0. Introduction
EDITORIAL NOTE: With all of my posts, I incessantly make revisions after they have been published. I have not been in the habit of keeping an ‘update log,’ but Tom encouraged me to make a note whenever I make a substantial revision or correct an error. The original versions of each post are sent to the inboxes of all my subscribers and I am happy to make copies of them available to anyone that prefers to have a static reference when citing my posts.
Dr. Maxime Georgel replied to my article about the Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano. While I appreciate his substantive engagement with my arguments, regrettably, his article is suffused with demonstrable falsehoods, fallacious reasoning, and misrepresentations of sources. I sincerely hope he sets the record straight in the coming days, especially with regard to his insinuations about Dr. Linoli discussed in section (1.1.2) and his misleading quotation discussed in section (3.2.1).
In this reply, I dissect Maxime’s “in-depth analysis” of the Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano. In the first section, I respond to his discussion of the identification of the relics as human cardiac tissue and human blood. In the second section, I respond to his discussion of the origination of the relics. In the third section, I respond to his discussion of the preservation of the relics. I have tried to be as comprehensive as possible, but on a few occasions I omit discussion of inconsequential points.
1. Identification
1.1 - Linoli and Bertelli
1.1.1 - Prejudgment bias?
Maxime claims that a “major weakness” of Dr. Linoli’s study was “the risk of prejudgment bias.” He claims that “[Linoli] believed, even before performing the analysis, that the material in his hands was from a miracle.” He quotes Dr. Stacy Transancos as saying “Everyone involved already accepted this miracle as being true. The entire report shows that Dr. Linoli approached the study of not just possible flesh and possible blood, but the flesh and the blood of the miracle of Lanciano.”
First, it is simply not true that Dr. Linoli presupposed his conclusions from the outset of his investigation. Fr. Castiglione recorded Dr. Linoli’s first impression of the relics before he extracted fragments from them: “After examining the tissue of the Flesh, Prof. Linoli expressed his concern to be unable to identify valid elements to draw scientific conclusions through laboratory tests. He advanced the hypothesis that the Flesh was already lacking characterizing features.” Witnesses recalled that “everyone’s facial expression revealed unmistakable disappointment and disillusionment” and “we were feigning calmness though deep inside we were extremely apprehensive and expecting the worst.”1
Second, Dr. Bertelli independently corroborated Dr. Linoli’s identification of “myocardial muscle tissue.” After speaking with Dr. Bertelli’s grandson, Dr. Serafini learned that Dr. Bertelli “was a non-believer and remained very touched by those histological samples.” It is very unlikely that an atheist doctor ‘prejudged’ that histological samples from a Eucharistic relic were heart tissue. Maxime points out that “we must trust” Linoli regarding “the selection of slides sent to the retired colleague.” That is true, but the presence of characterizing features of myocardial tissue in any subset of the histological samples extracted from the Lanciano ‘flesh’ is compelling evidence for Linoli’s identification.
1.1.2 - WHO report?
In 2005, Catholic media began to spread the claim that the WHO had “appointed a scientific commission to verify the conclusions of Professor Linoli” and that the commission had published a report that “confirmed the incapacity of science to explain the phenomena.” Dr. Serafini debunked this in 2016 when he discovered that the WHO commission “did not deal with the miracle of Lanciano at all.” Maxime claims that this incident “raises questions about the integrity of the Lanciano convent” and even “about Dr. Linoli himself.” That is preposterous:2
First, the only connections between the friars at the Lanciano convent and the fake WHO report were that (i) they stored a photocopy of the report at the convent, (ii) they assumed the report was legitimate and told people they had a copy until Dr. Serafini informed them it was a fraud, (iii) they made their copy available to Dr. Serafini when he requested access to it. Maxime believes this “raises questions” because it took Dr. Serafini “less than 2 minutes” to recognize it was a fraud. If it was that obvious, why didn’t the friars expose it sooner? Are we to believe the friars never read it? However, that is a specious argument:
Dr. Serafini had technical expertise, whereas the friars at the Lanciano convent did not. The report claimed to be written by “a full member of the WHO Executive Board.” It was a “fusion of two mismatched parts.” The first part was “convoluted and opaque” and argued for a "logical link” between the Lanciano miracle and WHO studies on ancient human remains that Dr. Serafini deemed “more than questionable.” The idea was supposed to be that the techniques Linoli successfully applied to the Lanciano relic proved ineffective when applied to ancient human remains. The second part was a “serious publication” that reported the findings of those WHO studies. It is easy to imagine such a report impressing the friars but not Dr. Serafini.
Second, Maxime, once again following Dr. Transancos, insinuates that Dr. Linoli originated false claims about the WHO report. He cites a ZENIT interview that mentions the WHO report but does not attribute any comments about it to Dr. Linoli. The only reference to the report appears in a section of the article that provides background information about the miracle without any quotations from Dr. Linoli interspersed. If ZENIT’s source was their interview with Dr. Linoli, they would have quoted his comments about the WHO in the same fashion that they quoted the rest of the information that they attributed to him.
Third, Maxime uses conspiratorial reasoning to argue that Dr Linoli is the “primary suspect” for the author of the WHO report. That is not credible:
(1) For starters, the “primary suspect” obviously has to be Professor Giuseppe Biondini, a real person that is credited by the report. Emmanuel Porcher discovered references to Professor Biondini in published literature about the Shroud of Turin. The WHO report was only proven to be “fake” in the sense that it grossly exaggerated the relevance of the WHO studies that it cited to the Lanciano relics. It has never been shown to be a forgery. Dr. Serafini has suggested that Professor Biondini exploited his affiliation with and connections at the WHO to lend credibility to the Lanciano relics.
(2) Maxime asks “Since the convent selected Dr. Linoli as the scientist in charge, who else could have provided them with this fake report?” Dr. Serafini reports that “In his decades-long correspondence with the friars of Lanciano, Linoli never, never! (I can swear it because I have leafed through all his letters from 1970 to 2006) mentions the WHO report…” If Dr. Linoli went to the trouble to forge the document and then referenced it in interviews, it would be bizarre that he never mentioned it in his extensive correspondence with the friars at the Lanciano convent. It seems that he simply wasn’t aware of it.
(3) Forging this document would be completely out of character for Dr. Linoli. Given the rigor of his 1971 study, it is very implausible that he sloppily forged a fake WHO report that could be debunked after a “quick, superficial glance” by anyone with technical expertise. Furthermore, in 1977, Dr. Linoli wrote a letter that instructed the friars at the Lanciano convent to find and destroy a pamphlet that contained exaggerated claims about the Lanciano relics:
He read to me some data which had unsettled him and which, frankly, also left me very perplexed.
In a leaflet that I do not know, he read to me two passages which absolutely have no place in the history of the Miracle itself.
One passage concerns the weight of the Blood, with the well-known story that the weight of each fragment was equal to the total weight.
The second, that the Blood and the Flesh belong to a living person.
More or less, this is the sense of the words and the construction of the passage.
Now then, Reverend Father, evidently this is a gross error, which can have serious repercussions on the reality of the Miracle.
I think it would be appropriate to withdraw the leaflet wherever it may be found and have it destroyed. It is a source of misunderstanding and error, and everything comes at the expense of the proper end.
