As a 38 year veteran of teaching in Catholic Schools, I've worked with a few priests who claimed to witness the "miracle of San Gennaro's blood". Frankly, they would say anything to make students believe. The best thing about San Gennaro is the feast they celebrate in New York's Little Italy every September. It's the best fun, and the best food you will ever have.
@@kimsland999 When I started teaching in the '80's, Catholic schools had better environment and better behaved kids than public schools. I wasn't a practicing Catholic as an adult. Actually, the religiosity wasn't much of an issue until the 2000's. That's when the Church began to notice the decline in attendance and identification with organized religion. Schools started to force teachers of all subjects to infuse some faith-based lessons. Schools also put more prayer gatherings into the schedule which decreased classroom time. It is madness now. I had been a skeptic for nearly twenty years, but I finally decided it was nonsense 10 years ago. I retired one year ago today.
@@fje6902 "Catholic schools had better environment and better behaved kids than public schools" you are aware that is because they are brutally underfunded, over crowded, severely lack sufficient amount of teachers and have to take in all children including those coming from dysfunctional families, among other problems, right?
I love how Emma links her sources and evidence and doesn't just want us to trust her but we can actually see the evidence ourselves. I always hate it when people just say, "JuST trUsT Me, bRo!" Truly one of my biggest pet peeves
@@tariq_sharif They have and use only one source. Oh, the Bible? No, no, no, that's for telling people they deserve Hell. The only true source is the opinions of a pastor at my church. No need to link it!
Rare indeed, and most appreaciated! I am pretty sure everybody takes whatever video essayists say as gospel... I mean: They put so much effort in the video an are an independant researcher: They MUST always do good research and report objective truth, right?! RIGHT?!!?!?
I don't really believe in the efficacy of many of these relics, BUT... as a self-described occult-enthusiast witchy goth girl, I have to admire the Catholic Church's commitment to the goth and macabre aesthetic 🖤💙🖤
I'm sure you've already heard about the incorruptibles (saints' bodies that don't decompose after death), but if you haven't, check it out, it should be right up your alley! 🙂
@@AW-uv3cb YES there's a super gnarly picture I've seen of a GLASS COFFIN with a saint's entire preserved corpse inside and while it feels exploitative...it's super gross and weird and I love it.
18:50 I'm a lifelong atheist who also loves traveling around Europe. I always visit the churches. They tell so much about the lives of the people over time. The hopes, fears, desires, tragedies, and victories are all recorded in those buildings. And when I'm lucky enough to be in one of those beautiful buildings when someone is playing the organ and the glorious music is echoing through the space, that is my secular heaven.
What I see in those churches is the serfs who had to cough up the money for these vanity projects. Yeah, they sure are cool to look at, but the system of oppression they were built upon is depressing. So many lives lived under terrible circumstances just so the rich church leaders could build ever more opulent buildings.
Preach, brother in secularity! For me, I find it fascinating how religion drives people to both great acts of good, at the same time as it drives them to unspeakable crimes.
I enjoy similar aspects of religious architecture and culture, but I get a bit uneasy about it when I consider the cultures and people that were destroyed and plundered to amass most of the resources and land where these structures now stand.
Churches and especially cathedrals are reminders of what a human society _can_ do when collectively motivated. I really like visiting them, and I feel a lot of respect for the dedication of the builders, despite lamenting their (as I see it) misguided intentions. I visited the cathedral in Chartres, France, just recently. Impressive. Will with good conscience recommend a train ride there, if you are visiting Paris. The night time light show is awe-inspiring.
My partner's dad is named Gennaro and he's a staunch atheist. Good dude. Also, speaking as an Italian, don't worry about your pronunciation. It's better than most Americans I've heard.
The funniest relic story I've come across is in Umberto Eco's novel, The Name of the Rose. The main character is in a monastery on a mountain and the monk says that they have an important relic, it's the skull of John the Baptist from when he was a twelve year old boy. Eco's character says, 'But he wasn't beheaded until he was an adult', to which the monk responds, 'And that skull is in the monastery on that mountain over there.' Gotta love Italian relics.
Thoroughly enjoyed that book (though Eco can be a bit of challenge to get through...might be a result of translation), he injects so much history into the story! I enjoyed the movie version also even though it was riddled with a lot of Hollywood baloney and the script deviated from the novel ...
Eco was a decent medieval historian, but that book had just the intention of presenting a broadly correct medieval setting. It's a good book but more comedic oriented.
Former Catholic, loved the deep dive. Miracles like this are largely publicly acknowledged urban legends among the faithful- not required by for belief. That said, even in my most faithful days, the evidence these miracles always seemed lacking.
@@jimgillert20 Because it didn't. The history of lies and propaganda from the Christian church pretty much guarantees it. The only possibility is that the blood, if it even still is blood, is replaced regularly. The only thing I'm unsure of is whether or not the "melting" was originally someone who just dropped a vial of blood then replaced it or if it was done intentionally to inspire "faith."
From one former Catholic to another, " It's all a mystery ", I'm sure you like I have heard this from clergy a few times. Lol, and congrats on your escape from insanity.
Hoo boy! This took me back to when I was a Catholic and I used to deeply believe in this. My school had a mini cathedral inside the building and there, they securedly stored some patron saint's bones (yeah, for real...). And since I was part of the the Catholic Youth League, I got to see them from afar. And I remember just how important it felt for me. Catholicism was a source of great trauma for me for many years, and now I'm gladly just a recovered atheist. But I'll never cease to amaze me to remember all the stuff I used to believe in lol Much love from Latin America!
Lo que pasa es que fuiste mal catequizada. Es al revés, la iglesia está para curar los traumas... los mejores bálsamos siempre son amargos de tragar, pero dulces de vivir.
@@Miolnir3 es todo muy lindo, suena poético inclusive. Pero dónde está la evidencia de lo que dices? Dejé de creer en no sólo la denominación católica, sino toda cosa sobrenatural, por la falta de evidencia feaciente y convincente que hay de que existe tal cosa. Cuando la haya, por supuesto que creeré en cosas que han sido demostradas con evidencia. Pero mientras tanto, sólo siguen siendo eso, palabras bonitas y afirmaciones sin evidencias para respaldarlas.
Catequismo o lo que sea da igual, el texto por sí solo está repleto de problemas, ya sabemos que Moisés no escribió la Torah y tenemos la hipótesis documentaria, el viejo testamento está plagado de imoralidades como la esclavitud, el nuevo testamento se inspira de otras obras Greco-Romanas de ese entonces como la Odisea para eventos de Jesús, etc, etc, etc. Para peores hay gente como Frank Turek o William Lane Craig diciendo cualquier babosada para defender la fé y terminan fallando.@@Miolnir3
I wish everyone had a life where believing in x religion or y religion was the biggest trauma of your life, y’all don’t realize how privileged y’all sound by making up these traumas. Oh yes going to church mass on Sunday completely destroyed my youth I need to recover from it, while people die on the streets
@@balkanbaroque when you don't have an argument, you resort to pathetic ad hominems. I used to live in the streets due to my own religious family kicking me out when I was a minor (so much for Catholic "love"). But let's play your little game and pretend I never did. That still doesn't make your god real. I can be the most privileged person that ever lived and still that is no argument for your god existing in our shared reality. I stopped believing because I realized there was no sufficient evidence to back up the personal religious beliefs and claims I was so convinced of. If you want to believe in fairy tales, miracles and personal supernatural friends with no sufficient evidence to even justify doing so, go ahead, you're free to do so. But please, for the love of whatever god you believe in, have better arguments before commenting so smugly, while only embarrassing yourself. Edit: typos. English is clearly not my first language 😅
Growing up in Italy, I obviously knew about San Gennaro's blood, but I'd say that outside of Napoli and the region of Campania, people didn't really care that much. There are just too many saints and alleged miracles pretty much everywhere in Italy.
One of my favourite (possibly eroneous but f'ing funny nonetheless) relic facts is that there are at least 12 foreskins apparently belonging to Jesus in churches around the world. No wonder he wore robes!
Of all of Catholicism's odd relics, the Holy Prepuce takes the cake. Also, as a PSA to any parents to-be, please please don't circumcise your babies, please! Let that awful practice die out.
I first read about this "miracle" back in 2007, in a novel called The Borgia Bride. I was stunned to discover that this stunt is still being performed today.
