A feast of the universal Church came out of this town. In 1263 a Bohemian priest who doubted transubstantiation was saying mass on the tomb of Saint Christina when blood, the chronicles say, came out of the consecrated host and soaked the corporal. The proofs were carried to Orvieto, to pope Urban IV, who the following year instituted the feast of Corpus Christi; the corporal stayed in Orvieto, in a reliquary by the Sienese goldsmith Ugolino di Vieri, and the cathedral was built to keep it. Raphael painted the scene in the Vatican Stanze.
The town, though, is much older than its relic: it was founded in 264 BC under the name of Volsinii Novi, after the Romans had destroyed Etruscan Velzna, and it grew along the Via Cassia. On the evening of the twenty-third of July the streets fill with the Mysteries of Saint Christina, living tableaux that tell the martyrdom of the child saint: the roles and the settings are handed down from father to son. And in June 1944, in this territory, Germans and British fought a battle in which five hundred and ninety-seven Commonwealth men died: the war cemetery is here.
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📅 Every year, on 24 July; in 1264 the Eucharistic miracle gave rise to Corpus Domini
Bolsena celebrates Saint Christina on 24 July, in the basilica dedicated to her, where in 1263 the famous Eucharistic miracle occurred that led to the institution of the feast of Corpus Domini.
A white wine carved into Etruscan tufa history, toasted by Garibaldi's Thousand: Orvieto has held Denominazione di Origine Controllata status since 1971.
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Outside Bolsena, but an easy day trip away.
