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Updated: May 26, 2025
Through the streets, between crowds of people standing on the pavements or looking down from the windows while the church bells ring, and wreaths of incense fill the air, bands of music, squadrons of cavalry, crucifixes, shrines, images, the banners of the parishes, heralds in their varied dresses, bareheaded pilgrims from England, France, and other countries, maidens in white, bearing palms or crowns of thorn or garlands priests and chanting choristers, move slowly along, and, when the relic of the Holy Blood passes, all the people sink to the ground.
It needs not to tell in detail what history has told of that tragic night: how the doors at last were forced, and the mob rushed in; how citizens and friends, and many of the monks themselves, their instinct of combativeness overcoming their spiritual beliefs, fought valiantly, and used torches and crucifixes for purposes little contemplated when they were made.
At last you pass between two promontories, the Capo del Turco and the Capo del Papa, from the summits of which two great Crucifixes look down, and you enter the Laguna di Vallanza, a land-locked bay, tranquil as a lake.
I told it to Jack, who in rapturous delight gave me his whole worldly fortune of two shillings, bidding me give it to put it in their pockets, and to bid good General Orde tell gentlemen to send much Bibles to Kilkenny, that his father and mother and all the poor people might learn to break the crucifixes, and love Jesus Christ.
One of these little interior French villages is the most unpromising looking place imaginable for a hungry person to ride into; often one may ride the whole length of the village expectantly looking around for some visible evidence of wherewith to cheer the inner man, and all that greets the hungry vision is a couple of four-foot sticks of bread in one dust-begrimed window, and a few mournful-looking crucifixes and Roman Catholic paraphernalia in another.
He reproached them for their dealings in tapers, chaplets, prints, and crucifixes, for the disloyal manner in which they competed with those who sold those articles as well as with the hotel and lodging-house keepers. And he was also wrathful with the Blue Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, for had they not robbed him of two tenants, two old ladies, who spent three weeks at Lourdes each year?
She wrought also three other crucifixes, one very small, which she wore round her neck; another, three feet high, which, she placed in her cell; and a third, six feet high, which she carved out of the wood of a fir-tree, which had been struck down by lightning in the forest, and which she placed in the Calvary she had arranged on the summit of one of the highest of the rocks which enclosed her habitation.
Therefore they are still living under the influence of the ancient superstitions of their race, though the women are all provided with crucifixes and wear them on their breasts as ornaments. They are perfectly honest. Indians, until they become contaminated by contact with whites, always are honest.
Crucifixes are used as potent fetish charms or as symbols of power passing down from chief to chief; whilst every native has a "Santu" or Christian name and is dubbed dom or dona. Fetishism is the prevailing religion throughout the province.
Near it was a high altar, with the usual crucifixes, candlesticks, vases, and other ornaments of the Romish worship, made on this occasion as imposing as possible. In the box sat Dona Juana, Queen-Dowager of Portugal, and governess of the kingdom during the absence of her brother, Philip the Second, in the Netherlands.
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