1.2 - Gross anatomy
To rebut Linoli’s interpretation of the macroscopic appearance of the relics, Maxime cites a paper by Professor Giuseppe Costantino Budetta, a “specialist in immunohistochemistry at the Faculty of Medicine of Naples and in domestic animal nutrition at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Naples” that had “more than one hundred scientific publications—including some in major American (J. Anatomia) and British journals.” Maxime characterizes Professor’s Budetta’s conclusion as follows “Without contesting the human or even cardiac origin of the tissue (as one cannot judge such things from macroscopic appearance), he favors the hypothesis of a medieval fraud and notes signs of deliberate modification of the tissue.”3
First, it is worth noting that, after “listening to the scientific explanations of Professor Odoardo Linoli,” Professor Budetta wrote “science has established that [the relics are] indeed a piece of human heart and coagulated human blood.” Indeed, his article was predicated on the assumption that the species and organ identity of the ‘flesh’ had been proven beyond reasonable doubt. That is why he resorted to the hypothesis of a “meticulous forgery” that involved “a small heart from a full-term human fetus.” Evidently, this eminently qualified “specialist in immunohistochemistry” did not think that Linoli’s evidence was inconclusive.
Second, in private correspondence, Dr. Serafini noted “I dont think we could ever establish an absolutely precise correspondence,” since “what remains of the miraculous tissue must have undergone significant morphological changes especially in the first days and weeks on this earth.” He also noted “It has certainly been affected by human intervention, which fixed it with nails or sewed it to some surface, as evidenced by the small holes and ripples that mark its outer edge.” Professor Budetta concedes an approximate correspondence between the macroscopic appearance of the relic and a transverse section of a heart. Even an approximate correspondence is very evidentially significant for two reasons:
First, it is anachronistic to explain the correspondence by positing that a premodern forger deliberately simulated a transverse section of a heart. The correspondence between the relic and a heart is not immediately obvious to those with specialized knowledge of anatomy in modern times. Furthermore, if he wanted to create the impression the relic was a heart, he definitely would have incorporated that into the legend he invented to contextualize the relic.
Second, if the forger was merely trying to simulate a host that had transformed into flesh, there would be no plausible explanation for the central void. Premodern audiences would have interpreted that feature as a defect. Moreover, it would have made producing and preserving the relic much harder than it otherwise would have been. It would not be a default outcome of aging or handling, so appealing to those possibilities is ad hoc.
Third, Professor Budetta’s argument depends on interpreting the protrusion in the central void of the relic as a piece of the interventricular septum. His point is that, if the protrusion is septum, the region ‘E’ in diagram ‘B’ shouldn’t be there:
In 1982, Dr. Linoli interpreted the relic as a section of the left ventricle. Later, in 1991, he suggested that it could be interpreted as a section of an entire heart. I consider his earlier opinion to be more probable. The geometry of the relic is more consistent with a section of the left ventricle than it is with a section of an entire heart. Hence, the protuberance can be interpreted as an intraluminal muscular protrusion rather than as a residue of intraventricular septum:
1.3 - Histology
Maxime gave reproductions of Dr. Linoli’s photomicrographs to his former histology professor. He does not reveal the name of the histology professor, but insists “he has significantly more academic experience than Dr. Linoli.” The anonymous professor’s conclusion was “post-mortem autolytic processes and technical artifacts hinder tissue recognition and do not allow the captions to be confirmed.”
First, whereas Dr. Linoli and Dr. Bertelli both examined fragments of the relic under a microscope, the anonymous professor complained “I am hindered by an examination based on pixelated, small-format photos. Perhaps by enlarging them it would be possible to see certain details.” With regard to Figure 4, he attributes “the striations I think I perceive” to “pixelation.” With regard to Figure 7, he concedes “one could have some doubt because one can make out a striation, but the bridges seem more like artifacts.” Since the captions were written and confirmed by experts that were not constrained by the limitations of these micrographs, repeatedly appealing to imaging artifacts is a stretch.
Second, after reviewing the anonymous professor’s comments, Dr. Serafini replied that “It’s a mistake to consider those images separately, they are in the same cubic millimeter. The shape of cardiac fibers is evident. And they color with the Igensti stain (the guy didn’t know Igensti…)” Dr. Serafini specializes in the heart and is familiar with all of the staining techniques that Dr. Linoli employed. The anonymous professor acknowledged that he was “not familiar with the Ignesti method,” so his opinion that Figure 5 and Figure 8, which depict Ignesti stains, are “uninterpretable” is of little value. Moreover, since the anonymous professor was missing the context that all of the images depict “the same cubic millimeter,” he failed to appreciate that the slides have to be evaluated holistically.
1.4 - Uhlenhuth test
Maxime writes “Ethan Muse (who, I remind you, is a philosopher) claims that the Uhlenhuth antigenic test, which returned positive for human serum and negative for bovine and rabbit serum, establishes without doubt that it is human blood.” While it is true that I am a lowly philosopher, it is ironic that he frames his objection around that point, since he goes on to quote Dr. Serafini’s declaration that “it is qualitatively unquestionable that the miracle of Lanciano contains true human blood.”
1.4.1 - Dr. Kelly Kearse
Maxime cites Dr. Kelly Kearse’s opinion that the “polyclonal antibody preparation” that Dr. Linoli used would have been “potentially cross-reactive.” While I was doing research for my original article, I corresponded with Dr. Kearse about this. In that exchange, I raised the point that Dr. Linoli used forensic-grade antisera:
Linoli used commercial anti-human protein serum from the reputable supplier Behringwerke. In the 1960s–70s, Behringwerke was supplying forensic-grade antisera. These products were specifically marketed for medico-legal use, where cross-reactivity would have undermined their admissibility. The standard practice at that time was removal of heterospecific antibodies by adsorption/absorption, explicit tests against panels of other species (including all of the most common domestic animals), and minimum potency requirements.
Dr. Kearse replied by qualifying the statement that Maxime cites (emphasis mine):
This passage in the article is in reference to the statement by Serafini that “it is qualitatively unquestionable that the miracle of Lanciano contains true human blood.” I think that unquestionable is a very strong word. Yes, those procedures were used for early polyclonal antisera at the time, but it is difficult to know if such adsorption/absorption tests were all inclusive; also, the wording was not absolute in meaning, the phrase “potentially cross-reactive” was intentionally chosen. It is a good point you make, yes, but I don’t believe that one can be entirely sure.
I also raised the point that Linoli demonstrated total negativity in animal controls:
The strength and clarity of Linoli’s results from both the heart tissue and the blood were not consistent with a cross-reaction. Both the tissue and the blood formed a clear precipitin band within five minutes, whereas there was total negativity in all the controls. That rules out promiscuous cross-reactivity, and it is hard to imagine specific cross-reactivity with anything except a non-human primate, which is historically implausible for the relics.
Dr. Kearse responded with a minor critique of the experimental grid: (emphasis mine)
The second issue you raise, which I believe is the most pertinent is in reference to the strength and clarity of the controls. Regarding the total negativity in the controls, we have a negative result in tube 7, which is anti-human Ab plus saline (expected), tube 6 is anti-human Ab plus ox (cow?) serum which is negative. As an immunologist, I would like a demonstration of another tube with ox serum plus anti-ox Ab to show that on that day, in that assay, there was something in the ox serum preparation that would have reacted. Yes, this might seem picky, but I think that extraordinary claims require one to go above and beyond with the results. Also, as an immunologist, who has worked with scores of antibodies under a variety of conditions, I was trained to be thorough. If you have this built into the experimental grid, it makes it more airtight. Similarly, with tubes 4 & 5 using anti-rabbit Ab, confidence in these findings would be increased if there were additional tubes included showing that the anti-rabbit Ab used was functional on that day that the assay was run. If the anti-rabbit Ab had for whatever reason not worked, the result is equivalent to tube 7 with just saline. Too picky? Perhaps, but I believe it’s better to be thorough and make it a moot point. Tube 3 is a positive control to show that the Ab works (good result), brings us to tubes 1& 2 where a similar reactivity is seen. Again, because these claims are relatively extraordinary, I believe the results would be strengthened if additional tubes were run mixing the anti-human Ab with a “faux” blood rinse or “faux” tissue, perhaps using unconsecrated wafers, just to rule out that some type of nonspecific binding might be occurring. It happens more than one might think. I don’t believe that the result in tube 6 suffices for this for reasons mentioned above. Also, there is no equivalent to an unrelated tissue sample that is provided.
