BOLSENA (anc.

See also:

• VOLSINII

Volsinii)  ,' a town of the province of Rome, Italy, 12 M . W.S.W. of Orvieto by road, situated on the north-east bank of the lake of Bolsena . Pop . (1901) 3286 . The town is dominated by a picturesque medieval castle, and contains the church of S . Christina (martyred by drowning in the lake, according to the legend, in 278) which dates from the IIth century and contains some frescoes, perhaps of the school of Giotto . It has a fine Renaissance facade, constructed about 1500 by Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici (afterwards Pope Leo X.), and some good terra cottas by the Della Robbia . Beneath the church are catacombs, with the tomb of the saint, discovered in 188o (E . Stevenson in Notizie degli Scavi, 188o, 262; G . B. de Rossi in Bullettino d'Archeologia Cristiana, 188o, log) . At one of the altars in this crypt occurred the miracle of Bolsena in 1263 . A Bohemian priest, sceptical of the doctrine of transubstantiation, was convinced of its truth by the appearance of drops of blood on the host he was consecrating .

In

commemoration of this Pope Urban IV. instituted the festival of Corpus Christi, and ordered the erection of the cathedral of Orvieto . The miracle forms the subject of a celebrated fresco by Raphael in the Vatican . The Lake of Bolsena (anc . Lacus Volsiniensis), 'coo ft. above sea-level, 71 sq. m. in area, and 48o ft. deep, is almost circular, and was the central point of a large volcanic district, though it is probably not itself an extinct crater . Its sides show fine basaltic formation in places . It abounds in fish, but its banks are some-what deserted and not free from malaria . It contains two islands, Bisentina and Martana, the former containing a church constructed by Vignola, the latter remains of the castle where Amalasuntha, the daughter of Theodoric, was imprisoned and strangled . (T .