Swilling about in my head
Today, as we walked past a church in Cartagena, La iglesia de Santa María de Gracia, Maggie commented on the number of people coming out of the building. "Very religious.... in Cartagena," she said. I wondered if there was so much toing and froing because of the Pope's retirement. As we passed the door there was a notice "Entrada Besapie" - foot kissing entrance. Neither of us had the faintest idea why. We were on our way to lunch. As we ate, on the telly in the corner, the Queen was kissing the feet of a statue which, with a bit of Googling, I found was the Cristo de Medinaceli. The Medinaceli Christ is a carved wooden figure which was crafted in Seville sometime before 1650. It fell into the hands of the Muslims some thirty years later when a Spanish garrison in Morocco was overrun. The Spanish got it back about a year later. It is now in a church in Madrid. On the first Friday of March people queue up to kiss the feet of the statue in the hope of having t...