Januarius ( ; ; Neapolitan and ), also known as , was Bishop of Benevento and is a martyr and saint of the Catholic Church. While no contemporary sources on his life are preserved, later sources and legends say he died during the Great Persecution, which ended with Diocletian's retirement in 305.
Januarius is the patron saint of Naples, where the faithful gather three times a year in Naples Cathedral to witness the liquefaction of what is claimed to be a sample of his blood kept in a sealed ampoule.
Life Little is known of Januarius' life. What follows mostly derives from later Christian sources, such as the Acta Bononensia (BHL 4132, not earlier than 6th century) and the Acta Vaticana (BHL 4115, 9th century), and later folk traditions.
Legend According to various hagiographies, Januarius was born in Benevento to a rich patrician family that traced its descent to the Caudini tribe of the Samnites. At age 15, he became local priest of his parish in Benevento, which at the time had only a small Christian community. When Januarius was 20, he became Bishop of Naples and befriended Juliana of Nicomedia and Sossius, whom he met during his studies for the priesthood. During Emperor Diocletian's -year-long persecution of Christians, Januarius hid some of his fellow Christians and prevented them from being caught. But while visiting Sossius in jail, he too was arrested. He and his colleagues were condemned to be thrown to wild bears in the Flavian Amphitheater at Pozzuoli, but the sentence was changed due to fear of public disturbance, and they were instead beheaded at the Solfatara crater near Pozzuoli. Other legends say either that the wild beasts refused to eat him or that he was thrown into a furnace but came out unscathed.
History The earliest historical reference to Januarius is in a letter by Uranius, bishop of Nola, dated 432, on the death of his mentor Paulinus of Nola.Uranius Nolanius (432), De Vita et Obitu Paulini Nolani. Published by Surius as Epistola "De Obitu Sancti Paulini" Online version accessed on 2009-06-20. in Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities edited William Smith (1870). The letter says the ghosts of Januarius and Martin of Tours appeared to Paulinus three days before his death in 431. Of Januarius, the letter says only that he was "bishop as well as martyr, an illustrious member of the Neapolitan church". The Acta Bononensia says, "At Pozzuoli in Campania [is honored the memory] of the holy martyrs Januarius, Bishop of Beneventum, Festus his deacon, and Desiderius lector, together with Sossius deacon of the church of Misenum, Proculus, deacon of Pozzuoli, Eutyches, and Acutius, who after chains and imprisonment were beheaded under the emperor Diocletian".
Legacy Celebrations
The Feast of San Gennaro is celebrated on 19 September in the General Roman Calendar of the Catholic Church."Martyrologium Romanum" (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2001 ). In the Eastern Church, it is celebrated on 21 April.Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford University Press, 2005 ) The city of Naples has more than 50 official patron saints, but its principal patron is Saint Januarius. Januarius has been traditionally invoked by the people of Naples on several occasions, e.g. to ask for help, healing and special favors; memorably, he was called on to stop the 1631 eruption of Mount Vesuvius, and the lava – that was about to destroy the towns around it – slowed down.
In the United States, the Feast of San Gennaro is also a highlight of the year for New York's Little Italy, with the saint's polychrome statue carried through the middle of a street fair. A fictionalized version of the event is depicted in The Godfather Part II.
Relics According to an early hagiography, Januarius' relics were transferred by order of Severus, Bishop of Naples, to the Neapolitan catacombs "outside the walls" ().Norman (1986), p. 331 In the early ninth century the body was moved to Beneventum by Sico, prince of Benevento, with the head remaining in Naples. Subsequently, during the turmoil at the time of Frederick Barbarossa, his body was moved again, to the Territorial Abbey of Montevergine, where it was rediscovered in 1480.
In 1497, at the instigation of Cardinal Oliviero Carafa, the body was transferred to Naples, where he is the city's patron saint. Carafa commissioned a richly decorated crypt, the Succorpo, beneath the cathedral to house the reunited body and head. The Succorpo was finished in 1506 and is considered one of the city's prominent monuments of the High Renaissance.Norman 1986:323-355.
Blood
Januarius is famous for the annual liquefaction of his blood, which, according to legend, was saved by a woman named Eusebia just after his death. A chronicle of Naples written in 1382 describes the cult of Saint Januarius in detail, but mentions neither the relic nor the miracle.(1382) Croniche de Inclyta Cità de Napole In Altamura, Antonio (ed.), Cronaca di Partenope, Napoli, 1974 The first certain date is 1389, when it was found to have melted.Chronicon Siculum [1340-1396], ed. Giuseppe De Blasiis, Naples, 1887, p. 85Norman 1993:332 and note. Over the next two and a half centuries official reports began to appear declaring that the blood spontaneously melted, at first once a year, then twice, and finally three times a year. While the report of the first incidence of liquefaction made no explicit reference to the saint's skull, soon afterward assertions began to appear that this relic was activating the melting process, as if the blood, recognizing a part of the body to which it belonged, "were impatient while waiting for its resurrection".Cesare Baronio, Annales Ecclesiastici, Rome 1594, vol. 2, p. 803. This explanation was definitively abandoned only in the 18th century.de Ceglia Francesco Paolo, "Thinking with the Saint: The Miracle of Saint Januarius of Naples and Science in Early Modern Europe" in Early Science and Medicine 19 (2014), p. 133-173
Thousands of people assemble to witness this event in Naples Cathedral three times a year: on 19 September (Saint Januarius' Day, commemorating his martyrdom), 16 December (celebrating his patronage of Naples and its archdiocese), and the Saturday before the first Sunday of May (commemorating the reunification of his relics).Chiesa di San Gennaro - Duomo (Napoli)
The blood is also said to spontaneously liquefy at certain other times, such as papal visits. It supposedly liquefied in the presence of Pope Pius IX in 1848, but not that of John Paul II in 1979 or Benedict XVI in 2007. On March 21, 2015, Pope Francis venerated the dried blood during a visit to Naples Cathedral, saying the Lord's Prayer over it and kissing it. Archbishop Sepe then said, "The blood has half liquefied, which shows that Saint Januarius loves our pope and Naples."
