George Young reflects on Catholicism and the corrida, where the only certainty is death.
The convergence between bullfighting and Spanish Catholicism could not have been clearer this summer in Madrid’s Plaza de Las Ventas where, each year, a Mass takes place in the ring of what is technically “the largest church in Madrid” on the feast of the Assumption. It is an event that has occurred each year since its inception in 1964 to commemorate the mortal wounding in the ring of Manuel Leyton, “El Coli”. The annual service is therefore one of adoration, memorial and petition – especially so for madrileños who will fight en capilla (in chapel) and maybe face death later that evening or in the season. “He who does not fight on 15 August is neither a torero, nor is he anything,” runs a Spanish bullfighting aphorism.
The plazas, their chapels and the liturgy that unfolds within them are saturated in the symbolism and presence of Hispanic Catholic tradition. But several popes, including Gregory XIII, St Pius V and Clement VIII, condemned the corrida de toros. After Super prohibitione agitationis Taurorum & Ferarum, the papal edict of 1567 which excommunicated all Christian princes who permitted toreo in their lands, the Church tolerated it again when it was decided that bulls should appear only once in the ring.
Earlier this year, animal-rights groups gathered in St Peter’s Square to demand the Holy Father’s denouncement of toreo. It was misguided at best (the Pope, unsurprisingly, has no authority over bullfighting legislation) and His Holiness was wise to steer clear of similar protests that have previously demanded he promote vegan options over meat at Easter. More recently, PETA reported that three priests – one from England, one from Canada and one from France – had written to Pope Francis, saying that “a strong message condemning bullfighting is needed”.
“As billions of people around the world eagerly await your reflections on our responsibilities as stewards of God’s creation,” they wrote, “the significance of your words regarding this crucial issue of bullfighting cannot be emphasised enough.” The protests target self-contained, disinterested communities of generally self-contained, disinterested people who know exactly where and to what they belong. “Padre Nuestro, que estás en los ruedos…” (Our Father, who art in the arenas) reads a panel in the tiny chapel secreted in Las Ventas.
Toreo is often referred to in the Spanish press as liturgia – a coherent, yet spontaneous progress of dance and ritual to death. Indeed, the distinct tercios (thirds) of the corrida (despite its pagan origins) all mirror to some extent the celebration of Mass, beginning with the paseíllo: the participants enter on parade to music in a kind of introductory rite, and from there the tragedy and profundity of the performance flows. The first two-thirds are, respectively, assessments of the bull’s strength and tendencies followed by the weakening of him with banderillas and the tactile work of the muleta (cloth) in a series of passes and movements.
Hemingway, the first point of reference on the subject for any non-Hispanic, said that “it is not a sport – it is a tragedy”. He also said it was “the last serious thing left”, which was a greater insight into the vacuity of modern life than the art he loved. Serious because tragedy is serious and as the greatest art form of all – being essential and unsentimental and showing life at its most painful – it strengthens those who have seen it. Surrounded by jeering crowds, the torero is alone – a figure essential and isolated from narrative like an early Christian icon – and through dexterity finds a supreme form through which death is tamed.
The role of any artist is, in some way, to confront the reality of death, but in that confrontation to find some kind of redemption; save for his years of training and immense precision of movement, the torero on this basis alone is unquestionably an artist. And to experience any true art – by which I mean art that is true – is a sacred experience. He shows the living dance to be triumphant, but always in proportion to death; forgetting this proportion, he strays recklessly into its territory. Indeed, it is often forgotten in the legend that St George tamed the dragon before killing it; it was not one skip to the suerte suprema – the last act of the sword n the corrida’s final third, the tercio de muerte.
After all this, there is death; death confounded and made dead by life. TS Eliot inferred Christian death in the sacrificial bull of Greek tragedies when he wrote, in The Rock: “The bull is sacrificed, and why? Why must a thing so holy die? [H]e must die because he is so holy, that he may give his holiness, his strength, his life at the moment it is holiest, to his people.” In some mysterious way, the death of the bull is a part of this tradition and, without its death, the creature is but an accessory to a kind of Reformed liturgy that centres on nothing absolute: it cannot die twice. Indeed, death is the only certainty in toreo – something our sanitised world is embarrassed and horrified by in equal measure, which is considered better refrigerated than seen.
But without blood and death there could be no Christianity, for they are the necessary rites of redemption and resurrection. Blessing derives from the Old English blud; without blood there is no blessing (Ex 29:12) and after death and the dance and everything that precedes it, there is the triumph of life and its celebration. And then “this mortal who has put on immortality” (cf 1 Cor 15:54) and who has beaten death is carried out through the plaza, showered in hats and carnations, and paraded in the streets of the town to chants affirming his name. “O Death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor 15:55) seems doubly mocking here with trumpets sounding – for his own absence and that of the pinprick of his horns.
George Young is a researcher for International Christian Concern.
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