The Sacred Hosts of Siena

Siena in the summer of 1730 was preparing for the Assumption, its great civic and religious feast. The Basilica of San Francesco was the large church of the Conventual Franciscans. Its building had begun in the thirteenth century and had been enlarged in the fourteenth and fifteenth.

On 14 August, the eve of the Assumption, the people and clergy were taken up with the feast. One account says the thieves came about midnight. They forced the little door of the tabernacle in the chapel then dedicated to St Anthony of Padua, and they took a silver ciborium full of hosts recently consecrated. The theft was discovered the next morning. The National Catholic Register adds that the lid of the ciborium was found in the street on 15 August.

The Archbishop of Siena, Alessandro Zondadari, who governed the diocese from 1715 to 1745, ordered fasts and public prayers of reparation. The Archdiocese's page says that the Palio, the famous horse race of the city's districts, was suspended in reparation. For a city like Siena that was no small thing.

On the morning of 17 August, three days after the theft, the hosts were found in the alms box of the nearby church of Santa Maria in Provenzano. Our sources differ on who noticed them first. One says a cleric, another an altar boy, and another a man at prayer who saw something white through the box. They lay among coins, dust and cobwebs.

The ciborium was never recovered. The hosts were examined and identified as the stolen ones. They were cleaned of dust as far as possible and were shown to the people. The next day, one account gives 18 August, they were carried back to San Francesco in solemn procession, and the people came to adore them in reparation.

The number needs a word. A memoir of the same year, signed by a certain Macchi, is the earliest written witness that later writers name, and it gives 351. An old Sienese author, Pecci, quoted in the Siena press, says 348 whole hosts and six broken pieces. Either way, some were later consumed, and that is why the number is smaller today.

Normally, hosts recovered in this way would be consumed at Communion, and new ones consecrated. We did not find a document that gives the friars' reason for keeping these. Later writers suggest two: the hosts had been lying in dust and were not fit to be distributed, and the people wished to come and adore them in reparation for the sacrilege.

Whatever the reason, they stayed. As years passed, the friars noticed that the hosts did not change. The Archdiocese's page speaks of a "near silence" in the record from 1730 to 1914, explained by the Napoleonic suppression, changes in the use of the church, restoration work and wars. The early history is therefore known only in outline.

April 1780. Fr Giovanni Carlo Vipera, Minister General of the Conventual Franciscans, came on a canonical visit. He found about 230 hosts and fragments in a wooden box in the tabernacle and moved them to a silver chalice. Aleteia's account says he consumed one on 14 April and found it fresh, and that he forbade any further distribution. The Register says that some had been distributed before this.

7 to 9 February 1789. The Archbishop, Tiberio Borghesi, examined the hosts during a pastoral visit. Friars testified on oath to the tradition that these were the stolen hosts. The hosts were described as firm, shining and fresh. They were moved to a silver pyx with a glass lid.

The control of 1789. The same Archbishop had ordinary unconsecrated hosts sealed away under similar conditions. Several accounts say they were put in a tin box. When a commission opened it ten years later, the accounts say it held only worms and decayed fragments. The Archdiocese's own wording is simply that the control hosts had deteriorated.

12 July 1799. Anton Felice Zondadari, Archbishop from 1795 to 1823 and a Cardinal from 1801, ordered an inspection by a commission of judges and experts. It found the hosts intact, with a slight taste of staleness. A procession of thanksgiving followed on 28 July.

15 June 1815. The glass of the pyx broke during the Corpus Christi procession, and the Cardinal ordered another inspection.

11 September 1854. Archbishop Giuseppe Mancini inspected the hosts during Mass. He and two other celebrants consumed one whole host and some fragments. The state of the hosts was found to be the same as in 1799.

The church had been a seminary from 1856 and was restored from 1891, and the Conventual friars returned in 1912. One of them, Fr Felice Spée, promoted what he called the "Eucharistic Treasure" and encouraged a scientific study.

Archbishop Prospero Scaccia ordered the inquiry. Many popular accounts add that St Pius X authorised it. The Archdiocese's own summary names the Archbishop as the one who ordered it, and we did not find the Pope's authorisation in a Vatican document.

The experts named by the Archdiocese were Prof. Siro Grimaldi, a chemist in food chemistry; Prof. Luigi Simonetta, of hygiene; Prof. Carlo Raimondi, of materia medica; and Dr Mansueto Delaini, assistant at the Institute of Physics, all of the University of Siena. Blessed Giuseppe Toniolo, professor at Pisa, served as legal expert. Church and lay witnesses were present.

They were asked two questions: were these truly hosts of unleavened bread, and were they in a normal or altered state? They looked with the eye and the microscope, tested a host in distilled water, used a litmus indicator for acidity, and used iodine to test for starch.

