The Basilica of St Christina in Bolsena, Italy

Today is the feast of St Christina, a less well-known member of the illustrious company of ancient virgin martyrs whose true histories have been lost in the mists of time. The pre-Tridentine Roman breviary gives three brief lessons about her, which state that she took from her father, the prefect of the area around the lake of Bolsena in northern Lazio, some idols made of gold and silver, had them destroyed, and used the precious metal to benefit the poor. For this, her father had her tortured her in various ways, and then attempted to kill her by drowning her in the lake. As is so often the case in such legends, nature refused to cooperate with the persecution of God’s saints, and Christina was rescued from drowning by an angel; eventually her father’s successor as prefect had her killed by being shot full of arrows. This is said to have taken place during the persecution of Diocletian, at the very beginning of the 4th century.

St Christina Giving Her Father’s Golden Idols to the Poor; first half of the 17th century, by an anonymous Flemish follower of the Neapolitan painter Massimo Stanzione (1585-1656).

The editors of the Tridentine breviary, recognizing the legendary character of the story, which has likely been confused with that of another Saint of the same name from Tyre in Lebanon, reduced her feast to a commemoration on the vigil of St James the Greater. However, her church in the town of Bolsena (about 69 miles north north-west of Rome) is famous as the sight of the Eucharistic miracle which is traditionally said to have given rise to the feast of Corpus Christi, and one can still see the altar within it at which this miracle is said to have taken place. (As painful as it is to impugn this beautiful story, the bull of Pope Urban IV which promulgated the feast makes no mention of it, nor does St Thomas Aquinas, who composed the Mass and Office of the feast at his behest. The story does not appear in any source, in fact, until quite some time later.) It was originally consecrated by Pope St Gregory VII in 1077, and the interior preserves the form of an early central Italian Romanesque basilica. A lovely Renaissance façade was added to it by the Florentine architects Francesco and Benedetto Buglioni in 1492-94, at the behest of the papal legate to nearby Viterbo, Cardinal Giovanni di Medici, the future Pope Leo X. The bell-tower was added in the 13th century. (All photos by Nicola de’ Grandi.)

The large chapel on the left of the main church is the original site of the Eucharistic miracle, completely rebuilt in the Baroque period.

The oratory on the right is dedicated to St Leonard.

The relics of St Christina are now within the reliquary in this side-altar.

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The Miracles of St Bernardine of Siena

During the Jubilee year of 1450, Pope Nicholas V canonized the Franciscan St Bernardine (Bernardino) of Siena (1380-1444), who had died six years earlier, and whose feast is kept today. This was an unusually quick process for the era, especially considering how varied the Saint’s career had been: he had preached all over Italy, performed countless miracles, produced a large body of writings, and served as the general of the reformed branch of his order, known as the Strict Observance, or “Osservanza” in Italian. The revised Butler’s Lives of the Saints tells a funny story regarding his process, in reference to one of his contemporaries, Thomas of Florence, a collaborator in the reform. Thomas died in 1447, and many within the order wished that his cause for canonization might be joined to Bernardine’s. But since this would certainly have delayed the latter, St John of Capistrano went to Thomas’ tomb (which was in the order’s church in Rieti) and ordered him in the name of holy obedience to stop performing miracles until Bernardine had been canonized. This did in fact happen, and Thomas remains a blessed.

St Bernardine of Siena, 1450-60, by the Sienese painter Sano di Pietro.

St Bernardine is especially well known for promoting devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus. In his time, the upper two-thirds of Italy (basically everything north of the kingdom of Naples) was divided into many small states, which were very often at war with each other, and just as often rent by civil wars. Bernardine was extraordinarily successful in bringing peace to and between these states by preaching on the Holy Name, and would usually end his sermons by holding up a painted tablet with an IHS monogram on it, surrounded by the sun. (Monograms of this sort can still be seen to this day on the outside of public buildings all over Italy.) In many places, there was no church large enough to accommodate the crowds that gathered to hear him, and so he had to preach in the public squares, which is all the more remarkable when one considers that (as is often seen in paintings of him, including the one above) he had lost all his teeth.

The IHS monogram on the façade of the city hall of St Bernardine’s native city. Image from Wikimedia Commons, © José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of the places that had benefitted very greatly from Bernardine’s services as a peacemaker, and which nourished a great devotion to him, was the little Umbrian city of Perugia, the long-time rival of St Francis’ native place, Assisi. (It was during one of the frequent little wars with Perugia that Francis was captured and imprisoned in 1202, leading to his conversion and embrace of holy poverty.) As the Jubilee of 1475 approached, the Franciscan friars of Perugia commissioned a set of paintings of his miracles, which were made to be mounted on two large doors that covered a statue of the Saint in a small but very beautiful oratory dedicated to him. These panels are now displayed in the National Gallery of Umbria in Perugia, one of the best museums in all of Italy.

