Corporal of Bolsena

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The Corporal of Bolsena processing out of Orvieto's Duomo as part of Corpus Christi celebrations.

The Corporal of Bolsena, preserved in a rich reliquary at Orvieto in the cathedral, is a miraculous cloth of the type of the Shroud of Turin, though not nearly so famous. The reddish spots on the cloth, upon close observation, show the profile of a face of the type by which the Saviour is traditionally represented. The origin of the stains is related to be from communion bread at the nearby city of Bolsena that miraculously turned bloody in the hands of an officiating priest who had doubts about Transubstantiation. A corporal is a white altar linen on which consecrated items are placed during the celebration of the Eucharist.

The so-called "Miracle of Bolsena" is not officially supported by the Roman Catholic Church, though it is considered a private revelation for the doubting priest; the historical evidence is hearsay, and its tradition is not altogether consistent. Pope Urban IV makes no mention of it in the Bull by which he established the feast of Corpus Christi, although the legend of the miracle is set in his lifetime and is claimed by its partisans to have determined him in his purpose of establishing the feast. The contemporary biographers of Urban are silent: Muratori, Rerum Italicarum scriptores, (vol. III, pt. l, 400ff) and Thierricus Vallicoloris, who, in his life of the pope in Latin verse, describes in detail all the events of the pontiff's stay at Orvieto, referring elsewhere also to the devotion of Urban in celebrating the Mass, and to the institution of the Feast of Corpus Christi, without at any time making allusion to a miracle at Bolsena.

The miracle of Bolsena is related in the inscription on a slab of red marble in the church of St Christina, and is of later date than the canonization of St. Thomas Aquinas (1328). The oldest record of the miracle is in the enamel representations of it that adorn the front of the reliquary (made in 1337-39).

A tapestry depicting the Miracle of Bolsena as part of the Corpus Christi parade in Orvieto.

In 1344 Clement VI, referring to this matter in a brief, uses only the words propter miraculum aliquod (Pennazzi, 367); Gregory XI, in a Brief of 25 June, 1337, gives a short account of the miracle; and abundant reference to it is found later (1435), in the sermons of the Dominican preacher Leonardo Mattei of Udine ("In festo Corp. Christi", xiv, ed. Venice, 1652, 59) and by St. Antoninus of Florence (Chronica, III, 19, xiii, 1), the latter, however, does not say (as the local legend recites) that the priest doubted the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, but, merely that a few drops from the chalice fell upon the corporal. For the rest, similar legends of the "blood-stained corporal" are quite frequent in the legend collections of even earlier date than the fourteenth century, and coincide with the great Eucharistic polemics of the ninth to the twelfth centuries.

The Feast of Corpus Christi is one of the major public holidays for the city of Orvieto, during which the Corporal of Bolsena is paraded around the city with much fanfare.

Most of this text is based on the Public Domain Catholic Encyclopedia; update as required.