Eucharistic miracles · Italy · about 1273

Offida: the Woman Who Confessed

Church's position There is long local veneration and a diocesan shrine at Offida, but this page found no formal judgment by the Holy See or by a bishop that declares the event a miracle. Devotional sources list bulls of Boniface VIII, Julius II, Pius V, Gregory XIII, Sixtus V, Paul IV and Pius IX, some granting indulgences. A recent study by Valter Laudadio doubts the oldest of these, a bull of Boniface VIII of 1295, because it is not in the Vatican registers. The texts of the bulls have not been seen here. No Catholic is obliged to believe in the event.

Place today Church of Sant'Agostino, Piazza Forlini, Offida, province of Ascoli Piceno, Marche, Italy. The event itself is placed at Lanciano, Abruzzo.
Date About 1273; the relics reached Offida in 1280, according to tradition
What is kept Fragments in a silver-gilt cross; a roof tile; a linen cloth. A few fragments went back to the chapel of Santa Croce, Lanciano, in 2003.
Feast 3 May, the old feast of the Holy Cross, with a procession and showing of the relics

The account

All of this section is what tradition tells. It is called the miracle of Offida because the relics are there, but the story takes place in Lanciano, about a hundred kilometres to the south. Lanciano is better known for an older Eucharistic miracle, placed in the seventh or eighth century, which is a separate event.

Ricciarella and Giacomo

In 1273, in the old quarter of Lanciano, lived a woman named Ricciarella. Her husband was Giacomo Stasio. One source calls him a wealthy merchant, another a carter. The marriage had gone bad. He had turned away from her and they quarrelled often.

In her distress she went to a woman who practised sorcery and asked how to win back her husband's love. The woman told her to take a consecrated Host, cook it over a fire, crush it, and put it in his food.

So Ricciarella went to Mass in the nearby church of Sant'Agostino, went up for Communion, did not consume the Host, and carried it home hidden in a cloth.

The tile and the cloth

At home she put a curved roof tile on the fire and laid the Host on it. Tradition says that the Host turned into flesh and began to bleed, and that the blood kept flowing. Sources differ on whether this was in the kitchen or in the stable.

She was terrified. She tried to stop the flow and wrapped tile and all in a linen table cloth. Then she carried the bundle to the stable and buried it under the dung, or under straw in some tellings, and told no one.

The animal that knelt

That evening Giacomo came back from the fields and led his animal to the stable. It would not cross the threshold. It is a mule in most tellings, a donkey or horse in others. He threatened and coaxed and beat it. When it finally went in, it knelt, facing the spot where the bundle lay. This happened again, night after night.

Giacomo did not understand. He accused his wife of having put a curse on the beast. Things between them grew worse, and the woman carried her secret alone. Sister Maria Gloria Riva compares the scene to the donkey of Balaam, who saw what the prophet could not (Numbers 22:21 to 33).

The confession

Seven years later, in 1280, she could bear it no longer. She went to the prior of the Augustinian friars of Lanciano, Fra Giacomo Diotallevi, who came from Offida. In one telling the delay is only a few days, but most say seven years.

The old chronicles give her cry as "I have killed God!" That is the voice of a terrified conscience and not a statement of doctrine. The friar heard her confession. He went to the stable and dug, and he found the cloth and the tile as she had buried them, and the flesh preserved.

This is the heart of the story. It ends with a sinner on her knees in the sacrament of Penance, and with a priest who goes to look.

The journey to Offida and the goldsmith

Tradition says Fra Giacomo took the relics to his own town of Offida in 1280. The town and the friars then ordered a reliquary in the shape of a cross from a goldsmith in Venice. Two friars went with the relics, one of them named as Fra Michele. They made the goldsmith swear to tell no one what he saw.

When the man took the relic in his hands he was seized by a sudden fever and cried out, "What have you brought me, my brothers?" Fra Michele asked if he was in mortal sin. The goldsmith said he was, and made his confession to the friar there and then. The fever left, and he finished the work. Once more the story turns on confession.

Another tradition adds that the Doge of Venice learned what was in the city and sent galleys after the friars' boat, but that a storm held them back. This appears only in popular retellings.

What is known

The three objects are real and old. The shrine's description dates the linen cloth to the thirteenth century and calls it the only known household table linen of that century. The silver-gilt cross is dated to the fourteenth century in most sources. A hymn to the Host in the cross, In cruce sacra hostia, which names Offida, is dated about 1280 to 1316 by Valter Laudadio, and he treats it as evidence that relics in a cross were honoured there early. The story was printed by Agostino Merli at Padua in 1581. A notary, Giovanni Battista Doria, made a certified copy of an older text on 18 April 1788.

What is less certain

No account written at the time has been found. The oldest printed story is from 1581, three centuries later, and the Doria copy is later still. Laudadio points out that Offida's documents are silent about the miracle and the relics from 1280 to 1581, that a donation act of 1307 at the church does not mention them, and that old calendars list only the Holy Cross on 3 May. He calls the story a devotional compilation. Boccardi (2006) calls it a homiletic expansion. Palmieri (1913) warned against both easy doubt and easy certainty. Laudadio says clearly that his aim is not to rule on the miracle itself.

Many details differ between versions: mule or horse, stable or kitchen, seven years or a few days. Most sources date the cross to the fourteenth century and one to the thirteenth, while the story places it soon after 1280. This is not resolved.

