Sanctuary of Lanciano

A Byzantine cenobium on the hill of Anxanum

Long before the present church, the site was occupied by a small church dedicated to Saints Legonziano and Domiziano — San Legonziano in local tradition.^[2] Around the 8th century, this sanctuary was entrusted to a community of Basilian monks, those Catholic religious of the Greek rite who spread through southern Italy at the time of the Byzantine iconoclast crisis.^[3] It was in their church, around 750, that the miracle occurred : a celebrating monk, doubting the Real Presence, saw, at the consecration, the host change into flesh and the wine into blood (full account in the dedicated article).

The shrine traditionally accompanies the account of the miracle with a devotional formula hailing in this monk the blessed witness chosen by Heaven to confirm the faith.^[4]

The Basilians remained at Lanciano until the 11th century. According to local tradition, they were driven out of the city for grave disorders, and the monastery then passed under the care of the flourishing Benedictine abbey of San Giovanni in Venere, on the nearby coast of Fossacesia.^[5] The relics of the miracle followed this change of hands : from the Basilians to the Benedictines, then, in the mid-13th century, to the Conventual Friars Minor.

The arrival of the Franciscans (c. 1240–1252)

The order founded by St Francis of Assisi in 1209 had spread within a generation across all Europe ; by 1230, Abruzzo formed an autonomous Franciscan province.^[6] The friars arrived at Lanciano between 1240 and 1250 and obtained, in 1252, the grant of the ancient church of San Legonziano in order to raise, "in a higher and adjoining place", a new temple dedicated to St Francis.^[7]

This transfer is far from incidental for the history of the shrine : it is to the Conventuals that falls the uninterrupted guarding of the relics for nearly eight centuries. Where Loreto was entrusted successively to Jesuits and then to Capuchins, Lanciano has remained the house of a single religious family — that of St Francis — which still today provides its liturgy, its penitentiary and its custody.^[8]

One of the first Franciscan churches of Abruzzo

The construction of the church of San Francesco began in 1252 and was completed in 1258, in the Gothic style.^[9] It is one of the very first Conventual Franciscan churches built in Abruzzo, raised just above the foundations of San Legonziano — so that the present shrine literally overlies the place of the miracle.

According to the shrine's local tradition, taken up by local sources, the church was begun in 1252 and completed in 1258.^[10]

The Burgundian façade and the portal

Of the medieval building there survive above all the lower half of the façade and the base of the bell tower. This rectangular façade, in squared ashlar stone, offers a fine example of the "simple and solemn" architecture of Franco-Burgundian inspiration which the Franciscans spread through central Italy ; its upper part, with its large oculus, was redone in the 18th century in the Baroque taste.^[11] The linear Gothic portal was completed in 1975 with a bronze door by the sculptor Tommaso Gismondi of Anagni.^[12]

The bell tower, the oldest in the city

The campanile of San Francesco is held to be the oldest in Lanciano. About 31 metres high, it was raised in three stages : a Romanesque base predating 1204, a raising during the Franciscan building campaign (1252–1258), then, in the 16th century, the addition of the octagonal cell and a cupola clad in polychrome majolica tiles — the characteristic silhouette which still dominates the historic centre.^[13]

A single nave for the shrine

In the 18th century, the medieval church was profoundly remodelled. Between 1730 and 1745, the Conventuals rebuilt the interior along Baroque lines : the old Gothic structure became a single nave, vast and lofty, flanked by two lesser altars near the presbytery.^[14] The aim was clear : to give the miracle a setting worthy of growing devotion and to ease the flow of pilgrims towards the altar of the relics.

The stuccoes of this Baroque campaign were executed by Michele Clerici ; the vaults received frescoes by the Theatine painter Donato Teodoro (c. 1740), depicting three biblical heroines — Judith, Rachel and Esther — traditional figures of fidelity and salvation.^[15] There were added also canvases by Nicola Ranieri of Guardiagrele and ironwork from the workshops of that same town, renowned for its goldsmithery.^[16]

The organ of Clement XIV

A recent restoration brought back to light a monumental organ and its case, made between 1769 and 1774 by Modesto Salvini of Orsogna, and offered — according to the shrine's tradition — by Pope Clement XIV, himself a Conventual Friar Minor.^[17] This detail is significant : a Franciscan pope endowing with an organ the Franciscan church that guards the Eucharistic miracle traditionally held to be the oldest — the whole coherence of the order gathered around its treasure.

At the centre of all the devotion lie the two relics of the miracle : the Flesh — a host turned into tissue, once fixed upon a disc — and the Blood, clotted into five globules of unequal weight. Their material presentation evolved over the centuries, up to the setting the pilgrim contemplates today.

