What a bloody miracle! - Notes On A Strange World

On August 10, 1996, Garlaschelli was officially invited to examine the small flask on the occasion of a television documentary. Garlaschelli took along with hint a number of instruments: a camera, a caliper, an electronic balance, a test-tube whirler, some chemist's damps, laboratory metal stands, thermometers, and beakers.

Testing the Relic

The relic consists of a small glass flask, 15.3 cm high and weighing 141.8 grams (mean of three measures on an Acculab electronic balance). It has the shape of an inverted cone, connected to a long, 2.5 cm diameter neck. The bottle is closed with a cork that cannot be removed, secured by red strings, red wax seals, and an old discolored bishop's label. However, the cork is clearly not airtight.

The vial contains an estimated 35 ml of a mixture of substances. On the bottom there is a lumpy, tan-colored layer, possibly containing sand or earth. A very tiny piece of darker material in this layer was traditionally interpreted by believers as being a particle of the coal on which the saint was martyred. A few observers even claim to see a piece of the saint's charred skin (Giannetta 1964). A second layer is above, normally in the solid state, also brownish, topped by a third, thin, more amorphous layer. When liquefied, the middle layer becomes dear, changing color to ruby red, and flows freely if the flask is tilted slightly. The bottom layer always remains solid and the top one sometimes becomes partly liquefied. When Garlaschelli examined the relic, the middle layer was liquid while the other two layers remained opaque and solid.

Garlaschelli whirled the ampoule for ten seconds on a Maxi Mixer test-tube mixer to check for a possible stress-induced thixotropic phase transition, but the only result was that the two uppermost layers became slightly mixed. The bottom layer remained unchanged, and a further ten seconds whirling failed to alter the fluidity of the viscous contents.

Garlaschelli then cooled down the small flask by clamping it at the neck and immersing its lower part into a water-ice bath. After a few minutes, the entire contents solidified into an opaque tan-colored mass.

Finally, Garlaschelli slowly re-warmed the water bath again to the initial room temperature by placing a hair-dryer under it, while monitoring its temperature. The contents of the flask melted again, and its color turned red, thus clearly demonstrating that the observed change is simply a temperature-related effect of a low melting-point compound.

The Results So Far

The red substance cannot possibly be blood, since whole blood is typically opaque; even a clear haemoglobin solution would have decomposed and lost its bright red color over the centuries; and a water solution would have dried up from the imperfectly sealed flask (and would not freeze at 30[degrees]C).

Garlaschelli's conclusion was that the softening temperature and the overall look suggest that the relic consists of fats, waxes, or mixtures thereof, possibly containing an oil-soluble red dye. As a matter of fact, this relic is described in the church consecration act scroll (1177) as reliquia de pinguedine St. Laurentii Mart ("relic from the fat of the martyr Saint Lorenzo"). The liquefaction phenomenon was not observed until the seventeenth century, when it became dubbed "fat and blood" and finally just "blood." This fact might even raise the suspicion that the early relic was at that time substituted for the present one (possessing evident liquefying properties).