Milan: Can St. Peter Cure My Headaches?

I suffer from headaches. Chronic, debilitating headaches. I won’t call them migraines out of respect for those who get physically ill from migraines, but I will say that when I get a headache, it’s hard to be productive or do anything but curl up in bed with ice packs for at least 36 hours.

I was telling this to a friend here in Milan and she told me that Milan has state-of-the-art migraine treatment facilities. Her husband then piped up: “We also have a saint who cures migraines.” Sorry, what?!

St. Peter of Verona was a Dominican Friar who became Inquisitor General for the province of Lombardy in the 13th century. He preached against Catholics who professed their faith with words but then performed contrary actions. He also converted many followers of the Cathar movement (a Christian movement that believed that there were two separate Gods – one of the Old Testament who was evil and one of the New Testament who was good) to orthodox Catholicism. Because of this, a group of Cathars hired an assassin named Carino of Balsamo to kill Peter. Carino ambushed Peter and struck him in the head with an axe, at which time Peter (according to legend) began reciting the Nicene Creed and wrote the first line of the creed, “Credo in Unum Deum”, in his own blood on the pavement. St. Peter was canonized a short 11 months later, in 1252ad.

Giovanni Visconti, the Archbishop of Milan at the time, commissioned an elaborate urn for his remains but made a mistake: he took the saint’s head home to be near him always as a sacred relic. All of the sudden, Visconti began suffering from horrible, chronic headaches. Doctors had no solutions. Finally he had an thought and returned the head of St. Peter to the Basilica di Sant’Eustorgio where the rest of his remains had been laid. Instantly his headaches went away. I guess St. Peter hadn’t appreciate the post-mortem decapitation…

Now, every year on April 29th, St. Peter’s feast day, headache sufferers come to the Basilica di Sant’Eustorgio in Milan and enter the 15th century Portinari Chapel, an incredible example of Renaissance art in Lombardy that was created to house St. Peter’s remains. His head – or, his skull, I should say – is displayed in a glass reliquary. The faithful are urged to touch their own head to the glass and say a prayer to St. Peter, who will then cure them of their headaches for an entire calendar year (after which they are expected to come back and pay their respects the following year on April 29th).

The rest of the year, St. Peter’s skull is locked up in a side chapel in the Portinari Chapel, hidden from view, but I was lucky enough to see it this fall, touch my head to the glass and pray to St. Peter for my headaches to cease. The skull is completely intact, except for a hole on the top where he was struck by Carino’s axe. There are even a few browned teeth hanging on to his jaw. It’s quite incredible, really. I thought it would be disrespectful to take a photo after being given the rare privilege to view the reliquary, but if you’re in Milan on April 29th it’s definitely something worth seeing.

And my headaches? I’ll let you know