There Are Several Crosses In Rome Too, The Kissing Of
Which, Confers Indulgences For Varying Terms.
That in the centre
of the Coliseum, is worth a hundred days; and people may be seen
kissing it from morning to night.
It is curious that some of these
crosses seem to acquire an arbitrary popularity: this very one
among them. In another part of the Coliseum there is a cross upon
a marble slab, with the inscription, 'Who kisses this cross shall
be entitled to Two hundred and forty days' indulgence.' But I saw
no one person kiss it, though, day after day, I sat in the arena,
and saw scores upon scores of peasants pass it, on their way to
kiss the other.
To single out details from the great dream of Roman Churches, would
be the wildest occupation in the world. But St. Stefano Rotondo, a
damp, mildewed vault of an old church in the outskirts of Rome,
will always struggle uppermost in my mind, by reason of the hideous
paintings with which its walls are covered. These represent the
martyrdoms of saints and early Christians; and such a panorama of
horror and butchery no man could imagine in his sleep, though he
were to eat a whole pig raw, for supper. Grey-bearded men being
boiled, fried, grilled, crimped, singed, eaten by wild beasts,
worried by dogs, buried alive, torn asunder by horses, chopped up
small with hatchets: women having their breasts torn with iron
pinchers, their tongues cut out, their ears screwed off, their jaws
broken, their bodies stretched upon the rack, or skinned upon the
stake, or crackled up and melted in the fire:
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