A BAKE BACILLUS. 47 



The bacillus prodigiosus seems to have one of the best 

 authenticated pedigrees, and to have been known under 

 various names for many centuries. Undoubtedly it was the 

 cause of so-called " bleeding bread or bleeding Host " or the 

 "bloody sweat " of the middle ages. The moist Consecrated 

 Wafers left on the altar overnight were found to be covered 

 with red spots resembling blood next day, drops which 

 rapidly grew larger in a few hours. What else, it was 

 asked, could it be but blood, and what could it mean but the 

 portent of some great calamity ? Needless to say great 

 capital was sometimes made out of this " miracle." Priest 

 and layman alike could believe in it with perfect honesty, 

 and owing to lack of knowledge it was regarded as purely 

 supernatural. 



I believe that the chief church in Brussels is called 

 St. Grudule's, and that there is an Annual Festival of the 

 Miracles on July 13th. Here then is the connection with 

 St. Gudule and the bacillus prodigiosus. 



About 1350 a Jew, to show his detest of Christianity, 

 stole 16 Consecrated Wafers from the altar of St. Catherine's 

 at Brussels. He was discovered and assassinated, but his 

 widow gave the Wafers in their Pyx to several other Jews, 

 and they, one Good Friday, laid them out on a table and 

 stabbed them with a dagger. The legend says that as each 

 wafer broke it bled, at the sight of which the horrified Jews 

 fled, and the wafers were afterwards collected and restored 

 to the priests of St. Grudule's, since which time (it is said) 

 serious epidemics have been arrested, and many other 

 " miracles " performed through their agency. 



The appearance of this terrible " blood portent " seems 

 to have generally been associated with some act of desecration 

 on the part of the unfortunate Jews, who were made to 

 confess their guilt under inquisitorial torture. 



About the year 1600 twenty Jews were tortured and 

 burnt at Judenburg, in Styria, and in 1620 another 28 met 

 with a similarly awful fate, while in 1819 a peasant at Liguara, 

 near Padua, was terrified by finding bloodstains on some 

 polenta which had been made and shut up in a cupboard on 

 the previous evening. Next day similar patches appeared on 

 bread, meat, and other articles of food in the same cupboard. 

 It was naturally regarded as a miracle and a warning from 

 Heaven, until the case had been submitted to a Paduan 

 naturalist, who discovered the presence of the bacillus, which 

 Ehremberg, at Berlin, had previously identified as the monas 

 prodigiosa. 



