As Ernesto de Martino stated at the very beginning of his Magic: A Theory form the South (1959; published in English in 2015 for Hau Books), the alternative between magic and rationality has been one of the founding motifs of modern civilization. In a way, De Ceglia’s ambitious, erudite book, which claims the case for an “anthropological history,” can be seen as yet one proof of the enduring influence of De Martino’s views in Italy. However, it is much more: a discussion on the relation between religion and science in early modern to modern Italy (and Europe), a reappraisal of religious life in Naples, and, last but not least, a captivating read. It also responds to Peter Brown’s exhortation to abandon a two-tiered model, popular versus learned, in the interpretation of the cult of saints in late antiquity. As De Ceglia convincingly shows, this model has been widely used for the early modern period as well; it is still with us and, indeed, it explains very little.

S. Gennaro’s miracle, still one of the most popular festivities in the city, showcases the public liquefaction of the content of ancient and sealed glass vials supposed to contain the saint’s blood, collected at his martyrdom. The ceremony has undergone dramatic metamorphoses in its long history. It was first related in 1389, and in its first period it happened in what may now seem a bizarre form, that is, whenever the saint’s supposed head, in a precious reliquary, was placed near the vials. In this version, as De Ceglia shows, the miracle was connected to cruentatio, the belief (also used as judicial evidence) that corpses bled when in the presence of their assassin. In the late Renaissance, a learned discussion arose between theologians and natural philosophers, among them the Paduan physician Fortunio Liceti, an expert in rare and wondrous phenomena. The dialectic between supernatural, preternatural, and natural phenomena was at the core of the notion of the miracle and, in De Ceglia’s interpretation, of the divide between the Catholic and Protestant world. Liceti, a contemporary of Galileo, absorbed the rhetoric of experimentalism and assumed the miracle could not be categorized as natural. Contrary to simplistic expectations, harsh critics of the miracle came from within the church, and especially from religious orders, as the Bollandists, who took pride in a scientific approach to philology and history.

One of the most fascinating features of De Ceglia’s book is the way it presents Naples as an urbs sanguinum: S. Gennaro’s miracle elicited a number of imitations in a city where urban violence was a constant problem. The cult of the saint was also connected with subterranean phenomena: his martyrdom had taken place near the Solfatara, in the Phlegaean Fields, and he supposedly saved the city from the flow of lava in one of its most dramatic moments, when in 1631 Vesuvius erupted in a particularly destructive way. However, being linked to predictions as to the situation of the city itself, the miracle—and the lack thereof—also had a political side to it, and this is arguably the reason for its ritualization. It was, and is. Moving from quoties, the ambiguous relationship with the saint’s head, to quotannis, a more manageable and socially useful timing, the liquefaction began to happen at fixed dates, in May, September, and December.

The most interesting and convincing chapters in the book are those—from the sixth to the last—where De Ceglia’s narrative deals with the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: the miracle had gained a wide notoriety in Europe, thanks to travelers and other witnesses, and there were countless replicas of what supposedly happened in the vials (aptly manipulated during the ceremony) in an age when chemistry and other sciences could begin to advance sensible hypotheses on the way the mysterious substance could change state, from liquid to solid and vice versa. The mystery has remained to our day, even if the miracle has been downgraded to prodigy, as befits the new doctrinal orientation of the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council.

This book is a welcome addition to the burgeoning literature on the history and culture of Naples. It also strikes a new and interesting note in one of the most controversial fields of inquiry in Italian early modern and modern history—namely, the relationship between religious life and institutions, especially after the Counter-Reformation,and the sciences. By showing that a miracle is a multifaceted phenomenon, eliciting complex and sometimes unexpected reactions and responses, De Ceglia helps historiography overcome the simplistic rift between religious and scientific knowledge and practices. Meritoriously, he does this from the point of view of an informed and learned history of the sciences—and theology.