1.4.2 - Species specificity
Maxime claims that “it is precisely because the [Uhlenhuth] test is not specific that Dr. Linoli also tested bovine and rabbit serum…” As should already be apparent from my exchange with Dr. Kearse, this assertion is simply not true. The purpose of the Uhlenhuth test, which has been extensively validated over decades, is species identification. It would be completely useless if it were “not specific.”
Dr. R.E. Gaensslen, head of the forensic science program at the University of Illinois at Chicago, characterized the forensic consensus about specificity as follows:4
The development of a specific immunological test for determination of the species of origin of bloodstains was a major event in the evolution of legal medicine. It provided for the first time a technique for unequivocally establishing species of origin in stains. All authorities soon came to agree on the specificity and certainty provided by the new method, Wood (1902a) having said to the Massachusetts MedicoLegal Society that one could finally testify absolutely as to the species of origin of bloodstains, rather than having to say that the results were "consistent with" the stain having originated from a particular species…
Elsewhere, Dr. Gaensslen wrote the following about cross-reactivity:5
Properly controlled and conducted tests for human blood can be considered specific if it is not possible that a nonhuman primate was the source of the blood… Similarly, tests for common farm animals, cats, dogs, and some wild game animals are specific in terms of distinguishing them from humans and from one another… Normally, the interpretation of species test results is straightforward, and test results are easy to read by the experienced professional. Positive results show that a bloodstain is from the species for which the antiserum is specific...
Maxime references a table from an introductory biology textbook that uses agglutination cross-reactivity as a proxy for relatedness between species. That does not reflect the probability of a cross-reaction between species on the Uhlenhuth test. As noted by Dr. Gaensslen, there is only a realistic possibility of an Uhlenhuth cross-reaction between human anti-sera and the blood of non-human primates. Maxime asserts that “Today we know that these cross-reactions occur with a larger number of species, including dogs and cats.” His only reference is a study by Dr. Kearse that is about serological techniques that Dr. Linoli did not employ, not the Ulhenhuth test.
1.5 - Absorption–elution test
Maxime argues that it is possible that microbial contamination explains the results of the absorption-elution test that Linoli performed. Before addressing the plausibility of that in this context, a few methodological points are in order:
First, Dr. Linoli’s identification of the relics as human cardiac tissue and blood was not predicated on the blood typing results. Even if the results of the absorption-elution test were unreliable, the rest of the evidence is more than sufficient to establish the organ and species identity of the relics. However, if the results were reliable, they suggest a common origin for both relics and contribute to a striking coincidence between the blood types of a number of Catholic relics.
Second, even if the blood types of the relics are underdetermined, the strength and concordance of the agglutination reactions in ancient, degraded tissues corroborates Dr. Linoli’s identification of highly vascularized muscle and blood. The most plausible pathways for microbial contamination to lead to mistypings presuppose underlying substrates that consist of genuine blood. They do not involve the de novo generation of strong, concordant blood group signals.
Third, Maxime does not attempt to estimate the probability of microbial contamination giving rise to the blood typing results that were observed. That probability is a function of the probability that the relevant kinds of microbes were present in all three samples that were tested, one from the ‘flesh’ and two from the ‘blood,’ and the probability that they produced strong, concordant reactions. Even under extreme assumptions, that probability is very low.
1.5.1 - Bacterial colonization?
Maxime’s hypothesis requires that blood-group simulating bacteria were present in abundance at multiple sites in both relics. Dr. Linoli pointed out that:6
3.1. The hypothesis that the Blood was contaminated is erroneous; no such finding has ever been confirmed.
3.2. The hypothesis that microorganisms are the origin of the A and B antigens is entirely inconsistent. The Miraculous Heart had few colonies on its surface, and not in the peripheral area from which the small fragment was taken. Furthermore, numerous histological preparations have never demonstrated parasites, which readily appear under basic staining in cases of morbid infection.
If contaminants were not observed in “numerous histological preparations” taken from the immediate vicinity of the samples, the probability that large concentrations of exactly the right kind of microbes were present in all of the samples is negligible.
1.5.2 - Forensic literature?
Maxime motivates his hypothesis with the following argument:
Bacterial contamination can give false positives for group AB. But wouldn’t it be strange if the error repeatedly led to an AB result? Funny coincidence, right?
Well, not quite, if the forensic literature is to be believed. Indeed, in the 1970s and 1980s, serologies, comparable to those that Linoli used, gave similar results in certain contaminated series. For example, in 1977, a study of 68 ancient skeletons (55 of which yielded results) found 51% group AB, a rate well beyond what was expected. Even more surprising, the O rate was less than 4%. These results have been interpreted as signaling bacterial contamination of samples and thus, in recent years, various articles have concluded that ABO serologies should be abandoned in forensic science, especially for degraded samples, which is still the case for older samples.
This gives the false impression that there is a consensus in the forensic literature that the results of Micle et al. (1977) were attributable to bacterial contamination. There is one sentence in Kearse (2023) that suggests that the study reported a prevalence of AB that was “much higher” than “would be expected based on modern statistics and heredity,” but the only source provided is a table from “BabyMed.com” that has nothing to do with the probability of changes in the ethnic distribution of blood types over time. Meanwhile, the original study convincingly argued for its own reliability:7
First, it cited scholarly literature about population genetics in the ancient Near East: “The great variety of theoretically possible combinations of the ABO-blood group frequencies in isolated populations of ancient times was demonstrated by Brues (’63) in her models for selecting phenotypes in the ABO system.” Neither Maxime nor Dr. Kearse have presented any evidence that recent discoveries preclude the gene frequencies that are implied by the original study’s results. Furthermore, neither considers the possibility of kinship effects at burial sites. Burial proximity is strongly correlated with the genetic relatedness of decedents.
Second, it noted that Borgognini “obtained for eneolithic Italian skeletons gene frequencies closely approximating those in contemporary European populations. For recent bones from a Pisa cemetery she observed the same frequencies as in the present-day Pisa population… Borgognini’s data on Egyptian mummies are in agreement with the data of the present study: both indicate a high frequency of the I^B gene and an extremely low frequency of the I^O gene.” Why would the same method skew towards AB in Israel and Egypt but not Italy? If the answer is related to geography, then the Italian studies are more relevant to Lanciano.
Third, “each bone extract was tested three times to ensure the uniformity of the results” and “three soil samples from the immediate vicinity of the bones were also tested.” The authors reported that “all the soil samples gave negative results in the hemagglutination-inhibition test confirming that any antigens detected actually belonged to the bones and were not the result of biological processes occurring in the soil… Repeated typing of the ancient bones further established that the results were perfectly reproducible.” So, not only was there no direct evidence of adventitious contamination, there was direct evidence against it.
