Page 83 - The Secret Museum

I TOOK A TAXI TO the Museu de Arte Sacra to see the collection. When the taxi driver

dropped me off, he said, ‘The museum is down the hill – walk down that little street.
When you come out, come straight back up to this main road. Don’t hang around
outside the museum, it can be dangerous.’ So, nervously, I legged it down a side
street into the pretty courtyard of the museum.

Once safely inside, I met Francisco Portugal, who has been the curator of the
museum for 14 years. He wanted to show me the most precious treasure they have in
the collection: a glittering bejewelled cross, which lay hidden under the floor of the
building for centuries as buried treasure. It hasn’t been exhibited for 40 years, as the

museum is worried, now the area around the museum can be sketchy, that it might get
stolen.

It is kept wrapped in a white cloth under lock and key inside a safe somewhere in
the building. I didn’t see where. The curator asked his assistant to fetch it and bring it
into his office for me to see. We waited there, looking out at the beautiful views of
the ocean until his assistant reappeared. We stood up, and she unwrapped the
treasure. It was a golden cross, decorated with precious jewels. As she placed it on
the table, the sunlight streaming across the ocean and in through the curator’s office

window bounced off the jewels and scattered around the room.

We gathered around to admire the cross. It’s a processional one, so would have
been carried from the base. It was made in Brazil, out of precious gold and jewels.
At the top is a circle of golden rays bursting out of another central circle, which
looks like a smoothed crystal. The circle opens up to be a cubbyhole for Communion
bread. On top of the golden rays sits a small golden cross. The piece is decorated
with diamond droplets, amethysts, topaz, emeralds and rubies. Six cherubs float
around its edges. You’ll just have to imagine it because there are no published

photographs of this most sacred cross.

Once upon a time, the room we stood in was a monk’s bedroom. The whole
museum has been shaped out of the former Convent of Saint Teresa de Avila, which
was founded by the Order of Barefoot Carmelites in the mid-seventeenth century in
the former capital of the colony. The monks who lived here were Portuguese. They
arrived in Bahia in 1660 and built a little hospice by the sea; then, in 1685, they built
a convent beside it, with a church modelled on the Church of Nossa Senhora dos
Remédios (Our Lady of the Remedies), of Évora in Portugal, which dates from 1614.

The curator didn’t know exactly when the cross was made but, once it was in the

monastery, the monks protected, polished and proceeded to the altar carrying it.
During Communion, they would open the central crystal to take out the Communion
bread with which to feed the souls of their fellow monks.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Bahia fought for independence from Portugal.
The convent was taken over by Portuguese troops trying to keep Bahia for their
country. The monks were forced out of the monastery, but before they fled they buried
this precious cross beneath the floorboards of their home. After the monks, and then