Ampulla of Blood

AMPULLA OF BLOOD. - With this expression and other similar ones, from the beginning of the 17th century, people have customarily designated those small phials or glass vessels, sometimes also of terracotta, tinged with a reddish color, found in ancient tombs or more often set into the lime used to seal the loculi in the catacombs. For the excavators of holy bodies and also for many scholars of the 17th-19th centuries, they were regarded as the most authentic sign for distinguishing whether a tomb was that of a martyr or of a simple faithful.

However, phials and vessels - the matter is by now settled among archaeologists - set into the walls or into the lime of the loculi could have had many other meanings, and especially serve as ornament or to contain perfumes or as a mark of recognition when the tomb was anepigraphic. Likewise the reddish color could ordinarily be produced by the oxidation of the material of the vessel itself, or of its contents, perfumes, oily substances, etc. It is established that in antiquity the faithful sometimes boldly collected the blood of martyrs to keep it near them or to place it with the remains of the victims, but it is not known that they used to distinguish the tomb of a martyr from that of a faithful by affixing to it externally a small phial or a vessel containing their blood. Nor is there any record that the ancient searchers of the tombs of the martyrs in the Roman cemeteries, from Damasus to the popes of the 9th century, ever recognized the sepulcher of a martyr by means of such a distinctive sign. It was created, albeit in good faith, by the searchers of holy bodies, of the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the following one, who believed and helped to make others believe that the underground cemeteries of Rome were inexhaustible mines of relics of martyrs, and therefore also on slight evidence began to believe and assert that those vessels and phials, tinged with a reddish color, plainly showed traces of human blood, and hence of martyrs. The assertion was accepted, without much scrutiny, by a good number of scholars of the time, who in their dissertations, not all commendable for learning, came to establish the principle that the "cup of blood" was to be considered the most authentic mark of recognition of the tomb of a martyr. This principle was soon accepted in practice and then also officially sanctioned by the Sacred Congregation of Indulgences and Relics, on 10 April 1668, which decreed "palmam et vas sanguine tinctum pro signis certissimis [martyrii] habenda esse" (cf. Decreta authentica S. R. Congregationis, II, Rome 1908, n. 3120).

The Protestants, it is understood, were from the outset the most determined opponents of the a. d. s.; in the Catholic camp doubts about the contents of these a. and about their probative value arose as early as the 17th century and continued to grow in the following centuries, especially after the repeated observation that often the a. was found in tombs of the late 4th century, adorned with inscriptions that not only did not allude to martyrdom, but even seemed to exclude it. The most authoritative Catholic authors who expressed themselves in this sense are: Papebrock, Tillemont, Mabillon, Muratori and Marini. In 1793 the abbot of St. Paul, Giuseppe Giustino di Costanzo, put forward a new hypothesis, later taken up by Le Blant and in part also by De Rossi, according to which the a. would have contained not the blood of the Christian buried in the loculus, but that of any martyr, placed as a guard over the tomb of the faithful.

Following the translation from Rome to Amiens of the supposed martyr Aurelia Theodosia (1853), the Bollandist Fr. Victor de Buck, at the suggestion of his superiors, published a study on the a. (De phialis rubricatis, quibus martyrum romanorum sepulcro dignosci dicuntur observationes V[ictoris] D[e] B[uck], Brussels 1855), printed in very few copies and not placed on sale. The author demonstrated therein that normally the a. could not in itself be a sign of martyrdom and, while granting to the a. that contained true human blood the value recognized for it by the Sacred Congregation in 1668, he believed - an implausible hypothesis - that in general these a. contained remains of eucharistic blood or in any case remains of the oblation. The first effect of the learned study was to cause the extraction of the bodies of saints to be suspended, through the intervention of De Rossi, who obtained a copy of it; the second was to provoke a new examination of the question on the part of the Sacred Congregation of Rites. The studies collected in the ponenza published by the Sacred Congregation were all substantially contrary; nevertheless, as it seems, through the personal action of Msgr. Bartolini, secretary of the Congregation, the reply was given on 27 Nov. 1863 "non recedendum" from the decree of 1668 (Decreta authentica, II, Rome 1908, n. 3120). Characteristic is the vote of De Rossi, who, while in his writings he always deliberately refrained from entering into the heart of the question and only in private conversations expressed himself more freely, here develops thoroughly the thesis that such a. cannot be a sure indication of the tomb of a martyr, all the more so since one cannot even say that they contained, in general, human blood. And it was also through his intervention that, notwithstanding the aforementioned reply of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, the ecclesiastical authorities of Rome continued from then on to prohibit the extraction of the bodies of saints from the catacombs (cf. Acta Sanctae Sedis, 14 [1881], p. 39); indeed Pius X gave orders to bring back there one of these bodies, extracted in the 18th century with the usual a.

To decide the question recourse has also been had various times, over the past century, to chemical analysis, with results now positive now negative; see most recently G. De Sanctis, in Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana, 8 (1931), pp. 7-13. In any case, even if the presence of elements of blood and not merely of an organic substance in an a. were proved, this would not constitute proof of the martyrdom of the person buried there, unless other positive elements concurred in that regard. Such blood, as di Costanzo opined, could at most be considered as a relic of an unknown martyr, placed there for the protection of the body of a simple deceased person.

A. Pietro Frutaz