This, and the Shroud of Turin, and innumerable other silly stunts have been performed for centuries, and will go on being performed as long as there are people gullible enough to fall for it.
@@BahamutEx That's stupid. Liches are corporeal. San Gennaro is a wraith, and the blood is his fetters, binding him to the material world. Gotta be careful destroying that stuff, it's possible he'll be able to create new fetters if the blood isn't properly disposed of.
@@DavidSmith-vr1nb Popularized by DnD, though I don't know if they invented it. That is undoubtedly where Rowling's idea came from. The "phylactery" is much older but it's something from Judaism that has basically nothing to do with liches. I'm pretty sure the word was just adopted because it sounded cool.
About a dozen years ago, my brother and sister had an opportunity to go up to the peak of Vesuvius. My brother picked up a chunk of lava and brought it home for me. I have a geology degree, so that was more precious to me, than any silly little church relic could ever be.
I saw the notification... and utterly misread it. Put down my iPad and walked toward the kitchen. THANK YOU, Whatever Dragged Me Back... (turns up hearing aid, for Sweet, Sweet Screams of believers everywhere)
I'm a St. Benezet girl, myself. He built bridges in the Middle Ages and in doing so spread civilization and paved the way for the Renaissance exchange of ideas.
Fun Fact: Holy relics or should I say "holy relics" were huge business for con artists who would sell them to gullible pilgrims on the route to the Holy Land. Let's just say that there's more shards of Jesus' cross on display than there were shards of Jesus' actual cross. Hell, St. Valentine is buried in at least six different locations, including America. So any remains purported to be the remains of saints should immediately be considered sus.
Relics in general were big business as they drew in pilgrims from far away, they were like a pre-modern tourist trap. They also were often a vital part of geopolitics and visiting rulers from other countries were often given relics as gifts, the Eastern Romans made extensive use of this in their diplomacy. It's a bit like how today you might give some sort of order, medal or local speciality to visiting statesmen as a way to cement friendly relations.
Beside the obvious con part of the relic selling the religious value of the object themselves must not be undervalued, we have many sources telling that even objects representing relics, casts of relics and objects that had contacts of relics had an holyness by proxy. Sometimes even objects that were known to be fake but worshipped anyway because it's the intention that matter. This waned after XVI century.
8:08 "rediscovered" in 1480 ... It's interesting to see how many relics from the first 3-4 centuries of Christianity were "rediscovered" between about 900-1300 AD. It's also interesting to note how the presence of these relics led to increased numbers of visitors, pilgrims, to the towns where the relics were kept and how this translated into $$$ in the pockets of local businesses. Interesting side note. The Catholic Church venerates as many as 36 nails from the holy cross. It only takes 3 to crucify someone, though 4 were also used.
Thank you, Emma! This was hugely fun, and informative as well. I was raised in a pretty devout Catholic family, and went through eight years of elementary school indoctrination (we went to Mass EVERY morning before school) at the hands of Ursuline nuns, and three years of Catholic high school in the claws of the dreaded Jesuits. So yeah, I know about "holy" relics. Always seemed pretty gruesome to me. But the best thing about a Jesuit education was their insistence on logic, which eventually led to me jettisoning the entire notion of deities, or the supernatural. Nice job, Jebbies! Also, if I've ever left a comment to you "correcting" your pronunciation of some word, I apologize to you, and I promise that I will never do it again. No matter how badly you might butcher a word... Thank you again, Emma, for all that you do. Now, I want to see your Napoli videos, so I'm gonna mosey on over to your other channel and check 'em out. Probably subscribe while I'm there. I really like your brains and your humor, and I'm a 68 year-old American guy. Do I skew your demographics? And of course, Goddamn it, Connla!
What I generally find most inspiring is the fact that hundreds of people were willing to spend often over a century working on these churches and that the entire project was undertaken because of religious devotion. Even if I don't believe in the same thing I have to respect the effort put into building something that was far beyond the normal capabilities of their times. Today these churches and cathedrals don't exactly look impressive from an engineering standpoint when they're dwarfed by so many things but back in the day they were the largests buildings by far and were absurdly huge for the cities they were in. Like a city might just have a few thousand inhabitants living in cramped timberframe homes and then in the middle there's just this cathedral that's gigantic. This is generally true of most historic religious buildings and it's what makes them so impressive. It also almost makes me angry at American megachurches since they are built in an age with so much better technology by people with unfathomable wealth and they're just so goddamn ugly.
@hedgehog3180 Yeah, I think it's the Cathedral in Ulm, Germany where I was hearing the story of how literal generations of this particular family worked on it. Like, you're born and you work on this church for your entire life- because that's just what your family _does-_ knowing you'll die before it's complete. It boggles the mind.
@@hedgehog3180 people built equally beautiful palaces, so it’s not that special. And these churches cost the communities a lot of money they couldn’t really afford.
As an Italian, sometimes is so cool to hear how some of our most well-known and (to us) obvious traditions and cultural habits are seen from a different point of view! Also, it is nice to hear some scientific explanations for something I've always wondered, but never looked up! It makes so much more sense now! On a more not-religious side, I live in the north part of Italy and even here you can tell where people from Napoli live, because on this days they have some banners out of their places to celebrate their football victory! :D Sorry for my bad English and thank you for the video, it was super cool!
I work with a guy whose father, is a catholic priest. He told me how his father does "magic tricks" during his sermon, something about pouring water into a chalice and it becomes wine or something like that. His dad even showed him how he does the trick.
Interesting, it's pretty rare for cathlolic priests to have children (at least out in the open). Although I am aware there are certain circumstances were priests can have children, such as their spouse dying prior to them becoming a priest, and even special circumstances where they can be married while they are a priest. But still both cases are pretty rare.
Fascinating! Well told, Emma, a rational explanation with no disparagement toward the faithful. "Relic science" adding just another interesting layer to a city and region deep in layers. Your appreciation for and enjoyment of Napoli and its people shone through. Differences of belief adding just one more dimension rather than provoking dissension. Travel more, and tell us your insights and stories.
I was in Naples during Christmas a few years ago and it was fantastic! I loved it and really want to go back. Coming from North America the amount of history in Italy and the rest of Europe is astonishing to me. I visited a church there and was shown about 2-3 thousand years of history in the basement.
I really appreciate your last sentiment. To say it us not unreasonable to believe in such miracles if you are faithful is a strong and imho good statement.
06:44 _"The other was a Saint Marten, but I don't really care about him right now"_ Emma, how can you simply dismiss the Patron Saint of Insoles? Doctor Saint Marten earned his sainthood after a great feet of ingenuity.
If I remember correctly, each Catholic alter has (or used to be required to have) a ‘relic’ under them/ in them? Many cathedrals used to compete for the number/ quality of relics as those would bring pilgrims.. and pilgrims brought money. Still, the ‘relic cults’ are very fascinating. I’m glad you both had such a wonderful time..😊😊😊
I really enjoy your approach and the fun you have while still regularly offering up sources and evidence for your positions on these sorts of situations. Cheers!
Don't forget blood. Some religious people talk about being washed in the blood of Christ. Drinking wine and eating a wafer are supposed to be stand-ins for drinking his blood and eating his body, respectively. Transubstantiation is the fancy name for it but that doesn't negate the queerness of the ritual.
Transubstantiation is a form of Necromancy (death magic). They say they are bringing a dead person's flesh/blood back to life. Nobody ever mentions that with the existence of so many priests/churches all performing this witchcraft on the same day every week, how there is enough of Jesus to go around and show up at all of them. 🙃🤔Just don't think about the grift. I forget which comic to attribute this to: "Body of christ - with or without nuts."
@@QueenBoadicea Well no Catholic doctrine does state that the wine and bread literally is turned into the blood and flesh of Jesus Christ. It's more a protestant thing to see this as more metaphorical.
Great vid as always! I remember looking into this ritual. Really loved Vibing in Naples vid on Emma Thorne Extra channel. Well worth checking out. A workmate returned from holiday to Italy, Napoli, Pompeii and Versuviio. Described enthusiastically many of the things in this video.
Ah, yes. The beautiful works of God: Creating space and time, forming everything in the cosmos, making a vial of blood liquid sometimes, all these miraculous things.
The hagiography - a story traditionally told by an old hag in the street, preserved in writing shortly before the hag was put to the pyre for witchcraft as was custom in Catholic dominated areas.
