Faces and Views

I think it was a Christianized pagan custom, which has reached us through the centuries: on Maundy Thursday, at the break of dawn, fires were lit in all the courtyards for the dead, who, it was said, came to warm themselves, and left as soon as the sun rose. The red flames, the smoke that rose above the village with flowering trees and barely green gardens had a kind of sacredness that moved to te...