Pictured: La Basílica de Nuestra Señora del Pilar, Saragossa, Spain
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[And the woman was] decked with gold and with precious stones and pearls...REVELATION 17:4b
AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT FROM SPAIN
D. ANTONIO GAVIN, author of A Master-Key to Popery, was born and educated in Spain at the end of the 1600s. As a Roman Catholic priest he had become thoroughly disillusioned by the evil in which he found himself entangled. Fleeing the Spanish Inquisition disguised in an army officer's uniform, Gavin made his way to safety in England. His book gives a clear picture of Roman Catholicism in his day and has much to say about her incredible wealth and the part it played in the practice of Rome's paganized Christianity.
GAVIN lived for some time in the city of Saragossa (or Zaragosa), Spain. The most famous church (or basilica) is called Our Lady of the Pillar because of an alleged appearance of the Virgin there. Gavin describes the CROWN on the image of the Virgin:
"....twenty-five pounds weight, set all over with large diamonds, so that nobody can see any gold in it, and everybody thinks it is all made of diamonds.
"Beside this rich one, she has six crowns more of pure gold, set with rich diamonds and emeralds..."
He goes on to say:
"The roses of diamonds and other precious stones she has to adorn her mantle are innumerable; for though she [the image of the "Virgin"] is drest every day in the colour of the church's festival [Las Fiestas del Pilar - "the feasts of the Pillar"], and never useth twice [in a year] the same mantle, which is of the best stuff imbroidered with gold, she has new roses of precious stones every day for three years together, she has three hundred and sixty-five necklaces of pearls and diamonds,and six chains of gold set with diamonds, which are put on her mantle on the great festivals of Christ [another Christ, that is]".
A VISITOR TO SARAGOSSA (Zaragoza) today may enter the treasure room to see some of the wealth. The Virgin has a different skirt for each day of the year embroidered with gold and set with diamonds and other precious stones.
ANOTHER IMAGE of silver five feet high is set with precious stones and wears a diamond-studded crown of pure gold.
IN THE EARLY 1700s "the Right Honorable Lord Stanhope, then General of the English forces," was shown the treasure. Gavin was present and heard the General exclaim, "if all the Kings of Europe should gather together all their treasures and precious stones, they could not buy half of the riches of this treasury!"
SUCH WAS THE WEALTH 280 years ago in ONE cathedral in ONE city of Spain. That's ONE Catholic treasury of just ONE Catholic basilica.
D. ANTONIO GAVIN was a Spanish priest who converted to Protestantism shortly after his arrival in London from Saragossa around 1714, was licensed to officiate in 1715, printed his first sermon in 1716 (Conversion de las tres potencias del alma, ...), published several antipapist tracts, most notably A Master-Key to Popery,..., Dublin, 1724 (translated into French by François-Michel Janiçon as Le passe-par-tout de l'Église Romaine ; ou, histoire des tromperies des prêtres et des moines en Espagne, Stephens, London, 1726), and subsequently served as a curate in Dublin, a military chaplain in Gibraltar (1733), and as a minister in various parishes in the American Colonies from 1735 until his death in 1750 (see John K. Nelson, A Blessed Company: Parishes, Parsons, and Parishioners in Anglican Virginia, 1690–1776, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2001, passim).
Sources: Biblio.com, Wissendrang.com, Dave Hunt's A Woman Rides the Beast, and others