Hey Emma, i'm so happy you ended up in Napoli and you liked the city since it's one of the most unique in the world (it's even an odd one for us Italians too). The funny thing is that religion in Italy is lived not literally and the souther you go the more it melts with local folklore and superstitions. Napoli is the highest form of this philosophy even nowadays: when they say "make a prayer" it actually means "wish good fortune", there is very little religious in that. Also, a side note for relics (fascinating topic tbh): in the period of the Reform there was a hunt for Saints and prestige that came with having a relic of them. Of course forgery was very common and semi-legal at the time, but having a "real" saint was a matter of honor and ment the town/village was rich and prosperous. Churches were a symbol of power and wealth and relics too. So, in the end, as Italians we mainly believe in a superstitious version of Christianity and catholicism and the deeper you go in saint's lives the more you find out many were stolen/faked/forged and mostly not Italians at all but... in the end i think it's ok: knowledge is power, but is also funny ;) take care Emma
I appreciate how you try to find the magic in others' beliefs, even without compromising your own logic and skepticism. I remember seeing a documentary about this blood relic when I was a kid, and even then the "shaken up gel" theory was the leading possible explanation. I remember they compared the "blood" to a stubborn bottle of Heinz ketchup. You can only imagine what that did to my young Catholic brain...
Used to go to the Feast of San Gennaro in NYC as a kid with my mom. The highlight for me was having fresh out of the oil donut holes with powdered sugar. Can't remember what they were called but they were scrumptious. I wasn't Italian, or even catholic for that matter. So the festival didn't have particular meaning for me. It did get across the idea that people put lots of energy into recognizing, celebrating saints. Thanks for the dive into the history and hagiography. Like your other vids, this was unbiased, informative. It's great not to get "bullshitted."
Quite honestly, the best part of this video was the affirmation that "reliquary" is a difficult word to pronounce even for a native speaker. Thank you.
Always a pleasure to see you videos, and lovely to see you have taken som Italian with you home (hands, flying around when talking). Small request might be to tedious, can you in you videos write them name people you are not sure how to pronounce? Would help a dyslexic alot when I want to read more :D
What a great video Emma! Just a "How I Spent My Summer Vacation (Holiday)" report. (Hopefully you have that cliche in GB too.) I'll be checking out your other Naples video next.
Random thought, based on your photo of “cool bored priest dude” who was holding the vial, can you see how the ampule looks to have been made and how thick the glass is? One would expect that blood would have to be stored relatively soon after the saints demise, so could the vial have been created using 6th century glass blowing techniques? Unless you said that the blood has been transferred from vial to vial and I missed it.
@@hedgehog3180 Indeed, so it at least puts a lower bound on when the blood could have been (bottled? vialed? ampuled? you get the point) and then one could check if that fits with any of the legends and lore around the relic. Sidenote: New D&D quest idea unlocked....
Man, Emma is a breath of fresh air. I fell away from the atheist youtube stuff when they all started only attacking feminists and "SJWs" instead of talking about the important issues of religion and superstition and how they affect people. Emma is so peppy, charismatic, and smart. While also being respectful and humble, she's so cool!
If you think Italy has churches galore, go to Mexico. I know someone from there, her hometown has no joke 365 churches! And they are always holding a party somewhere, it caused so much conflict the Dioceses had to make a rule. Every church has only one specific day to hold a religious festival for themselves, the next day it goes to the next church. It's a literal year round party town, when she told me that I thought that was the most awesome thing ever!
Inteteresting, Gennaro was also the patron saint of the androgynous, who not only bore martyr's blood but also menstrual blood. I think it's some alloy that liquifies somewhere around normal body temperature and the handle is the heat conductor. So when you pick it up by the handle, heat gets transferred to the vials. It would explain why it sometimes liquifies while there is a cleanup. At least that's my explaination. The relic contains two glass vials which are shielded by another glass casing, so outside temperature is hindered.
There was a documentary on TV several years ago on supposed miracles and this was one of them and a scientific explanation was given, but I can't remember what it was now.
I witnessed a miracle in Ireland when I was little. A moving statue! I saw it move! 'cos the way the lights were set up made it look weirdly disconnected from the grotto, and when you moved a little bit it looked really weird, like it moved. I wasn't a smart kid! The whole way home I tried to explain by pointing to a light in the car that wibbled if you stared at it, but no-one would listen, presumably because (as mentioned) I wasn't smart. Anyway, the best thing I saw on that trip was the Coca-Cola factory, it was very impressive.
that wasn't a miracle, it was a weeping angel. you're lucky to have survived kid, I assure you: someone less observant was 'eaten' by that weeping angel, thrust backwards in time. note, this is in reference to a 'monster' from the Doctor Who Series of the BBC
This one was actually explained to me a little differently by my grand-aunt (my granma's sister) who came from Napoli. In Italian the saying goes "vedi Napoli poi muori", which is exactly as you said, but she told me that it was originally "vedi Napoli poi Mori", with Mori being a small city close to Napoli, the classical "tiny but nice place", so it's like saying "go visit the important places first and leave the smaller ones for later" 😁 sounds way better like that, doesn't it?
[4:47] "... too vague and *bulbous* a question ..."-I'm gonna guess that the word which Emma is aiming for here is "nebulous". ["bulbous" = "resembling a bulb especially in roundness"]
There's a big San Gennaro festival every year in New York's Little Italy; it's the setting for two events in the Godfather movies- one in the 1920s, and one in the 1990s.
If the mixture is not blood ( which I doubt it is) still kinda cool to know that some crafty guy made a thixotropic gel. Back in the day when they thought mercury was a medicine cuz it shiny and do the funny bubble thing.
I have to thank you for the education value here. (It is SO weird having people assume I know anything about their odd little iron-age book clubs.) This is an interesting little window on it.
Oh, of course not! That would destroy a tiny portion of the miraculous substance. Although, DNA analysis is not necessarily what you need here. Yes, you could tell whether it was human. If it is human blood, the alleged "family", are at best, so distantly removed from the alleged source that most living humans would have close to the same amount of DNA similarity as currently no human being alive is any more distant from any other living human than 27th cousin. We've had more than enough time for that much distance over the past 18 centuries - although people who live/have ancestry near Naples - southern Europe, northern Africa, or Asia Minor would be a lot closer than 27th cousin from any other random person in those areas.
Performing a DNA analysis wouldn't really be relevant here since for one DNA isn't super stable and breaks down pretty quickly, and secondly we just just want to confirm that this is blood and you'd only need to look for the presence of hemoglobin to do that.
@@hedgehog3180 DNA breaks down, but it can still be analyzed thousands of years after the organism that made it died or went extinct. If it's a chemical compound of some sort without cells - or even something that contains single-cell life which appear red, sometimes thick liquid and sometimes solid, we would note that BEFORE testing for DNA on it. If it does contain animal-type cells, we don't only want to confirm it's blood, but that it's human blood. Cow blood or chicken blood contains hemoglobin, but is certainly not human. If it is human blood - with hemoglobin, DNA, and levels of other substances compatible with human life, before looking at a miraculous instance of fresh blood from someone who died 18 centuries ago, I'd want to see if it's blood from someone still alive or who died recently. We have a lot of DNA samples in various databases throughout the world - a family match would be probable, or several of them, and an exact match to an individual would be possible. Also, look at the levels of radioactive isotopes in it. There is a sharp difference in the isotopes in amount and type in samples taken from life forms that died before and after 1946 - the start of the Atomic Age. If the blood shows a "modern" level of various isotopes, that would preclude it coming from a saint who died in the 4th century.
