Miracle of The Blood
The church houses a vial of the blood of Saint Januarius which is brought out twice a year, on the first Saturday in May and on 19 September, when the dried blood usually liquefies. If the blood fails to liquefy, then legend has it that disaster will befall Naples.
A recent hypothesis by Garlaschelli, Ramaccini, and Della Sala is that the vial contains a thixotropic gel, he also explained on the Blood Miracle of Riddles of the Dead series on National Geographic Channel. In such a substance viscosity increases if left unstirred and decreases if stirred or moved. Researchers have proposed specifically a suspension of hydrated iron oxide, FeO(OH), which reproduces the color and behavior of the 'blood' in the ampoule. The suspension can be prepared from simple chemicals that would have been easily available locally since antiquity.
Read more about this topic: Cathedral (Naples)
Famous quotes containing the words miracle of, miracle and/or blood:
“O miracle of men!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“A miracle is the violation of mathematical, divine, immutable, eternal laws. By this very statement, a miracle is a contradiction in terms. A law cannot be immutable and violable at the same time.... God cannot do anything without reason; so what reason could make him temporarily disfigure his own handiwork?”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned.
O I’ll leap up to my God: who pulls me down?
See, see, where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament.
One drop would save my soul, half a drop, ah my Christ.”
—Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)