it has at any rate the
value of a symbol or a metaphor. The idea which it materialises, the
historical events of which it is a sign, may well arrest attention. A
sword concealed in the crucifix--what emblem brings more forcibly
to mind than this that two-edged glaive of persecution which Dominic
unsheathed to mow down the populations of Provence and to make Spain
destitute of men? Looking upon the crucifix of Crema, we may seem
to see pestilence-stricken multitudes of Moors and Jews dying on the
coasts of Africa and Italy. The Spaniards enter Mexico; and this is
the cross they carry in their hands. They take possession of Peru; and
while the gentle people of the Incas come to kiss the bleeding brows
of Christ, they plunge this dagger in their sides. What, again, was
the temporal power of the Papacy but a sword embedded in a cross?
Each Papa Re, when he ascended the Holy Chair, was forced to take the
crucifix of Crema and to bear it till his death. A long procession of
war-loving Pontiffs, levying armies and paying captains with the pence
of S. Peter, in order to keep by arms the lands they had acquired by
fraud, defiles before our eyes. First goes the terrible Sixtus IV.,
who died of grief when news was brought him that the Italian princes
had made peace. He it was who sanctioned the conspiracy to murder
the Medici in church, at the moment of the elevation of the Host.
The brigands hired to do this work refused at the last moment. The
sacrilege appalled them. 'Then,' says the chronicler, 'was found a
priest, who, being used to churches, had no scruple.' The poignard
this priest carried was this crucifix of Crema. After Sixtus came the
blood-stained Borgia; and after him Julius II., whom the Romans
in triumphal songs proclaimed a second Mars, and who turned, as
Michelangelo expressed it, the chalices of Rome into swords and helms.
Leo X., who dismembered Italy for his brother and nephew; and Clement
VII., who broke the neck of Florence and delivered the Eternal City to
the spoiler, follow. Of the antinomy between the Vicariate of Christ
and an earthly kingdom, incarnated by these and other Holy Fathers,
what symbol could be found more fitting than a dagger with a crucifix
for case and covering?

It is not easy to think or write of these matters without rhetoric.
When I laid my head upon my pillow that night in the Albergo del Pozzo
at Crema, it was full of such thoughts; and when at last sleep came,
it brought with it