Madonna of the Miracle: the Ratisbonne apparition at Sant'Andrea delle Fratte, Rome, 1842

Alphonse Ratisbonne was born in Strasbourg in 1814, the son of the Jewish banker Auguste Ratisbonne. He trained in law and worked in the family bank. The 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia calls him a religious sceptic who became a strong opponent of Catholicism after his brother Théodore converted. In 1841 he became engaged to his 16-year-old niece. The wedding was postponed because of her age. So he set off on a pleasure trip to the East. The road ran through Rome.

In Rome he met Baron Marie-Théodore Renouard de Bussières, a convert from Protestantism who knew him from Strasbourg. Bussières proposed a test. Wear the Miraculous Medal. Say the Memorare every day. Ratisbonne mocked the medal, but agreed to wear it. He copied out the prayer reluctantly, then found its words kept coming back to him. On 17 January, Count Pierre-Louis-Auguste de La Ferronays, former French ambassador to the Holy See, died suddenly. Devotional accounts say he had prayed more than 20 Memorares for Ratisbonne's conversion.

Thursday, 20 January 1842. Bussières went into Sant'Andrea delle Fratte to arrange the count's funeral. He left his friend waiting inside. He would be gone not more than a few minutes. Ratisbonne remembered "a black dog that jumped up and down before me." Then, "Suddenly the dog disappeared, the church disappeared, and I did not see anything." In his sworn testimony the church "seemed to me to be shrouded totally in darkness, with the exception of one chapel." All the light was concentrated in that single place.

Above the altar was "a living figure, tall, majestic, beautiful and full of mercy." She looked like her figure on the Miraculous Medal. She did not speak a word. "She signaled me to fall on my knees." The light was blinding, so he kept his eyes on her hands. In them he read an expression of mercy and pardon. He knelt where he stood.

Bussières was away about ten to twelve minutes. He found Ratisbonne kneeling in front of the chapel of St. Michael the Archangel, his cheeks wet with tears. It took two or three more touches to rouse him.

His first words were for the dead count. "How this gentleman prayed for me!" He kissed the medal. "It was She!" As he was led out, he said: "After what I have seen, I obey." He asked for a priest.

On 31 January he was baptised by Cardinal Costantino Patrizi and took the name Marie. It cost him. His uncle ended his partnership in the bank. His family disowned him.

Around 17 February 1842 the Vicariate of Rome, under Patrizi, opened a canonical inquiry, reportedly on the order of Pope Gregory XVI. Ratisbonne gave a sworn deposition. Many others were heard. On 3 June 1842, Patrizi declared the conversion a divine miracle obtained through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin. The decree certified an instantaneous conversion. Whether it also ruled on the vision itself is not clear.

At the time, the case produced numerous pamphlets taking widely differing views of the matter. The historian Carol E. Harrison has studied how the conversion spread in print and images in Rome and Paris.

Natale Carta's altar painting, made following Ratisbonne's directions, was placed in the church in May 1842. Maximilian Kolbe said his first Mass at that altar in 1918. Ratisbonne joined his brother in the Congregation of Our Lady of Sion, moved to Palestine in 1855 and is buried at Ein Karem. Every 20 January, the anniversary is still kept.