Maxime cites Gosh (2022) as if it were relevant to his discussion of Micle. However, Gosh does not mention Micle. He only makes the modest claim that the absorption-elution test does not “comprehensively eliminate the possibility of mistyping” and that it has recently been superseded by “high-throughput genotyping.” Overall, the forensic literature supports the reliability of Dr. Linoli’s findings:8
Lee et al. (1991) assessed the reliability of the blood types assigned by the absorption-elution test as a function of environmental exposure using 1534 human bone specimens of known ABO type. Their grading criteria accepted reactions that were much weaker than those observed by Dr. Linoli, they did not exclude samples with contaminants in the immediate vicinity, and their exposures were very harsh. Their data suggest a conservative upper bound for the probability of false positive AB results in two independent substrates of ~0.05%.
Llop and Rothhammer (1988) determined the blood types of 54 Chilean mummies. They checked all of the mummies for bacterial contamination. The only spores that were present in the mummies were “bacterium lacking ABO antigens.” Crucially, they pointed out that serological methods are biased towards underestimating the prevalence of A and B antigens, since the “transforming enzymatic activity of bacterial vegetative forms” can “give rise to a spurious increase of O or lack of determination, but never to A and B pseudospecifities.”
Kind and Lang (1976) cultured 257 microbiological colonies in blood agar. Of the 80 colonies that demonstrated blood group activity, only 4 demonstrated AB activity. If Dr. Linoli deliberately targeted microbiological colonies, that suggests there was only a 1.5% chance he would have selected one that produced a false positive for AB. Maxime’s hypothesis is that this occurred thrice in two independent substrates even though Linoli tried to avoid contaminants. Hence my point about how the plausible pathways to mistyping presuppose genuine blood.
1.6 - Thin-layer chromatography
Maxime asserts that “thin-layer chromatography is only probative in the negative sense… since different molecules can have the same Rf…”
First, the forensic literature supports Dr. Linoli’s assertion that thin-layer chromatography “has full value for the recognition of blood…” Maxime references Fried and Sherma (2009) which notes that “evidence from TLC alone is not sufficient for unambiguous identification of unknowns. Correspondence of Rf values… provides only presumptive identification, and non-universal detection reagents are not specific for one compound but selective for a type or class of compounds.” That is true as far as it goes, but it is irrelevant in this context:9
Dr. Linoli was trying to determine whether the sample belonged to a class of compounds (i.e, blood-derived pigments). He was not trying to discriminate between closely related molecules (e.g, different heme derivatives). In fact, the entire point of applying the alkali treatment was to transform the sample into alkaline hematin irrespective of the initial heme species. Fiori (1957), Farago (1966), and Franchini (1966) confirm the validity of chromatographic methods for the unambiguous identification of an unknown substance as blood.
Second, conceptually, for a substance to co-migrate with hematin in Linoli’s setup, it would have to have properties that are specific to heme compounds:
(Homogeneity after alkali treatment) Heme compounds yield a homogeneous chromatographic product after alkali treatment because they contain a single, structurally uniform prosthetic group—iron–porphyrin heme—which converges under alkaline conditions to a stable derivative. By contrast, non-heme compounds would have been expected to undergo divergent reactions under alkali, fragmenting into heterogeneous mixtures, which would have resulted in no chromatographic signal, multiple spots, or diffuse smearing.
(Partition equilibrium in solvent system) Co-migration required that the compound exhibit essentially the same balance between adsorption to silica and solubility in the methanol–acetic acid–water mobile phase as hematin. That balance is highly sensitive to couplings between chemical properties of the sample and the solvent system. In practice, the vast majority of non-heme compounds would have fallen into extremes of polarity that precluded co-migration with hematin. Furthermore, even small differences in protonation or amphiphilic balance would have caused measurable differences in Rf.
Third, even if Maxime were right that “the identification here would only be indicative, pending confirmation by other tests,” he neglects that these results were obtained in the context of the microscopic appearance of blood, precipitin reactions, agglutination reactions, and an electropherogram that exactly corresponded to fresh serum. In other words, the sample looked like blood, swam like blood, and quacked like blood. Meanwhile, the only direct evidence against blood was negativity on the Teichmann and Takayama tests. Maxime himself acknowledges that “such a result is entirely possible for ancient tissue.”
1.7 - Protein electrophoresis
Maxime asserts that “a simple gel electrophoresis cannot distinguish intact human albumin from… a charged molecule with the same mobility.”
First, it is true that different molecules can have similar charge densities. However, it is extremely unlikely that a non-serum mixture reproduced the same set of charge densities in the same relative proportions as fresh human serum, especially in the context of the rest of the evidence that points to blood:
To improve on Maxime’s analogy, imagine the following scenario: You found a lost wallet on the ground. A stranger comes up to you and claims that it is his wallet. You want to be sure that it is his. To prove that it is his, he volunteers that the wallet contains roughly 600 pennies, 20 nickels, 120 dimes, 60 quarters, and 200 half dollars. Unfortunately, you’ve forgotten how to identify coins by looking at them. However, after weighing a representative sample of the objects in the wallet, you determine that about 60% of them weigh 2.5g, about 2% weigh 5g, about 10% weigh 2.25g, about 5% weigh 6g, and about 20% of them weigh 11g. How confident would you be that the stranger owned the wallet? Does it matter that dimes are not the only objects that weigh 2.25g?
Second, Maxime invokes Dr. Transancos and assures us that she “is a chemist and is therefore knowledgeable about this test.” In her commentary, she concedes “it is undeniably remarkable that the controls and tests were so close a match.” It seems that her reservations are philosophical, not technical. In my debate with her, she did not raise any technical objections when I presented this argument.
2. Origination
Maxime asserts that “to conclude that a miracle occurred in the case of Lanciano, one must… assume that the account written eight centuries after the alleged event is accurate…” However, that is an obvious strawman of proponents of authenticity:
First, none of the proponents that he engages with assume the accuracy of the tradition that has come down to us. Rather, we argue that it is the best explanation of the data. If we are right that the origination and preservation of the relics is naturalistically inexplicable, then it seems they must have been produced and conserved by a supernatural agent. But why did a supernatural agent miraculously produce a transverse section of a heart and five coagulated blood clots? Why did the Lanciano tradition become associated with those remains? Why did the agent miraculously conserve them for centuries thereafter? The Lanciano tradition suggests a straightforward and unified explanation of all the relevant data.
Second, while I consider it most likely that God preserved the tradition that contextualizes the relics alongside the relics themselves, it is simply not true that “one must” accept the “accuracy” of the traditional account “to conclude that a miracle occurred.” It is entirely possible that historical memory of the original miracle was corrupted over time. Maybe it didn’t involve a doubting priest. Maybe it happened in the 10th century or the 11th century rather than the 8th century. Maybe it happened during Eucharistic adoration rather than during Mass. The case for a miracle is not based on the intrinsic credibility of the historical sources that witness to the traditional account of the miracle, so it does not stand or fall with the reliability of those sources nor with the specific details they provide.
2.1 - Provenance
Maxime asserts that there is “no trace of” Lanciano before the 16th century.10
(Guitmund) In a dialogue that dates back to the 11th century, the archbishop of Aversa reported that he learned the following from a trustworthy source:
In Italy, a priest, while celebrating Mass, noticed real Flesh on the altar and real Blood in the chalice. At that sight, he began trembling and refrained from consuming them. At once, he reported the unusual event to his bishop and sought his advice as to what should be done. The bishop, after convening a meeting with many other bishops, recorded of the Miraculous Event and decided to take a delicate care of the chalice containing the Flesh and Blood. Eventually, everything was sealed at the centre of the altar so that all would be perpetually preserved as Extraordinary Relics.
