Eucharistic Miracle of Rimini

The Story

The Eucharistic Miracle of Rimini is a Catholic tradition connected with St. Anthony of Padua and dated to 1227, when the saint was preaching in Rimini, a city on Italy's Adriatic coast. The event is commemorated in the city's central square, today called Piazza Tre Martiri, where a small sixteenth-century shrine known as the Tempietto di Sant'Antonio marks the place associated with the miracle. According to the traditional account, a man of Rimini — often named Bonovillo in later tellings — denied the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and challenged St. Anthony to prove it. He proposed a test: he would keep his mule without food for three days, and if the animal, offered oats on one side and the consecrated Host on the other, turned away from the food and knelt before the Sacrament, he would believe. Tradition holds that when the day came, St. Anthony approached with the Host and the hungry mule ignored the oats, walked toward the Blessed Sacrament and bent its front legs to the ground before it. The challenger, the account continues, was converted and professed faith in the Eucharist. The story belongs to a period when preachers such as St. Anthony were confronting movements that denied the sacraments, and it became one of the most beloved episodes of his life, retold in early biographies of the saint and depicted by artists over the centuries. Whatever the historical details, the tradition expresses in vivid form the Church's faith that the consecrated Host is truly the Body of Christ, worthy of adoration. Today, visitors to Rimini can see the small shrine in Piazza Tre Martiri built to commemorate the event, and the memory of the miracle remains part of the devotional heritage surrounding St. Anthony, whose feast is celebrated on June 13. The tradition continues to invite the faithful to the same reverence before the Blessed Sacrament that, according to the account, even a humble animal was moved to show.

Church Recognition

A recognized devotion within the approved tradition surrounding St. Anthony of Padua, who was canonized in 1232 and later declared a Doctor of the Church; a sixteenth-century shrine in Rimini's Piazza Tre Martiri commemorates the event.

Catholic Teaching

The tradition points to the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist — the Church's faith that the consecrated bread and wine truly become the Body and Blood of Christ (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1373–1381) — and to the adoration owed to the Blessed Sacrament.

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1 Additional Information ▾

A longstanding devotion associated with St. Anthony of Padua at Rimini.

Go Deeper

The episode appears in the early lives of St. Anthony of Padua and in the Vatican-sponsored 'Eucharistic Miracles of the World' exhibition compiled by Blessed Carlo Acutis (miracolieucaristici.org). For the Church's teaching on the Real Presence, see Catechism of the Catholic Church 1373–1381.