"He who starts bread and doesn't make a cross, the devil makes it his own." This saying is incomprehensible to us today, but over the centuries it was part of a daily ritual respected by all, and one that I came to know: the practice of making a cross with the tip of a knife on the flat side of a round loaf before slicing it.

There is great history, the kind that appears in books, the kind that shapes common life. Now, these days, with the death of Pope Francis, the conclave, and the election of Leo XIV, we have experienced an important chapter. But it is not that history I want to talk about. Newspapers, radio stations, and television stations—what they call the media—have already spoken about it at length. No, I want to talk about a kind of history that, for me, is as interesting as, or more so than, any other. I like to call it small history, the kind that considerably enriches the larger history, the kind that tells us about the lives of people, more than about the facts. And if it tells us about the facts, it does so to add human nuances, to preserve places and customs, to bring us closer to everyday life.