The oratory of St Bernardine in Perugia, built in 1452, only two years after his canonization. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by AliasXX00, CC BY-SA 4.0)

The group of painters who produced the panels is collectively referred to as “the workshop of 1473”, and includes two particularly famous names. One is Pietro Vannucci, by far the best known and most successful artist in the city, and therefore usually just called “Perugino – the man from Perugia.” (1448 ca. – 1523) The other is his assistant Bernardino di Betto Betti, who was generally known by the nickname “Pinturicchio – tiny little painter”, from his unusually small stature. (Born in Perugia ca. 1452; died in Siena, 1513.)

One of Piero della Francesca’s most famous paintings, The Flagellation of Christ, 1459-60. Notice how the composition is dominated by the architectural elements, as is also the case in the paintings shown below.

An interesting aspect of the project is how much it evidently owes to the style of Piero della Francesca (1415 ca. – 1492), their almost-fellow Umbrian. (Almost, because his native place is in the modern region of Tuscany, but borders on Umbria.) In six of the eight panels, the scene is either indoors or taking place in front of a building, and the architecture dominates the image; in the remaining two, roughly two-thirds of the scene is sky and countryside. The colors are bright, and the human figures cast shadows, but just barely. Pinturicchio had originally been trained as a miniaturist, doing very small images for the illustration of devotional books, and brought his training for finely drawn detail into the style of Perugino’s workshop; this is evident in the trees and the elaborate decorations on the buildings. (All images from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY-SA 3.0, or public domain)

St Bernardine heals a young girl who suffers from an ulcer. (Perugino) The large structure that provides the backdrop is an idealized restoration of the arch of Titus in the Roman Forum, and partly reproduces the inscription on it.

St Bernardine raises up a young man whom he finds dead under a tree as he is traveling to Verona. (Perugino) The countryside shown in the background is very much like that of Umbria, but notice how the artist introduces the rather exotic looking and impossibly balanced cliff structure for contrast.

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Venetian Miracles of the Holy Cross

In the days of the Venetian Republic, one of the most important aspects of the city’s religious life was a group of large and prestigious confraternities known as the “scuole grandi – the great schools.” These associations engaged in a wide variety of devotional and charitable activities, and each of them had a large hall on which these activities were centered.

The entrance to the Scuola Grande of St John the Evangelist. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0)

The interior of the upper hall, constructed in 1544. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra, CC BY 2.0)

In 1369, the scuola grande of St John the Evangelist, one of the oldest in the city, was given a relic of the True Cross, which soon became known for the miracles it effected. At the end of the 15th century, the confraternity commissioned a group of painters to make a series of panels celebrating nine of these miracles, which were to be displayed in the large hall where the relic was kept. One of these, a work by Raphael’s teacher Perugino (1446-1523), has been lost, but the other eight survive. Three were painted by Gentile Bellini (1429 ca. - 1507), scion of a family of painters who had long been among the most successful in the city; the rest are by artists who were in various ways his students or associates, who also assisted Bellini to varying degrees with his own canvases. (It is no small testament to the prestige which Perugino enjoyed throughout Italy in the late 15th century that he was invited to participate in this project, even though he was not a Venetian.) In 1797, the arch-criminal Napoleon, enemy of God and the Faith, overthrew the Republic and closed the scuole, whose properties were then plundered and dispersed; since 1820, the paintings have been displayed at the Galleria dell’ Accademia.

1. The Miraculous Healing of a Madman at the Rialto Bridge, ca. 1495, by Vittore Carpaccio (1460/65 - 1525 ca.) The principal scene, in the upper left part of the painting, shows the healing of a madman by the relic of the True Cross, which is held by Francesco Querini, Patriarch of Grado (1367-72) when the relic came to Venice. (From the time of its foundation in 774, the see of Venice was suffragan to the Patriarchate of Grado, a town roughly 55 miles to the east along the edge of the Adriatic. In 1451, shortly after St Lawrence Giustiniani was appointed bishop of Venice, the pope transferred the title of the patriarchate to his see.) This takes place on the loggia of a palace near the famous Rialto Bridge; most of the painting is taken up with the view of the surrounding area, a very busy scene very much to the taste of the times in Venice, as also seen in the remaining paintings. (The wooden bridge seen here collapsed in 1524; the central section of this older structure was movable so that taller ships could get up the canal.)

2. The Miracle in the Campo San Lio, ca. 1495, by Giovanni Mansueti (flor. 1485-1527). During the funeral procession of a member of the confraternity who had been but little devoted to the Holy Cross, the relic suddenly became too heavy to carry, until it was handed over to the parish priest.

3. The Relic of the True Cross is Given to the Scuola Grande of St John the Evangelist, ca. 1495, by Lazzaro Bastiani (1429-1512). This picture is an important record of the appearance of the confraternity’s complex before a number of subsequent renovations. The relic had previously belonged to a French Carmelite named Pierre de Thomas (1305-66), who was the papal legate to “the churches of the East” from 1357 until his death. When he died on the island of Cyprus, it passed to Philippe de Mézières, the chancellor of the Kingdom of Cyprus and Jerusalem, the successor state to the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem; it was de Mézières who in turn gave it to the confraternity.

