Music and Ritual in the Procession of All Souls Day in Seville Cathedral (14th – 17th centuries)

Abstract

The All Souls Day’s procession is one of the highlight ritual events associated with the Omnium Sanctorum and Commemoratio omnium fidelium defunctorum festivities, which have a clear theological connection and a unified liturgical treatment. The ceremonial apparatus of these two feasts in Seville Cathedral derived from the rank, first and second respectively, they had in the Sevillian calendar. The procession had a strong emotional impact on citizenship, reflecting the influence of the doctrine of the Purgatory, and this translated into a gradual increase in private endowments that accumulated over time. In this article special emphasis is placed on the spatial -dramatically transformed in the second half of the fifteenth century- and sensory aspects of the procession’s itinerary, with particular attention to the sound elements that identified it. The idiosyncrasy and deployment of resources pertaining to this procession gave a unique character to all the two hundred and eleven processions that circulated annually through the interior of the Cathedral of Seville in the early eighteenth century.