Maxime asserts “stories of this type were numerous in the medieval period.” St. Carlo Acutis catalogued more than 130 historical accounts of Eucharistic miracles. This is the earliest account of a miracle that involves the transformation of both species, an exceedingly rare feature. Moreover, the account mentions that a conference of bishops “recorded of the Miraculous Event” and that “Flesh and Blood” had been “perpetually preserved as Extraordinary Relics” in Italy. Maxime asserts “this text mentions neither a chalice, nor the city of Lanciano, nor even Italy.” Guitmund’s testimony clearly mentions both “Italy” and a “chalice.”
(Fella) In a chronicle written around the year 1620, the historian Fella reported that two friars, Antonio Scarpa and Angelo Siro, told him that “in 1560, two Basilian monks came to the Convent of St. Francis; they stole from us a parchment codex, written in Greek and in Latin, hidden between two tablets” that “contained the complete narration of the Eucharistic miracle.” As I argued in my original article, the bilingual format of the codex is far more consistent with an authentic document composed between the 8th and 10th centuries than with a late medieval forgery. Furthermore, the codex is a perfect match for the episcopal record that Guitmundo mentioned. Maxime does not even mention Fella.
(Monastery) Basilian monks began to serve the monastery of St. Legontian during the the sixth century. The monastery was abandoned when Basilian monks left the region at the end of the 12th century. It was then given to the Benedictines, but they left after only about fifty years because the monastery was ravaged by earthquakes. In 1258, the Franciscans built a new monastery on the ruins of the old monastery. The Franciscans named the new monastery after their patron St. Francis. The author of the traditional account of the miracle demonstrates familiarity with the historical vicissitudes of the monastery. That indicates that accurate and detailed records were available during the episcopal investigations.
(Bellini) Bruno Sammaciccia writes “The historian Bellini, who certainly drew on an ancient source, affirms that the Holy Eucharistic Relics, before being transferred in 1258 to the new church of St. Francis, that is, during the five centuries that they remained in the church of St. Legontian, were preserved in a precious ivory reliquary.” In a 1631 report, Bishop Andrea Gervasio confirmed that “for 400 years a Host has been preserved and venerated in the church of St. Francis of Lanciano, which has become the Flesh of Christ, and that coagulated blood is also observed.” That exactly corresponds to Bellini’s timeline.
(Paintings) Sammaciccia also writes “Pollidoro mentions the existence of very ancient paintings representing the Miracle, paintings that have not come down to us.” It seems that the “very ancient paintings” that Pollidoro referred to were extant in 1686, seeing as Abbot Giovanni Battista Pacichelli wrote “In the ancient Temple of St. Francis, formerly [property] of the Monks of St. Basil, then of the Cassinians, among numerous other relics, the Sacred Host changed into Flesh and a few drops of wine [changed] into Blood a thousand years ago in the hands of an unbelieving Religious Priest, the history of which is depicted in the Sacristy.”
2.2 - Anachronistic?
2.2.1 - Doubter theme?
Maxime argues that “the story of a doubting priest reassured by a bleeding host” suggests “an origin toward the late Middle Ages” because that “is a recurring theme in medieval Eucharistic legends.” This argument is backwards:11
First, the Apophthegmata Patrum, a document that dates to either the 4th or 5th century, records an account of a doubter reassured by the transformation of a host. The Vita Beati Gregorii Papae, a document that dates to the 8th century, records an account of a host transforming into Flesh and Blood by the intercession of Pope St. Gregory to convert a doubter. So, the doubter theme is present in the most ancient “Eucharistic legends” that have come down to us.
Second, John Palamas’ statistical analysis of Eucharistic miracles indicates that the doubter theme is more characteristic of “Eucharistic legends” from antiquity than of “Eucharistic legends” from later periods. Additionally, Palamas’ data confutes Maxime’s objection that it is suspicious that “the first written mention” of Lanciano dates to “the 16th century… in the midst of the Counter-Reformation...” The doubting theme disappeared throughout the 16th century:
2.2.2 - Unleavened bread?
Maxime argues that “The relic itself is anachronistic. It corresponds to the size of a thin host used at the end of the Middle Ages. It was only gradually from the 9th century onward that unleavened bread began to be widely used…”12
First, writing in the 7th century, John Maro claimed that “those who made the Eucharistic offering in leavened bread reproached the Western churches, the Armenians, and the Maronites, with offering ‘unleavened cakes,’ which were not bread at all” which is conclusive evidence that “unleavened bread was used in the Eucharist by the Latins, and by some Eastern sects, in the 7th and 8th centuries.” Furthermore, writing in the late 8th century, Alcuin prescribed unleavened bread as a universal norm. It is hard to imagine that he would have insisted that “the bread should be perfectly free from leaven of any kind” unless that had precedent.
Second, Maxime asserts that “only later did the thin, small host appear, in the 11th century.” Any host made out of unleavened bread would have been relatively thin and the Lanciano relic is considerably larger than a “small host” from the 11th century. However, it is a natural size for a host that was prepared for a priest to use during the consecration. Furthermore, as I argued in section (1.2), the hypothesis of a late medieval forgery can’t explain the central void and the progressive thinning towards the center. Meanwhile, the dimensions, geometry, and thinning are consistent with a transverse section of a left ventricle.
2.2.3 - St. Gregory of Tours?
Maxime argues that “the example of Gregory of Tours… shows that the flow of blood from consecrated bread was not perceived at that time as confirming the real presence, but rather as a bad omen. It does not follow that such an event in the 8th century would have been perceived as confirming the real presence.”13
First, Maxime asserts “for Gregory of Tours the most natural interpretation was a portent of disaster—likely because transubstantiation had not yet been formulated…” The notion that Lanciano wouldn’t have been interpreted as confirming the real presence is confuted by the 4th and 7th century accounts that were discussed in section (2.2.1). Obviously, there is no equivalence between the doctrinal implications of hosts bleeding during a period when numerous cities across France were being ravaged by natural disasters and hosts perceptibly transforming into Flesh and Blood to restore the faith of a doubting priest.
Second, St. Gregory never denied that the bleeding hosts were evocative of the real presence. Due to the context in which they occurred, he didn’t interpret the bleeding hosts as a “blessing,” but that is irrelevant to whether he understood them to have doctrinal implications. In Glory of the Martyrs, St. Gregory discussed a Eucharistic miracle that was certainly not a sign of God’s favor, but that he nonetheless understood to have significant doctrinal implications:
Gregory opens the chapter by expressing general concern about our purity when we receive the Eucharist…
”For I recall what I heard happened when I was a young man. It was the anniversary of the suffering of the great martyr Polycarp, and a mass was being celebrated in Riom (Ricomagensis vicus), a village in the territory of Clermont. [An account of] Polycarp's suffering (passio) was read along with the other readings that the clerical canon included. It was time for offering the sacrifice.”
A deacon was given the vessel in which the Eucharistic bread was placed and entered the church with it; but the vessel floated above him to the altar, never allowing him to touch it. This was surely because he was polluted, being reputedly an adulterer. Only four people were able to see this, one being Gregory's mother; Gregory himself was there, but was not able see it.
2.3 - Prophecies?
