The
first references to El Paso El Santo Sepulcro go back to the mid-17th century
at the latest, when the Brotherhood of the Blood of Christ had a Crucified as
its owner, with whom, unnailed from the cross and deposited in a catafalque, it
was celebrated for in the afternoon the ceremony of the Descent and the
subsequent Procession of the Holy Burial of Christ. This is corroborated in
1682 by the document for the transfer of some land that the Franciscan
Community that intends to settle in Cieza requests for the construction of what
will later be the Convent of Discalced Franciscans of San Joaquín and Custody
of San Pascual, and according to which, in return, the nearby Hermitage of San
Sebastián, in which the Holy Sepulcher was guarded, would become a Hospice that
would be run by the friars themselves. In the agreement signed between both
parties, it is stated that "a chapel must be built in the convent to place
the Holy Sepulcher on Good Friday, and thus the Procession of the Holy Burial
of Jesus Christ can be carried out and the Holy Crucifix can be delivered. in
the Hermitage of San Sebastián carried in Procession from the Church of the
Assumption".
It
is not known since when the Paso had its own Image, but the truth is that the
first testimonies of an Image of the Reclining Christ date from the 19th
century and that this Image, of unknown authorship, was destroyed in the Civil
War.
The
Image was processed under a canopy inside an urn (still preserved today,
although in very precarious conditions) that resembled the shape of a canopy
bed, which led to the Paso being known by the nickname of "The Bed of
Christ". , as it is still popularly called today.
Since
the second half of the 19th century, it was linked, as its Camarería has
attested, to the Capdevila family, parading within the Jesús Nazareno
Brotherhood, which is the one that defrays the expenses derived from its
maintenance, according to various notes that appear in the Account Book of said
Brotherhood: “To Don Gaspar Victoria for the damask and canvas for the
canopy... 257 reales with 8; for the value of the percaline, seams and three
silk rods for said canopy, brought from Murcia... 184 reales” (1851); "For
golden wood for the Urn of Christ of the Sepulcher... 80 reales" (1865);
and the one that in 1873 requests that the image of the Lord of the Sepulcher
be located in the Soledad chapel (in the same place that the one made in 1943
to replace that one is preserved today). However, at the beginning of the 20th
century, it could have been processed under the protection of the Brotherhood
of the Blessed Sacrament, as appears to be clear from a preserved scapular in
which it reads: “Brotherhood of the Blessed Sacrament and Holy Burial”. For a
few years after the end of the Civil War, he figured as an independent Pasó,
becoming part of the Brotherhood of La Oración del Huerto, of which he would be
its second owner.
For
its part, the Paso de La Oración del Huerto, also known simply as “El Paso”,
was linked from its creation to the Moncada Aguado family, who settled in Cieza
in the second half of the 18th century, and may have been sculpted by an
unknown author in the first decades of the 19th century to parade under the
auspices of the Jesús Nazareno Brotherhood, which bears the expenses derived
from its maintenance, as reflected in the local press at the end of the century
(La Voz de Cieza, Crónica of Holy Week in 1899: "Of novelties, the only
thing that has appeared, unfinished and therefore without due brilliance, is
the platform of La Oración del Huerto, which has been built here under the
direction of the active and tireless D. Antonio Aguado Moxó; the The work has
come out prepared in white and without finishing its decoration; therefore,
when it will shine it will be next year, finished and golden") and in the
Accounts Book of the Brotherhood ("To Pascual Molina for arranging the
boat of the La Oración pass and three new shelves... 50 reales, to Manuel Villa
for his assignment for the collection of La Oración Pass... 200 reales ”–1859–;
"To the sculptor D. Pedro Franco for restoring Jesus in Prayer... 640
reales, to Mariano Miranda for conducting the pass to Murcia and to Murcia...
