Antonio Botta

Antonio Botta | © Archivio Visitsavona

Pious farmer. Savona (1478 - 1550)

Famous for the appearance of N.S. di Misericordia, well known in the Marian glories in Italy, was venerated as Blessed.

The Virgin Mary liked to show herself as Mother of Mercy in the year 1536, on March 18, to a farmer from the Borgo di San Bernardo, district of the city of Savona.

Antonio Botta had gone to his vineyard that morning, to tie the shoots that had already been pruned, but, remembering that the vineyard of a relative of his had not yet been pruned, he was going there to perform this act of charity. He had two wives, the second was a servant in the hospice of N. Signora, in fact after the apparition Antonio stayed there as a caretaker.

Note is the description of his room, later changed into an oratory. Exalted by the miracle, he became more taciturn, more humble. Verzellino, Ippolito Zocca and Teofilo Minore have written about him.

The tombstone of the epigraph is now walled up in the left wall of the atrium of the Palazzo degli Anziani in Savona, Piazza del Brandale.

Taken from "File of illustrious men in Savona" by Ernesto Baldassarre and Renato Bruno with the kind permission of the Savonese Society of Homeland History.