Time for something on the edge of horror. At the end of the 18th century, there lived in Rottweil, a small town in Swabia, a very godless man named Otto. One day, as the Blessed Sacrament passed by his house in a solemn Corpus Christi procession, Otto decided to make a mockery of the Catholic faith. He stood in the window wearing a sleeveless shirt, a bloody butcher's apron, and a white headdress for sleeping on his head. With this inappropriate attire, he wanted to show his contempt for the Eucharist adored by the people. To make matters worse, when the Blessed Sacrament passed him, he spat in its direction in disgust.

The scandal he caused, which became widely known, required a public act of reparation for the insult to the Divine Majesty.

Maybe it's a coincidence, maybe not, but on the same day the blasphemer fell ill. What is more, after a few days he died! Then strange things began to happen in the house. At night, dreadful sounds could be heard, terrible groaning, loud wailing, even the clashing of metal chains.

No one could stand it.

It was easy to guess the reason… In order to stop the noises, a very original thing was done; it is said that the residents of the house were "as if inspired by God." They decided to paint a portrait of the dead butcher, dressed and posed as he had appeared at the window to mock the Blessed Sacrament. The painting was placed where Otto mocked the most Holy Eucharist - in the window of an apartment building. All passersby were to see how God punishes blasphemers. It was also meant to be a form of humiliating penance for the offender himself.

The house went quiet.

At that moment, the story had reached its point and we could move on to another story. We need to pause for a moment because the story of Rottweil has a second ending. A few years later, the wife of a Protestant pastor who lived across the street from the butcher's house, and who could not bear to look at the dreadful portrait, forced her husband to go to the magistrate's office and get a decision on its removal.

The city authorities ordered the painting to be taken down. But as soon as it disappeared from public view, the old groans of fear began again, and they continued until the inhabitants of the house obtained permission to put the portrait of the blasphemer back in its place.

The story sounds incredible, but the author quoting it, a monk, assures his readers: "One of our fathers told me about this event as an eyewitness."

When we read the books of miracles, we find again and again the mention of a special place connected with the cult of the Eucharist. We read many times that people vow that if God listens to them, they will go on pilgrimage to a certain city within the borders of the Republic of Poland. This city is called "Posnania", and we begin to suspect that we are talking about a place called "Poznan" today. Except that… we know little about the Eucharistic miracle that would make Pozna? one of the most important pilgrimage sites in Europe. It is time to make up for this and to remember the great Eucharistic miracle of 1399.

The news of the extraordinary circumstances of the Eucharistic miracle that took place in Poznan in August 1399 spread so quickly throughout the world that less than two years later, Pope Boniface IX, in an official letter, granted special indulgences to the place because of the many "miracles that occur there," which were later extended several times by his successors on the throne of Peter. At some point, Poznan became one of the most visited pilgrimage sites on the map of Europe.

The miracle was described by the famous Polish historian Jan Długosz, other chroniclers wrote about it, and the Apostolic Nuncio Francesco Ditalevi recalled it. If one extracts a common and fundamental message from numerous sources, the whole story is as follows:

It all began when a group of Poznań Jews bribed a woman who worked in the home of one of them. They promised to pay her a large sum of money if she would bring them consecrated Host. Lured by the easy and large income, she agreed to commit a sacrilegious act. On August 15, 1399, the day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the woman went with her daughter to the Dominican church for the noon mass, and after the liturgy, she remained hidden behind a pillar in the church. When the church was closed, she approached the altar. Allegedly, a force pushed her away from the tabernacle twice, but finally, with the help of her daughter, she managed to open it and stole three consecrated Hosts. She wrapped them in a cloth and hid again in the church with her daughter, waiting for the church to open for evening vespers. Then, unnoticed, she left the church and went to the Jews to give them the stolen Holy Sacrament. Sacrament. After receiving the Hosts, they paid her the agreed sum. The rabbis and elders of the community, thirteen of them in all, went to the tenement house called ”Świdwińska,” went down to the cellar and poured the Hosts on the table.

They could begin to abuse the hated Christ. The oldest of the Jews started first. But when he pierced one of the Hosts with a knife, blood gushed out and splashed him in the face.

We may be surprised at the reaction of the witnesses to this miracle. Instead of abandoning their evil intentions in horror, they fell into a frenzy and, as if possessed by an evil spirit, began to stab the Hosts without restraint. They did not stop, even though blood spilled all over the table. At the same time they were blaspheming and hurling the most terrible insults at Jesus.

In the place where the miracle took place and the desecration continued, there was a Jewish girl, blind from birth, who was obviously not possessed by an evil spirit, but on the contrary, her heart was opened by the grace of God. She was unexpectedly inspired by a pious thought that perhaps Jesus Christ, "whom Christians praise" and consider to be God, was really present in the Blessed Sacrament and that there was a hidden holy power in those Hosts that her countrymen were torturing. The girl began to pray to Jesus hidden in the hosts for the miracle, asking for the restoration of her sight, and… her request was granted. 

