OUR LADY OF THE SLAP

Day 342: April 20

Our Lady of the Slap, Vercelli, Italy


The ancient statue of Our Lady of the thirteenth century is made from a single piece of white marble. On the left cheek she has a large livid spot, as if she had received a blow. A tradition tells that in 1200 a certain scandalous drinker and blasphemer, for having remained without the possibility of satisfying his passion, with a sacrilegious gesture hit the statue with a strong slap right on the left cheek. The mark would remain indelible in the holy Image.

Another legend of the foundation of the sanctuary tells that a player, in the first half of the sixteenth century, angry at having lost, would have hit the statue of Our Lady kept in the cathedral of Vercelli, which would have started to bleed. The player, unable to leave the church, would later be executed. Since then it has become a destination of devotion especially on the occasion of epidemics and calamities.

The statue of the Virgin, after the miracle of the slap, was kept in a chapel at the end of the left aisle. This chapel was rebuilt and embellished between 1630 and 1643.

The sanctuary corresponds to the terminal chapel of the left aisle of the cathedral church of Vercelli and was built between the year 1500 and the year 1550. On the occasion of the plague of 1630 and, subsequently, on the occasion of epidemics or calamities, the statue was exposed to the adoration of the faithful and the municipal authorities.


St Justin Russolillo Writes...

"In you first Jesus says and works, with mysterious reality, what He later entrusts to the Apostles: " As the Father has sent me, so I send you," and communicates to them His divine powers to universal sanctification."

(Justin Russolillo, Devotional, Vocationist Editions, Pianura, 2009, p. 163)

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