The small church tucked along this street is Santa Maria de' Ricci, and it is one of the only churches on earth that exists because a man committed a crime. Not because of a saint, or a vision, or a relic. Because of a gambler and a fistful of horse manure. This is the best true-crime story in Florence, and almost nobody knows it.
Summer, fifteen oh-one. A man named Antonio Rinaldeschi has spent the evening at a tavern called the Osteria del Fico, gambling, and losing. Losing badly — his money, and then his temper. He storms out into the night, drunk and furious at God and everyone, and on his way he passes a little street shrine set into a wall right around here: a painted tabernacle of the Madonna, an Annunciation, the Virgin receiving the news from the angel. And Antonio, at rock bottom, blaming heaven for his cards, scoops up a handful of horse dung from the street and hurls it straight at her face.
Then he runs. And this is where an ugly little tantrum turns into a legend, becau
se the dung does not slide off. A clump of it catches in the painted halo above the Virgin's head — right in the crown of golden light — and it sticks. It holds. A boy in the street saw the whole thing.
By morning there's a crowd. And the crowd looks up at this filthy smear lodged in the Madonna's halo, and they do not see filth. They see a SIGN. A little rosette of muck, sitting in her crown lik
