Virgin-Martyr relics of Roman printer Luca Antonio Chracas donated to convent.

[Roman printing] / [Relics] / [Nuns] / Luca Antonio Chracas. Vincentius Capycius Dei, & S. Sedis Apostolicae Gratia Archiepiscopus, & Comes Theatinus. Universis, & singulis praesentes nostras litteras inspecturis fidem facimus, & attestamur, quod nobis fuit exhibita à D. Luca Antonio Chracas quaedam Authentica… S.l. [Rome?]: s.a. [Chracas?] signed 10 June 1709. [36.9 x 24.8 cm], [1] f. letterpress form, completed in manuscript, with later manuscript annotations on verso, wax seal. Folds, marginal toning.
 
 
A very curious authenticum—or certificate of authenticity for a relic—attesting to the validity of relics of 15 female saints that belonged to the renowned Roman printer Luca Antonio Chracas (c. 1658-1723), and which later were donated to a convent of Franciscan nuns (relics not included). Relic authentica only very rarely include the level of detail found here, and the connection to a well-known printer is unprecedented. 
 
In 1697 Luca Antonio Chracas, a native of Spinazzola, opened a printing shop in Rome in the Curia Innocenziana in Piazza Montecitorio, It remained active until 1701, when the newly elected Pope Clement XI assigned the premises another printer. Luca Antonio Chracas then opened a shop near the church of S. Marco al Corso, but within a few years he seems to have turned over some of its day-to-day operation to family members (their names replace his on title pages). The Chracas press is best remembered today for its Diario Ordinaro (later Diario di Roma), a pioneering news pamphlet that ran from 1716 until 1848 and was popularly known as Il Chracas.
 
The authenticum offered here (dated 10 June 1709) states that Luca Antonio Chracas had a reliquary to which was attached an authenticum dated 25 November 1705. In 1709 he showed the reliquary/authenticum to Vincenzo Capece (1664-1722), Archbishop of Chieti. That original 1705 authenticum is then quoted in full in the letterpress text: It stated that Domenico de Zaoli (1638-1722), Bishop Emeritus of Veroli, gave Luca Antonio Chracas of Spinazzola a reliquary containing a thorn from the Crown of Thorns, a particle of the Cradle of the Christ Child, some of the Virgin Mary’s hair, bones of St. Anne, bones of the Holy Virgins & Martyrs Lucy, Agatha, Agnes, Ursula, Bibiana, Dorothea, Victoria, Apollonia of Alexandria, Aurelia, Pudentiana, and Bertilia, the flesh of St. Teresa, and bones of Catherine of Siena, Monica Mother of St. Augustine, and Maria Egyptiaca. 
 
The quoted 1705 authenticum further states that these relics had recently been donated to Domenico de Zaoli by the Franciscan Friar Padre Tommaso da Spoleto [a noted relic hunter], who in turn had been given them by Cardinal Alderano Cybo (1613-1700); before that Cybo had been given the relics by Cardinal Francesco Barberini (1597-1679), who had received them from his uncle, Pope Urban VIII (1568-1644).
 
Our 1709 authenticum—now speaking again in its own voice, the voice of Vincenzo Capece—states that the reliquary presented by Luca Antonio Chracas was opened, and that the relics of the 15 later female virgin-martyrs were removed, placed into a different reliquary, and returned to Chracas. Nothing is said of what was done with the thorn, particle Christ Child’s cradle, the Virgin hair, St. Anne’s bone. Below this, the document is signed and sealed by Vincenzo Capece.
 
On the verso of authenticum is an extraordinary manuscript note written and signed by Chracas stating that in Rome on 2 June 1710, he donated (“dono, cedo, et concedo”) the reliquary to a certain Claudio Angelucci of Belforte del Chienti in the diocese of Camerino [Angelucci was a native of nearby Macerata].
 
Below this is yet another a manuscript annotation, this one written and signed by Claudio Angelucci stating that on 23 September 1710 he gave the reliquary to Sister Maria Rosa Lucia Angelucci [a relative, no doubt], with the intention that it be displayed in the church of her convent of San Lorenzo, a house of Clarissans in Belforte del Chienti.
 
This authenticum is unusual—beyond its level of detail and its association with Chracas—because so much of the information is given in letterpress. Authentica typically were produced as blank forms that could be filled in by hand to accommodate a variety of relics/reliquaries that required certification and documentation. Complicated one-off authentica typically were just written out entirely in manuscript. Here the backstory of the relics is set in type, and so the form could only have been used in this one instance (or twice, if perhaps it was used for the separated-out thorn, cradle particle, Virgin’s hair & Anne’s bone). One is tempted to suggest that Chracas himself had the form printed at his family’s press, where he could have do so with ease.
 
 
* Furio Luccichenti, “Chracas stampatori in Roma (1698-1771),” L’Urbe, vol. XLVII , nos. 3-4 (1984), pp. 136-142; H. Leclerc, “Reliques et Reliquaires,” Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, vol. 14/2, cols. 2338-46.