4. A Miracle During the Procession on St Mark’s Day, 1496, by Gentile Bellini. On April 25th, the feast of Venice’s Patron Saint, the Evangelist Mark, the scuole grandi and many other pious associations would participate in a grand procession in front of the famous basilica that houses his relics. (In the days of the Republic, San Marco was not the cathedral of Venice, but the chapel of the doge and his court.) The members of the Scuola Grande of St John are seen in the lower middle of the painting, carrying the relic under a baldachin. Underneath the relic, a plaque is mounted into the pavement of the piazza, which commemorates the procession of 1444, during which a merchant from Brescia named Jacop de’ Salis knelt down and prayed before the relic, and his gravely injured son was immediately healed. This painting is also an important historical record of the mosaics on the façade of the basilica, and the older brick pavement of the piazza.

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A Eucharistic Miracle in Ferrara, Italy

On Easter Sunday of the year 1171, a Eucharistic miracle occurred in a church in Ferrara, Italy, called Santa Maria Anteriore; at the moment of the fraction of the Host, blood gushed forth from it and landed on the apse above the altar. The church became a pilgrimage site, but by the later 15th century, was in a very dire condition, so a new church was built nearby called Santa Maria in Vado. (“Vado” is Ferrarese dialect for “guado - a ford”, and interestingly, closer to the Latin “vadum.”) The remains of the blood-spattered apse were later brought into the new church in 1501, and set up as part of a shrine in the right transept, which was then completely rebuilt in 1594. A friend of mine recently visited the church, and kindly agreed to share his pictures of it with us; to these, I have joined several others by Nicola de’ Grandi.

The right transept, with the shrine built in front of the remains of the blood-spattered apse of Santa Maria Anteriore.

This inscription added at the base of the remains of the apse reads, “Here is the precious blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, which in the year 1171 on the day of Easter, March 28, leaping forth in the midst of the priest’s hands by a miracle, stuck to the upper part of this apse; wonder, adore, and give thanks to God.”

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Other Miracles of St Januarius

Today is the feast of St Januarius, who is also widely known by the Italian form of his name “San Gennaro”, as emigrants from Naples, of which he is the principal Patron, have brought devotion to him wherever they have settled; the feast held in his honor in New York City is particularly famous. September 19th is the day of his martyrdom, which took place at Pozzuoli during the persecution of Diocletian, alongside that of several other Christians from various parts of Campania; he was in point of fact bishop of Benevento, about 33 miles to the north-east of Naples. In the Middle Ages, his relics were transferred to the important monastery of Monte Vergine, and from there to the cathedral of Naples only at the beginning of the 16th century.

He is of course especially well-known for the miracle which takes place on his feast day in most years, when the relic of his blood is brought into the presence of the relic of his skull and liquifies. Perhaps less well-known is the fact that the miracle normally happens three times a year, since Naples celebrates two other feasts of him as well. On the Saturday before the first Sunday of May, the translation of his relics is commemorated; on December 16th, a third feast commemorates a rather spectacular miracle by which St Januarius demonstrated his care for and protection of the city. In 1631, an unusually powerful lava flow from Mt Vesuvius, the crater of which is only 9 miles from the city center, had come down towards the city and threatened to destroy the granaries which would provide bread for the populace through the upcoming winter. The bishop therefore brought the Saint’s relics to the lava flow, which turned aside at that point. I attended this December feast one year, when the relics of the blood are brought from the cathedral to the church of St Clare; I could see very clearly that the liquified blood was moving around inside the crystal vial which contains it, mounted in the reliquary, as it was carried back to the large chapel at the cathedral where it is housed.

Outside the church of Santa Caterina a Formiello in Naples is a monument which commemorates another occasion on which St Januarius saved the city and the region around it from the eruptions of Vesuvius, in 1707.

“To Saint Januarius, chief patron of the city of Naples, because, when (the relic of) his sacred head was shown on an altar set up in this place, he put down and completely pacified the destructive assaults of Mt Vesuvius in the year 1707, as, with a great eruption of fire, it raged with increasing force for a great many days, and thus threatened most certainly to burn the city and all of Campania; the Neapolitans, mindful of his divine favor, as also of the countless others by which he has liberated the city and its region from war, famine, plague and earthquake, set this monument.”

Behind the cathedral, in the Piazza Cardinale Sforza, stands a large baroque obelisk, also still called by the medieval Italian term “guglia”, which was erected in the Saint’s honor after the miracle of 1631. The inscription on the base says that “the grateful city of Naples raised (it) to Saint Januarius, most ready protector of the nation and kingdom, and her most-well deserving citizen.”

And here is really magnificent reliquary formerly used for the processions, now kept in the museum at the church of St Clare, where the December liquefaction happens.

The Solemnity of St Benedict 2023

Vir Domini Benedictus ferrum de profundo resiliens Gotho reddidit, dicens: * Ecce, labora, et noli contristari. V. Vix enim manubrium misit ad lacum, ferrum de profundo rediit, quod reddens dixit: Ecce. Gloria Patri. Ecce. (The 4th responsory of the Solemnity of St Benedict in the Monastic Breviary.)

