Anecdotes about the Virgin Mary

The fresco that bled from the forehead

King (Italy) (1494)

In the village of Re, in the Val Vigezzo of Piedmont, near the Swiss border, the Madonna del Sangue (Madonna of the Blood) is venerated. Its origin dates back to a small fresco of the Virgin Mary nursing the Christ Child, the Madonna del Latte (Madonna of the Milk), painted on the facade of the old church of San Maurizio. On the night of April 29, 1494, according to tradition, the fresco was struck by a stone; the following morning, it was observed that the image was bleeding from its forehead, and the bleeding is said to have lasted for about twenty days, intermittently, like a wound slowly closing. After this miracle, the devotion changed from Madonna del Latte to Madonna del Sangue.

Deeply rooted local tradition adds endearing details: a group of young men used to play piodella in front of the church, throwing a flat stone at a wooden cylinder topped with a coin. One of them, angered after losing several times, threw the stone at the facade, striking the fresco. Some sources identify the player as Giovanni Zucono de Villette. It should be noted that these specific details—the name and description of the game—are part of an old pious tradition and are not found in any accessible contemporary documentation.

The documented evidence rests on two parchments: one from 1494, signed by the podestà Daniele Crespi and four notaries, and another from 1500, by the podestà Angiolo Romano. That civil authorities attested to and signed the reality of the phenomenon with their names and titles is a detail that local devotion presents as a sign of its seriousness. However, it's important to be fair: the event is attested by contemporary accounts, but not proven in the modern scientific sense, as there is no critical analysis of the fresco nor a verified catalog of the cures from those centuries.

The sanctuary grew up around that humble image: a larger church was built between 1606 and 1628, and on the four hundredth anniversary of the miracle, it was decided in 1894 to build the current large sanctuary, whose construction began in 1922 and was consecrated on August 5, 1958. The small, damaged fresco is preserved as the centerpiece of the Virgin's altar: the church was literally built around it. Every year, from April 29 to May 1, a well-attended pilgrimage on foot takes place from Domodossola. There is no record of a founding event linked to the Rosary, although the sanctuary is a place of strong Marian and penitential devotion, with a large number of people seeking confession and receiving the Eucharist.