A word about the kind of story this is. Tales of stolen Hosts were common in medieval Europe, and some of them were turned against innocent people, with grave harm. This page follows the account given at the shrine: a wife of Lanciano, her own sin, and her own confession. It blames no people.

This page found no scientific test of the relics by any named laboratory. The shrine's material speaks of blood on the tile, and that is a description and not a finding.

How the Church has honoured it

Boniface VIII	Said to have confirmed the church of Offida in possession of the relics by a bull of 1295. One source gives 20 September. Laudadio doubts it, as it is missing from the Vatican registers.
Later Popes	Julius II, Pius V, Gregory XIII, Sixtus V (1585 is the date given in one source), Paul IV and Pius IX are named as giving bulls, several with indulgences. Italian reference works cite R. Iaria, I miracoli eucaristici in Italia (2005), for this. The texts have not been seen here.
Papal rings	Two rings given as votive gifts are attributed to Pius II and Paul II.
The town	The printed statutes of Offida (1589) give the 3 May feast more public money than any other, though they name only the Cross.
Seventh centenary	Kept in 1973.
Lanciano, 2003	After a request begun in the late 1990s by Archbishop Enzio d'Antonio of Lanciano-Ortona to the Diocese of Ascoli Piceno, some fragments went back to Lanciano.

The fruits

A town's great feast. In former times the feast of 3 May was prepared for eight days, with bells, gunfire and flags on the town hall and the church. Debts could not be pursued and foreign merchants paid no tolls during the fair, which ran eight days either side. On the eve armed men guarded the church door so that the women keeping vigil could pray in peace. On the day there was a ring tournament, a mock attack on three castles and a solemn procession, and pilgrims crossed the church on their knees.
The feast today. After two years limited by the pandemic, the feast returned in full on 3 May 2022, with Masses, a procession with the people, and fairground rides.
A church. The friars began their present church in 1338 and an inscription gives 1441 for its completion, on the place of a small church of St Mary Magdalene known from 1254. The cloister dates from 1574 and the convent was rebuilt from 1625. It also keeps a reliquary of the Holy Thorn from the fifteenth century.
A chapel on a stable. In Lanciano the stable became the small church of Santa Croce, in Via dei Frentani, dated 1583. Inside are old paintings of the story with captions in local dialect.
Poetry and story. Merli's printed history of 1581 was reissued several times. A poem by Rosini, La reliquia d'Offida, followed in 1587. Panels in the church at Offida tell the story.
A teaching on Penance. Writers on this story keep returning to confession. Ricciarella's marriage and the goldsmith's health, says Sister Maria Gloria Riva, were both restored through honest confession of sin.

Some writers also link frescoes by Ugolino di Prete Ilario, of 1357, now at Orvieto Cathedral, to the story of Offida. Laudadio argues that they show the miracle of Trani instead.

If you visit

Offida is a hill town in the southern Marche, inland from the Adriatic coast near San Benedetto del Tronto. Sant'Agostino stands on Piazza Forlini. The relics rest in a niche at the end of the apse, behind an iron grille and two walnut doors of the fifteenth century, and a shrine directory says they are shown to the public only on 3 May. The earthquakes of 2016 damaged the building. Works of art were removed on 14 March 2017, according to the Ministry of Culture, and the relics went for a time to the Collegiate Church of Santa Maria Assunta. Italian Wikipedia reports their return to Sant'Agostino on 2 May 2024. Please check with the parish before you travel. In Lanciano you can also visit the chapel of Santa Croce.

Timeline

1254	A small church of St Mary Magdalene at Offida, later the friars' place.
About 1273	Ricciarella and the Host at Lanciano, according to tradition.
1280	Her confession to Fra Giacomo Diotallevi; the relics go to Offida, according to tradition.
About 1280 to 1316	Date proposed by Laudadio for the hymn In cruce sacra hostia.
1295	Bull attributed to Boniface VIII; its authenticity is doubted.
1338 to 1441	The friars build the present church.
1536	Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament founded at Offida.
1581	Agostino Merli's printed history, the first widely read version.
1583	Date of the church of Santa Croce, Lanciano.
1589	Printed statutes of Offida.
1788	Certified copy of an older text by the notary Doria, 18 April.
1973	Seventh centenary.
2003	Fragments return to Lanciano.
2016, 2017	Earthquakes; works removed from the church.
2024	Relics reported back at Sant'Agostino, 2 May.

What the Church teaches

Our faith rests on Christ's own words and not on miracles. At every Mass and every Qurbana, Christ is truly present in the Eucharist, with or without any sign (CCC 1374 to 1376). The Host in your own parish needs no tile and no blood to be what it is. No one is obliged to believe this story, and its history is rightly open to study. Whatever one concludes, the road it points to is open to all: the Eucharist is received with reverence, and the sinner who is afraid can go to a priest, tell the truth and be forgiven.

Sources: Valter Laudadio, Un approccio storiografico al miracolo eucaristico di Offida (offida.info, 2 May 2024); Istituto San Clemente I Papa e Martire, exhibition panel on Offida (2006, Portuguese edition); Maria Gloria Riva, La confessione di Ricciarella (La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, 13 April 2014); Santuari Italiani on the church and feast; Cathopedia, Miracolo eucaristico di Offida; Italian Wikipedia, same title, citing L. Carducci, Il miracolo eucaristico di Offida e il santuario (1995); Maria di Nazareth on the old feast and statutes; L'Alba (5 May 2022); Italian Ministry of Culture, recovery of works, 2017.