All four of my grandparents were born in the Azores, and became adults there before moving to the U.S. I grew up speaking Portuguese in a thoroughly Catholic extended family, complete with weekly mass (initially in Latin), holidays in honor of various saints, Catholic school, and a stint as an altar boy. When I was a teenager, my paternal grandmother had ten grandsons, and singled me out at the likeliest tithe to contribute to a seminary. Had I remained sufficiently devout, I might well have gone along with the plan. (But despite the claims of Carla on the sitcom "Cheers," families don't automatically get admitted to heaven for sacrificing a son to Holy Orders.) Relics and miracles are pervasive in Church practice, both official (e.g., the apparition of the Virgin Mary in Fatima, Portugal) and merely tolerated (e.g., Medugorje in Bosnia). The relics of the more popular saints create certain problems (like too many finger bones if the saint in question possessed only the usual ten digits), but they are often concealed in ornate reliquaries instead of being actually on view. Was the Shroud of Turin revealed by carbon-14 dating to be a medieval forgery? Yes. Do people still believe in it? Oh, yes! Does the Church still benefit from pilgrims traveling to Turin? Double yes! My experience has left me a little jaded. A vial of magic blood? Yeah, heard of this one decades ago! Gennaro is not the only one. :)
12:15 .. "I wish not to Bullshit you!" That needs to be on a tshirt!! As a Protestant I've never understood the fanatical adherence to the veneration of saints and relics 🤔
if youre interested in stories about Saints, art, catholicism, and an exploration of life in the middle ages in general, i strongly recommend playing Pentiment. A little unrelated but the stories here really reminded me of the game.
Chemist in progress here and thinking about it there are some chemicals that do react with body heat to go from solid to liquid and in a church where I assume a lot of people are in it doesn’t seem all that crazy that this is enough heat to melt the solution with a low boiling point as mentioned I’m thinking kinda like gallium that when we have used it in the teaching lab here in Texas which is pretty hot is solid until you get close enough to it or it reaches a flame then it liquifies. I’m not that far into my studies to know about this shaking making something solidly process however we do see some compound have very close range between energy needed to transition between phases best example I can think of is when a water bottle is near freezing point and you tap it on a desk after removing it from a freezer and it becomes solid. Needless to say that doesn’t seem unlikely either as the simple fact of moving a compound can lead to solidification of said compound like in the water bottle example but really interesting indeed not a biologist but my first thought when watching this was wouldn’t the blood cells break down if it has been around since the 1300’s and not kept at ambient temperature for cells to survive with presumably no media but I guess that’s where the “miracle” part kicks in but eh 🤷♀️
As an Italian who's used to hear Italian names butchered by English speakers (and vice versa, of course), I have to say your pronunciations here were freakishly on point. The only name you said wrong was "Chiara". You fell in the trap of looking at the Italian "chi" like it were the Spanish "chi", but we use "ch" as "k" instead. So it's "Kee-ara". Just like "tiara" but with a k. Great video, btw.
@@tashatsu_vachel4477 This is progressive politics. Policies stop being progressive when they are firmly established and universally agreed upon. Women's suffrage used to be a progressive stance, but it isn't anymore, to the extent that being against women's suffrage today would make you a fringe extremist. Likewise, many historical individuals whom we consider progressive within their own time and context hold views that we would find unthinkably backwards by today's standards. This does also happen on smaller timescales. I think there has especially been very rapid progress in the past couple decades in LGTBQ+ acceptance, which is alarming to reactionaries. Wanting to totally ban gay marriage is no longer a mainstream political view, so people who still hold that view are increasingly ostracized. I don't think it makes you far right or a bad person or anything if you think current progressive politics is going in the wrong direction. I won't speculate about your political views and nothing above should be construed to suggest that I think you might hold one of the views described. However, I do think it's naïve to go through life not changing your beliefs and not expecting the world to change around you. I also think it's important to remember that the left is not monolithic, and having bad interactions with people on the internet is something everyone experiences. It's not fair to form an assessment of a large group of people based on, say, anonymous twitter users, nor even on individual politicians.
This reminded me, I had been hasty in pretending there was no precedent for "Saint John Paul II's" blood relics to go to Lourdes. This is a precedent. Well, San Gennaro's blood liquifies itself. Karol Wojtyla's blood liquefied the countryside, like Lourdes was flooded after the arrival.
My mother's side of the family is from Naples Italy. Seneca is her maiden name. She married a Sicilian. I have cousins there I have never met, and it's on my bucket list of places to see.
Uh, i was in naples in march and also visited vesuvius, the catacombs, etc.! I was also in the duomo and read about the blood miracle, was skeptical but didn't bother enough to look it up. So this is very interesting, thanks!
As a 38 year veteran of teaching in Catholic Schools, I've worked with a few priests who claimed to witness the "miracle of San Gennaro's blood". Frankly, they would say anything to make students believe. The best thing about San Gennaro is the feast they celebrate in New York's Little Italy every September. It's the best fun, and the best food you will ever have.
As a New Yorker, thanks for mentioning this. I had no clue.
Now I know what to look out for in September.
@@kimsland999 When I started teaching in the '80's, Catholic schools had better environment and better behaved kids than public schools. I wasn't a practicing Catholic as an adult. Actually, the religiosity wasn't much of an issue until the 2000's. That's when the Church began to notice the decline in attendance and identification with organized religion. Schools started to force teachers of all subjects to infuse some faith-based lessons. Schools also put more prayer gatherings into the schedule which decreased classroom time. It is madness now. I had been a skeptic for nearly twenty years, but I finally decided it was nonsense 10 years ago. I retired one year ago today.
@@fje6902 "Catholic schools had better environment and better behaved kids than public schools" you are aware that is because they are brutally underfunded, over crowded, severely lack sufficient amount of teachers and have to take in all children including those coming from dysfunctional families, among other problems, right?
Best fun? You ever been to a tittybar, or read a good book?
@@fje6902 Attended Roman Catholic schools and religiosity was not an issue. Can you cite any source other than you single personal experience.
I love how Emma links her sources and evidence and doesn't just want us to trust her but we can actually see the evidence ourselves. I always hate it when people just say, "JuST trUsT Me, bRo!" Truly one of my biggest pet peeves
"links her sources and evidence" - would it not be a day to rejoice if the religious apologists did the same ...
Who does say “just trust me”. ? Maybe don’t watch those videos…
trust me bruh is the most reliable sources on earth.😅
@@tariq_sharif They have and use only one source.
Oh, the Bible? No, no, no, that's for telling people they deserve Hell.
The only true source is the opinions of a pastor at my church.
No need to link it!
Rare indeed, and most appreaciated!
I am pretty sure everybody takes whatever video essayists say as gospel... I mean: They put so much effort in the video an are an independant researcher: They MUST always do good research and report objective truth, right?! RIGHT?!!?!?
I don't really believe in the efficacy of many of these relics, BUT...
as a self-described occult-enthusiast witchy goth girl, I have to admire the Catholic Church's commitment to the goth and macabre aesthetic 🖤💙🖤
I'm sure you've already heard about the incorruptibles (saints' bodies that don't decompose after death), but if you haven't, check it out, it should be right up your alley! 🙂
yeah, having a blood ritual is literally so cool, I literally just want to go see it purely because it is a blood ritual.
So true 😂 shout out to the witches 😊❤
@@AW-uv3cb YES there's a super gnarly picture I've seen of a GLASS COFFIN with a saint's entire preserved corpse inside and while it feels exploitative...it's super gross and weird and I love it.
Goth Hipster Texan agrees.
18:50 I'm a lifelong atheist who also loves traveling around Europe. I always visit the churches. They tell so much about the lives of the people over time. The hopes, fears, desires, tragedies, and victories are all recorded in those buildings. And when I'm lucky enough to be in one of those beautiful buildings when someone is playing the organ and the glorious music is echoing through the space, that is my secular heaven.
What I see in those churches is the serfs who had to cough up the money for these vanity projects. Yeah, they sure are cool to look at, but the system of oppression they were built upon is depressing. So many lives lived under terrible circumstances just so the rich church leaders could build ever more opulent buildings.
Preach, brother in secularity!
For me, I find it fascinating how religion drives people to both great acts of good, at the same time as it drives them to unspeakable crimes.
I enjoy similar aspects of religious architecture and culture, but I get a bit uneasy about it when I consider the cultures and people that were destroyed and plundered to amass most of the resources and land where these structures now stand.
Thiiiiisss thooooouuuggghhh
Churches and especially cathedrals are reminders of what a human society _can_ do when collectively motivated.
I really like visiting them, and I feel a lot of respect for the dedication of the builders, despite lamenting their (as I see it) misguided intentions.
I visited the cathedral in Chartres, France, just recently. Impressive.
Will with good conscience recommend a train ride there, if you are visiting Paris.
The night time light show is awe-inspiring.
My partner's dad is named Gennaro and he's a staunch atheist. Good dude.
Also, speaking as an Italian, don't worry about your pronunciation. It's better than most Americans I've heard.
sempre bello incontrare un italiano, ✌🏿🦇
@@nkemnoraulmanfredini7286 I've met too many Italians to feel the same but I appreciate it nonetheless. Grazie mille.
