Cascia

The miracle of Cascia did not happen at Cascia. By all the better accounts it happened near Siena in Tuscany. Cascia keeps it because of one man. Blessed Simone Fidati, an Augustinian friar and well-known preacher, was a son of the town, and he brought it home.

The tradition does not name the priest. In 1330 a gravely ill peasant near Siena asked for Communion. The priest took a consecrated Host. Instead of carrying it in the proper small vessel, he slipped it between the pages of his breviary, the book of the daily prayer of the clergy, and set out. Some tellings stress his carelessness, others say he had lost his reverence and was going through his duties by habit.

He came to the sick man's house and heard his confession. When he opened the book to give Communion, the Host, he found, had turned to blood. It had stained the two pages between which it lay. Some accounts speak of a clot and some of living blood. One says that the Host was gone and the marks were left.

The priest was shaken. He went to Siena, to the Augustinian house, to Father Simone, who was known as a holy and wise confessor. He told him all that had happened. Father Simone heard his confession and absolved him. He asked to keep the two pages.

Here we have firm ground. The standard Italian biographical dictionary, the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, says in its article on Fidati by Enrico Menestò that when he returned from Siena in 1330, he stopped in Umbria, first at Perugia and then at Cascia, and that in these two cities he left a relic of a Eucharistic miracle that had happened near Siena. It does not tell the story of the miracle or say whether it happened. It records the relics.

Devotional accounts add that one page was left in Perugia and the other went to the Augustinian house at Cascia. One says that this was decided by a meeting at Perugia. It is also said that only the Cascia page survives today. What became of the Perugia page is not clear.

The oldest evidence named in the sources is the Communal Statutes of Cascia of 1387. These are said to order that each year on Corpus Christi the authorities and people should gather and carry the relic through the town, starting from the church of St Augustine. If so, then 57 years after the event the relic was already the town's civic treasure, which is early for a relic of this kind.

A recognition of the relic in 1687 is also reported, citing a very old book of the Augustinian house which described the miracle. The date of that book is not given. In 1930 the historical documents were published for the sixth centenary. A study by Adolfo Morini, La reliquia del "Corpus Christi" di Cascia: storia e documenti, is listed in library catalogues; it is not used here.

Simone was born at Cascia to a noble family, sometime between 1280 and 1295. He first studied the natural sciences. A holy man, probably the Franciscan spiritual Angelo Clareno, turned him to the things of God, and he probably joined the Augustinian Hermits in his home town about 1310. He refused academic posts and spent about 27 years preaching in central Italy, at Rome, Perugia, Gubbio, Foligno, Siena, Florence and Pisa.

In Florence, about 1332 to 1333, he founded a house for women who had turned from a life of sin, and later a second house for women. He wrote L'ordine della vita cristiana in 1333, a guide to Christian life in Italian. In 1338 in Rome he began his main work, De gestis Domini Salvatoris, a long reflection on the Gospels. About thirty Latin letters, a spiritual rule, sermons and some Italian poems also survive. He criticised the government of Florence, and its Priors forbade him to preach.

He fell ill in Rome in 1347 and died on 2 February 1348 in the time of the great plague, most likely in Florence. His body was later brought to Cascia. Pope Gregory XVI recognised his cult on 23 August 1833, which is why he is called Blessed. After the suppression of the religious houses in 1866 his remains were moved to the collegiate church of St Mary. In 1948, the centenary of his death, they were placed in the new church of St Rita. He is honoured on 2 February, and the Augustinians keep 16 February.

Some accounts say that when a lamp is held behind the page, the stain shows the profile of a bearded man, and that some see the face of Christ. This is a personal impression, and not a statement of the Church or a finding of any study. People see faces in many patterns. Nothing depends on it.