Legends and Counterlegends as Rejections of Institutional Authority

In this and the preceding chapter, I have shown how stories of Fray Leopoldo reveal a wide variety of attitudes toward their protagonist as well as toward the supernatural, toward sanctity, and, at times, toward the very actions they describe. I have suggested that the tales' multiplicity reflects important differences among their tellers. I will now argue that it also constitutes a coherent, if not necessarily fully conscious rejection, of all manner of institutions. The Fray Leopoldo stories are thus united not only by a readily obvious debate about saints and miracles but also by a potent, if often considerably more subtle, undercurrent of antiauthoritarianism.

We are not talking here about that more obvious sort of anticlerical-ism characterizing a good number of Counterlegends, but rather, a more generalized distaste for constituted authority often discernible in even those Legends that may bear the most marked resemblance to the Life.^[22] This distaste may be taken as a reaffirmation and intensification of the stubborn localism that has always characterized one important subgroup of saints' legends. It also represents a confirmation of the very long and

[21] Man, age thirty-seven, born Palermo (Italy), high-school education. Separated, travel agent, does not attend mass.

[22] It is this same impulse, I would argue, that has found its most dramatic expression in a series of Anarchist and Socialist political movements during the last century. For two excellent discussions of twentieth-century manifestations of this antiauthoritarian spirit see Mintz, The Anarchists of Casas Viejas , and George A. Collier, Socialists of Rural Andalusia .

powerful tradition of anti-institutionalism in Spain—described in chapter 1—which finds its most immediate target in Franco's self-described "National Catholic" regime.^[23]

This deeply rooted antiauthoritarian impulse shows up most notably in the stories' tendency to redefine, de-emphasize, or subjectivize the supernatural, to delimit the friar's sphere of operations, and to picture him actively seeking out needy members of the lay population. It is discernible as well in the insistence on Fray Leopoldo's identity as friend rather than arbiter and in storytellers' recurring insistence on their tales' subjective truth.

Redefinition and sometimes outright rejection of miracles characterize many of the tales, Legend and Counterlegend alike. Thus, together with accounts of how Fray Leopoldo causes a lemon tree to burst into flower in the chill of winter or finds his empty knapsack filled with bread, there are numerous instances in which he simply offers sympathy or counsel. Unlike many traditional saints' tales in which the natural and supernatural form a continuum where some things are more or less probable than others, the tales we have studied reveal a clear demarcation between the possible and the impossible.^[24] Although individual storytellers may and do decide to cross this conceptual great divide, few if any fail to acknowledge its existence.

One might dismiss this generalized downplaying of the supernatural as nothing more than a response to the sort of rationalization generally associated with industrialization and the introduction of new technologies. From this standpoint, the woman who hastens to assure her listeners that Fray Leopoldo did indeed raise her dead niece ("Yes, yes, yes, yes, she was dead when he arrived") and the man who insists that the friar bumped his head on the cathedral ceiling are both proposing an exception to rules both they and the community accept.

[23] As one might well expect, this sort of anti-institutionalism is considerably more visible in the local legends that have come down to us in assorted shrine books, rather than written collections of saints' lives authored by members of monastic orders. It is obvious as well in a number of those Marian miracles that present an alternative to the stern, all-powerful male patron.

[24] See Keith Thomas's discussion of the relationship between medieval religion and occult forces in his Religion and the Decline of Magic , pp. 253-79.
Here and elsewhere in this section, I have used the term "traditional legend" very loosely. I am thinking here primarily of those stories appearing in such standard collections as Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogue on Miracles; Voragine, The Golden Legend; and Butler, Lives of the Saints , as well as a number of the local legends that have come down to us through shrine books. There are, to be sure, numerous differences among these narratives. For a study of this sort of variation over time, as well as apparent constants in a number of Spanish saints' lives, see Wyatt, "Representations of Holiness in Some Spanish Hagiographical Works."

