Host miracle

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Description of the miracle of the wafer " Wunderbarliches Gut " from Augsburg

A host miracle is understood to be a Eucharistic miracle that includes unexplained appearances on a consecrated host . The most common stories about host miracle since the 12th century, reports of blood communion wafers , on which miraculously blood is said to have shown.

The appearances are often described in connection with ritual negligence, with doubts in faith or with alleged host sacrilege . In the latter case, it was often Jews who were accused of sacrificing the host, such as the host miracles in Röttingen , Deggendorf , Sternberg and Flassau . Host miracles were therefore also the reason for anti-Jewish pogroms .

Background and story

Since, according to the church teaching discussed in the 11th and 12th centuries, bread and wine are substantially transformed into the body and blood of Christ at the mass ( real presence ), numerous legends emerged in the Middle Ages that this transformation, which is normally not perceptible to the senses, was externally visible has become. Such miracle reports also played a role in the development of the Corpus Christi festival .

After Berengar von Tours had denied a material transformation of the Eucharistic gifts in the 11th century , blood hospices became a kind of divine judgment on “true doctrine”. There are also reports that at Holy Mass the host was turned into flesh and the wine into blood.

The Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano has been mentioned as the first miracle of the wafer in church history . It is first mentioned in a document from 1631, which explains the origin of a blood and host relic kept in Lanciano - the legendary place of birth and death of St. Longinus - with a miracle that is said to have happened to a Greek monk in the 8th century should. According to studies, the “host” there is supposed to be a mummified disc of human heart tissue that was attached to a wooden board with special nails . Relics with drops of blood, which are said to have originated in the Eucharistic context, are among other things. a. also venerated in Bruges , Mantua and Bolsena , where no remains of the host have been preserved. One reason why the phenomenon has occurred more frequently since the 13th century, in addition to the piety-historical shift towards Gothic with its body-oriented mysticism of pain, is also that unleavened bread dough has been used for wafers in the Latin church since around the 12th century , because the bacterium prodigiosum can not grow on sourdough .

Host miracle called sometimes only short-lived, partly still ongoing pilgrimage customs forth. The Brandenburg miraculous blood church in Wilsnack and the Chapel of the Holy Blood in Sternberg became destinations for pilgrimages in Northern Europe because of such wonders of the wafers. The Wunderblutkirche Wilsnack was the destination of the pilgrimage from Berlin to Wilsnack . In the south, Seefeld in Tirol was a popular place of pilgrimage because of the miracle of the wafers.

Apparitions in the imagination of the Eucharistic miracles

Mass of St. Pope Gregory , Ulm or Ravensburg around 1480 (Bode-Museum Berlin)

The conception of the Eucharistic miracles also includes apparitions that are said to have been given to the priest during Mass.

The best- known example is the Gregory mass , a type of image that has been widespread since the 13th century and goes back to a report by Paulus Deaconus about a mass by Gregory the Great . Depicted is the appearance of Jesus as the Man of Sorrows , who is said to have appeared to him at Mass. In the case of Paulus Deaconus, however, there is only talk of a bloody finger.

A typical example of an early miracle tale is also the Bohemian priest Peter of Prague , who, after doubts about the reality of the Change , is said to have broken bread for communion in Bolsena in 1263 and discovered drops of blood in the process.

Differentiation from blood relics

A distinction must be made between the Eucharistic miracles and legends about the whereabouts of the blood of Jesus, which is said to have been caught when he was crucified. At the time of the Crusades, the legend of Joseph of Arimathea , who is said to have caught the blood of Jesus, was combined with the knight epic from the Arthurian round to the Grail saga . Other legends reported that Mary Magdalene or the Roman officer Longinus collected the blood. Blood relics became popular in the 13th century - ampoules with the blood of Jesus or a martyr , which on certain days showed their miraculous power by becoming liquid. Such remnants of blood were often associated or explained with Eucharistic miracles.

Theologically based criticism

Theologically justified criticism of this type of miracle has existed since the time it was first created. Albertus Magnus thought such miracles were visions. Thomas Aquinas viewed them skeptically, since he questioned their meaning and viewed them as a contradiction to his doctrine of the strictly supernatural (and therefore externally by definition imperceptible) transubstantiation . Even Nicholas of Cusa strongly opposed blood Host cult, as Jan Hus at the Council of Constance , as did the Erfurt theologians who stood against the pilgrimage to Wilsnack and referred to the critical attitude of Thomas Aquinas to the Eucharistic miracle. They could not prevail against the papal curia, which sanctioned the pilgrimage in 1453. In the theological discussions of the Middle Ages, questions were raised above all about the theological purpose of such apparitions, the unclear logic of the miracle event and the practice of storing consecrated hosts, which at that time was still inconsistent.

