The day’s afternoon is spent in the public ways and the public gardens. Perfect enjoyment for an Italian is the enjoyment of idleness, and he wears it with a graceful sort of sincerity. Day sinks into darkness, but the caffès are still open. The fire must not die out too soon, since with the morrow fasting must begin again.
So, amid laughter and jollity, La festa delle Palme sinks away with everything else that is gone into the past things of the year.
Holy Week and Easter Feasts. I Sepolcri.
The Palms are blessed and done with, fasting has begun, for even the first week-days of the Settimana Santa are ‘giorni magri,’ though few folks pretend to practise any self-denial until the last three days of the week. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday pass without much ado. The preacher-monks harangue congregations in churches, upon highways and market-places, pouring forth strange prognostications and fiery words, often of the most grotesque. But the Frati predicatori are as nothing in the eyes of the populace compared with the sights and wonders that begin to multiply on Maundy Thursday. It is the day of the Santo Sepolcro.
People throng the churches; a pilgrimage to one or more of them is considered a sacred and a necessary duty. The Duomo is crowded. Worshippers tread the aisles of Sant’Ambrogio, that church which is famous to travellers for its Rubens, but to the inartistic natives for its ashes of St. John, and at this season for its magnificence of camellias: they kneel at its confessionals and bow before its altars and pray before its Christs and Virgins.
The scene is strange. The priests have spread Il Santo Sepolcro around the chief altar. It is arranged in every church more or less fitly, but in every church the details are different, if the main effect must needs be the same. Miniature gardens, meadows, and cornfields, fashioned out of bleached and yellow grasses, with flowers in their midst, cover the marble pavement within the altar rails; and amid the gardens and the flowers little figures of men and women are set talking and labouring in the fields. This is the foreground, and in the near distance perhaps rises a tiny hill, with three nude crosses upon it, while farther back, where the altar is wont to be, rests—among a wealth of flowers and many gaudy trappings—the body of the Christ in its rocky sepulchre. Hundreds of wax candles are alight upon the reredos, and there is a soft yellow radiance in the nave. Sant’Ambrogio is famed for its flowers. To-day pillars of red and white camellias stand high above people’s heads on either side the chancel’s entrance, and down upon its pavement there are spring roses and heartsease, daffodils and bright ranunculus growing among moss and bleached grasses, or shining from out quaintly stiff posies.
People pass in and out of the churches all day. They say their prayers to the Christ in Sant’Ambrogio, and then they go on to La Maddalena or to San Luca, and say more prayers and gaze on new wonders. This is penance and prayer-time, and people must think a little about the next world, however much they love this one, says the good Catholic! And these Lenten duties are not much harder than festival ones after all, enshrined as they are in sights and sounds and beloved mysteries. La Madonna della Nunziata is another church, holding a place of honour on this day, not so much by reason of her flowers as because of her riches and the great number of her masses. La Madonna della Nunziata is that church of most gorgeous interior, where massive columns of rare marbles bear up a frescoed and heavily-gilded roof. It is rich in costly decoration, in gems and bright colours. The citizens hold it of great account and crowd thither to-day to worship at the Santo Sepolcro, though they have flocked from church to church already, and told their beads, and whispered their criticisms and little bits of gossip, saying to themselves the while that the more churches they visit the more ease it will be to their souls. The devout make a long stride towards heaven on Maundy Thursday, but they have a hard day’s work of it all the same, for when they are not on their feet they are on their knees. It is sure to rain the whole time, if not in hearty showers, then with a desponding fine rain out of scirocco clouds; as indeed it ought in answer to the prayers that have bade Heaven send moisture for all the good things of the land which are growing. The devout do not complain. Heaven is forced to weep on this day of woe, and all the green things of nature will spring the better meanwhile, so they trudge contentedly, with veils that are soiled and damp (for the devout are almost always women), and red and green umbrellas, to make some gay-coloured things in the sad streets. They are not even too much fatigued to go to the night ceremony at the Duomo, when the archbishop washes the feet of the pilgrims; and even by that time the excitement has scarcely been enough for them, but they must needs eagerly question one another about the way in which the Signore is laid out in Santa Catarina or in the Cappucini. And the prayers must all be prayed before the Sepulchre, its wonders seen and conned over ere the dawn of Good Friday, for then the spectacle must be cleared away to make room for still graver duties. It is no doubt for the greater convenience of Easter preparations that the Roman Church has decreed the Burial should be solemnized before the Crucifixion—but the devout do not seem to have a scruple as to the fitness of this arrangement, and are just as ready for funeral ceremonies as though they had not celebrated the interment beforehand. There are no flowers in the sanctuaries on Good Friday—all day long there is only black drapery and sad music, and bells that must not sound; for the Church would fain tune all to her solemn silence until the mid-day of Saturday, when all the chimes from all the steeples and domes break out together, and the great deep-toned bell of the cathedral peals out afterwards alone. Easter is rung in with the spring.
All over the country, and wherever there is a spare nook in this town of palaces and marble, the peach and almond trees, the Judas and apricot blossoms spread a dainty cloth of colour, while against the rose-tinted flower of fruit-trees, lilacs and banksia roses begin to bloom in contrast. Before the month is out laburnum and acacia will be striving for mastery with the orange-blossoms.
A fresh wind blows over the town upon the morning of Easter-day. Ere the sun has been up an hour house-wives are bargaining on the Piazza S. Domenico for the peas and greens and gaudy tulips. Easter eggs are set out for sale in confectioners’ windows, along the high streets, upon booths in the public ways or smaller shops in the dark alleys. Every child, rich or poor, must have an egg for his Easter morning gift. People go to mass again, but not as they went during Holy Week, for this day is a day of holiday-making proper.