Roman Easter, 1954
by JENNY NICHOLSON EASTER week is a brilliant crescendo of the Roman year. The golden city usually looks its best: buzzes with optimism. This •year the wind blows cold from the snowbound Abruzzi, the sky threatens rain. The fallen white columns of pagan temples lie among the daffodils, looking as if they have been blown down. The oranges on the trees of the Palatine are cold to touch. In the Forum the herbs have been deserted by the bees. But undiscourdged motor- 1 scooterists are out in full swarm; often mother, father, two .ehildren, dog and basket of Easter flowers and eggs, off to ,call on relations on one small scooter. The skittish sea winds 'blow the spray from the fountains like veils and wave the Winter clouts airing on the washing lines strung across the Squalid streets of Trastevere and the Saburra like festive bunting: they carry the scent of stock—" the flower of Easter" ' --among the streets and mix it up with the heady smell of II,incense which billows out through the doors of the three hundred churches. Priests, their young servers at their heels „carrying sprinklers and holy water, circulate their parishes, both bowed before the unruly April wind to bless the houses --bathroom, damask salon and lift alike. All Holy Week the mourning churches—their usually ornate .' interiors shrouded with down-casting purple—have been relics, including: "one of the pieces of money with which the Jews paid the treachery of Judas; great part of the veil and hair of the most blessed Virgin; a mass of cinders and charcoal, united in the form of a loaf, with the fat of Saint Lawrence, martyr of the gridiron; one bottle of the most precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ; another of the milk of the most blessed Virgin; a little piece of the stone where our Lord sate when he pardoned Mary Magdalen; of the stone where our Lord wrote the Law, given to Moses on Mount Sinai; of the stone where reposed Saints Peter and Paul; of the cotton which collected the blood of Christ; of the manna which fed the Israelites; of the rod of Aaron which flourished in the desert; of the relics of the eleven Prophets ! " (This list is from Percy's Romatlism and the exclamation mark is his.)
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