The episode referred to in the responsory above, depicted by Spinello Aretino, 1388, in the sacristy of the church of San Miniato in Florence.

R. Benedict, the man of God, returned to the Goth the iron that leapt up from the deep, saying, * Behold, work on, and do not be sad. V. For scarcely did he put the handle near the lake, and the iron returned from the deep; and giving it back, he said, Behold... Glory be... Behold.

In the Second Book of St Gregory the Great’s Dialogues, dedicated to the life and miracles of St Benedict, this episode of a miracle also performed by the Prophet Elisha (4 Kings 6, 1-7) is recounted thus in chapter six:

(A) certain Goth, poor of spirit, came to conversion (i.e., became a monk) whom the man of God Benedict most gladly; and one day, commanded him to take ... a sickle, and cut away the briars from a certain plot of ground, so that a garden might be made there. Now this place, which the Goth had undertaken to clear, was by the side of a lake, and while he was cutting away the cluster of briars with all his strength, the head of the sickle flew off the handle and fell into the water, in a place where it was so deep that there was no hope of getting it back. The Goth, in great fear, ran to the monk Maurus, and told him what he had lost, confessing his own fault, and Maurus went to the servant of God Benedict and told him. Therefore, the man of God Benedict went to the lake, took the handle from the Goth’s hand, and put it into the water, and soon the iron head came up from the deep, and entered again into the handle (of the sickle), which he returned at once to the Goth, saying, ‘Behold, work on, and be sad no more.’

St Benedict died on March 21 in the year 543 or 547, and this was the date on which his principal feast was traditionally kept, and is still kept by Benedictines; it is sometimes referred to on the calendars of Benedictine liturgical books as the “Transitus - Passing”. There was also a second feast to honor the translation of his relics, which was kept on July 11. The location to which the relics were translated is still a matter of dispute, with the abbey of Monte Cassino in Italy, founded by the Saint himself, and the French abbey of Fleury, also known as Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, both claiming to possess them. This second feast is found in many medieval missals and breviaries, even in places not served by monastic communities. (It was not, however, observed by either the Cistercians or Carthusians.). The second feast was in a certain sense the more solemn in the traditional use of the Benedictines; March 21 always falls in Lent, and the celebration of octaves in Lent was prohibited, but most monastic missals have the July 11 feast with an octave. In the post-Conciliar reform of the Calendar, many Saints, including St Benedict, were moved out of Lent; in his case, to the day of this second feast in the Benedictine calendar.

St Anthony’s Eucharistic Miracle

English-speaking Catholics today perhaps think of Anthony of Padua principally as the Saint to call upon when something is lost, for which there is a well-known rhyme, “St Anthony, St Anthony, please come down: something is lost and cannot be found.” In his own lifetime, however, and for centuries after, he was principally known for his extraordinary learning and skill as a preacher; he was in fact the first Franciscan to study at a university and teach.

Ss Anthony and Francis, depicted by Simone Martini in the Chapel of St Martini in the lower basilica of St Francis in Assisi, 1322-26. Note that in this earlier stage of Franiscan iconography, St Anthony’s charactistic feature is the book of a scholar. (Public domain image from Wikpedia.)

He was also known for a variety of highly spectacular miracles. The 39th chapter of The Little Flowers of St Francis tells the story of how he preached before the Pope and cardinals in consistory, and was understood by them all,

Greeks, Italians, French, Germans, Slavs and English, and other languages… as if he had spoken in their own languages … and it seemed that that ancient miracle of the Apostles at the time of Pentecost was renewed, when they spoke by the power of the Holy Spirit in every tongue. And they said to each other with admiration, “Is this man who preaches not a Spaniard? And how do we all hear our own language as he speaks?”

By an interesting coincidence, his feast day is also the last day on which Pentecost can occur. He was canonized within a year of his death by the Pope in whose presence this miracle took place, Gregory IX (1227-41), who also referred to him publicly as “the ark of the covenant, and the treasure-chest of the Divine Scriptures.” At the ceremony of his canonization, Pope Gregory intoned in his honor the Magnificat antiphon for Doctors of the Church, “O Doctor Optime”, a title which was formally confirmed in 1946 by Pope Pius XII.

The common representation of Anthony as a young man tenderly holding the Christ Child perhaps makes it easy to forget that he was also called “the hammer of the heretics”, who were many in his time. Like his contemporary St Dominic, he preached in a wide field in northern Italy and southern France against the bizarre heresy of the Cathars. When he was still a young canon regular in Coimbra, Portugal, Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) had called the Fourth Council of the Lateran, which also had a good deal to say on the subject of heresy. This was famously the first ecumenical council to enshrine the use of the term “transubstantiation” as a way of describing the change of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ in the Mass, a response to a variety of erroneous teachings on the Eucharist.

