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riod, during Ascensiontide of 1298 , in the church of Sant’Andrea at Mantua,
the Precious Blood began to work miracles. A chronicler reported that the
Precious Blood of Mantua soon began to cure many: the mute, the para-
lyzed, the lame, the blind, and the deformed.^176 One could cite numerous
other examples.
An early-fourteenth-century Italian who owned a sumptuous book of
Latin devotions over one hundred years old added to his precious text only
one new prayer. He inscribed on the back of the first blank leaf a salutation
that focused on Christ’s Body and its power:
Hail Word Incarnate
on the altar consecrated,
Living Bread of Angels,
only hope of Christians;
Greetings, Body of Jesus Christ,
who for us descended,
World’s Health for salvation,
free us by your power. Amen.^177The Body of Christ was the key that opened heaven to believers at Mass and
ushered them into heaven at the hour of death. When the heretics struck
down Pietro Parenzi by a blow to the head, he marshaled all his dying
strength and placed a small bit of earth in his mouth, thereby showing he
died longing for the Blessed Sacrament.^178 He longed for what his Cathar
killers despised. The heretic was the one blind to the hidden realities of
Christ’s presence. More than any doctrinal deviation from the articles of
the Creed, this defined the heretic. The heretic rejected as impossible the
substantial presence of Christ to his people and so lost both holiness and
understanding.^179 The Dominican preacher Fra Bartolomeo of Vicenza con-
ceived of heresy almost solely as rejection of the Eucharistic Presence.^180 Fra
Megliorino of Piadena testified to Giovanni Buono’s love of the Eucharist in
the same sentence in which he reported his hate for heretics. Saint Giovanni
would cry with joy when the priest brought him Communion or when the
subdeacon brought its symbolic substitute, the Pax.^181 By the late communal
176 .Breve Chronicon Mantuanum,ed. Carlo d’Arco, in ‘‘Cronichette di Mantova di autore anonimo dal
1095 al 1299 ,’’Archivio storico italiano,n.s., 1 : 2 ( 1855 ), 57.
177. Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale,msII.iv. 111 (xiiicent.), fol. 1 v: ‘‘Ave verbum incarnatum
in altare consecratum,panis vivus angelorum, sola spes Christianorum;salve corpus Iesu Christi, qui
pro nobis descendisti,salus mundi pro salute, libera nos cum virtute. Amen.’’
178. Giovanni of Orvieto,Vita [S. Petri Parentii], 2. 89 ,p. 89.
179. Zanella, ‘‘Malessere ereticale,’’ 52 – 57.
180. E.g., in his sermon at Christmas, Bartolomeo of Vicenza,Sermones de Beata Virgine ( 1266 ),Sermo
9. 2 ,p. 58.
181 .Processus... B. Joannis Boni, 4. 4. 282 ,p. 844.