Today's assessment

Today, even among Roman Catholic experts, it is predominantly assumed that the historically transmitted phenomena are largely pious legends, fraud, self-deception or phenomena that can be explained in some other way. Only if there are convincing indications of a possible supernatural event does the Roman Catholic Church still allow acts of worship today, for example in Poland, where on April 17, 2016 the Bishop of Liegnitz approved the worship of a host that appeared in December 2013, which "has the characteristic features of a Eucharistic Miracle ”. An event investigated at about the same time in the Diocese of Salt Lake City in the USA was not recognized.

Serratia marcescens growing on bread

In particular the bacterium Serratia marcescens (also called Bacterium prodigiosum , "miracle bacterium ") is said to be responsible for many phenomena of the type of a host miracle. Reddish growths appear on the hosts, which are interpreted as blood residues. The bacterium develops particularly quickly on wafers soaked in wine, which used to be the usual way of keeping the holy of holies in the tabernacle . The mold Neurospora crassa can also thrive on hosts and discolor them red, which also gives the false impression of a blood miracle . Fungal or bacterial growth of this kind also often occurs with watered hosts (dissolution in water is the usual way of destroying consecrated forms that can no longer be consumed due to contamination or damage).

Fungal and bacterial infestation cannot explain miracles in which human blood or body cells are found on the hosts, which can be histopathologically examined and more precisely determined, or where growths from such cells are found on the hosts (usually identified as "heart tissue" ). Such a miracle is said to have occurred in 2013 in Liegnitz . However, devout pathologists were involved in the examination of the cells discovered there on watered hosts , who had already positively assessed a similar, alleged host miracle in another Polish diocese in 2009.

literature

Lexicon article

Contributions

  • Luigi Garlaschelli: Chemistry of Miracles. In: Chemistry in our time , Volume 33 (1999), No. 3, pp. 152-157.
  • Werner Köhler : Blood miracles and miracle blood bacteria. In: Angelika Lozar, Sybill De Vito-Egerland (ed.): Middle Ages and Renaissance. In honorem Fritz Wagner. Saur, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-598-73018-7 , pp. 47-72.
  • Peter Browe : The Eucharistic miracles of transformation of the Middle Ages. In: ders .: The Eucharist in the Middle Ages. Research into liturgical history with a cultural-historical intent (= Forgotten Theologians, Volume 1). 5th edition, Lit Verlag, Berlin 2010, pp. 265–289.

Monographs

  • Johannes Heuser: Holy Blood in Cult and Customs of the German Cultural Area. [Bonn] 1948, DNB 481653996 (Dissertation University of Bonn, Philosophical Faculty, August 12, 1948, 262 pages).
  • Olaf B. Rader : Hocus pocus. Blood hosts between belief in miracles and booth magic. Wilhelm Fink, Paderborn 2015, ISBN 978-3-7705-5738-7 .

Web links

Wikisource: Pigment rot and bleeding hosts  - sources and full texts
Commons : Eucharistic Miracle  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ New Eucharistic Miracle in Poland. In: CNA German edition of April 19, 2016 (accessed July 11, 2016).
  2. ^ Announcement of the Bishop of Liegnitz. Retrieved January 6, 2018 .
  3. ↑ US diocese: the supposed blood miracle was just a mold. In: kath.net from December 18, 2015 (accessed January 8, 2019).
  4. ↑ Stefan Winkle : The blood miracle as a microbiological and mass psychological phenomenon. Contribution to the history of the Bacterium prodigiosum (Serratia marcescens) and the phenomenology of intolerance. In: Laboratoriumsmedizin 7 (1983), Heft 9, pp 143-149.
  5. ↑ US diocese: the supposed blood miracle was just a mold. In: kath.net , December 18, 2015; restrictive: Michael O'Loughlin: Utah's 'bleeding host' isn't a miracle, Church says. In: Crux , December 16, 2015, accessed on January 8, 2019 (English): From the original sound of the press release of the Diocese of Salt Lake City cited there , it is clear that it must remain open whether the cause of the discoloration is actually a red mold like Neurospora crassa or not the Bacterium prodigiosum ( Serratia marcescens ).
  6. ↑ Elizabeth Scalia: Miracles aren't 'making a comeback' - they never went away. In: Catholic Herald, July 8, 2016 (accessed July 11, 2016).
  7. ↑ Eucharistic miracle. In: Lord's Day , July 6, 2016, retrieved May 15, 2018.
  8. ↑ Andrzej Wendrychowicz: The Host Miracle from Legnitz. In: Humanistischer Pressedienst , July 19, 2016, accessed on May 14, 2018.
  9. ^ Johanna Klimowicz: Sokółka. Nikt never maczał palców w cudzie. In: Gazeta Wyborcza , October 14, 2009, accessed May 14, 2018 (Polish).