“There is indeed one universal church of the faithful, outside of which nobody at all is saved, in which Jesus Christ Himself is both priest and sacrifice. His body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine, the bread and wine having been changed (transsubstantiatis) in substance, by God’s power, into his body and blood, … And indeed, nobody can confect this sacrament except a priest who has been properly ordained according to the (power of the) Church’s keys, which Jesus Christ himself gave to the Apostles and their successors.” (Canon 1 ‘on the Catholic Faith’)

The Miracle of the Mule, by Joseph Heintz the Younger (1600-78), from the Chapel of St Pius V in the Domincan Order’s basilica of Ss John and Paul in Venice.

When St Anthony was in Rimini in the year 1223, a heretic named Bonovillo challenged him to prove the doctrine of the Real Presence in the following manner. The man would lock his mule in its stall for three days without giving it any food, then bring it into a public square where there would plenty of hay be ready for it. At the same time, St Anthony would show the consecrated Host to the mule; if it would then ignore the hay and kneel, its owner would convert to the Catholic Faith. On the appointed day, St Anthony celebrated Mass, then brought the Host in procession to the piazza. On arriving, he said to the mule “By the power and in the name of the Creator, Whom I, for all that I am unworthy, truly hold in my hands, I say to thee, animal, and order thee to come near at once in humility, and show Him proper veneration.” At this, the mule immediately left the hay, approached and knelt, for the sake of which miracle the heretic Bonovillo did indeed convert. In Rimini, in the Piazza of the Three Martyrs, there is a small chapel known as the “Tempietto – little temple”, which marks the place where this miracle happened.

The event has also been represented in art many times, such as the painting above. From 1446-53, the sculptor Donatello was in Padua to do a new high altar for the great basilica which houses St Anthony’s relics, with four relief panels of his miracles, and seven free-standing bronze sculpture of Saints. The miracle of the mule is one of the four. (Click to enlarge.)

St Margaret of Hungary and Hagiographical Skepticism

On the calendar of the Dominican Order in both the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms, today is the feast of St Margaret of Hungary, who died on this day in the year 1270 at the age of 28. In earlier versions of the Dominican liturgical books, she is found on other days. When she was equivalently beatified with an approbatio cultus in 1789, her death day was occupied by the feast of St Peter’s Chair in Rome; she was therefore assigned to January 26th. In 1943, she was formally canonized by Pope Pius XII, and her feast moved to the 19th, and finally, with the suppression of St Peter’s Chair, to the 18th.

Ss Elizabeth, Margaret and Henry of Hungary, depicted by Simone Martini in a fresco in the lower basilica of St Francis at Assisi, 1318. (public domain image from Wikipedia.)

St Margaret was the daughter of Bela IV, a king of the Arpad dynasty, which ruled Hungary for almost exactly three centuries, from 1000-1301; six members of this family have been canonized by the Catholic Church, three men and three woman, and one by the Orthodox Church. At the time of her birth, the Dominican Order was still very young, but rapidly expanding, and Margaret spent her earliest years in a convent of Dominican nuns in the city of Veszprém. When she was twelve, her parents established a convent for her on an island in the Danube where it passes through Budapest; this island, now a public park, is fairly large, over a mile and a half long, although only 550 yards across at the widest. Before the Ottoman invasion of Hungary and the concomitant destruction of all the religious foundations, it was also the home of Premonstratensian, Franciscan and Augustinian communities, the ruins of which can still be seen there, but it is still to this day called after her “Margaret Island.”

Seven years after her death, a cause for her canonization was begun. Of course, most of the sisters who had known her personally were still alive, and they gave extremely detailed and thorough depositions about her life, as did many others. The entire bulk of this material is preserved, a very unusual case among pre-Congregation Saints; it attests with sobriety, and great consistency among the many witnesses, to a significant number of miracles. While still at Veszprém, Margaret once repeated the miracle which is practically the only thing known about the life of St Benedict’s sister Scholastica, forcing two Dominican friars to prolong their visit to the convent by praying for a heavy downpour that prevented their departure. As the revised Butler’s Lives of the Saints puts it, “there are so many such incidents vouched for by the sisters in their evidence on oath that it is difficult to stretch coincidence so far as to explain them all.” One of the persons interviewed was a servant girl at the convent named Agnes, who on an extremely dark night fell into a well and nearly drowned, but was saved by Margaret’s prayers. (This took place while the latter was still alive.) This is also attested by almost all of the other persons deposed.

St Margaret shares her current feast day with a Roman martyr named Prisca, whose cultus is very ancient, but of whom nothing is known at all for certain, not even her dates. Her entry in the revised Butler’s states that “…. it is unquestionable that the so-called ‘acts’, dating at earliest from the tenth century, are historically worthless, for they simply reproduce, with slight changes, the legendary Passion of St Tatiana.” When reading this today, I was struck by this thought: but for the historical accident that the depositions given for St Margaret’s cause survive, would it not say something similar about her? A heavy miraculous element is frequently treated by hagiographical scholars as a telltale sign that the life of the Saint is unreliable, as is the repetition of miracles for which other Saints are famous. And yet, these miracles are attested by numerous eyewitnesses, people who sincerely believed that they were true, and that they would be committing a very grave, indeed, a damnable sin, were they to lie under oath. I had occasion to read a fair amount of this material with one of my Latin teachers many years ago, and it would take the stone heart of a Voltaire to think that they were involved in some weird conspiracy of lying.

