London – The “Sacco di San Francesco”, a relic kept in the monastery of Folloni, near Montella in Campania (province of Avellino) dates back to 1200. And its content, according to scientists, and how it tells the legend, would actually be bread. These are the results of a study published on Radiocarbon, a journal of Cambridge University Press, conducted by professors Ilaria Degano and Maria Perla Colombini of the University of Pisa along with researchers from the University of Southern Denmark and Leiden University in the Netherlands. According to the legend, the sack of bread would appear on the threshold of the Folloni monastery in the winter of 1224, sent by St. Francis thanks to an angel to feed the monks besieged by snow and wolves. By comparing miracle and science, the study therefore predicted the radiocarbon dating of a sack fragment and the analysis of the surviving traces of bread by the Working Group of Chemical Sciences applied to the Cultural Heritage of the Pisa University. (9colonne)