19 reales" –1862–; “for dressing and gilding the jars of the La Oración
pass according to the receipt of the gilder... 400 reales” –1870–) and to which
the anderos of this Pass belong (“For tarjas charged to the anderos of La
Oración...” –1862–). In the middle of that century, the Camarería del Paso was
held by the Brotherhood's own Elder Brother, Mr. Antonio Aguado y Marín, and
successively his sons, Mr. Antonio and Mrs. Visitación Aguado y Moxó. Upon her
death in 1917, his brother D. Manuel took charge of the Paso until 1933 and
after his death the property and the position of Waiters passed to D. Manuel
Moxó Ruano and his wife, who kept it until after the Civil War. From the
"cocherón de los Ejíos" owned by the family, El Paso participated in
the traditional "Traída de los Santos" and when it ceased to be
celebrated it continued for years with a popular Transfer on the afternoon of Holy
Wednesday.
In
1935, the Anderos of "La Oración del Huerto", elderly men at the
service of the Moxó family, after the Transfer of Holy Wednesday in which the
Paso has been about to collapse due to its great weight, refuse to process it
that night . At the request of the Yarza brothers, a group of young people who
used to meet at the “Gige” Barbershop on Calle Cartas, led by Bartolomé
Herrera, charged that year with “los Dormijosos”, as El Paso was popularly
known. They decide to form a Brotherhood, but unfortunately a year later the
Civil War would break out. Meeting again at the end of this, under the
Presidency first of D. Pascual Moreno Balsalobre and later of D. Santiago
García García, they began the necessary procedures for the Brotherhood to be
legalized (in principle with the intention that the Brotherhood would be a
subsidiary of that of Jesús Nazareno and thus "Brotherhood of La Oración
del Huerto, a subsidiary of that of Jesus", but definitely with an
independent character as "Brotherhood of La Oración del Huerto and El
Santo Sepulcro), which is achieved by being President of the same D. Manuel
Semitiel Aroca (1943-1949) and becoming known among the people of Cieza, over
the years, as "the Dormis".
In
the same year of 1940, the Brotherhood also carried out a procession with the
Holy Sepulchre, holder of the Procession of the Holy Burial, which was not
going to take place because the Image of the Lord had been destroyed.
Throughout the afternoon of Good Friday the Brotherhood dedicates themselves to
the laborious task of assembling the throne, on which they place a half-length
plaster Christ covered with a valuable shroud owned by the Camarera del Paso,
Mrs. Mariquita Capdevila. Two years later, she herself commissioned the local
sculptor Manuel Juan Carrillo Marco to create a new Image for The Holy
Sepulchre, which she processed in 1943 and which is currently kept in a glass
urn in one of the side chapels of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Assumption.
In 1951, faced with the pitiful state of the throne, the sculptor Carrillo,
commissioned by the Brotherhood, made the new sculptural group of the Holy
Sepulcher and its corresponding golden throne and carved in wood, taking
advantage of the Image of Jesus that he sculpted before, which Up to a total of
four guardian angels were attached to it to be definitively finished in 1963
when Carrillo also carved a new sculpture of Dead Jesus for the Brotherhood in
order to replace the one that until then had been in procession of private
property. The last interventions in El Paso were carried out in 1985, when
Carrillo himself restored the Images, and in 1992, the year in which Carmen
Carrillo, daughter of the former, did the same with the throne. Since its first
remodeling, El Paso has not missed its appointment with its Good Friday
afternoon Transfer, a Transfer that is carried out, as is traditional, to the
sound of the Brotherhood's pasodobles, a fact that at one time or another
brought with it not a few drawbacks.
In
1949, under the presidency of D. Antonio Torres Ortega, Nazarenes paraded for
the first time with the current uniform of the Brotherhood, purple, and in 1954
the black percale tunics of the anderos (color inherited from the Brotherhood
of Jesus) for the current dwellings.
D.
José Lucas Avellaneda (head of the Brotherhood until 1959 after a brief term of
D. Antonio Alcaraz Ballesta during the year 1956) accedes to the Presidency in
1950 and that same year commissioned a sculptural group of five Images, The
Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, popularly known as "La Burrica", for
the Procession of the Palm to the sculptor Carrillo, who also made a first
throne for himself. Said throne will be replaced at the beginning of the
sixties by another made in 1967 by the local artist Manuel Jaén, which in turn
will later be assigned to a new Paso de la Cofradía. For a few years the
sculptural group would also parade on the old platform of the Paso de La
Oración del Huerto, until in 1988 Manuel Juan Carrillo made a new platform that
was finished according to the original throne project by his disciple,
Bonifacio Pérez Ballesteros from Ciez. in 2003, having carried out the
restoration of the Images a year earlier in the Murcian workshops of Javier
Bernal Casanova.