When the blood fails to liquefy it is said to be a bad omen, some people even correlate some of the years when the miracle did not happen with wars or pandemics. Times where the blood did not liquefy include: September 1939, September 1940, September 1943, September 1973, September 1980, December 2016 and December 2020. The blood usually takes anywhere from 2 minutes to one hour to fully liquify but it can take days.
Ritual liquefaction
The blood is stored in two hermetically sealed small ampoules, held since the 17th century in a silver reliquary between two round glass plates about 12 cm wide. The smaller, cylindrical ampoule contains only a few reddish spots on its walls, the bulk having allegedly been removed and taken to Spain by Charles III. The larger, almond-shaped ampoule, with a capacity of about 60 ml, is about 60% filled with a dark reddish substance.San Gennaro: Vescovo e martire (in Italian) Separate reliquaries hold bone fragments believed to belong to Januarius.
The ampoules are kept in a bank vault whose keys are held by a commission of local notables, including the mayor of Naples; the bones are kept in a crypt under Naples Cathedral's main altar. On feast days, these relics are taken in procession from the cathedral to the Monastery of Santa Chiara, where the archbishop holds up the reliquary and tilts it to show that the contents are solid, then places it on the high altar next to the saint's other relics. After intense prayers by the faithful, including the so-called "relatives of Saint Januarius" (parenti di San Gennaro), the content of the larger vial typically appears to liquify. The archbishop then holds up the vial and tilts it again to demonstrate that liquefaction has taken place. The ampoules remain exposed on the altar for eight days, while the priests move or turn them periodically to show that the contents remain liquid. Sir Francis Ronalds gives a detailed description of the May 1819 ritual in his travel journal.
The liquefaction sometimes takes place almost immediately and sometimes takes hours or even days. According to records kept at the Duomo, on rare occasions the contents fail to liquify, are found already liquified when the ampoules are taken from the safe,"Sangue di San Gennaro liquefatto prima della processione" Corriere dell Sera, 4 May 1997, p.15 or liquify outside the usual dates.
Scientific studies While the Catholic Church has always supported the celebrations, it has never formulated an official statement on the phenomenon and maintains a neutral stance about scientific investigations. It does not permit the vials to be opened nor examinations of the substances contents, for fear that doing so may cause irreparable damage. This makes close analysis impossible. Nevertheless, a spectroscopic analysis performed in 1902 by Gennaro Sperindeo claimed that the spectrum was consistent with hemoglobin.Gennaro, Sperindeo and Raffaele Januario (1901), Il Miracolo di S. Gennaro, 3rd ed., Naples, D'Auria, p. 67-72. A later analysis, with similar conclusions, was carried out by a team in 1989,F. D'Onofrio; P. L. Baima Bollone; M. Cannas; quoted by Michele Cardinal Giordano (1990), Prolusione, in Proceedings of the Symposium on the VI centenary of the first liquefaction of the blood (1389–1989), December 1989, Napoli, Torre del Greco (Napoli), p. 10. but the reliability of these observations has been questioned.Franco Ramaccini, Investigation into the Blood of San Gennaro, on cicap.org , CICAP
"The results of that spectroscopy were not submitted to the peer-reviewed judgment of a scientific journal; their quality, even at its most favorable, requires too much interpretation from the observer to constitute a convincing argument. Inexplicably, a prism spectrometer was used instead of a modern electronic spectrometer. Multiple spectra, obtained within minutes of each other, were interpreted as each revealing a different hemoglobin derivative, and explained as a miracle in progress, while, it should be noted, the substance had long been in the liquid phase, not liquefying." While clotted blood can be liquefied by mechanical stirring, the resulting suspension cannot solidify again.
Measurements made in 1900 and 1904 claimed that the ampoules' weight increased by up to 28 grams during liquefaction. Later measurements with a precision balance, performed over five years, failed to detect any variation.
Various suggestions for the contents' composition have been advanced, such as a material that is photosensitive, hygroscopic, or has a low melting point.Eusèbe Salverte, Des sciences occultes ou essai sur la magie, les prodiges et les miracles, Paris, Baillière, 1826.Henri Broch. Le Paranormal (1985); ed. ext., Paris, Seuil, 1989, p. 109Joe Nickell, John F. Fischer, Mysterious Realms, Buffalo, Prometheus Books, 1993, p 159. These explanations face technical difficulties, such as the variability of the phenomenon and its lack of correlation to ambient temperature.