The Neapolitan silver monstrance (1713)

The centrepiece is a silver monstrance of Neapolitan workmanship, made in 1713 and offered by a man of Lanciano, Domenico Coli.^[18] Two angels in adoration uphold the lunette ; on the ribbon floating between their hands runs the inscription of the Tantum ergo of St Thomas Aquinas :

"Let us, bowed low, venerate so great a Sacrament." — "Tantum ergo Sacramentum veneremur cernui", hymn Pange lingua by St Thomas Aquinas (1264), engraved on the monstrance^[19]

It is in this monstrance that the Flesh is exposed, while the Blood is kept in a second reliquary.

The crystal chalice

The five globules of blood are enclosed in a rock-crystal chalice of the 17th century, which leaves the venerated matter visible.^[20] Tradition reports a detail often repeated : weighed together or separately, the five globules would give the same weight — a fact which the old canonical examinations recorded as prodigious, and which the article on the miracle discusses in detail.

The monumental marble altar (1902)

For centuries, the relics changed place and reliquary several times ; according to the shrine's sources, they were transferred into the church of San Francesco in 1637.^[21] But it was at the beginning of the 20th century that they were given their definitive setting : a small marble temple raised above the high altar, at the centre of the presbytery, inaugurated on 4 October 1902 — the feast of St Francis.^[22] Sources diverge on its author : the design is attributed to the engineer Filippo Sargiacomo, and the marble execution to Angelo Rocca of Carrara.^[23]

The 1713 monstrance took its place there in an upper tabernacle, the crystal chalice in a second tabernacle, the whole crowned by a baldachin borne on columns of Carrara marble. A double staircase allows the pilgrim to ascend on either side to the level of the relics, to contemplate them at close hand — an arrangement which makes the altar a veritable architectural "monstrance", after the manner of the marble setting of Loreto.^[24]

From the medieval building site to the suppressions

The adjoining convent was built at the same time as the church, between 1250 and 1260, then rebuilt during the Baroque campaign of 1730–1745, with a cloister of Renaissance appearance remodelled in the 16th century.^[25] A spiritual centre and house of studies, it nevertheless knew two centuries of spoliation.

The friars were expelled a first time in 1799, then driven out again in 1809 when the Napoleonic laws confiscated religious property for the benefit of the State.^[26] The complex served thereafter as barracks, town hall, court-house and even college — a fate shared by so many Italian convents after the suppressions of 1809 and then those of the Kingdom of Italy in 1866. During those decades, the guarding of the relics was assured as best it could be, but the shrine kept its vocation : the miracle never left Lanciano.

The return of the Franciscans (1952–1953)

The Conventual Friars Minor resumed a permanent residence in the convent in 1952, and the complex was officially restored to them in 1953.^[27] A few decades later, in 1997, they recovered full possession of the whole convent, until then shared with civil uses.^[28] It is this community which, in 1970, authorised and accompanied the scientific examinations entrusted to Professor Odoardo Linoli — the decisive episode recounted in the article on the miracle.

The museum and the excavations of the Jubilee 2000

In 1994, the shrine opened the Permanent Museum of the Eucharistic Miracle, which gathers 18th-century canvases, liturgical vestments, pontifical bulls, incunabula and Italic fragments unearthed during excavations.^[29] For the Jubilee of the year 2000, restoration works brought to light, beneath the square and the church, a Roman aqueduct, 16th-century frescoes and the remains of the primitive church of San Legonziano (6th–7th century) — archaeological confirmation of the palimpsest which makes the place unique.^[30]

Anxanum, capital of the Frentani

The shrine cannot be understood without its city. Lanciano is ancient Anxanum, which the Roman historians — Varro, Livy, Pliny the Elder — held to be the capital of the Frentani, an Italic people of the Adriatic coast.^[31] The city prospered thanks to its fairs, the Roman nundinae held every nine days, whose memory lived on through the centuries.

The city of fairs

In 1212, Emperor Frederick II raised Lanciano to the rank of land of the royal domain, in recognition of its wealth : the ancient nundinae became great half-yearly fairs, held in May and August, which drew hundreds of merchants from all over the peninsula and from beyond the Adriatic, notably from Dalmatia.^[32] This commercial vocation made Lanciano a cosmopolitan crossroads — and the Eucharistic miracle, displayed in the heart of the city, became a pole of devotion for passing merchants and pilgrims.

