giving everything.

As you've probably guessed by now, I'm on my year abroad in Brescia, Italy. For those of you whose geography is a little shaky, it's a provincial town (in the Province of Brescia, believe it or not...!) in Lombardy, northern Italy. Aside from being mentioned at the beginning of The Merchant's Tale (one of the Tales from Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales) (I KNEW English Literature 'A'-Level would come in useful somehow - even if it's just for moments like this), it's one of the richest regions of Italy (actually, that's probably why it was mentioned in the Tales), if not the richest (I haven't checked the stats recently, and don't want to have to embarrass myself by having to let Wikipedia know it for me). As well as its present-day inhabitants having more Ferraris, Lambourghinis and Hermès handbags than I've had hot dinners, it is also important in terms of Roman history.

Being the good (read: frugal) student I am, my cheap-skate radar was very fast to sniff out a notte bianca in town the other night - it basically means that the shops stay open 'til late and, more importantly (for the purposes of this post, at least!), there's free entry to the museums. Why pay 6€ when you can do something for free? (and a note to any Peruvians out there: take your passport to prove your identity, and you can get heavily discounted entry to the Inca exhibition that's currently on at the same museum!), I mused to myself one night this week. So, along with a friend, we headed for Santa Giulia: Il Museo della Città. (Sounds like some kind of action movie, right? Nah, it's just the Italian way of saying that Santa Giulia is the city's museum) It's built on an old Benedictine convent, and there's also Roman ruins that pre-date that. There's all kinds of exhibitions - Roman pottery, bronze heads and paintings, but to name a few - but, and this is the thing that struck me most, there's also Il Croce di Desiderio, or Desiderio's Cross.

It was used by the monastery in its religious processions. Its name comes from King Desiderio of Italy, the person who donated it. The thing I find most striking about it, though, is the fact that it's adorned with tens and tens of precious stones. The picture above only really shows the middle section, but imagine those four arms carrying on out in their respective directions, packed with gems. Now, yes, the King was a rich man, and I don't know much about him historically, so I'm not saying he's a particular role model. But, it did prompt me to think, as I was standing there in that beautiful room staring at that downlit box which contains the cross, of how much we give.

As Christians, we believe that Jesus paid the ultimate price for us by dying on the cross (and then rising again, obviously!). I don't know if the King had an active relationship with God, but it seemed symbolic that he'd nailed the most precious things in his life (there are also pictures of his children and wife, I think) to that cross. Even if we don't have gold and jewels, the most precious thing we do have is life. I suppose it just served as a reminder that we should be nailing our lives to that cross, handing it over to Him. I know it seems like a really obvious thing to say, but the intensity with which it hit me at the point in time was immense.

Most of you know I'm not a Catholic (not by any stretch of the imagination!), but I found that room a really amazing and peaceful place to be in. If you couple that with the fact that the walls were decorated with a mural of the life of Saint Giulia (a girl who lived in Carthage, and was hung by her hair and then had her breasts scraped out just for being a Christian in a pagan country), it was actually quite overwhelming - certainly the most I've felt like that since coming to Italy. I just really wish I'd bothered going there earlier in the year!