SAN GENNARO MIRACLE.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 224, 21 September 1929, Page 13 (Supplement)

SAN GENNARO MIRACLE.

CONGEALED BLOOD LIQUEFIES IS IT GENUINE OB A TRICK 1 OFTEN TURNED THE SCALE OF destiny. (By BEATRICE BASKERVILLE.) The martyred saint's congealed blood keDt in two glass phials in the Cathedral of Naples, liquenes regularly twice a year. There are miracles and miracles—those which science explains and faith accepts; those the Roman Church rejects, but the Latin masses believe so fervently that they carry on their own cult of them till church intervenes. There are the miracles of the Gospel and miracles of tradition..! From the last have sprung a thousand rustic festivals throughout Italy, strangle minglings of pagan rite and Catholic rituaL But the miracle of San Gennaro, patron saint of Naples, stands apart. It has baffled science. Sceptics have not yet made good their cry of tricks and humbug Popes have not ventured to disclaim it. Lutherans have talked of the devil's influence; army chiefs have used it for conquest; kings have made it serve their policies, and millions have been lavished to adorn it with gold and silver and precious stones. And whether you be Jew or Gentile, Greeks or Eoman; whether follower of a new religion or an old, or of none at all, the undeniable fact remains—San Gennaro's blood, kept in two glass phials in the Cathedral at Naples, liquefies regularly and infallibly twice a year, and | sometimes thrice, at about ten o'clock in the, morning. 1 * The Saturday before the first Sunday in May, September 19 (the saint's "name day") and sometimes December 16 are the miracle days, and have been, year in and year out, for more than five centuries. These days are far more important to the Neapolitans than any others in the whole year: the festivals of Christmas, Easter, Fentecost and Ascension fade into insignificance in comparison. Even Corpus Christi, that outstanding feast of Catholicism, means less on Naples Bay than the mornings when San Gennaro's congealed blood is carried near the silvergilt head which encases his supposed skull, and thereby becomes liquid. Staunch Belief in Auguries. The phials and the saint's skull are carried in procession through the city in times of great calamity; when the earth quakes, when Vesuvius belches fire and cinders on it. And the citizens will tell you that it never fails. The liquefying of the blood is watched with hysterical fervour by the crowds who flock to the Cathedral soon after dawn on the days set apart for the miracle. If it liquefies quickly, the omen is good; there will be many tourists, bringing prosperity with them; no earth-

quakes; less hunger; Vesuvius, whose smoking crater is ever in sight and whose destructive humours are never absent from theii' superstitious minds, will keep calm. All through the city's history, under Norman," Spanish and Bourbon domination, San Gennaro's phials of blood have been used as guide or instrument.

Sometimes that brownish substance, long since bereft of red, has been used to make a foreign king popular or an invading general victorious without losing a soldier. By weeping as the miracle of liquefaction slowly takes place, and by offering priceless jewels which cover tfca saint's many silver busts, invaders have turned the citizens in their favour. Quick liquefaction is of good augur, and the happy event is always used for some important - end. In short, San Gennaro, or St. Januarius in English, has ruled the destinies of Naples on more than one occasion; and the student of history could not find a better example of the survival of the ancient augurs than in this miracle, which he can watch for himself if he takes the trouble to visit the Cathedral on the days indicated. Josepn Addison, who saw it in the beginning of the eighteenth century, dismissed it as a "pretended miracle, one of the mo§t bungling tricks I have ever seen, copied from one shown in a town of the Kingdom of Naples as long ago as Horace's time.". He concludes that "the heathen priesthood had the same kind of secrets of which the Roman Catholics are now masters." But people have never ceased to discuss it all the same. Calvinists have put it down to the devil; chemists to calcium and common salt. Others, including Pope Benedict XIV., who sat in St. Peter's chair from 1741 to 1755, attributed it to some mysterious sympathy between the blood of murdered persons and any other parts of their bodies which the blood happens to be near; an influence asserted to be so strong that even blood reduced to powder wil liquefy when brought near the mortal remains of the body from which it once flowed. Tolerant Attitude of Church. Evidently Benedict XIV. did not take the miracle so seriously as do the Neapolitans. But then he was from Bologna, Northern Italy, and allowed them to enjoy their miracles in peace. His successors have done the same, though there are signs that Rome still fails to take it as seriously as Naples. A Frenchman once put it down to the climate, modified by radio activity from Vesuvius and the Sulfatara; a C4erman called it a clever piece of conjuring, whereby a swift-handed priest exchanges a phial containing congealed blood for one with liquid blood so cleverly that the singing, praying, weeping and altogether hysterical crowds which pack the Cathedral and the streets outside suspect nothing. In 1890 Professor Alihini, of Naples gave another formula; powdered chocolate, sugared water, casein and common salt were mixed to a certain consistency which liquefied when shaken. When the shaker's hands were hot, liquefication was quicker than when they j were cold. His contention that the secret 1

of some such formula had been handed down for centuries by the priests in charge of the "miracle" brought several caustic comments to the effect that it would be a far greater miracle to keep the secret for centuries than to liquefy real blood by keeping it exposed to the over-heated atmosphere of the Cathedral.

Whether you believe them or not, go I and see the chapel which their forbears put up in the Naples Cathedral, which was built on the site of two pagan temples, to Apollo and Neptune. At a stone's throw from some of the poorest slums in Europe shines a wealth of gold and silver and precious stones, lavished upon the skull inside one of the silver busi portraits and the phials inside the silver-doored closets behind the altar. And, perhaps, the oddest point of it all is that San Gennaro was not martyred in Naples, but at Pozzuoli. There his relics lay for exactly 1192 years, when plague, strife and famine ravaged Naples, and somebody had the bright idea of bringing them to the stricken city. And they have been there ever since, which is since the Year of Grace, 1497. One cannot help wondering why the people of Pozzuoli put up with the loss of their saint, for whom they had built a church. But they still keep the block on which Gennaro was beheaded. In damp weather, and at certain other seasons of the year, a bright red mark appears on that block. —("Star" and A.A.N.S. copyright.)