Maxime draws an analogy between the evidence for Lanciano and three Protestant prophecies that disconfirm Catholicism. His reasoning is astoundingly fallacious:
First, the analogy neglects that the evidence for Lanciano consists of physical artifacts that are purported to have observable properties that are impossible to reconcile with a premodern forgery. Meanwhile, the evidence for his three prophecies is entirely dependent on the precise wording of statements that were only mentioned by partisan sources after they were supposedly fulfilled.
Second, the base rate of meticulous forgeries that can withstand centuries of critical scrutiny is much lower than the base rate of apocryphal stories about religious leaders. In fact, since he is a Christian, Maxime should confess that the base rate of such forgeries is lower than the base rate of miracles. It is stunning that he didn’t recognize that his comparison was based on a category mistake.
Third, whereas the alleged prophecies make perfect sense as legendary embellishments, the traditional account of Lanciano doesn’t. If Franciscan monks conspired to pass off the relics as ancient, why would they invent a story that situated the miracle in a defunct church served by a different religious order? The primary incentive to forge relics was to enhance prestige and attract pilgrims.
2.3.1 - Jan Hus?
It is not worth going through all three of the prophecies that Maxime discusses, but I think his treatment of an apocryphal story about Jan Hus is representative of how he reasons about sources and evidence throughout his entire article.
In 1415, Jan Hus was condemned by the Council of Constance. Before he was executed, he supposedly said “You will roast a goose, but in a hundred years a swan will come that you will neither be able to roast nor boil!” Maxime acknowledges that “the earliest sources for this prophecy are Lutheran authors, a century after…”
Nonetheless, Maxime apparently believes this prophecy is more credible than Lanciano for four reasons: (i) the earliest sources are only a century after the event, (ii) Lutherans claimed they were aware of this prophecy in their own time, (iii) in his letters, Hus referred to himself as a ‘goose’ and to others as ‘birds,’ and (iv) a companion of Hus used the imagery of a roasted goose to describe Hus’ execution.14
First, the earliest source of Hus’ prophecy is Martin Luther himself:
St. John Huss prophesied of me when he wrote from his prison in Bohemia, “They will roast a goose now (for ‘Huss’ means ‘a goose’), but after a hundred years they will hear a swan sing, and him they will endure.”
Besides the fact that this was a self-serving claim by a compulsive liar, there is also the minor issue that we have comprehensive editions of Hus’ writings, including an edition of Hus’ writings during his imprisonment with a preface written by Luther himself, and this statement does not appear in any of them. It seems that Luther’s followers caught onto this, so by the time of Luther’s death, the legend evolved into its current form. Scholars have speculated that Luther was conflating a 1412 letter written by Hus with a statement that was attributed to another heretic that was condemned at Constance, Jerome of Prague.
Second, Maxime fails to mention that we have contemporaneous accounts of Hus’ execution that omit the prophecy. For example, Peter of Mladoňovice, an eyewitness, wrote an account of his masters execution very shortly after the event. What’s more, we have access to an extensive body of Hussite literature from between Hus’ execution in 1415 and Luther’s reference to Hus’ prophecy in 1531. There is no evidence that Hussites were aware of anything resembling this prophecy before the Reformation. Evidently, Luther was the first Hussite to discover the document that witnessed to the prophecy, forgot to include it in any of his editions of Hus’ writings, and then it was subsequently lost to history.
Third, taken at face value, Luther’s version of Hus’ prophecy is far less impressive than secular predictions that have been vindicated. In 1919, Marshal Ferdinand Foch declared that the Treaty of Versailles was “not a peace,” but “an armistice for twenty years.” That is far more specific than the prophecy that Luther attributes to Hus, but I doubt that many readers will be convinced that Foch was prophesying. It’s not even clear that Luther’s version of the prophecy was fulfilled. The wording implies that, although Church authorities were persecuting Hus in his time, in a hundred years they would “hear a swan sing” and then decide to tolerate that swan’s reform movement. Famously, that did not happen.
Fourth, even conceding all of his premises, Maxime’s arguments are ludicrously silly. As to the first, it is obviously very suspicious that the earliest reference coincides with the supposed fulfillment. As to the second, what would be relevant is Hussites demonstrating any familiarity with the prophecy before Luther’s time. As to the third, Lutherans had access to Hus’ writings, so it is not surprising that they incorporated his vernacular into their legendary embellishments about him. Regardless, this is a huge stretch. Hus’ name literally meant ‘goose’ and likening people to ‘birds’ is not a close parallel to calling someone a ‘swan.’ As to the fourth, the companion doesn’t attribute the imagery of a roasted goose to Hus. In fact, the companion’s phrasing might have been what inspired the legend.
2.4 - Procurement
Maxime’s only response to arguments to the effect that a premodern forgery would have been historically implausible is that “they all depend on the dubious histological interpretation.” As explained in section (1.3), I dispute that Dr. Linoli and Dr. Bertelli’s interpretation of the histology is “dubious,” but even if it were, that would not be sufficient to rehabilitate the hypothesis of a premodern forgery:
First, if the species identity of the relics is established, then regardless of whether the organ identity is established, the forger would have needed to have surreptitiously extracted ‘flesh’ and ‘blood’ from a human corpse within a few hours of death. That would have been needlessly difficult and risky. Animal tissue would have been much easier and safer to covertly acquire, transport, manipulate, and prepare. Since the species identity of tissue was inscrutable until modern times, it would make no sense for a premodern forger to prefer human tissue.
Second, if the blood type of the relics is established, then conditional on the forger choosing human tissue rather than animal tissue, there would only have been a 2.5% chance that they would happen to choose a corpse with AB blood, the blood type that contributes to a striking coincidence with a number of other relics and that was disproportionately prevalent among Jews during the time of Our Lord. Keep in mind, the probability of fraud decreases multiplicatively with each coincidence posited to accommodate data predicted by authenticity.
Maxime writes “Muse argues that a forger would have sought to create a more spectacular relic. Is he unaware that thousands of fake relics were produced during the Middle Ages—from ‘the Virgin’s milk’ to mere threads of cloth and even hairs?”
First, my point was not that a forger would never produce an unspectacular relic. It was that forgers are very unlikely to fabricate relics in ways that are extremely difficult and risky if there are obvious alternatives that are much easier, less risky, and that would foreseeably produce indistinguishable results. Thus, if a forger went out of his way to perform a complex dissection on a heart from a fresh corpse, it is very unlikely that he would have done so in a way that failed to make it clear to his intended audience that the relic was a fragment of a heart.
Second, the reason that fraudsters often passed off threads and hairs as relics is precisely because acquiring them was trivial and risk-free. My point was simply that if a forger decided to fabricate a relic using a thread, it is very unlikely that he would go to the trouble to break into a heavily guarded museum to steal a thread from an artifact unless that thread was recognizably different from one he could have taken from his bed. If Maxime considers that “nothing more than armchair psychology,” then he’s abusing that term to denigrate common-sense.
3. Preservation
Maxime objects to miraculous preservation on the grounds that “either the relic is miraculously preserved and one refrains from invoking poor preservation to explain observations, or one stops appealing to this alleged miracle of preservation.”
First, it is not clear why Maxime believes that preservation has to be perfect to be miraculous. Would he deny that the regeneration of Savino’s right eye, discussed in my article about St. Pio, was miraculous on the grounds that Savino’s left eye wasn’t healed? Would he deny that the raising of Lazarus was miraculous on the grounds that Lazarus died again? Would he deny that the Resurrection of Our Lord was miraculous on the grounds that His glorified Body retained wounds? Which ‘law of miracles’ excludes the possibility of imperfect preservation?
