Forlì woman comes unasked to swear St. Peregrine cleared her face

FORLÌ, Romagna, October 8, 1608 AD — Magdalena de Savorellis came before the notary of Forlì’s inquiry into Saint Peregrine Laziosi without being summoned. She swore that about thirty years ago, after she made a vow to the friar, a growth under her left eye that she had carried for nearly seventeen years disappeared.

St. Peregrine was a friar of the Servants of Mary who died in this city in 1345 AD. He was buried in the Servite church, in a niche in its wall rather than in the ground.

In July the prior of the Servite convent, Fr. Peregrino de Dandis, went before the vicar general of the diocese and the city’s officials. He asked them to open a formal inquiry, so that St. Peregrine’s holiness and the cures worked through him would be put on record under oath. On July 30 Fr. Peregrino opened the gilded chest that holds the body, built into the wall above an altar of the church, while the notary, the cathedral clergy and the city’s magistrates looked on. Everyone present swore on the Gospels that it was the true body of the friar, kept there for about two hundred and sixty years and venerated by the whole city.

This month the notary began taking sworn statements about the cures. Camilla, the wife of a knight of the town, swore that her son, Ludovico, fell gravely ill with dropsy when he was eight. The physicians of Forlì and one from Cesena all judged him beyond cure. Camilla took the boy first to the miraculous image of the Mother of God in the Jesuit church, and then to the relics kept at San Domenico. Last she brought him to the Servite church, where the cap St. Peregrine had worn in life was put on him. Ludovico began to recover at once, and in a very short time he was free of the illness.

When Magdalena stood before him, the notary warned her, as he warned every witness, to tell only the plain truth of what happened, adding nothing and taking nothing away. About thirty years ago, she swore, she had a growth under her left eye the size of a goose egg. Because it gave her no pain, she did nothing about it for nearly seventeen years. In the end she decided to try to rid her face of what she called “that monstrous appendage,” and she sent for Francesco Sassi of Benevento, a physician and surgeon then living in Forlì. Sassi looked at the growth and felt it. He told her it was a tumour, and a very hard one to cure. Magdalena told him to try anyway.

Sassi treated her for seven months, and the growth did not improve. Some noblewomen of the town then advised her to turn to St. Peregrine. She took their advice and made a vow to him.

As soon as she had made the vow, Magdalena swore, she felt the growth suddenly begin to heal. In the end it was gone completely. Magdalena told the notary: “I was entirely free, with no disfigurement left, by the singular grace of God and Blessed Peregrine.”