As I have written on other occasions, there are many cases of Saints whose lives as we have received them are difficult or impossible for a reasonable person to accept as accurate. Perhaps the case of St Margaret should serve as a cautionary tale, that there may perhaps not be as many such cases as the modern hagiographical skeptics would have us believe.

The Eucharistic Miracle of St Juliana Falconieri

This year, the Sunday within the octave of Corpus Christ is celebrated with a commemoration of St Juliana Falconieri (1270-1341). She was the foundress of the women’s branch of the Servite Order, and the niece of St Alexius Falconieri, one of the seven Florentine noblemen who founded the older men’s branch. The collect of her feast refers to a famous Eucharistic miracle that took place to her benefit.

Deus, qui beatam Julianam Virginem tuam extremo morbo laborantem pretioso Filii tui corpore mirabiliter recreare dignatus es: concede, quaesumus; ut ejus intercedentibus meritis, nos quoque eodem in mortis agone refecti ac roborati, ad caelestem patriam perducamur.

O God, Who, when the blessed Virgin Juliana was laboring in her last illness, deigned in wondrous manner to comfort her with the Precious Body of thy Son; grant by the intercession of her merits, that we also, in the agony of death, may be refreshed and strengthened thereby, and so brought to the heavenly fatherland.

When St Juliana was dying, at the (for that era) very old age of 71, she was unable to retain any solid food, and for this reason, also unable to receive Holy Communion. She therefore asked that the Eucharist might be brought to her in her sickroom, that she might at least adore Christ in the Real Presence. As the priest brought the Host close to her, it disappeared, and Juliana peacefully died. When her body was being prepared for burial, the impression of a circle the size of a Host, with an image of the Crucifixion in it, was discovered over her heart. She is therefore represented in art with a Host over her heart.

A statue of St Juliana Falconieri in St Peter’s Basilica

She was canonized in 1737 by Pope Clement XII, a fellow Florentine, and her feast added to the universal calendar. The Office of her feast includes a proper hymn for Vespers, which also refers to the Eucharistic miracle:

Hinc morte fessam proxima / Non usitato te modo / Solatur, et nutrit Deus, / Dapem supernam porrigens.
Hence when thou wert tired, and death close by, / God consoled and nourished thee, / Not in the usual way / offering the heavenly banquet.

The relics of St Juliana are now in the altar of the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament within the basilica of the Annunciation in Florence, which was founded by her parents.

(Image from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY 3.0)

St Juliana, pray for us!

Miracles of St Clare of Assisi

St Clare died on this day in the year 1253 at the age of 59. The pope at the time, Innocent IV, had known her personally for many years, and had even come with his court to the church of San Damiano in Assisi, the first Franciscan women’s house, which Clare had ruled over for many years, in order to be present for her funeral. The story is told that the Pope had such a high regard of her sanctity that he wished to canonize her immediately without process, and celebrate the Mass of a Holy Virgin in her honor, rather than a Requiem for her, but was prevented by the admonition of the Franciscan Master General that to do so would be a violation of the Church’s tradition. Pope Innocent himself died the following year, and so it fell to his successor, Pope Alexander IV, to canonize her just over two years after her death, on the feast of the Assumption in 1255.

Her feast day was originally assigned to the day after her death, and kept on that day until 1970, partly out of respect for the martyrs Ss Tiburtius and Susanna, whose feast occupies August 11, but also so that her feast could have both Vespers without conflicting with those of St Lawrence.

In art, St Clare is often represented holding a monstrance with the Blessed Sacrament in it, an unusual attribute for any Saint who was not a priest. This custom arises from one of the great miracles which she performed. In the year 1234, the army of Frederick II, which counted a great many Saracens from Sicily in its number, were plundering the part of Umbria which includes Assisi. As the invaders sought to enter the convent at San Damiano, Clare took the ciborium from one of the chapels within the complex, and brought it to a window near the place where the soldiers had set a ladder against the walls in order to scale them. When she raised the Blessed Sacrament on high, the soldiers fell off the ladder and away from the wall as if dazzled, and the whole company of them fled.

St Clare Defends the Walls of Assisi, by Giuseppe Cesari, (often called ‘Cavaliere d’Arpino’; 1586-1640), date uncertain; now in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.

St Clare was often very ill, and spent many years practically confined to her bed. Another story is told that one year, when she was too ill to attend the Midnight Mass on Christmas, she was able to be present for the ceremony through a vision, for which reason Pope Pius XII declared her the Patron Saint of television in 1958. (This subject seems to have attracted no attention from artists, inexplicably, and I was unable to find a good representation of it. If anyone knows of one, please be so kind as to let me know in the combox.)

