When we went down night before last, she was busy making a big spider out of a trash bag and some sticks. She had already made a dead body wrapped in a bag hanging upside down from a tree on the terrace with a sign saying "He Didn't Pay." We thought this was pretty funny, but she told us that the priest (the main employee of the only other place in the village that is open to the public) will certainly preach a sermon against Alice and Daniele because of the decorations.
Last Easter, she told us, they served a very playful menu featuring such dishes as "The Passion of the Tordelli" and "Lamb of God Chops." The priest came to eat -- and he ate deeply, with fortitude and vigor, enjoying his meal to the fullest. Then he went back to the church and wrote Alice and Daniele a very stern letter calling the menu "blasphemy" and threatening to report them to the Catholic Church Office of the Inquisition, which is a real thing that still exists.
In the end, Alice apologized profusely, took down the menu, and managed to mollify the priest with protestations of remorse and also cheesecake. But clearly there were no feelings of great love left between the parties.
It could have been very serious for Alice and Daniele. The priest could have caused them to be shunned in the village, forbidden the members of the congregation (i.e., everyone) from going to the pub. It would have been an interesting measure of the lingering power of the Catholic Church, though, to see if a priest's interdiction would have had any effect on the old men who sit all day under the trees drinking bottles of wine and gossiping. It is not clear to me which side would win in a contest between eternal damnation and having to go all the way to Capezzano Monte to drink wine with one's friends.