In
1952 the Brotherhood debuted its banner, embroidered in gold and silk in the
Convent of Discalced Carmelites in Lorca, as well as the two Tercio lanterns
and the current staffs for the Nazarenes, both in the Ciezano workshops of
Maestro Penalva. On Easter Sunday of that same year, the carved wooden
sculpture of the Angel of the Triumphant Cross, a work, like the throne, by
Manuel Juan Carrillo, is blessed in the Basilica of Our Lady of the Assumption,
with which the Brotherhood he avoids taking a procession, as he had done since
1943, with the Angel of La Oración del Huerto himself in the Procession of the
Risen Jesus. The Image of the Angel of the Triumphant Cross by Carrillo will be
replaced in 1970 by another larger one that we owe to the gouge of the Murcian
sculptor José Sánchez Lozano and that will procession on a new throne by
Carrillo himself (the original carving by Carrillo will be recovered in 1984
for the Parade of the infantile Tercio of the Brotherhood).
In
1966, with D. José Salmerón Salmerón at the head of the Brotherhood, contact
was made with the Moxó family to obtain ownership of the titular Paso,
acquiring the throne and the three Images of the Apostles, disappearing from
Cieza el Ángel and conserving the family the sculpture of the Lord. A year
later, Sánchez Lozano carved two sculptures of Christ and the Angel, faithful
replicas of those of Salzillo, reforming the group of the Apostles. It will
finally be in 1972, under the presidency of D. Antonio Galindo Tormo,
(1969-1978), when a new throne for the titular Paso carved in wood and gilded
by the Lorente Brothers is made in Murcia.
In
1973 La Caída, the work of José Sánchez Lozano, paraded for the first time,
although only with the Images of Jesus and the Cireneo, incorporating the Sayón
the following year, and he did so on the throne that Manuel Jaén built for “La
Burrica”. With the arrival of this new Paso, the holder, who had been parading
in the General Procession on Holy Wednesday at night and in the Procession of
Penitent Good Friday in the morning, will stop doing so in this second one to
join the Arrest Procession in the Holy Tuesday night. The sculptural group of
La Caída was restored in 2006 by Javier Bernal Casanova and its throne was
restored, enriched and gilded by the tronista from Ciez, Bonifacio Pérez
Ballesteros, who finished it for Holy Week in 2007.
After
the short mandate of D. Antonio Gómez Salmerón during the year 1979, D. Diego
Ortega Rojas (1980-1999) began his career as President, who commissioned a new
purple velvet tunic for the Images of Christ of La Oración del Huerto and La
Caída, and with which the Brotherhood will build its own House-Museum in the
vicinity of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Assumption in 1991.
In
1988 the Brotherhood acquired its sixth Step, The Anointing of Jesus in
Betania, the work of Carmen Carrillo, made up of the Images of Lázaro and
María, which paraded provisionally on a platform by Carrillo mounted in turn on
that of "La Burrica". Renovated these a year later, in 1997 the
sculptor herself will carve the Images of Lázaro and Marta that complete the
Paso, which from that year will procession on a new throne made of copper and
silver by the Ciezano goldsmith Diego Penalva. El Paso, which until then
participated in the Arrest Procession instead of La Oración del Huerto, will
become part of the General Procession, with which the holder will be
definitively located in the first.
In
the year 2000 and under the presidency of D. José Penalva Salmerón, the
Brotherhood renews the andero costume, which recovers the traditional
"muco" cap and the cingulus, replacing, respectively, the
"plate" cap and the sash, introducing for the first time for them
the velvet or luxury tunic, instead of the usual terylene ones. Lastly, in 2008
the Brotherhood debuted some new Tercio lanterns made entirely of silver by the
Fuengirola goldsmith Cristóbal Angulo following the design of Brother Abelardo
Salmerón, as well as a new rod for its banner, also made by the Malaga
goldsmith in in keeping with the design of the lanterns.