😂😂😂
She's British, though. 😋
@@alexandrorocca7142 Yes, I am aware. But I don't live in the UK, so I don't hear how most British people pronounce Italian words.
The funniest relic story I've come across is in Umberto Eco's novel, The Name of the Rose. The main character is in a monastery on a mountain and the monk says that they have an important relic, it's the skull of John the Baptist from when he was a twelve year old boy. Eco's character says, 'But he wasn't beheaded until he was an adult', to which the monk responds, 'And that skull is in the monastery on that mountain over there.' Gotta love Italian relics.
Thoroughly enjoyed that book (though Eco can be a bit of challenge to get through...might be a result of translation), he injects so much history into the story! I enjoyed the movie version also even though it was riddled with a lot of Hollywood baloney and the script deviated from the novel ...
@@hurdygurdyguy1 when doesn't Hollywood do that silly.
Eco was a decent medieval historian, but that book had just the intention of presenting a broadly correct medieval setting. It's a good book but more comedic oriented.
Former Catholic, loved the deep dive. Miracles like this are largely publicly acknowledged urban legends among the faithful- not required by for belief.
That said, even in my most faithful days, the evidence these miracles always seemed lacking.
Non vacuum container. Unsanitary. How does blood stay remotely in normal condition since 305 AD? That is the true miracle.
@@jimgillert20 Because it didn't. The history of lies and propaganda from the Christian church pretty much guarantees it. The only possibility is that the blood, if it even still is blood, is replaced regularly. The only thing I'm unsure of is whether or not the "melting" was originally someone who just dropped a vial of blood then replaced it or if it was done intentionally to inspire "faith."
There is an easy way to explain DnD or Larping to people. Just point them to religion but the difference is most participants enjoy it being fiction.
@@jimgillert20 By not being blood as explained in the video you clearly didn't watch.
From one former Catholic to another, " It's all a mystery ", I'm sure you like I have heard this from clergy a few times. Lol, and congrats on your escape from insanity.
Catholic Blood Ritual has to be the next Norwegian Eurovision entry with their Miracle Faith speed metal ballad.
Great idea. I'll bring it to the right persons❤
My favorite thing about growing up catholic was all the cool little bits and odds and ends I later stole for dungeons and dragons games I ran.
Hoo boy! This took me back to when I was a Catholic and I used to deeply believe in this. My school had a mini cathedral inside the building and there, they securedly stored some patron saint's bones (yeah, for real...). And since I was part of the the Catholic Youth League, I got to see them from afar. And I remember just how important it felt for me. Catholicism was a source of great trauma for me for many years, and now I'm gladly just a recovered atheist. But I'll never cease to amaze me to remember all the stuff I used to believe in lol Much love from Latin America!
Lo que pasa es que fuiste mal catequizada. Es al revés, la iglesia está para curar los traumas... los mejores bálsamos siempre son amargos de tragar, pero dulces de vivir.
@@Miolnir3 es todo muy lindo, suena poético inclusive. Pero dónde está la evidencia de lo que dices? Dejé de creer en no sólo la denominación católica, sino toda cosa sobrenatural, por la falta de evidencia feaciente y convincente que hay de que existe tal cosa. Cuando la haya, por supuesto que creeré en cosas que han sido demostradas con evidencia. Pero mientras tanto, sólo siguen siendo eso, palabras bonitas y afirmaciones sin evidencias para respaldarlas.
Catequismo o lo que sea da igual, el texto por sí solo está repleto de problemas, ya sabemos que Moisés no escribió la Torah y tenemos la hipótesis documentaria, el viejo testamento está plagado de imoralidades como la esclavitud, el nuevo testamento se inspira de otras obras Greco-Romanas de ese entonces como la Odisea para eventos de Jesús, etc, etc, etc. Para peores hay gente como Frank Turek o William Lane Craig diciendo cualquier babosada para defender la fé y terminan fallando.@@Miolnir3
I wish everyone had a life where believing in x religion or y religion was the biggest trauma of your life, y’all don’t realize how privileged y’all sound by making up these traumas. Oh yes going to church mass on Sunday completely destroyed my youth I need to recover from it, while people die on the streets
@@balkanbaroque when you don't have an argument, you resort to pathetic ad hominems. I used to live in the streets due to my own religious family kicking me out when I was a minor (so much for Catholic "love"). But let's play your little game and pretend I never did. That still doesn't make your god real. I can be the most privileged person that ever lived and still that is no argument for your god existing in our shared reality. I stopped believing because I realized there was no sufficient evidence to back up the personal religious beliefs and claims I was so convinced of. If you want to believe in fairy tales, miracles and personal supernatural friends with no sufficient evidence to even justify doing so, go ahead, you're free to do so. But please, for the love of whatever god you believe in, have better arguments before commenting so smugly, while only embarrassing yourself. Edit: typos. English is clearly not my first language 😅
Growing up in Italy, I obviously knew about San Gennaro's blood, but I'd say that outside of Napoli and the region of Campania, people didn't really care that much. There are just too many saints and alleged miracles pretty much everywhere in Italy.
Please report the scammer to RUclips.
"We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Fear the old blood." -Provost Willem
Darkplace reference! Awesome.
Thank you for bringing back this fascinating history lesson. Glad to hear you enjoyed the trip.
One of my favourite (possibly eroneous but f'ing funny nonetheless) relic facts is that there are at least 12 foreskins apparently belonging to Jesus in churches around the world. No wonder he wore robes!
There are also enough splinters of the True Cross to rebuild Noah's Ark.
@@RichWoods23 'Why are we crucifying that man on a 60ft cross?'
Of all of Catholicism's odd relics, the Holy Prepuce takes the cake.
Also, as a PSA to any parents to-be, please please don't circumcise your babies, please! Let that awful practice die out.
The rings of Saturn are Jesus' foreskin, according to Allatius in the early 17th century.
I think there was also a fun theory suggested by someone around the renaissance that they turned into Jupiter's rings or something like that!
I first read about this "miracle" back in 2007, in a novel called The Borgia Bride. I was stunned to discover that this stunt is still being performed today.
This, and the Shroud of Turin, and innumerable other silly stunts have been performed for centuries, and will go on being performed as long as there are people gullible enough to fall for it.
It's even reported in the news on tv, on national public television
Religion is the biggest scam ever.
@@RickSolusNow that there's a Facist in government be prepared that it happens again in September just in time for the 1 year anniversary
So the ghost of San Gennaro can only be defeated by destroying the phylactery/reliquary first. Got it.
Yeah, sounds a bit like a lich.^^
@@BahamutEx That's stupid.
Liches are corporeal. San Gennaro is a wraith, and the blood is his fetters, binding him to the material world. Gotta be careful destroying that stuff, it's possible he'll be able to create new fetters if the blood isn't properly disposed of.
@@BahamutEx or that guy with no nose who picked a fight with a scarred kid with glasses.
@@a-blivvy-yus where do you think she got the idea? Pretty sure the concept of a Lich's phylactery pre-dates Potter by decades, if not centuries.
@@DavidSmith-vr1nb Popularized by DnD, though I don't know if they invented it. That is undoubtedly where Rowling's idea came from. The "phylactery" is much older but it's something from Judaism that has basically nothing to do with liches. I'm pretty sure the word was just adopted because it sounded cool.
About a dozen years ago, my brother and sister had an opportunity to go up to the peak of Vesuvius. My brother picked up a chunk of lava and brought it home for me. I have a geology degree, so that was more precious to me, than any silly little church relic could ever be.
understood. i'd have enjoyed that very much.
That is so sweet of him, I would also treasure that forever
There’s no correlation between the two, what’s the point of this comment I don’t understand
I was raised Catholic, there is a lot of theatre going on in the church.
Certainly you visited Capri while in Naples, love the place.
Oh, you want hills? Come to Pittsburgh! It gave me the opposite reaction the first time I went to Florida and was STUNNED by how FLAT it was!
I saw the notification... and utterly misread it.
Put down my iPad and walked toward the kitchen.
THANK YOU, Whatever Dragged Me Back...
(turns up hearing aid, for Sweet, Sweet Screams of believers everywhere)
Can’t get enough of this channel. Thanks Emma!