The miracle seemed to bring the elders who were torturing the Hosts to their senses. They understood that the situation was taking a dangerous turn and, realizing what the consequences of desecrating the Blessed Sacrament could be for them (and that was death!), they decided to get rid of the bleeding Hosts at all costs. However, they tried in vain to get rid of them on the spot: burning them or drowning them in a well in the cellar.

Thrown into either fire or water, the Hosts inexplicably floated above the surface of the elements.

Then the perpetrators of the sacrilege decided to take the bleeding Hosts out of the city. Their horror was intensified when, as they left the walls of Poznan, they witnessed two more miraculous healings. The first was accomplished by the mere presence of the consecrated Hosts: a beggar standing at the gate was cured of his handicap, and he did not even know what the Jews passing by were hiding.

And the next miracle? A dying man was restored to health. It was he who cried out that Christ had been crucified a second time.

When the Jewish blasphemers finally reached the meadows near Poznań and found themselves among the meadows and marshes, they abandoned the hosts in the grass and quickly returned to the city.

We have already had three miracles and another one is waiting for us.

Sunday morning came. A local shepherd brought his cattle to this place and he and his son, who was several years old, watched over them. His father left him there alone because he was going to Mass. The boy, whose name was Pawel, saw three Hosts rise into the air and fly like butterflies. The horses that were passing by began to worship them on their knees, as did the cattle he was tending.

When the father returned to the meadows near Poznan, he saw the same thing his son had seen for a long time. The shepherd returned to the city and told the mayor, who, not surprisingly, did not believe the story. Finally, together with the local bishop (we know that his name was Wojciech Jastrzębiec) and the clergy, he arrived at the place indicated by the shepherd, and everyone saw three Hosts miraculously hovering over the marshes. In a solemn procession, in which the "pious priest John" carried the Hosts, they were brought back to the city.

In the meadows where the Hosts were found, a wooden chapel was soon built, in which the three miraculous Hosts were placed. So many miracles began to happen in this place that less than two years later, Pope Boniface IX granted special indulgences to this place, and King Władysław Jagiello founded a brick church dedicated to Corpus Christi.

Before the temple was built, God had already performed extraordinary miracles in this place, "among which 36 people were raised from the dead, and from the beginning of these miracles until the year 1604 their number increased to 382".

To complete the story, it is worth mentioning that in 1620, in the almost ruined tenement house of the Świdwy-Szamotulski family, a table was found in the local cellar, on which the Hosts had been desecrated in 1399. In his official letter, the Apostolic Nuncio of the time mentioned a table "miraculously sprinkled with the Blood of our Savior." On February 16, 1704, the Roman Congregation of Cardinals issued a decree officially approving the possibility of opening an oratory and a small monastery of the Carmelite Congregation at the place of the desecration of the Hosts.

The fame of the church in Poznan grew, and rumors of all kinds of impossible miracles spread throughout Europe. The stories that circulated contributed to this. Some were so unbelievable that they were considered edifying, imaginative fables, but others were so rooted in fact and so "uninventive" that they were almost gray and boring in their narrative until the moment the miracle was mentioned.

Or perhaps the former were passed on by word of mouth, with new pious embellishments added, for so long that the story, passed on from time to time by someone who "heard it for himself," became a legend in the modern sense of the word? This could be the case, for example, with the story of the missing child who was found after his parents made a vow. Did the search last three days, or rather, as the story goes, three years? Did the child really survive so many months, including two winters, thanks to the care of a goat?

Let's listen to this rather miraculous story for ourselves. Although… This story, like the others we are about to quote, was written down by none other than Tomasz Treter. And he is an important person, not a popular preacher, but a historian.

Tomasz Treter († 1610) was the secretary of Anna Jagiellon, Stefan Batory and Sigismund III, and above all of Cardinal Hosius, whom he did not leave until his death; he was also a canon of St. Mary of Transteveronia in Rome, of Warmia in Poland and apparently of Olomouc in the Empire. He wrote historical works in Latin and, according to the fashion of the time, poems. He described the extraordinary miracles in a 50-page book on the history and miracles of the Blessed Sacrament, published in 1609: Sacratissimi corporis Christi historia et miracvla, quae in ecclesia Posnaniensi ordine Sacrae Carmelitanum diuina bonitas operatur studio et labore Thomae Treteri […] collecta. Let us add that when he wrote about miracles, he was describing what happened in his hometown. Descriptions of miracles can also be found in his letters addressed, I believe, to Abraham Bzowski († 1637), a famous Dominican preacher who served for several years in the Dominican church in Poznań. And since Treter is writing two hundred years later, his material already has a fairground coloration…

This illustration is one of 18 presented in Cor Jesu Amanti Sacrum, created by the Flemish printmaker Antoon Wierix II in 1595. The work is dedicated to the devotion of the Child Jesus, who manifests his power especially in the Blessed Sacrament. Four of the images depicting the power of the Child Jesus are part of the interior decoration of the medieval Carthusian church in Pelplin, Poland. They are bas-reliefs created in 1765. For more informations click here.