Grimaldi's report, as quoted by later Italian writers, was strong in tone. It called the case a unique fact in the annals of science, and said in one phrase that "le leggi della natura si sono invertite", that the laws of nature had been reversed. The results were presented at the International Eucharistic Congress at Lourdes, 22 to 26 July 1914. In 1917 Fr Agostino Ruelli, an Augustinian, published the documents in Latin as De Sacris Particulis ab anno 1730 in Senensi Basilica S. Francisci incorrupte servatis.

The chief experts were Catholics working at the Archbishop's request, and the report's strongest words are their own conclusions. They are not a verdict of the Church.

3 June 1922. The hosts were moved from the pyx into a new monstrance. The count was 224 hosts and fragments. The inspection noted fine dust, hairs and spots of mould on the inside of the glass lid, caused by air getting into the pyx. The Archdiocese's other page names Cardinal Giovanni Tacci in connection with a cylinder of pure rock crystal.

1944. Archbishop Mario Toccabelli renewed the seals, because the ribbon had worn out.

23 September 1950. The hosts were placed in a new monstrance that made them easier to see.

August 1951. The monstrance was stolen, on 5 or 6 August according to which account is read. The thieves took the precious vessel and left the hosts scattered near the tabernacle. Police examined the place for fingerprints. The hosts were cleaned one by one.

10 June 1952. The hosts were checked again, counted and photographed, and placed in a rebuilt monstrance modelled on the stolen one.

A hundred years after the 1914 study, Archbishop Antonio Buoncristiani carried out a new inspection, with the approval of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. According to the Archdiocese, it was limited to non-invasive tests to confirm preservation and the absence of microbial contamination.

Siena News reports that the work was done by researchers of the Institute for the Conservation and Valorization of Cultural Heritage of Italy's National Research Council in Florence, under Dr Cristiano Riminesi. It reports that the results showed a good state of preservation and total absence of contamination. Avvenire, the Italian Catholic daily, reported on 23 October 2014 that samples were taken with great care, that a digital microscope was used, and that no microbial growth appeared after 7 days or after 14 days from sampling.

The Archdiocese then held a Eucharistic Year, 1 November 2014 to 4 October 2015, marking the centenary of the 1914 study. Avvenire reports that Pope Francis granted a plenary indulgence for those who devoutly adored the hosts in the basilica and in the churches of the archdiocese where they were exposed.

None of these tests is a proof, and the Church does not need them to be. The sources we checked name no critic of the Siena studies, and we found no published sceptical study. Careful readers can still ask fair questions. The early inspections were made by interested parties. Dry wafers can last a long time in a dry place, and how long they last depends on air, damp and pests, which were not measured over the centuries. Some of the later accounts are more confident than the documents behind them. Against this, the Siena accounts stress that the hosts were handled, moved, dusted, breathed on and left under ordinary conditions, and that mould was found on the glass and not on the hosts.

The Archdiocese's own page recalls the view of Fra Fortunato, a custodian of the basilica: the Blessed Sacrament is to be adored on bended knee, not examined with lenses and reagents. That is a good place to stand. A believer may be glad of the study and may also be at peace without it.

• The Archbishops of Siena have had the care of the hosts from the start: Zondadari in 1730, Borghesi in 1789, Anton Felice Zondadari in 1799 and 1815, Mancini in 1854, Scaccia in 1914, Toccabelli in 1944, Buoncristiani in 2014.
• St Pius X, Benedict XV and Pius XI are named by the Register as having recognised the event without visiting. We could not check this in a Vatican text.
• The future Paul VI and St John XXIII are named by the Register among those who prayed before the hosts, with St John Bosco and Blessed Savina Petrilli. These visits rest on that account.
• St John Paul II made a pastoral visit to Siena on 14 September 1980 and adored the hosts. His address to the clergy and religious in the cathedral that day refers to this adoration.
• Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later Benedict XVI, visited the basilica, according to the journalist Antonio Socci, who writes that he accompanied him.
• The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith approved the 2014 inspection.
• Pope Francis granted a plenary indulgence for the Eucharistic Year of 2014 to 2015, according to Avvenire.

Siena has made this its own. The Archdiocese lists the regular devotions:

• A Eucharistic day on the 17th of each month, recalling the finding on 17 August 1730.
• The homage of the contrade, the historic districts of Siena that run the Palio.
• The visit of children making their First Communion.
• A solemn procession on Corpus Christi.
• A seven-day Eucharistic devotion at the end of September.
• Weekly prayer for priestly and religious vocations.

The Italian scientist Enrico Medi, a devout Catholic, is remembered for speaking of the hosts, in substance, as a direct act of God kept up across centuries as a witness to Christ's presence. That is his own conviction.