International Medieval Society, Paris
Société Internationale des Médiévistes, Paris

Symposium 2008 Abstracts

In 1433 Pope Eugenius IV gave to Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy what was undoubtedly the most visually arresting of all the communion wafers that miraculously bled in the Middle Ages.  The Sacred Bleeding Host of Dijon, embossed with an image of Christ as Judge, seemed to bleed in all the right places:  from the Savior’s hands, knees, and feet, as well as from the implements of his Passion.  The cult of the Host began immediately after its arrival in Dijon and flourished -- first locally, then nationally -- for over 350 years.  The wafer, which was the focal point for the city’s annual Corpus Christi celebrations, was also credited with saving Dijon over the years from war, plague, and drought.  It was the subject of monographs in both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  The French Revolution destroyed the cult by burning the Host, razing its chapel, and dispersing its treasury.  We are able, however, to reconstruct the wafer’s forgotten cult by examining the body of images that survive in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century books of hours, choir books, and broadsides.