"Lanciano la bella" — beautiful Lanciano — as it was called, city of fairs, of music and of the miracle.^[33]

The cathedral of the bridge

Above the Bridge of Diocletian, a Roman work of large 3rd-century arches, stands Santa Maria del Ponte Cathedral, patroness of the city, built in the 15th century.^[34] Lanciano is thus a city with two sacred poles : the Madonna del Ponte, who watches over the bridge and the city, and the Eucharistic Miracle, which makes it a place of universal pilgrimage.

The recognition of the Church

The Church has never defined the miracle of Lanciano by a solemn dogmatic pronouncement — as with the other Eucharistic miracles, its recognition belongs to cultic approval and authorised devotion (the distinction between levels of magisterial engagement is treated in the article on the miracle). But the shrine was the object of many canonical examinations from the 16th century onwards, and the shrine's notices report that at the time of the 1975 Jubilee the miracle was hailed as an authentic fact worthy of veneration ; in the absence of any published text recovered, this assessment remains a reported tradition of the shrine.^[35]

The great pilgrims

Among the visitors to the shrine, one towers above all the others : Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, Archbishop of Kraków, came to venerate the relics on 3 November 1974, four years before his election to the pontificate. He inscribed on the shrine's register a prayer that has remained famous :

"Make us believe in Thee ever more, hope in Thee, love Thee." — "Fac nos tibi semper magis credere, in te spem habere, te diligere", Cardinal Karol Wojtyła (the future John Paul II), register of the Shrine of Lanciano, 3 November 1974^[36]

Having become pope, John Paul II recalled in 2004 that cardinal's pilgrimage.^[37] Many other cardinals followed : Achille Silvestrini (1990), Józef Glemp, Primate of Poland (1992), Paul Poupard (1997), Carlo Maria Martini (1998), Angelo Sodano, Secretary of State (2002), and Francis Arinze, Prefect of Divine Worship (2003 and 2005), who hailed in the Eucharist "the centre and summit of the Church's worship".^[38]

Liturgical life and devotion

Today, the shrine is served by the Conventual community, which provides Mass, Eucharistic adoration, the penitentiary and the welcome of pilgrims. Lanciano has become "the city of the Miracle", a required stop on itineraries of Eucharistic devotion, alongside the other places of the hub The Eucharistic Miracles. 4 October, feast of St Francis and anniversary of the monumental altar, and the great solemnities of Corpus Christi gather there crowds from all over Italy and abroad.

Why build, guard and adorn for thirteen centuries a church around a fragment of flesh ? Because that fragment, for Catholic faith, is no curiosity : it is the visible sign of an invisible yet real presence. The miracle of Lanciano does not found the dogma of the Real Presence — that dogma rests on the word of Christ and was defined by the Council of Trent (see Eucharistic Real Presence) — but it confirms it before eyes of flesh, as a condescension offered to the weakness of faith.

"If the Lord Jesus deigned to make visible what He works invisibly at every Mass, it is to strengthen our faith, not to replace it." — Traditional meaning of Eucharistic devotion, in the line of St Thomas Aquinas^[39]

St Thomas, indeed, whose verses adorn the monstrance, had sung this mystery in the Adoro te devote :

"On the Cross lay hid Thy Godhead only ; here Thy Manhood lies hidden too. Yet, believing and confessing both, I ask what the penitent thief asked." — "In cruce latebat sola Deitas, at hic latet simul et humanitas…", St Thomas Aquinas, Adoro te devote^[40]

It is this faith that the pilgrim comes to rekindle at Lanciano : not to see in order to believe, but to believe better because, once in history, the veil was parted. As John Paul II wrote on the threshold of the third millennium, "the Church lives by the Eucharist"^[41] — and Lanciano has been, since the 8th century, its witness in stone, in flesh and in blood.

Related Ignispedia articles

• The Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano (c. 750) — the account, the Linoli analyses, the objections and the doctrine
• The Eucharistic Miracles — the ensemble hub
• Eucharistic Real Presence — the dogma defined at Trent
• The Shrine of Loreto — another great Italian shrine built around a relic
• St Peter's Basilica in Rome — the setting of the Apostle's tomb

Main sources

• Chiesa di San Francesco (Lanciano) and Convento di San Francesco (Lanciano), it.wikipedia.org.
• Storia di Lanciano and Lanciano Cathedral, Wikipedia.
• Official shrine website : miracoloeucaristico.eu ("Il Santuario", "Visitatori Illustri").
• BeWeB — Beni ecclesiastici in web (Italian Episcopal Conference), "La chiesa di San Francesco — Santuario del Miracolo Eucaristico".
• Miracolo eucaristico di Lanciano, it.cathopedia.org and it.wikipedia.org.