Second, my account of divine hiddenness posits that God performs miracles in a way that balances their epistemic force for real seekers with the psychological possibility of doubt for reprobates. If God is mindful of that trade-off, it makes sense that He miraculously preserved the relics in a way that preserved their evidential value, but wasn’t so conspicuous that obstinate skeptics had no pretext for dismissing them. Regardless of whether you find my model antecedently plausible, it is unreasonable to categorically reject it as a possible explanation for data that it strongly predicts and that alternatives struggle to even accommodate.
Third, let’s evaluate this objection from the standpoint of inductive logic. Even if you believe that the conditional probability of unprecedented, apparently inexplicable, imperfect preservation of a putatively miraculous relic given authenticity is very low, surely the conditional probability of that data given inauthenticity is far lower. Thus, it is strong evidence for authenticity. In fact, I think this argument would go through in the weaker case of exceptional, imperfect preservation of a putatively miraculous relic that was neither unprecedented nor inexplicable. The double coincidence of a bizarre and implausible fraud and extremely rare preservation is already unconscionable.
In a recent post, Maxime argues that Eucharistic miracles are inconsistent with the incorruptibility of Our Lord’s glorified Body after the Resurrection. This rests on the assumption that the accidents of flesh and blood that are perceived after Eucharistic miracles inhere in the substance of Our Lord. But pious Catholics should affirm that the accidents of flesh and blood exist in the same manner as the accidents of bread and wine after the consecration. They signify the change in substance that took place during the consecration, but without inhering in the substance of Our Lord.
Maxime writes “moreover, it makes little sense to judge the preservation of a sample whose date has never been scientifically verified. The only reason to date it to the 8th century is a devotional narrative written eight centuries later.”
In section (2) of this article, I argued for a provenance of the relics that goes back to antiquity, but if you concede a provenance that goes back to the episcopal inspection in 1886, then all the arguments for miraculous preservation go through. Moreover, the hypothesis of substitution between the episcopal inspections in the 16th century and Dr. Linoli’s investigation in the 20th century is absurd for reasons that were explained in section (2.1) of my original article. The inexplicability of the preservation doesn’t stand or fall with whether the relics have perdured for more than a millenia or ‘merely’ a few hundred years.
3.1 - Preparation
3.1.1 - Preservatives?
Maxime questions the absence of preservatives by asserting that Dr. Linoli neither explained “the basis for this claim” nor performed “specific analyses to support it.”15
First, Dr. Linoli’s report states that “no histological section has revealed any trace of infiltrations of salts or preservatives used even in antiquity for the purpose of mummification.” Furthermore, he did perform “specific analyses” that corroborated that interpretation. Chemical tests revealed that the ‘blood’ was depleted in sodium and chlorides, the opposite of what you would expect from samples that had been impregnated with salts to draw out moisture, a preservation technique that a premodern forger would have likely used.
Second, in addition to leaving behind conspicuous traces that were not observed, alcohol, vinegar, and resinous balsams would have caused protein denaturation and antigen loss that can’t be reconciled with the results of the immunological and serological tests. Maxime’s only response involves reiterating his objections to those results. He even begrudgingly admits that “as for reactivity in the Uhlenhuth test, [Muse’s] claim is more plausible…” If sugar or honey were used, hygroscopic instability would have negated any initial preservation advantage.
Third, Maxime fails to appreciate the tension between positing that the relics were infested with bacteria to explain the agglutination reactions and then positing that the relics were treated with preservatives that are only effective insofar as they maintain low water activity and suppress microbial growth to explain preservation. If he were right about the extent of bacterial contamination, then the exceptional preservation of the relics would be even more extraordinary and apparently inexplicable than it otherwise would have been.
3.1.2 - Desiccation?
Maxime asserts that preservatives would have been “unnecessary” because “desiccation is one of the oldest methods of meat preservation.”16
First, it is mind-boggling that Maxime believes medievals could preserve uncured meat for arbitrarily long periods. Even with heavy salting, cured meat would only last for a few years under favorable conditions. Meanwhile, even under the most favorable conditions, uncured meat would only last for a few days.
Second, the feasibility of evaporative drying as a short-term preservation technique depends on the type of meat. Myocardium is a poor candidate because it is highly cellular, water-rich, and metabolically fragile. Moreover, accelerating desiccation with heat or smoke would’ve disfigured histology and biomolecules.
Third, evaporative drying makes no sense as a short-term preservation technique for the hematic coagulations. Blood clots are fragile, hydration-dependent fibrin networks rather than structurally stable tissues. Evaporative drying would have been totally ineffective at preserving multiple free-standing coagulated masses.
Fourth, even if it were theoretically possible to preserve the relics without preservatives, it is unthinkable that, after going to great lengths to procure the relics, a forger staked the fruits of all his labors on achieving an exceptional outcome using a very inefficient and unreliable short-term preservation technique.
3.2 - Storage
3.2.1 - Dr. Silvano Fuso
Maxime quotes Dr. Silvano Fuso, “a member of CICAP,” an advocacy group that “promotes critical investigation of the pseudosciences...” as saying “Of course, the preservation of proteins and minerals observed in the flesh and blood of Lanciano is neither impossible nor exceptional […].” Is it possible there was any important context omitted in the “[…]”? Dr. Fuso certainly would have thought so: (emphasis mine)
Of course, the preservation of proteins and minerals observed in Lanciano's flesh and blood is neither impossible nor exceptional: repeated analyses have allowed proteins to be found in 4- and 5,000-year-old Egyptian mummies. But it should be emphasized that the case of a body mummified according to known procedures is very different from that of a fragment of myocardium, left in its natural state for centuries, exposed to atmospheric physical and biochemical agents.
This is an egregious misrepresentation of a source. Unfortunately, I think it raises serious questions about whether Maxime can be trusted to accurately represent his private correspondence with anonymous experts. If he continues to publicly comment about Lanciano, I think he should name his sources and reproduce his correspondence with them in full. At the very least, he needs to rectify this before he continues to disparage Dr. Linoli by insisting that his “integrity cannot be affirmed.”
3.2.2 - Mummies?
Maxime claims that the “tissue preservation” of “Chilean mummies” is “far superior” to the Lanciano relics. Since their preservation is due to “spontaneous mummification caused by environmental conditions,” he suggests that this is relevant to Lanciano.17
First, in my original article, I pointed out that “biological remains are known to perdure only when they are protected by unusually stable environments… by contrast, in addition to being untreated, the Lanciano relics were continuously exposed in liturgical vessels that were neither airtight nor sterile.” Chilean mummies are preserved in the Atacama Desert, which is the driest non-polar desert on Earth. The Atacama’s soils are rich in nitrates and salts that act as natural preservatives. It is an optimal environment for the preservation of soft tissue.
Second, conceptually, long-term preservation of soft tissue requires continuous suppression of water activity, microbial growth, and oxygen exposure. Maxime acknowledges that the Lanciano relics were subjected to fluctuations in humidity, contamination by microbes, and the open air. In order for a case of exceptional preservation to be relevant, it would need to demonstrate that soft tissue can withstand centuries of rehydration-dehydration cycles, microbial colonization, and oxidative degradation. But that would upend the entire field of taphonomy.
