Self-crucifixion of Mattio Lovat

Between 1803 and 1805, an Italian shoemaker named Mattio Lovat made two attempts to crucify himself in public settings, including outside the third-floor window of his Venice, Italy home. Both times, he was prevented from doing so and rescued by passersby, where he recovered. Lovat later died in 1806 at a mental hospital on the island of San Servolo.

Background Mattio Lovat was born in 1761 to a poor family in Casal, in the territory of Belluno, Italy. Lovat worked as a shoemaker, and in November 1802, he moved to Venice. His younger brother Angelo helped him find lodging at the house of a widow, and he stayed there until the first of his two attempts at self-crucifixion.

Self-crucifixion attempts In 1803, in the middle of the street called Cross of Biri, Lovat made an attempt at self-crucifixion upon a frame that he had constructed using the timber of his bed. He was prevented from succeeding by several people who came upon him as he was driving a nail into his left foot. When interrogated about the motive for his self-crucifixion, he was silent. He once said to his brother that that day was the festival of St. Matthew and that he could give no further explanation. Days after the incident, Lovat set out for his homeland in the Belluno region,

Aftermath Venetian physician Cesare Ruggieri came to see Lovat out of curiosity and made sure that he was immediately admitted to the Clinical School of Venice, where he himself was a professor of surgery. For several weeks, Ruggieri treated and observed Lovat at his bedside until he had physically recovered from his self-crucifixion attempt. Due to Ruggieri's diagnosis of a persistent mental disorder, Lovat was then transferred to the asylum of San Servolo, an early mental asylum situated on an island of the same name in the Venetian lagoon, where Lovat died in April 1806 from an unspecified chest disease. and a book, The Man Who Crucified Himself: Readings of a Medical Case in Nineteenth-Century Europe, was published in November 2018.