One could, however, just as easily see storytellers' generalized de-emphasis of the miraculous (and also their reluctance or refusal to expound on supernatural actions on other occasions) as a rejection of official criteria of sanctity and, by extension, of the church's definitive control over the canonization process and religious experience in general. From this perspective, the friar's insistence that the workers do not need his miraculous intervention to move an obstinate slab of granite is neither an acknowledgment of the supremacy of reason nor an attempt to conceal his inability to help the needy. Rather, it is an endorsement of an emphatically nonhierarchical, this-world approach to human problems.

The limited scale of both Legends and Counterlegends invites a similar interpretation. Nowhere in either the Life or the wide array of oral stories we have seen does Fray Leopoldo lead an army into battle, rid Granada of an epidemic, or multiply a single loaf of bread before the eyes of a hungry multitude.^[25] But (in contrast to the Life, where he does appear alone at times) the great majority of the tales we have examined portray him in the company of others. The friar inevitably appears alongside another individual or individuals—a handful of workers, a mule driver and a few curious passersby, a sick child and his anxious parents.

A few of the texts presented do involve a somewhat larger than usual number of persons. We have seen how Fray Leopoldo levitates in full view of the worshipers cramming the city cathedral and have noted his presence at a great banquet in the palaces of the Alhambra. Even in these cases, a single face often stands out among the crowd. In several versions of the cathedral story, for instance, a young boy is the first to notice the friar's ascent. In addition, we have noted the numerous references—particularly in Legends, but also in a number of Counterlegends—to proper names, distinguishing physical features, and family connections. Whereas the Life speaks of "a certain man," the oral accounts refer to "the youngest brother of the García family that used to own the barbershop on Recogidas Street" or "a fruitseller, lame from birth in the left leg, who lived for many years across the street from my Great-Aunt Elvira."

This focus on small groups of very ordinary people could be taken as an illustration of the increasing privatization of religious experience, which some scholars have observed in various complex industrial

[25] For numerous examples of these sorts of occurrences consult appropriate headings in Loomis, White Magic , and Brewer, Dictionary of Miracles .

societies.^[26] One could argue that the friar deals almost exclusively with small numbers of people because he—and the religious establishment with which he is associated—has largely lost the hold it once commanded over public institutions.^[27]

It is equally possible, however, to see Fray Leopoldo's notably limited circle of activities as an affirmation of the individual and the near-at-hand. The woman who describes how Fray Leopoldo cures her husband beneath the Elvira Arch or the newspaper vendor who relates how an acquaintance witnesses an empty jug fill to the brim with cooking oil reveal a proximity to the events in question that stands in contrast to the distance cultivated by the friar's biographer. The absence of crowds and the highly idiosyncratic actors in both Legends and Counterlegends may constitute a further rejection of the anonymity and massification often synonymous with bureaucratic process.

A third general characteristic of the stories cited in the preceding pages is their situation of the friar in not just concrete, but familiar and public places such as plazas, shops, and historical landmarks. Time and again, he remains on the threshold instead of disappearing behind the doors of a private residence. Even those Counterlegends that depict the friar amidst his fellow Capuchins customarily include scenes of his activities in the countryside or city streets. Fray Leopoldo may come trudging back to Granada along a dirt road "gold with sun, gold with grain," or spend long hours helping the prostitutes in a section of the city where "no priest, you can be sure, would ever poke his nose."

Moreover, the friar is not simply situated within the public domain. Rather, he moves within it. Legends and Counterlegends alike show him circumnavigating Granada and its immediate environs, rather than staying in the monastery or one of the churches mentioned in the Life. In the course of his travels, he regularly happens on situations of need. Although people do sometimes seek out the friar with problems, he is far more likely to intervene of his own accord at a critical moment. Just as a scheming landowner is about to browbeat a poor farmer into sur-

[26] Clearly, this privatization does not occur in all cases. Theories of modernization, extremely influential in the 1960s and the early 1970s, fell out of favor precisely because their globalizing predictions were emphatically belied by developments in a number of non-Western nations. In addition, one could argue that "privatization" in the Spanish case often has a quite different meaning than in other, apparently similar contexts.

