Part One of the Host Desecration Project is here; Part Two is here...
On the Miracle of the Host!!
Many Disgraces Inflicted by a Jew of Paris!!!
12 April 1290, Paris
The benefits that God conferred on his people, the Jews were vast, but those divine bounty showed, and daily shows, us Christians are immeasurable. It was not enough for him to change the children of wrath by nature into children of God by the sacrament of baptism. He also endures with us unto the completion of the world, sustaining us through the eating of his own flesh and the drinking of his own blood. When we receive in our members his body and blood we become Christ-bearers, joined to him, just as our limbs, fitted, join to the head itself.
Yet our venomous, odious cousins, taught of the necessity of the Eucharist to the life of the soul by the Lord, turned away from it. Thus the children of the poisonous Jews remain doubtful of it. See for yourself how, in the year of our Lord 1290, on 11 April, Easter day, the most celebrated of all by Parisians up and down the city, a certain down-on-her-luck common woman had pawned her clothes to a Jew for the pledge of 30 Parisian solidi. She reclaimed them, that she might appear in the sacred precincts.
The Jew promised to return them for free, if she would bring to him the thing she claimed was her God. The greedy woman promised to do so. And, when she was ready, she received the most holy body of Christ at the Church of Saint Merry. She took it, hidden in her mouth, to the Jew, from whom she received her clothes free of charge.
"I will know," said the cruel merchant, "whether what the insane Christians blather on about this kind of thing is true." So he grabbed a bread knife and, placing the most holy body of Christ on a chest, pierced it with dire blows, whence he perceived sacred blood to flow copiously! This deed was witnessed by his wife and children.
His wife, upon seeing this stupendous miracle, stood astonished. The Jew, frightened as well, but feeling no remorse, again seized the Host and attacked it with hammer and nails, causing the sweet-smelling blood to flow as before. His wife admonished him, to little avail, that he might desist from his endeavor. He then threw the most holy Host into a large fire, from which it emerged whole, flying throughout the house.
Trying once more in vain to rip it to shreds with a knife, he attacked the Host, which always remained whole, with all his strength, finally hanging it from a lancet near the washroom. And, the Host abundantly flowing with blood as before, the Jew threw it into a cauldron of boiling water. The water, elevated by the power of the Host's glory, became blood. It showed itself to the Jew in the form of the body of the crucified Lord, at whose appearance while his wife and children wept contritely, he went mad and fled from the room.
to be continued...
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