Disappointing visits and fake relics

The last two days have been spent in Montefiascone and Bolsena, which is very close to Orvieto.  We stayed at the major seminary of the Institute of the Incarnate Word, and other than the ruins of a Papal castle and a very nice view of the nearby lake, I did not particularly enjoy myself.  The members of the Institute are very nice and they seem to do a lot of good work, but in over six hours of talks, I never really got what their primary charism was.  I also object to some of the ways in which they do human formation, but this entry doesn't need to turn into a multi-paragraph rant about that.  They seem nice as individuals, but I want to remove this visit from next year's agenda.  If you want a more upbeat gloss, check the official seminary blog.

The view from the Monte.  Behind us is the city.

Pope's castle even higher up the mountain/hill/butte.

Despite the shot, it it's located in a busy city park.

But onto more interesting things: fake relics. Wednesday morning we went to Bolsena. Bolsena is the site of the mass where the Eucharistic miracle I mentioned in Orvieto happened, and they still have the altar, which is pretty neat. However, according to their version of events, the host bled so heavily that the blood went right through the corporal and left a nice red dot on the altar stone, was removed and framed for veneration.  Let me be clear, I do not doubt the initial miracle, nor the fact the altar is a genuine relic. 

The altar.  What is nice is that the missing corner is clearly the one in the reliquary.

What I doubt is the nice little blood spot on the stone.  First and foremost, the stain doesn't match the corporal.  Second, the corporal isn't that soaked, so I doubt blood would have gone through enough to soak into stone.  Third, the altar doesn't appear in the contemporary literature (50-60 years later) that Orvieto had posted of the event and the bishop of Orvieto had been told to remove all the relics, and the altar isn't that big, so you think he would have absconded with the altar. I have a feeling that after Orvieto got popular, Bolsena, site of the actual miracle felt the need to play up their relic a bit to get pilgrims and so had fun with some red agents.  We pilgrims want to see the miracle, not where it took place. The closest analogy I can think of is Our Lady of Guadalupe. We want to see the tilma bearing her miraculous image, and not the bishop's palace where she appeared. Of course, I could be cynical, and just to be on the safe side I did venerate because it's still an altar where there was a Eucharistic miracle.

The altar fragment. The spot is much more red in person.