was the capital of the Inca Empire until Francisco Pizarro and his army of Spanish adventurers arrived in 1533. Although, for ease of communication with other Spanish colonies, Pizarro established a new capital on the coast at Lima, Cusco retained the prestige of its Inca past. In 1572, Viceroy Francisco de Toledo consolidated the power of the Spanish crown over the mountainous Inca Empire with the capture and execution, in Cusco’s Plaza de Armas, of the last fugitive Inca ruler, Tu´pac Amaru I (Hem- ming 1970). A year later, declaring Corpus Christi to be “the principal festival and procession of the year,” the viceroy summoned “all the Indians” of the city’s several parishes to help with preparations and ordered every Spanish-led trade guild to “bring out its dance or play.” The texts of the plays were to be “examined” by an ecclesiastical judge (Toledo 1926:87–90; for the date of the proclamation, see Maria´tegui Oliva 1951:12). The colonial festival was intended, at least in part, as a dramatization of the triumph of Spanish Catholicism over Inca paganism. The Spaniards were helped in this regard by the tem- 1. An ornamented and poral coincidence of the imported Catholic festival with the Inca festival of Inti dressed Virgin of the Reme- Raymi and, more generally, with the widespread harvest festivals that marked the dies is carried in the proces- reappearance of the Pleiades and the end of the Andean agricultural cycle (Dean sional entrada (entry of the 1999:31–38). Also influential was the occasional feast of Q’apaq Hucha (Great saints) down Calle Mantas. Guilt). Celebrated at times of real or perceived danger, it involved the portage of (Photo by Max Harris) religious images to Cusco from the empire’s holy sites, a great festival of drinking and dancing in the main square, displays of group identity and social ranking, and, after several days of celebrations, the return of the statues to their respective temples. Q’apaq Hucha sometimes coincided with Inti Raymi (Cieza de Leoń 1959:190–93 [pt. 2, ch. 29]; Sallnow 1987:39–40; Fiedler 1985:245–78; Dean 1999:32–38). Encouraged by the Spanish authorities, indigenous elements migrated to Cor- pus Christi. In 1551 or 1552, the cathedral choirmaster “composed a part-song [...] for the feast of Corpus Christi, in perfect imitation of the Inca singing.” He drew his inspiration from Inca plough songs in which the repeated Quechua word hailli (victory [over the soil]) marked the rhythmic raising and dropping of the foot-ploughs.

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