On September 19 the Church honors St. Januarius — San Gennaro in Italian — the Bishop of Benevento martyred at Pozzuoli near Naples around 305, and the principal patron of Naples. He is venerated above all for the miracle of his blood: two hermetically sealed ampoules, kept in a silver reliquary in Naples Cathedral, that are said to contain his blood, collected after his beheading, and that liquify three times a year — on September 19, on December 16, and on the Saturday before the first Sunday of May.
Januarius was bishop of Benevento in Campania. During the Great Persecution under Diocletian, he was arrested while visiting imprisoned deacons at Pozzuoli and was beheaded at the Solfatara crater near Pozzuoli, together with his companions Festus, Desiderius, Sossius, Proculus, Eutyches, and Acutius. The earliest historical reference to him is a letter of Uranius, Bishop of Nola, written in 432. His relics were originally interred in the Catacombs of San Gennaro in Naples — the oldest catacombs of southern Italy — and were translated to Naples Cathedral in the fifteenth century.
The Cathedral of Naples (Cattedrale di San Gennaro) holds his relics in the Succorpo, the Renaissance crypt chapel built by Cardinal Oliviero Carafa and completed in 1506, where his reunited body and head are enshrined. The blood ampoules are kept in a chapel of the cathedral treasury and brought out for the three annual liquefaction ceremonies. The first certain record of the liquefaction is from 1389. The Church maintains a neutral position on the phenomenon's cause; the vials have never been opened for scientific examination. When the blood fails to liquify — as in September 1939, 1940, 1943, 1973, and 1980, and in December 2016 and 2020 — Neapolitans have traditionally read it as an omen.
The annual September 19 feast draws the largest pilgrimage: the cathedral is packed, the cardinal holds up the reliquary to show the liquified blood, and the city of Naples celebrates its patron with processions and the festa di San Gennaro. The Catacombs of San Gennaro, accessible to pilgrims beneath the Capodimonte district, preserve the earliest burial site and third-century Christian frescoes. The Museum of the Treasure of San Gennaro, beside the cathedral, holds the vast votive offerings accumulated over centuries — including the necklace of the saint's statue, donated by Charles III of Bourbon and other monarchs.