Third, when blood is preserved in archaeological contexts, it persists as thin films or irregular crusts adhered to a substrate. A blood clot is a hydrated gel with no intrinsic scaffolding. Unlike soft tissue, it lacks an extracellular matrix or cellular architecture capable of bearing load independently of water. Thus, if it is rapidly desiccated to avoid putrefaction, the inevitable result is a densified, weakly cohesive protein residue. When archaeologists report finding ‘clots’ in a mummy, they are referring to trace residues that retained shape by confinement.
3.2.3 - Biomolecules
Maxime responds to biomolecular preservation by noting that “the presence of blood proteins has since been identified in other ancient tissues…” That doesn’t refute the arguments presented in section (3.2) of my original article. None of them assumed it was impossible for serum proteins to be preserved in ancient tissues. Rather, they were about the abundances and relative proportions of the serum proteins that were identified in the relics. Since they went unchallenged, I won’t recapitulate them.
Maxime suggests that “the most plausible explanation” for the selectivity of the biomolecular preservation is “defective sample analysis.” However, it is not plausible that a procedural error was responsible for the results of protein electrophoresis:
First, any error capable of yielding an electrophoretic tracing comparable to fresh serum would have to involve the substitution of the specimen itself—the inadvertent testing of fresh serum in place of eluate derived from the relic. The well-characterized failure modes of the method—improper buffer, overloading, contamination—do not produce clean, canonical fractionation patterns.
Second, the eluate derived from the relic would have been visibly distinct from fresh serum, making unwitting substitution extremely unlikely. Fresh serum would be a clear, straw-colored, homogeneous liquid. By contrast, the eluate derived from the relic would have been turbid, variably colored, and particulate. If Dr. Linoli inadvertently substituted at any stage, it would have been obvious.
Updates
(03/27/26)
(2.2.1) Emmanuel Porcher pointed out that my description of an account in the Apophthegmata Patrum was imprecise. I’ve corrected the description.
(3) I added a response to an objection concerning the incorruptibility of Our Lord’s glorified Body that was presented in a recent post by Maxime.
(04/02/26)
(3.2) Maxime found counterexamples to my claim about the distinctiveness of the transformation of both species. I’ve weakened the claim accordingly.
(09/08/26)
I’ve eliminated all references to the claim that the Flesh would need to have been produced using a cut with a tangential orientation.
Serafini, F. (2021). A Cardiologist Examines Jesus: The miraculous Eucharistic phenomena in the light of science. San Francisco: Ignatius Press.
Narayanan, Karthik, et al. 2014. “Left Ventricular Diameter and Risk Stratification for Sudden Cardiac Death.” Journal of the American Heart Association 3 (1): e000815.
Tran, K., Milne, N., Duhig, E., & Altman, M. (2013). Inverted takotsubo cardiomyopathy: Clinicopathologic correlation. American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology.
Budetta GC, Su una particolarità del miracolo eucaristico di Lanciano che genera perplessità, Auditorium, 2007.
“The Common Vein.” Heart Size. Accessed 18 Mar. 2026. https://thecommonvein.com/heart/size/.
Gaensslen, R. E. (1983). Sourcebook in forensic serology, immunology, and biochemistry. U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, U.S. Government Printing Office.
Gaensslen, R. E. (2000). Forensic analysis of biological evidence. In C. H. Wecht (Ed.), Forensic sciences (Vol. 1, Release 29). Matthew Bender & Co.
Kearse, K. P. (2023). Inadequacies in serological ABO typing of ancient artifacts: The Shroud of Turin as a case example. International Journal of Forensic Sciences, 8(3), 000326.
Micle, S., Kobilyansky, E., Nathan, M., Arensburg, B., & Nathan, H. (1977). ABO-typing of ancient skeletons from Israel. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 47(1), 89–91.
Ghosh, S. (2022). ABO typing in forensic analysis: To be or not to be in the epoch of genotyping. International Journal of Forensic Science & Pathology, 9(3), 487–494.
Lee, H. C., Berka, K. M., Folk, N. L., Pagliaro, E. M., Carroll-Reho, J., Brubaker, T. L., & Gaensslen, R. E. (1991). Genetic markers in human bone: II. Studies on ABO (and IGH) grouping. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 36(3), 639–655.
Llop E, Rothhammer F. (1988). A note on the presence of blood groups A and B in pre-Columbian South America. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 75:107–111.
Kind, S.S. and B.G. Lang. (1976). An investigation into the possible sources of adventitious ABH substances in bloodstain grouping J. Forensic Sci. Soc. 16: 155-161
Fried, B., & Sherma, J. (1999). Thin-layer chromatography (4th ed.). New York, NY: Marcel Dekker.
Franchini, A. (1966). Medicina legale. Padua: Cedam.
Farago, M. E. (1966). Forensic serology. In A. K. Mant (Ed.), Modern trends in forensic medicine (2nd series). London: Butterworths.
Fiori, A. (1957). La diagnosi delle macchie di sangue. Rome: Edizioni Medico-Forensi.
Sammaciccia, B. (1977). The Eucharistic miracle of Lanciano (R. Bourdariat, Trans.). Editions du Cèdre.
Palamas, J. (2026). The First-Ever Statistical Analysis of Eucharistic Miracles. Palamas Obscurity (Substack).
Acutis, C. (2006). Eucharistic Miracle of Scete (Egypt, III–V Century).
Acutis, C. (2006). Eucharistic Miracle of Rome (Italy, VI–VII Century).
McClintock, J., & Strong, J. (1880). Elements, Eucharistic. In Cyclopaedia of biblical, theological, and ecclesiastical literature. Harper & Brothers.
B. Ward-Perkins (2015). Glory of the Martyrs 85 (summary). In The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity Database (E00628). University of Oxford.
A.A. (2017). The goose and the swan. Pioneer Library (Old Dead Guys). https://olddeadguys.com/2017/07/07/the-goose-and-the-swan/
Scribner, R. W. (1986). Incombustible Luther: The image of the reformer in early modern Germany. Past & Present, (110), 38–68.
The New York Times. (1944). Foch’s warning: The marshal predicted World War II.
Luther, M. (1531). Dr. Martin Luther’s commentary on the alleged imperial edict promulgated in the year 1531 after the Imperial Diet of the year 1530. In Luther’s Works (Vol. 34, pp. 103–104).
Peter of Mladoňovice. (1416). Relatio de Magistro Johanne Hus.
Hus, Jan (1415). Letters of John Huss, Written During His Exile and Imprisonment: With Martin Luther’s Preface. Translated by Campbell Mackenzie. Edited by Émile de Bonnechose.
Linoli, O. (1971). Ricerche istologiche, immunologiche e biochimiche sulla carne e sul sangue del miracolo eucaristico di Lanciano (VIII secolo). Quaderni Sclavo di Diagnostica Clinica e di Laboratori, 7(3), 661–674. Siena: Sclavo Institute.
de Courcy, T. (2010). Salting meat. A Baker’s Peel. https://www.bakerspeel.com/salting-meat-old/
Woolgar, C. M., Serjeantson, D., & Waldron, T. (Eds.). (2006). Food in medieval England: Diet and nutrition. Oxford University Press.
Haglund, W. D., & Sorg, M. H. (1997). Forensic taphonomy: The postmortem fate of human remains. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Haglund, W. D., & Sorg, M. H. (1997).
Arriaza, B. T. (1995). Beyond death: The Chinchorro mummies of ancient Chile. Smithsonian Institution Press.
This was a knock-down response! Great work Ethan, you are one of the best catholic apologist out there! Would love to interview you on my channel :)
Thank you for your response to my article. I will respond on Par la foi in French and per haps translate the reponse in English.