The Vision of St Clare (not the Midnight Mass vision), by Guercino, 1615-21, also from the Hermitage.

St Anthony’s Eucharistic Miracle

English-speaking Catholics today perhaps think of Anthony of Padua principally as the Saint to call upon when something is lost, for which there is a well-known rhyme, “St Anthony, St Anthony, please come down: something is lost and cannot be found.” In his own lifetime, however, and for centuries after, he was principally known for his extraordinary learning and skill as a preacher; he was in fact the first Franciscan to study at a university and teach.

Ss Anthony and Francis, depicted by Simone Martini in the Chapel of St Martini in the lower basilica of St Francis in Assisi, 1322-26. Note that in this earlier stage of Franiscan iconography, St Anthony’s charactistic feature is the book of a scholar. (Public domain image from Wikpedia.)

He was also known for a variety of highly spectacular miracles. The 39th chapter of The Little Flowers of St Francis tells the story of how he preached before the Pope and cardinals in consistory, and was understood by them all,

Greeks, Italians, French, Germans, Slavs and English, and other languages… as if he had spoken in their own languages … and it seemed that that ancient miracle of the Apostles at the time of Pentecost was renewed, when they spoke by the power of the Holy Spirit in every tongue. And they said to each other with admiration, “Is this man who preaches not a Spaniard? And how do we all hear our own language as he speaks?”

By an interesting coincidence, his feast day is also the last day on which Pentecost can occur. He was canonized within a year of his death by the Pope in whose presence this miracle took place, Gregory IX (1227-41), who also referred to him publicly as “the ark of the covenant, and the treasure-chest of the Divine Scriptures.” At the ceremony of his canonization, Pope Gregory intoned in his honor the Magnificat antiphon for Doctors of the Church, “O Doctor Optime”, a title which was formally confirmed in 1946 by Pope Pius XII.

The common representation of Anthony as a young man tenderly holding the Christ Child perhaps makes it easy to forget that he was also called “the hammer of the heretics”, who were many in his time. Like his contemporary St Dominic, he preached in a wide field in northern Italy and southern France against the bizarre heresy of the Cathars. When he was still a young canon regular in Coimbra, Portugal, Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) had called the Fourth Council of the Lateran, which also had a good deal to say on the subject of heresy. This was famously the first ecumenical council to enshrine the use of the term “transubstantiation” as a way of describing the change of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ in the Mass, a response to a variety of erroneous teachings on the Eucharist.

“There is indeed one universal church of the faithful, outside of which nobody at all is saved, in which Jesus Christ Himself is both priest and sacrifice. His body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine, the bread and wine having been changed (transsubstantiatis) in substance, by God’s power, into his body and blood, … And indeed, nobody can confect this sacrament except a priest who has been properly ordained according to the (power of the) Church’s keys, which Jesus Christ himself gave to the Apostles and their successors.” (Canon 1 ‘on the Catholic Faith’)

The Miracle of the Mule, by Joseph Heintz the Younger (1600-78), from the Chapel of St Pius V in the Domincan Order’s basilica of Ss John and Paul in Venice.

When St Anthony was in Rimini in the year 1223, a heretic named Bonovillo challenged him to prove the doctrine of the Real Presence in the following manner. The man would lock his mule in its stall for three days without giving it any food, then bring it into a public square where there would plenty of hay be ready for it. At the same time, St Anthony would show the consecrated Host to the mule; if it would then ignore the hay and kneel, its owner would convert to the Catholic Faith. On the appointed day, St Anthony celebrated Mass, then brought the Host in procession to the piazza. On arriving, he said to the mule “By the power and in the name of the Creator, Whom I, for all that I am unworthy, truly hold in my hands, I say to thee, animal, and order thee to come near at once in humility, and show Him proper veneration.” At this, the mule immediately left the hay, approached and knelt, for the sake of which miracle the heretic Bonovillo did indeed convert. In Rimini, in the Piazza of the Three Martyrs, there is a small chapel known as the “Tempietto – little temple”, which marks the place where this miracle happened.

The event has also been represented in art many times, such as the painting above. From 1446-53, the sculptor Donatello was in Padua to do a new high altar for the great basilica which houses St Anthony’s relics, with four relief panels of his miracles, and seven free-standing bronze sculpture of Saints. The miracle of the mule is one of the four. (Click to enlarge.)

Other Miracles of St Januarius

Today is the feast of St Januarius, who is also widely known by the Italian form of his name “San Gennaro”, as emigrants from Naples, of which he is the principal Patron, have brought devotion to him wherever they have settled; the feast held in his honor in New York City is particularly famous. September 19th is the day of his martyrdom, which took place at Pozzuoli during the persecution of Diocletian, alongside that of several other Christians from various parts of Campania; he was in point of fact bishop of Benevento, about 33 miles to the north-east of Naples. In the Middle Ages, his relics were transferred to the important monastery of Monte Vergine, and from there to the cathedral of Naples only at the beginning of the 16th century.

