Today, the Orthodox Church honors the patron saint of Naples – Saint Gennaro (January). PZdnes

Today, the Orthodox Church celebrates the memory of the martyr Januarius, who lived at the end of the 3rd and the beginning of the 4th century. He was a scholar and a virtuous Christian, that’s why in adulthood he was elected bishop of the Italian region of Campania with the capital city of Naples. He developed a very successful activity and a number of worthy and educated people joined his church. The number of believers multiplied, and their life was a bright example for all the other inhabitants of the district. This was also the best sermon about the truth of the Christian teaching and about its high morality.

The martyrdom of St. Januarius is known from the “Acts of the Martyrs” (Acta Martyrum), collections of accounts of the end of life and death of Christian martyrs, which are based on court records, reworked in the form of edifying readings. Apart from them, testimonies of contemporaries or later stories and legends reworked by ecclesiastical writers and apologists are used to compile the deeds and lives of the saints. Information about St. January is also contained in the Legend of John the Deacon (Acts of St. Sosius), ca. 900

Saint Gennaro

He was sentenced to death in 305 shortly before Emperor Constantine the Great made Christianity the imperial religion. A pious woman, shortly after his execution, collected San Gennaro’s blood in a vial. It was hidden in the catacombs of the city, along with his body, and years later one of the priests discovered that the blood inside liquefies before terrible events such as wars, natural disasters and epidemics. The padreto collected the strange object and after many years of observation found that the sign also occurs on fixed dates three times a year – on September 19 – the day of the saint’s death, on December 16 – the anniversary of the terrible eruption of the Vesuvius volcano (from 1631) and on the first Saturday of May, when his relics were transferred from the village of Agro Marciano to the Neapolitan catacombs. The feast day of San Gennaro is the most important religious holiday in Naples. It is also said that one of the other miracles of the saint is that it was he who stopped the lava from the volcano outside the gates of Naples. The saint was bishop of Benevento, and later considered the patron saint of Naples.

1389

The first official mention of the miracle of Saint Gennaro was recorded in 1389. The city’s 13th-century Gothic cathedral is dedicated to him. It holds the two sealed vials of his coagulated blood housed in a silver reliquary. According to legend, some of his blood was collected by a woman named Eusevia. She said that the martyr’s blood only coagulated on the eighth day after his execution. Then the dried mass of blood on one side of the reliquary turned into a solid mass that covered almost the entire vessel.

Liquefied Blood of San Gennaro – https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=527697005435240

According to cultural anthropology professor Marino Niola of the University of Naples, San Gennaro is a “folk saint” and his cult is based on Neapolitan legends and myths. The miracle is extremely popular and considered a good omen for Naples and its Campania region. And when it does not, it is considered an omen, foretelling war, famine, disease or other disaster, the local people say.

The Wonders of San Gennaro

This is evidenced by the numerous cases in which, after the miracle of San Gennaro did not happen, great disasters befell the city, all of Italy and Europe in general. For example, in 1527, Naples was devastated by a plague that claimed the lives of 40,000 people. The miracle of the liquefaction of the saint’s blood did not happen on September 19, 1939. It was then that the horror of World War II began. San Gennaro’s blood remained coagulated in May of the following year, when Italy entered the war. The same omen is associated with the bombing of Naples by Anglo-American aviation. Three years later, just after the armistice that the country concluded with the Allies on September 8, 1943, the blood also remained in its normal form. It was then that Naples was occupied by the Nazis.

In 1973, the city faced what seemed like a nightmare from the Middle Ages – a cholera epidemic spreading like wildfire. More than 1,000 patients were hospitalized and isolated, but only 11 died. Everyone believes that then the benevolence of San Gennaro, whose blood liquefied on all three dates during the year, saved the citizens from the mass plague.

The dried blood in the vial does not liquefy on December 16, 2016. During it, Central Italy was shaken by a series of earthquakes. Then there was great seismic activity all over the world – Spain, India, Greece. In Ecuador (April 17), the magnitude reached 7.8 on the Richter scale.

To the dismay of the faithful, Saint Gennaro’s blood remained in its usual solid form in 2020. The failed miracle was linked to the arrival of the COVID-19 coronavirus, which claimed the lives of 2,500 local people and millions worldwide.

Therefore, when on September 19, 2021, the Archbishop of Naples, Monsignor Domenico Battaglia, announced to those present in the cathedral that the patron saint’s blood had liquefied with the traditional waving of a white handkerchief, the event was met with jubilation and long applause as a sign, that the epidemic is already passing.

The reliquary itself is made of silver, enamel and precious stones. It has the shape of a miniature Gothic cathedral of gold and silver, on the top of which shines one of the largest emeralds in the world, in which the blood of the saint is stored.

The blood of San Gennaro did not liquefy in 1979, although the most beloved pope of the last century – John Paul II – prayed for a miracle. And misfortune is not late. On November 23, 1980, the city of Naples was awakened by a magnitude 6.9 earthquake. The dead and the damage are innumerable. The tragedy finds expression in a work by the famous American artist Andy Warhol.

The martyrdom of St. Gennaro