SIENA

ITALY, 1730

Eucharistic Miracle of

In the Basilica of San

Francesco in Siena, 223

consecrated Hosts are kept

intact for 276 years.

Archbishop Tiberio Borghese

closed unconsecrated hosts in

a sealed tin box for ten years.

The scientific commission

put in charge when the box

was reopened, found only

worms and rotted fragments.

The Siena event is against

any physical and biological

law, the scientist Enrico

Medi stated: “This direct

intervention from God is the

miracle [...], accomplished

and maintained for centuries,

to testify to the permanent

reality of Christ in the

Eucharistic sacrament”.

mong the most important documents that

describe the miracle, there is a memoir written

by a certain Macchi in 1730, in which is

written that on August 14, 1730 some thieves were

able to enter San Francesco’s Church in Siena, and

stole the chalice containing 351 consecrated

Hosts. After three days, on August 17th, in the

alms box of the sanctuary of Santa Maria in

Provengano, in the dust, were found the 351

consecrated Hosts intact. The entire population

celebrated the finding of the consecrated Hosts

which were right away taken back to the church of

San Francesco in a solemn procession. With the

passing of time the Hosts were not altered. Many

times, distinguished men examined them with

every means available and the conclusions were

always the same: “The sacred Hosts are still fresh,

intact, uncorrupted, chemically pure, and do not

present any sign of alteration”. In 1914, Pope St.

Pius X authorized a test to which many professors

of health, chemistry and pharmaceutics, among

whom was also the well-known Professor Siro

Grimaldi.

The final conclusionof the edited

report stated: “The sacred Hosts of Siena are the

classic example of the perfect conservation of

particles from unleavened bread consecrated in

the year 1730, and constitute a unique phenom-

enon, full of interest which reverses the natural

laws of conservation of organic matter, [...] It is

strange, surprising, abnormal: the laws of nature

have been reversed, in the glass there was mold,

the unleavened bread has been more refractory of

the crystal [...] it is a unique fact contained in the

annals of science.”

Additional tests were done in 1922, in occasion of

the transfer of the Hosts in a cylinder of pure crystal,

in 1950 and 1951. Pope John Paul II, during a

visit in the city of Siena on September 14, 1980,

said regarding the Hosts: “It is the Real Presence!”

The permanent miracle of the sacred Hosts is kept

in the Chapel Piccolimini in the summer months

and in the Chapel Martinozzi in the winter

months. Numerous are the initiatives that induce

the citizens of Siena in honor of the sacred Hosts:

the tribute of the political districts, the respect of

children having recently made their First Holy

Communion, the solemn procession in the cele-

bration of Corpus Christi, the Eucharistic

ceremony at the end of September, the day of the

Eucharistic adoration of the 17th of each month in

memory of the finding of August 17, 1730.

His Holiness John Paul II

in 1980 in Siena in adoration

before the Hosts of the miracle

Interior of St. Francis

Church in Siena

Basilica of St. Francis, Siena

Detail of a painting depicting the Hosts of the miracle in

Santa Maria in Provenzano

The sacred Hosts in the

processional monstrance

The Sacred Hosts of Siena

Fourteen tests were made to verify the condition of the Hosts.

The most scientific one was the one wanted by St. Pius X in 1914,

in the presence of many scientists

This painting of Master Stefano di Giovanni, known as “il Sassetta,”

is preserved in England in the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle.

It depicts the scene of another Eucharistic miracle that took place

near Siena in a Carmelite monastery. The painting depicts a Carmelite

monk who, tormented by doubts regarding the Real Presence of Jesus

in the Blessed Sacrament, is freed from the devil after receiving

Communion