He is of course especially well-known for the miracle which takes place on his feast day in most years, when the relic of his blood is brought into the presence of the relic of his skull and liquifies. Perhaps less well-known is the fact that the miracle normally happens three times a year, since Naples celebrates two other feasts of him as well. On the Saturday before the first Sunday of May, the translation of his relics is commemorated; on December 16th, a third feast commemorates a rather spectacular miracle by which St Januarius demonstrated his care for and protection of the city. In 1631, an unusually powerful lava flow from Mt Vesuvius, the crater of which is only 9 miles from the city center, had come down towards the city and threatened to destroy the granaries which would provide bread for the populace through the upcoming winter. The bishop therefore brought the Saint’s relics to the lava flow, which turned aside at that point. I attended this December feast one year, when the relics of the blood are brought from the cathedral to the church of St Clare; I could see very clearly that the liquified blood was moving around inside the crystal vial which contains it, mounted in the reliquary, as it was carried back to the large chapel at the cathedral where it is housed.

Outside the church of Santa Caterina a Formiello in Naples is a monument which commemorates another occasion on which St Januarius saved the city and the region around it from the eruptions of Vesuvius, in 1707.

“To Saint Januarius, chief patron of the city of Naples, because, when (the relic of) his sacred head was shown on an altar set up in this place, he put down and completely pacified the destructive assaults of Mt Vesuvius in the year 1707, as, with a great eruption of fire, it raged with increasing force for a great many days, and thus threatened most certainly to burn the city and all of Campania; the Neapolitans, mindful of his divine favor, as also of the countless others by which he has liberated the city and its region from war, famine, plague and earthquake, set this monument.”

Behind the cathedral, in the Piazza Cardinale Sforza, stands a large baroque obelisk, also still called by the medieval Italian term “guglia”, which was erected in the Saint’s honor after the miracle of 1631. The inscription on the base says that “the grateful city of Naples raised (it) to Saint Januarius, most ready protector of the nation and kingdom, and her most-well deserving citizen.”

And here is really magnificent reliquary formerly used for the processions, now kept in the museum at the church of St Clare, where the December liquefaction happens.

The Feast of St Benedict 2019

Vir Domini Benedictus ferrum de profundo resiliens Gotho reddidit, dicens: * Ecce, labora, et noli contristari. V. Vix enim manubrium misit ad lacum, ferrum de profundo rediit, quod reddens dixit: Ecce. Gloria Patri. (The 4th responsory of the Solemnity of St Benedict in the Monastic Breviary.)

The episode referred to in the responsory above, depicted by Spinello Aretino, 1388, in the sacristy of the church of San Miniato in Florence.

R. Benedict, the man of God, returned to the Goth the iron that leapt up from the deep, saying, * Behold, work on, and do not be sad. V. For scarcely did he put the handle near the lake, and the iron returned from the deep; and giving it back, he said, Behold... Glory be... Behold.

In the Second Book of St Gregory the Great’s Dialogues, dedicated to the life and miracles of St Benedict, this episode of a miracle also performed by the Prophet Elisha (4 Kings 6, 1-7) is recounted thus in chapter six:

(A) certain Goth, poor of spirit, came to conversion (i.e., became a monk) whom the man of God Benedict most gladly; and one day, commanded him to take ... a sickle, and cut away the briars from a certain plot of ground, so that a garden might be made there. Now this place, which the Goth had undertaken to clear, was by the side of a lake, and while he was cutting away the cluster of briars with all his strength, the head of the sickle flew off the handle and fell into the water, in a place where it was so deep that there was no hope of getting it back. The Goth, in great fear, ran to the monk Maurus, and told him what he had lost, confessing his own fault, and Maurus went to the servant of God Benedict and told him. Therefore, the man of God Benedict went to the lake, took the handle from the Goth’s hand, and put it into the water, and soon the iron head came up from the deep, and entered again into the handle (of the sickle), which he returned at once to the Goth, saying, ‘Behold, work on, and be sad no more.’

St Benedict died on March 21 in the year 543 or 547, and this was the date on which his principal feast was traditionally kept, and is still kept by Benedictines; it is sometimes referred to on the calendars of Benedictine liturgical books as the “Transitus - Passing” There was also a second feast to honor the translation of his relics, which was kept on July 11. The location to which the relics were translated is still a matter of dispute, with the Abbey of Monte Cassino in Italy, founded by the Saint himself, and the French Abbey of Fleury, also known as Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, both claiming to possess them. This second feast is found in many medieval missals and breviaries, even in places not served by monastic communities. (It was not, however, observed by either the Cistercians or Carthusians.). The second feast was in a certain sense the more solemn in the traditional use of the Benedictines; March 21 always falls in Lent, and the celebration of octaves in Lent was prohibited, but most monastic missals have the July 11 feast with an octave. In the post-Conciliar reform of the Calendar, many Saints, including St Benedict, were moved out of Lent; in his case, to the day of this second feast in the Benedictine Calendar.