I'm a St. Benezet girl, myself. He built bridges in the Middle Ages and in doing so spread civilization and paved the way for the Renaissance exchange of ideas.
Fun Fact: Holy relics or should I say "holy relics" were huge business for con artists who would sell them to gullible pilgrims on the route to the Holy Land. Let's just say that there's more shards of Jesus' cross on display than there were shards of Jesus' actual cross. Hell, St. Valentine is buried in at least six different locations, including America. So any remains purported to be the remains of saints should immediately be considered sus.
"Holy relics, Batman!"
Okay, that one kind of shows my age.
Relics in general were big business as they drew in pilgrims from far away, they were like a pre-modern tourist trap. They also were often a vital part of geopolitics and visiting rulers from other countries were often given relics as gifts, the Eastern Romans made extensive use of this in their diplomacy. It's a bit like how today you might give some sort of order, medal or local speciality to visiting statesmen as a way to cement friendly relations.
i thought it was jesus that was buried in america after the 23rd president of america organized a horse race to collect the corpse parts?
@@nanonano2595 If that's not a movie, i want it to be.
Beside the obvious con part of the relic selling the religious value of the object themselves must not be undervalued, we have many sources telling that even objects representing relics, casts of relics and objects that had contacts of relics had an holyness by proxy. Sometimes even objects that were known to be fake but worshipped anyway because it's the intention that matter. This waned after XVI century.
8:08 "rediscovered" in 1480 ... It's interesting to see how many relics from the first 3-4 centuries of Christianity were "rediscovered" between about 900-1300 AD. It's also interesting to note how the presence of these relics led to increased numbers of visitors, pilgrims, to the towns where the relics were kept and how this translated into $$$ in the pockets of local businesses.
Interesting side note. The Catholic Church venerates as many as 36 nails from the holy cross. It only takes 3 to crucify someone, though 4 were also used.
Maybe some of the nails were used to build/hold the cross together
Maybe Jesus ended up like Hellraiser.
Thank you, Emma! This was hugely fun, and informative as well. I was raised in a pretty devout Catholic family, and went through eight years of elementary school indoctrination (we went to Mass EVERY morning before school) at the hands of Ursuline nuns, and three years of Catholic high school in the claws of the dreaded Jesuits. So yeah, I know about "holy" relics. Always seemed pretty gruesome to me. But the best thing about a Jesuit education was their insistence on logic, which eventually led to me jettisoning the entire notion of deities, or the supernatural. Nice job, Jebbies!
Also, if I've ever left a comment to you "correcting" your pronunciation of some word, I apologize to you, and I promise that I will never do it again. No matter how badly you might butcher a word...
Thank you again, Emma, for all that you do. Now, I want to see your Napoli videos, so I'm gonna mosey on over to your other channel and check 'em out. Probably subscribe while I'm there. I really like your brains and your humor, and I'm a 68 year-old American guy. Do I skew your demographics? And of course,
Goddamn it, Connla!
56 yr old American here as well😊
Not at all religious but, having toured incredibly ornate churches across Europe, I certainly get why they inspired awe and/or religious belief.
What I generally find most inspiring is the fact that hundreds of people were willing to spend often over a century working on these churches and that the entire project was undertaken because of religious devotion. Even if I don't believe in the same thing I have to respect the effort put into building something that was far beyond the normal capabilities of their times. Today these churches and cathedrals don't exactly look impressive from an engineering standpoint when they're dwarfed by so many things but back in the day they were the largests buildings by far and were absurdly huge for the cities they were in. Like a city might just have a few thousand inhabitants living in cramped timberframe homes and then in the middle there's just this cathedral that's gigantic.
This is generally true of most historic religious buildings and it's what makes them so impressive. It also almost makes me angry at American megachurches since they are built in an age with so much better technology by people with unfathomable wealth and they're just so goddamn ugly.
@hedgehog3180 Yeah, I think it's the Cathedral in Ulm, Germany where I was hearing the story of how literal generations of this particular family worked on it.
Like, you're born and you work on this church for your entire life- because that's just what your family _does-_ knowing you'll die before it's complete. It boggles the mind.
@@hedgehog3180 people built equally beautiful palaces, so it’s not that special. And these churches cost the communities a lot of money they couldn’t really afford.
Best thing I've seen in Italy is coin-op electric candles in churches. A small miracle!
They don't have lightbulbs, the cardinal of the church controlled that racket
As an Italian, sometimes is so cool to hear how some of our most well-known and (to us) obvious traditions and cultural habits are seen from a different point of view! Also, it is nice to hear some scientific explanations for something I've always wondered, but never looked up! It makes so much more sense now!
On a more not-religious side, I live in the north part of Italy and even here you can tell where people from Napoli live, because on this days they have some banners out of their places to celebrate their football victory! :D
Sorry for my bad English and thank you for the video, it was super cool!
You write and spell better than a bunch of us in US. Well done😊👍
@@rebeccamartin2399 This was so nice of you, thank you so much!!
Il CICAP ha chiesto il permesso di analizzare il sangue per finalmente sapere.che miscela sia. Per qualche motivo preferiscono non lasciarlo esaminare
I work with a guy whose father, is a catholic priest. He told me how his father does "magic tricks" during his sermon, something about pouring water into a chalice and it becomes wine or something like that. His dad even showed him how he does the trick.
Or, you could buy the trick in a magic store 😂
Interesting, it's pretty rare for cathlolic priests to have children (at least out in the open). Although I am aware there are certain circumstances were priests can have children, such as their spouse dying prior to them becoming a priest, and even special circumstances where they can be married while they are a priest. But still both cases are pretty rare.
Grab the baphomet plushy and your ouija board and start summoning demons 😂
Summon best owl boi.
Fascinating! Well told, Emma, a rational explanation with no disparagement toward the faithful. "Relic science" adding just another interesting layer to a city and region deep in layers. Your appreciation for and enjoyment of Napoli and its people shone through. Differences of belief adding just one more dimension rather than provoking dissension. Travel more, and tell us your insights and stories.
I was in Naples during Christmas a few years ago and it was fantastic! I loved it and really want to go back. Coming from North America the amount of history in Italy and the rest of Europe is astonishing to me. I visited a church there and was shown about 2-3 thousand years of history in the basement.
I really appreciate your last sentiment. To say it us not unreasonable to believe in such miracles if you are faithful is a strong and imho good statement.
06:44 _"The other was a Saint Marten, but I don't really care about him right now"_
Emma, how can you simply dismiss the Patron Saint of Insoles?
Doctor Saint Marten earned his sainthood after a great feet of ingenuity.
I award you a well-deserved "oof."
@@Sableagle I'm assuming that's bad.
Fair enough 🤷
If I remember correctly, each Catholic alter has (or used to be required to have) a ‘relic’ under them/ in them?
Many cathedrals used to compete for the number/ quality of relics as those would bring pilgrims.. and pilgrims brought money.
Still, the ‘relic cults’ are very fascinating.
I’m glad you both had such a wonderful time..😊😊😊
Now I'm picturing the bishops' procession but as dance. Like in musicals!
I used to tell my Mother I lost my St. Anthony medal. (The Saint of lost things).
I really enjoy your approach and the fun you have while still regularly offering up sources and evidence for your positions on these sorts of situations. Cheers!
As a former catholic, I didn't realize how creepy catholicism is with its obsession with corpses until now.
Don't forget blood. Some religious people talk about being washed in the blood of Christ. Drinking wine and eating a wafer are supposed to be stand-ins for drinking his blood and eating his body, respectively. Transubstantiation is the fancy name for it but that doesn't negate the queerness of the ritual.
Transubstantiation is a form of Necromancy (death magic). They say they are bringing a dead person's flesh/blood back to life. Nobody ever mentions that with the existence of so many priests/churches all performing this witchcraft on the same day every week, how there is enough of Jesus to go around and show up at all of them. 🙃🤔Just don't think about the grift.
I forget which comic to attribute this to: "Body of christ - with or without nuts."
@@QueenBoadicea Well no Catholic doctrine does state that the wine and bread literally is turned into the blood and flesh of Jesus Christ. It's more a protestant thing to see this as more metaphorical.
That's how death cults do.
@@hedgehog3180 I was catholic for decades and I heard this doctrine a thousand times, though…
Emma and Aron Ra doing Q&A...PLEASE MAKE IT HAPPEN!
