Prodigi mariani "all'alba del secolo XX". L'apparizione di Alice Belcolle (Acqui Terme, 1900) fra stampa, scienza e censura

The article analyzes the case of the alleged marian apparition that occurred to a girl of Alice Belcolle (Alessandria) in the spring of year 1900. The matter, which is part of the intense season of mariophanies (full of antimodern meanings) occurred between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, had wide prominence in the national press and attracted the attention of Italian public opinion, as well as doctors and scientists (among others, even Cesare Lombroso dealt with it in an article written for «La Stampa»). The huge eclat aroused by the case triggered dynamics of control and censorship by the ecclesiastical authorities, leading first to the removal from the place of the mariophanies of the young seer, then to his “confession” which would have revealed the fraudulent character of the apparition