[27] See Berger, Sacred Canopy , pp. 127-53, for a discussion of the diminished power of religious institutions in modern, industrial societies. Although Berger's generalizations would not be true for some societies, there is no question but that the Spanish church occupied a privileged position during the Franco era which it no longer enjoys. For an overview of secularization as a sociological concept see Martin, General Theory of Secularization , and Glasner, Sociology of Secularisation .

rendering his tiny plot, at the very moment that a mule driver despairs of being able to feed his family, exactly when a small child who has just lost his mother feels most alone, the friar appears.

It is noteworthy that the beneficiaries of Fray Leopoldo's intervention do not necessarily call on him for help. In this respect, the tales depart from not only the Life but also from many other saints' legends in which the needy go to considerable pains to seek out the holy figure. (Recall the repentant man in chapter 2 who crosses town to implore Fray Leopoldo's aid at three o'clock in the morning.) The oral accounts are wholly devoid of these arduous pilgrimages. On the contrary, it is the friar who is the pilgrim in these stories, and he who makes the rounds of countryside and city.

Fray Leopoldo's extreme accessibility might be seen as an attempt to drum up business in a time of increasing competition among proliferating sects.^[28] But this same accessibility can also be viewed as a rejection of a hierarchical model in which spiritual aid must be actively solicited, often at considerable cost to the needy party. The friar's spontaneous appearance in critical moments suggests the ready availability of such assistance. Because Fray Leopoldo knows without their having to say so when people need him, they do not have to importune him or to offer gifts (constituting a kind of advance payment) for his help. He continues to think of them even when their mind is elsewhere. Unlike official saints, he is not located physically or metaphorically in a separate sphere—that of the religious institution—but remains close at hand.

Moreover, the friar shares not only the plazas and the streets with storytellers but also a common status. Not by chance do so many storytellers insist on his diminutive stature, lack of formal education, rustic accent, and shabby clothes. While the author of the Life repeatedly refers to him as a Servant of God—a title given to candidates for canonization—and a "varón de Dios" (man of God), storytellers ignore these high-sounding appellations in favor of others that stress his supreme ordinariness and thus his proximity to them. In their eyes he is an endearing, vaguely humorous, and unequivocally intimate frailecico (little friar), viejito (little old man), and santico (little saint). We have seen that the very family roles he represents—abuelito (grandfather) and hermanico (little brother)—undercut, while never wholly rejecting, patriarchal authority. As "father emeritus" and lay member of a religious order, he is at once within and outside the system.

[28] Berger compares the pluralistic situation to a market economy in which religious "products" must be marketed to a population of uncoerced consumers. (Sacred Canopy , p. 145)

The Life resembles many older hagiographical models in its portrayal of the friar as stern and demanding in all matters concerning religious thought and practice. Although Fray Leopoldo does not engage in the more spectacular displays of displeasure in which a long line of saints throughout the centuries have indulged, he regularly chides wrongdoers (who, one may note, are usually women of inferior social status). He is, for instance, quick to admonish a young servant who lies about her mistress's whereabouts and to scold a nun for thinking about forsaking her religious vows. In addition, the friar's biographer makes reference to one instance in which lightning strikes a boy who fails to follow the future friar in taking refuge from a thunderstorm.

Oral accounts, in contrast, rarely if ever show Fray Leopoldo chastising a would-be offender. Although the Hermanico recalls a number of traditional holy figures in his readiness to console and counsel, his reluctance to punish those who challenge his authority makes him more like a friend. It is therefore not surprising that the three versions I recorded of the story of the thunderstorm make no mention of a challenge to Fray Leopoldo, but instead portray all of the frightened children huddling behind a rock.^[29] No more than half a dozen of all of the tales in my collection do so much as hint at the redress of a personal wrong. In both Legends and Counterlegends, actions that would almost certainly be taken as affronts in the Life regularly pass without notice. Whereas, for instance, hagiographic tradition dictates that the disgruntled worker who abandons the group in one version of the stubborn stone should suffer for his action, our storyteller reports his departure as a simple fact.^[30]