Loving the energy in this video, you are obviously still giddy from your trip! you always put a smile on my face.
Thanks for this Emma - your a ray of sunshine in my life
Great vid as always! I remember looking into this ritual. Really loved Vibing in Naples vid on Emma Thorne Extra channel. Well worth checking out. A workmate returned from holiday to Italy, Napoli, Pompeii and Versuviio. Described enthusiastically many of the things in this video.
Thank you, Emma, for always taking the time of adding subtitles to your videos ❤
Ah, yes. The beautiful works of God: Creating space and time, forming everything in the cosmos, making a vial of blood liquid sometimes, all these miraculous things.
Don't forget them crying statues. :3
And sports victories. Dont neglect that.
And condoning slavery! God was really into slavery..... what a guy!
Sometimes he needs a break from all that toast drawing.
And creating a depiction of Jesus on a dog’s butt.
The hagiography - a story traditionally told by an old hag in the street, preserved in writing shortly before the hag was put to the pyre for witchcraft as was custom in Catholic dominated areas.
I've been saying lately that I should probably buckle down and write my hagiography... lol
Hey Emma, i'm so happy you ended up in Napoli and you liked the city since it's one of the most unique in the world (it's even an odd one for us Italians too). The funny thing is that religion in Italy is lived not literally and the souther you go the more it melts with local folklore and superstitions. Napoli is the highest form of this philosophy even nowadays: when they say "make a prayer" it actually means "wish good fortune", there is very little religious in that. Also, a side note for relics (fascinating topic tbh): in the period of the Reform there was a hunt for Saints and prestige that came with having a relic of them. Of course forgery was very common and semi-legal at the time, but having a "real" saint was a matter of honor and ment the town/village was rich and prosperous. Churches were a symbol of power and wealth and relics too. So, in the end, as Italians we mainly believe in a superstitious version of Christianity and catholicism and the deeper you go in saint's lives the more you find out many were stolen/faked/forged and mostly not Italians at all but... in the end i think it's ok: knowledge is power, but is also funny ;) take care Emma
This is my offering for the almighty algorithm. May he bless this video & the channel with a favorable listing.
I appreciate how you try to find the magic in others' beliefs, even without compromising your own logic and skepticism.
I remember seeing a documentary about this blood relic when I was a kid, and even then the "shaken up gel" theory was the leading possible explanation. I remember they compared the "blood" to a stubborn bottle of Heinz ketchup. You can only imagine what that did to my young Catholic brain...
Used to go to the Feast of San Gennaro in NYC as a kid with my mom. The highlight for me was having fresh out of the oil donut holes with powdered sugar. Can't remember what they were called but they were scrumptious. I wasn't Italian, or even catholic for that matter. So the festival didn't have particular meaning for me. It did get across the idea that people put lots of energy into recognizing, celebrating saints.
Thanks for the dive into the history and hagiography. Like your other vids, this was unbiased, informative. It's great not to get "bullshitted."
Quite honestly, the best part of this video was the affirmation that "reliquary" is a difficult word to pronounce even for a native speaker. Thank you.
Always a pleasure to see you videos, and lovely to see you have taken som Italian with you home (hands, flying around when talking).
Small request might be to tedious, can you in you videos write them name people you are not sure how to pronounce? Would help a dyslexic alot when I want to read more :D
+1 on both!
What a great video Emma! Just a "How I Spent My Summer Vacation (Holiday)" report. (Hopefully you have that cliche in GB too.)
I'll be checking out your other Naples video next.
Fun fact, I first discovered st. Janarius through video game (Cultist Simulator), where you can drink his blood, to heal yourself.
Love talking with my adult kids about history in video games. They tell me what they see in video and I share the known history. Good times.
Thanks for the fun history lesson, pretty Emma. Always a pleasure to visit your channel❤
Random thought, based on your photo of “cool bored priest dude” who was holding the vial, can you see how the ampule looks to have been made and how thick the glass is? One would expect that blood would have to be stored relatively soon after the saints demise, so could the vial have been created using 6th century glass blowing techniques?
Unless you said that the blood has been transferred from vial to vial and I missed it.
I don't think techniques for making clear glass had been discovered yet at that point.
@@hedgehog3180 Indeed, so it at least puts a lower bound on when the blood could have been (bottled? vialed? ampuled? you get the point) and then one could check if that fits with any of the legends and lore around the relic.
Sidenote: New D&D quest idea unlocked....
Religion is the world’s biggest scam.
@@hedgehog3180 The ancient Romans made clear glass by then…
Man, Emma is a breath of fresh air. I fell away from the atheist youtube stuff when they all started only attacking feminists and "SJWs" instead of talking about the important issues of religion and superstition and how they affect people. Emma is so peppy, charismatic, and smart. While also being respectful and humble, she's so cool!
If you think Italy has churches galore, go to Mexico. I know someone from there, her hometown has no joke 365 churches! And they are always holding a party somewhere, it caused so much conflict the Dioceses had to make a rule. Every church has only one specific day to hold a religious festival for themselves, the next day it goes to the next church. It's a literal year round party town, when she told me that I thought that was the most awesome thing ever!
Inteteresting, Gennaro was also the patron saint of the androgynous, who not only bore martyr's blood but also menstrual blood.
I think it's some alloy that liquifies somewhere around normal body temperature and the handle is the heat conductor. So when you pick it up by the handle, heat gets transferred to the vials. It would explain why it sometimes liquifies while there is a cleanup. At least that's my explaination. The relic contains two glass vials which are shielded by another glass casing, so outside temperature is hindered.
MARTYR!! I was for the longest time wondering who on earth were these "Martha" ladies Emma kept mentioning. Damn you, English accent!
Finally, a nice understanding of the importance of culture apart from faith. As an Italian - American. It's appreciated.
And I love learning about it.
12:05 OMG OMG OMG you referenced Garth Marenghi's Dark Place? Yay!
Good to hear you had a good break, to my eyes at least there was no discernible loss of mojo in this video.
There was a documentary on TV several years ago on supposed miracles and this was one of them and a scientific explanation was given, but I can't remember what it was now.
I witnessed a miracle in Ireland when I was little. A moving statue!
I saw it move!
'cos the way the lights were set up made it look weirdly disconnected from the grotto, and when you moved a little bit it looked really weird, like it moved.
I wasn't a smart kid!
The whole way home I tried to explain by pointing to a light in the car that wibbled if you stared at it, but no-one would listen, presumably because (as mentioned) I wasn't smart.
Anyway, the best thing I saw on that trip was the Coca-Cola factory, it was very impressive.
that wasn't a miracle, it was a weeping angel. you're lucky to have survived kid, I assure you: someone less observant was 'eaten' by that weeping angel, thrust backwards in time.
note, this is in reference to a 'monster' from the Doctor Who Series of the BBC
@@ilovefunnyamv2nd I only know Inspector Spacetime
@@ilovefunnyamv2nd I hope they didn’t blink.
Emma may sometimes have trouble remembering how to record videos and how to end them, but she will never forget how to shank you. Very much.
"See Naples and Die"... I kept my eyes closed the whole time I was there.
This one was actually explained to me a little differently by my grand-aunt (my granma's sister) who came from Napoli. In Italian the saying goes "vedi Napoli poi muori", which is exactly as you said, but she told me that it was originally "vedi Napoli poi Mori", with Mori being a small city close to Napoli, the classical "tiny but nice place", so it's like saying "go visit the important places first and leave the smaller ones for later" 😁 sounds way better like that, doesn't it?
Napoli is AMAZING! I will always be going back there whenever I visit Italy.
[4:47] "... too vague and *bulbous* a question ..."-I'm gonna guess that the word which Emma is aiming for here is "nebulous". ["bulbous" = "resembling a bulb especially in roundness"]
12:00 dang it Emma I'm going to have to watch the entirety of Dark Place again now
I've learned something I didn't know there was to learn; and now I have ideas for decorating.
Is that a Band-Aid on the Priest's hand?
There's a big San Gennaro festival every year in New York's Little Italy; it's the setting for two events in the Godfather movies- one in the 1920s, and one in the 1990s.
Paolo Sorrentino's Parthenope in theater 😁😁 the bloooooood
If the mixture is not blood ( which I doubt it is) still kinda cool to know that some crafty guy made a thixotropic gel. Back in the day when they thought mercury was a medicine cuz it shiny and do the funny bubble thing.
