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What a bloody miracle! - Notes On A Strange World
Skeptical Inquirer, Jan-Feb, 2004 by Massimo Polidoro
The next World Skeptics Congress will be held October 8-10, 2004, in Italy. For this reason, I will devote this and the next three columns to popular Italian mysteries. Should you come to the Congress you could also take advantage of your trip to visit these famous enigmas.
Italy has a long tradition of "sacred relics." There are bones and skulls of famous saints, as well as some of their mummified bodies. Even personal garments that belonged to martyrs and saints are still kept and worshiped in various Italian churches. What usually strikes visitors the most, however, are some extreme relics: body parts like teeth, hair, nails, hands, feet, hearts and tongues (the most famous of which is certainly St. Antony's tongue kept in Padua); or some unlikely ones like the tears of Jesus Christ, pieces of the Cross, feathers of angels, and the tail of the donkey on which Jesus entered Jerusalem.
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Of all these relics, only the blood of early saints exhibit some kind of alleged supernatural activity.
Clustered just around Naples, for example, there are some 190 blood relics (Alfano and Amitrano 1951). A small number of these samples liquefy from their usual clotted state--in a purportedly paranormal manner--on specific occasions, usually during religious ceremonies.
When blood is drawn from a living body and poured into a container, the soluble serum protein fibrinogen forms a network of insoluble fibrin, which in turn forms a jelly-like clot. This clot can be mechanically broken down, but when this has been done once, no further change of state can reoccur. Thus, the resolidification of a blood sample would be even more surprising than its first liquefaction (Garlaschelli 1998).
The most celebrated of these miraculous relics is a vial containing a dark, unknown substance said to be the blood of St. Januarius, which has been liquefying once or twice a year since 1389 in Naples (Alfano and Amitrano 1924). St. Januarius was an early bishop of Benevento who was beheaded during the persecution of the Emperor Diocletian in A.D. 305. The relic representing his blood appeared in Naples more than ten centuries later, around 1389. Other relics of this kind, wherein the phase transition is evident and genuine, are the blood of St. Pantaleone in Ravello (Avellino) and that of St. Lorenzo (St. Lawrence) in Amaseno, whose visual properties and behavior seem very similar (Alfano and Amitrano 1951).
Some years ago three members of CICAP (the Italian Committee for the Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal), Luigi Garlaschelli, Franco Ramaccini, and Sergio Della Sala (1991; 1994) proposed in Nature magazine that thixotropy may furnish an explanation for the properties of the Januarian blood. Thixotropy denotes the property of certain gels to liquefy when stirred or vibrated, and to solidify again when left alone. The very act of handling the relic during the ceremony, repeatedly turning it upside down to check its state, can provide the necessary shear force to trigger its liquefaction. In support of this hypothesis we succeeded in preparing thixotropic samples closely resembling the Januarian relic, using materials and techniques available in the fourteenth century.
Although the Januarian relic is subjected to many mechanical stresses, the large vial containing the blood of St. Pantaleone (becoming liquefied around 27 July) is never moved, as it is locked behind a grate; and that of St. Lorenzo is gently moved only once a year, on August 10, from its niche to the altar. In these cases, then, thixotropy cannot be the explanation. Moreover, it appears that the liquefaction begins days before the feast day, and ends much later (precise day-to-day records are lacking).
The Blood of St. Lorenzo
My good friend Luigi Garlaschelli, a chemist at the University of Pavia and one of the leading experts in the investigation of claims related to the supernatural, has had the rare opportunity of testing first-hand the liquefying blood of St. Lorenzo.
St. Lorenzo was martyred on August 10, 258 A.D., under the Roman Emperor Valerian, by being charred on a grill. His popularity as a saint was always great during the Middle Ages and continues today. The most famous of the relies of St. Lorenzo still existing is a small flask which allegedly contains his blood and which is venerated in the collegiate church of St. Maria in the small town of Amaseno (near Frosinone).
The relic is normally locked in a silver tabernacle in the right wing of the church. A few days before the saint's feast the niche is sometimes unlocked and the state of the relic inspected. On the morning of August 10, the relic is brought near the altar, put onto a baroque stand, and locked in a glass cabinet. There, the worshippers can witness any further transformation of its state. A ceremony is held, on that same day, in the presence of the bishop from Frosinone; at night the relic is locked again in its niche, and sometimes its further changes in the following days are checked by opening the safe a few times. No physical, chemical, or spectroscopical tests have ever been performed on this relic.
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