Likewise, accounts of the blow Fray Leopoldo receives upon asking two men in a café for alms omit any reference to retribution ("that was not his way," storytellers explain if pressed). The friar is content to respond with a play on the verb dar , which means both "to strike" and "to give." Then too, although his hosts at the Alhambra banquet finally contribute to his school, they do so not out of remorse, but rather, to be

[29] Significantly, I collected all three versions of this story in the hamlet of Alpandeire. Although the tale appears in the formal Life, no one in Granada repeated it to me, which would appear to suggest either a lack of interest or discomfort with the theme of retribution among residents of the city.

[30] "Punishment for opposition to saint" is motif number Q559.5 in Thompson. For a wide array of punishments by saints see Loomis, White Magic , pp. 55, 84-85, 98-99, 101-2, and Brewer, Dictionary of Miracles , pp. 275-78. A list of studies of medieval punishment stories appears in Wilson, ed., Saints and Their Cults , pp. 401-2. For more general discussions of divine wrath see Halpert, "Supernatural Sanctions and the Legend," and Hand, "Deformity, Disease, and Physical Ailment as Divine Retribution."

rid of him so they can go on with their lavish meal. In striking contrast to a number of saints' tales from other times and places, none of the stories I collected includes the slightest suggestion of reform.^[31]

Fray Leopoldo's pacific and even passive behavior in the great majority of stories may be taken as another, quite straightforward indication of the diminished power of religious ideology and institutions in some modern industrial states. Unable to command allegiance to a once theoretically uniform code of behavior, the friar has no other option than to coax and cajole.^[32] One can also interpret the stories, however, as a considerably more subtle rejection of the saint as arbiter. From this standpoint, Fray Leopoldo does not exact moral compliance, because the tellers have rejected force on principle. Rather than a reflection of his diminished power and obvious indication of weakness, his failure to assert authority in the most varied oral accounts becomes a statement of principle and show of strength. The stories would thus appear to confirm the demise of patronage as an ideal, but not that of the holy figure as a metaphor.^[33]

Finally, if the profound multiplicity we have taken pains to document can be understood as a unifying factor, so can storytellers' insistence on the subjective truth of their narratives. ("There's no arguing about faith," they say time and again. Or "Well, this story's true for me.") This insistence may in part reflect individuals' perception of an increasingly pluralistic Spain. Unanimity, however, may strike storytellers not simply as impossible but, above all, as undesirable. As such, the tales signal a long-standing and, indeed, premodern agreement to disagree.

In short then, oral accounts of Fray Leopoldo, while profoundly diverse in some respects are nonetheless united by their antiauthoritarian-ism. Although individual stories may recall specific narrative features of the Capuchins' biography, as well as its more general guiding vision, the tales as a body represent a debate about the friar, about sanctity, and

[31] Reform routinely accompanies retribution in traditional saints' legends. Those individuals who do not die as a consequence of their insulting behavior (and there are a good number of these) customarily become staunch followers of the holy figure who has vented his or her wrath upon them.

[32] Berger explains these codes as legitimating or "plausibility" structures. See Sacred Canopy , pp. 45-47.

[33] For a discussion of the relationship between popular religious practice and the ideal of patronage see Maddox, "Religion, Honor, and Patronage." In their use of a holy figure to attack the concept of the all-powerful male patron, the stories cast doubt on the thesis put forward by some scholars in the 1970s that the decline of patronage as both ideology and socioeconomic system necessarily results in the diminution of the symbolic power of the saints. (See, for example, Boissevain, "When the Saints Go Marching Out.")

about the role or nonrole of the supernatural in everyday life—a debate that is wholly alien to the printed text. Moreover, Legends and Counterlegends alike reveal a number of narrative constants that affirm the individual and local in the face of all manner of institutions and thus provide a striking contrast to the Life.