Dedicated alchemists discovered all kinds of things. Some of them were even useful.
I have to thank you for the education value here. (It is SO weird having people assume I know anything about their odd little iron-age book clubs.) This is an interesting little window on it.
Of course, the church is more than happy to allow a small sample for DNA analysis, yes?
Oh, of course not! That would destroy a tiny portion of the miraculous substance.
Although, DNA analysis is not necessarily what you need here. Yes, you could tell whether it was human. If it is human blood, the alleged "family", are at best, so distantly removed from the alleged source that most living humans would have close to the same amount of DNA similarity as currently no human being alive is any more distant from any other living human than 27th cousin. We've had more than enough time for that much distance over the past 18 centuries - although people who live/have ancestry near Naples - southern Europe, northern Africa, or Asia Minor would be a lot closer than 27th cousin from any other random person in those areas.
Performing a DNA analysis wouldn't really be relevant here since for one DNA isn't super stable and breaks down pretty quickly, and secondly we just just want to confirm that this is blood and you'd only need to look for the presence of hemoglobin to do that.
@@hedgehog3180 DNA breaks down, but it can still be analyzed thousands of years after the organism that made it died or went extinct. If it's a chemical compound of some sort without cells - or even something that contains single-cell life which appear red, sometimes thick liquid and sometimes solid, we would note that BEFORE testing for DNA on it.
If it does contain animal-type cells, we don't only want to confirm it's blood, but that it's human blood. Cow blood or chicken blood contains hemoglobin, but is certainly not human.
If it is human blood - with hemoglobin, DNA, and levels of other substances compatible with human life, before looking at a miraculous instance of fresh blood from someone who died 18 centuries ago, I'd want to see if it's blood from someone still alive or who died recently. We have a lot of DNA samples in various databases throughout the world - a family match would be probable, or several of them, and an exact match to an individual would be possible.
Also, look at the levels of radioactive isotopes in it. There is a sharp difference in the isotopes in amount and type in samples taken from life forms that died before and after 1946 - the start of the Atomic Age. If the blood shows a "modern" level of various isotopes, that would preclude it coming from a saint who died in the 4th century.
Most likely it isn’t even blood.
@@kellydalstok8900 Most likely. It would be interesting to find out what it is and when it was made.
Totally just pictured a procession of bishops doing that arm movement. That would be fabulous!
There's a really great festival dedicated to San Gennaro in NYC. Fantastic food.
Here in the US we celebrate the first Saturday in May as well! That's free comic book day!
10:31 For some reason I love this. Don't get me wrong, great video overall but all i can see now is fresh coffee cuts
All four of my grandparents were born in the Azores, and became adults there before moving to the U.S. I grew up speaking Portuguese in a thoroughly Catholic extended family, complete with weekly mass (initially in Latin), holidays in honor of various saints, Catholic school, and a stint as an altar boy. When I was a teenager, my paternal grandmother had ten grandsons, and singled me out at the likeliest tithe to contribute to a seminary. Had I remained sufficiently devout, I might well have gone along with the plan. (But despite the claims of Carla on the sitcom "Cheers," families don't automatically get admitted to heaven for sacrificing a son to Holy Orders.) Relics and miracles are pervasive in Church practice, both official (e.g., the apparition of the Virgin Mary in Fatima, Portugal) and merely tolerated (e.g., Medugorje in Bosnia). The relics of the more popular saints create certain problems (like too many finger bones if the saint in question possessed only the usual ten digits), but they are often concealed in ornate reliquaries instead of being actually on view. Was the Shroud of Turin revealed by carbon-14 dating to be a medieval forgery? Yes. Do people still believe in it? Oh, yes! Does the Church still benefit from pilgrims traveling to Turin? Double yes! My experience has left me a little jaded. A vial of magic blood? Yeah, heard of this one decades ago! Gennaro is not the only one. :)
12:15 .. "I wish not to Bullshit you!" That needs to be on a tshirt!!
As a Protestant I've never understood the fanatical adherence to the veneration of saints and relics 🤔
if youre interested in stories about Saints, art, catholicism, and an exploration of life in the middle ages in general, i strongly recommend playing Pentiment. A little unrelated but the stories here really reminded me of the game.
Addendum:
I've been to Castello Nuovo. No, sorry, I've been to Newcastle. It's easy to get them mixed up, they're so very similar in cultural terms.
Chemist in progress here and thinking about it there are some chemicals that do react with body heat to go from solid to liquid and in a church where I assume a lot of people are in it doesn’t seem all that crazy that this is enough heat to melt the solution with a low boiling point as mentioned I’m thinking kinda like gallium that when we have used it in the teaching lab here in Texas which is pretty hot is solid until you get close enough to it or it reaches a flame then it liquifies. I’m not that far into my studies to know about this shaking making something solidly process however we do see some compound have very close range between energy needed to transition between phases best example I can think of is when a water bottle is near freezing point and you tap it on a desk after removing it from a freezer and it becomes solid. Needless to say that doesn’t seem unlikely either as the simple fact of moving a compound can lead to solidification of said compound like in the water bottle example but really interesting indeed not a biologist but my first thought when watching this was wouldn’t the blood cells break down if it has been around since the 1300’s and not kept at ambient temperature for cells to survive with presumably no media but I guess that’s where the “miracle” part kicks in but eh 🤷♀️
Always great to see you emma you are always interesting always love your videos
Thanks for a second channel. Sometimes i don't get enough of you.😊
As an Italian who's used to hear Italian names butchered by English speakers (and vice versa, of course), I have to say your pronunciations here were freakishly on point. The only name you said wrong was "Chiara". You fell in the trap of looking at the Italian "chi" like it were the Spanish "chi", but we use "ch" as "k" instead. So it's "Kee-ara". Just like "tiara" but with a k.
Great video, btw.
Thank You Emma Thorne! Would you please describe their pizza?
Omg you are sutch a vibe. Your entusiasm and energy is infectious. Also great vid and very interesting 🐤
Emma. I am generally a conservative, but also not Christian. You are a lovely person. Please keep up with what you are doing.
You are lucky, I was always thought to be a bit left wing years ago, but now I am apparently 'far right' without changing my own beliefs whatsoever!
@@tashatsu_vachel4477 This is progressive politics. Policies stop being progressive when they are firmly established and universally agreed upon. Women's suffrage used to be a progressive stance, but it isn't anymore, to the extent that being against women's suffrage today would make you a fringe extremist. Likewise, many historical individuals whom we consider progressive within their own time and context hold views that we would find unthinkably backwards by today's standards. This does also happen on smaller timescales. I think there has especially been very rapid progress in the past couple decades in LGTBQ+ acceptance, which is alarming to reactionaries. Wanting to totally ban gay marriage is no longer a mainstream political view, so people who still hold that view are increasingly ostracized.
I don't think it makes you far right or a bad person or anything if you think current progressive politics is going in the wrong direction. I won't speculate about your political views and nothing above should be construed to suggest that I think you might hold one of the views described. However, I do think it's naïve to go through life not changing your beliefs and not expecting the world to change around you. I also think it's important to remember that the left is not monolithic, and having bad interactions with people on the internet is something everyone experiences. It's not fair to form an assessment of a large group of people based on, say, anonymous twitter users, nor even on individual politicians.
This reminded me, I had been hasty in pretending there was no precedent for "Saint John Paul II's" blood relics to go to Lourdes.
This is a precedent.
Well, San Gennaro's blood liquifies itself. Karol Wojtyla's blood liquefied the countryside, like Lourdes was flooded after the arrival.
the shop music from Ultrakill is the perfect bgm for this vid
The fact that people cling to these beliefs goes a long way to explaining why humanity is slowly destroying itself and the planet.
You guys are the same people that as soon as the plane goes through turbulence will start internally praying to be kept alive
My mother's side of the family is from Naples Italy. Seneca is her maiden name. She married a Sicilian. I have cousins there I have never met, and it's on my bucket list of places to see.
Some priest probably dropped the ampule and spilled the dry blood and refilled it with something else to cover his ass and started a "miracle"
Uh, i was in naples in march and also visited vesuvius, the catacombs, etc.! I was also in the duomo and read about the blood miracle, was skeptical but didn't bother enough to look it up. So this is very interesting, thanks!
Priest looks like Ben Stiller... good to see he found work after those "Clear Eyes" commercials... 😂