Naples : Sant'Aspreno and Aspirina

The official patron saint of Naples is certainly St. Gennaro, the saint of the Neapolitans par excellence, but it cannot be ignored that the city has 47 patron saints and that the second in order of importance seems to be this St. Aspreno. But who is this saint so little known today is known that he lived in Naples between the end of the first and the beginning of the second century AD, and was probably the first bishop of the church of Naples. A tradition says that St. Peter himself, on his way to Rome, promised to heal him if he converted to Christianity. Aspreno, who had been ill for some time, converted to the new faith and was baptized. St. Peter, keeping his word, healed him and before leaving again, placed him at the head of the nascent Neapolitan church. Confirmation of this story in the Treasury of San Gennaro would even keep the stick with which Peter healed Aspreno. Aspreno, then, at the head of the church of Naples remained about 23 years and during his office he acquired particular fame as a healer. In the small chapel of Sant'Aspreno al Porto there is a Hypogeum and tradition has it that this "cave" was none other than the home of the saint. In fact, this is what originally must have been part of a much larger and richer spa. Here, according to tradition, which identified this place as the house of the saint, in the 7th century A.D. a rock altar was built at the base of which there was a hole in which the faithful inserted their heads to be cured of migraine. This particular ability of the saint to heal from headaches is variously attributed to the fact that he was beheaded for his faith, or to his way of doing penance by placing a stone on his head. Whatever the origin of this story lies in the fact that this tradition has survived to the present day. And here is finally found the link with our aspirin!

In fact, a metropolitan and contemporary legend has it that when Bayer created the powerful drug known today as aspirin in 1899, it was inspired by this miraculous tradition because it was a Calabrian doctor, a graduate from Naples and in love with this city, Raffaele Piria, who isolated salicylic acid, the active ingredient of the new drug.