At that time the Right Reverend Bernard Olivier is supposed to have been assailed by doubts when during the mass the tintinnabulum (bell used in the mass) rang to transform the red wine into Christ's blood. From that moment, so the story goes, the blood mysteriously increased in volume, and it seemed to the faithful as if it flowed from the cloth of the Lord over the altar steps down to the floor of the chapel. Imagination went so far that some determined women mopped up the blood from the floor with cloths, the annals record. The Bishop of Solsona, St. Ermengol, heard of the happening and told the Pope. Pope Sergius IV (1009-1012) allowed public veneration of the strange relic, the bloodstained cloth of Iborra.
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[*] A relic may be the remains of a saint or a saint's possessions, also one of the instruments of martyrdom.
---- It is not always holy figures that provoke visions, their trappings can do it, too. Iborra is not an exceptional case.
The pious Monsieur Thierry, Rector of Paris University, was murdered in Pirlemont, Brabant, in 1073.
The brutal murderers threw his corpse into a muddy pond. For a long time the inhabitants vainly searched all over the village for the victim, when suddenly a 'wonderful light', which radiated from the I body, shone from the pond. In gratitude for this miraculous discovery an artist painted a wooden panel of the Blessed Virgin floating over the water. In 1297 the picture was transferred to a recently built chapel. During the consecration ceremonies, so it says in the records, the picture was suddenly enveloped in an 'inexplicable blaze of light'. (3) Even though it was not officially recorded, I suspect that here too the Blessed Virgin- tirelessly active everywhere, performed some other strange feats.
Perhaps she smiled at the congregation; perhaps she waved her hand in blessing from the frame.
On 23rd February, 1239, a small army of Christian warriors fought against a vastly superior force of Mohammedans on the hill of Codol, three miles from Jativa, near Valencia, Spain.
Before the battle six of the Christian leaders were praying before taking Holy Communion. They had just had time to confess their sins, but not to receive the host, because at that very moment the enemy's battle-cry reached the church from nearby Mount Chio. The leaders grabbed their weapons, since prayer would no longer serve. Terrified that the Moslems might destroy the church, the priests hid the altar cloth and host under a pile of stones. The Christian knights were victorious. When the priests took the altar cloth from its hiding place, six bloody hosts were stuck to it. But there was more to come!
The next day the Moslems attacked with heavy reinforcements. The situation seemed hopeless and the Christians had to withdraw to the Castle of Chio, which they had captured the day before. The priests had a brilliant idea. They tied the altar cloth, made sacred by the apparition of the hosts, to a pole and waved it at the enemy from the battlements of the castle. Tradition relates that the altar cloth sent out rays of light far and wide and that they were so luminous that the enemy were blinded and fled.
Is that a proof of the primitive power of vision? They can sway whole armies and even the battle cry
'Great is Allah!' is no help against the blood of Christ. No, visions are not always peaceful. If necessary, they can also spread fear and panic.
Any visitor to Spain can see that altar cloth with six red spots in the church at Daroca [4]
At some time in the fourteenth century, the exact date is unknown, a mower gave himself a fatal wound with his scythe near Trois-Epis in Upper Alsace, France. In memory of his tragic death the local farmers nailed a crucifix to an oak tree and called the scene of the accident 'A l'homme wort'. On
3rd May, 1491, the blacksmith, Dieter Schore, a sturdy man with no nonsense about him, was riding past it when the figure of a lady in a white robe and wearing a veil appeared to him. In one hand she held an icicle, in the other three ears of corn. She told the bewildered smith that because of the sins and vices of the local people Almighty God would send terrible diseases, heavy rain and frost to punish them if they did not repent and do penance. But the lady said that the ears of corn were a symbol of blessing and good harvests which God would grant through her intercession.
The blacksmith did not attach much importance to the phantom: he wasn't going to breathe a word of it to the villagers of Niedennorschweiher. But then it happened! He bought a sack of corn in the market, but although he was helped by some stalwart labourers he could not lift it on to his horse's back, for the sack got heavier and heavier. Then blacksmith Schore, as we can understand, bowed to God's power and told the people about his vision. The priests understood at once and summoned the faithful to form a procession to the spot known as 'A l'homme mori'. The fine lady usually had a firm hand on the pulse of her flock. Anyone who promises farmers a good harvest has won the battle already.
Trois-Epis is a well-known place of pilgrimage in Alsace. (5)
The Convent of Conception, Chile, belongs to the Trinitarians. In it stands a life-size gilded Cedarwood statue of the Blessed Virgin, whose hands are not folded in prayer - they look as if they were throwing something! There is a good reason for this.
When the city of Concepcion and the chapel in which the Cedarwood statue then stood were attacked by the enemy in 1600, the statue of the Virgin is supposed to have left the chapel in a mysterious way and appeared to the hostile Indians in a tree. She scooped up earth and showered the attackers with bog clods. It seems quite credible in the chronicles of the event that even valiant Indians fled in panic at the sight of such a martial wooden lady. Today we cannot prove whether this is fact or charming legend, but it is true that the 'clod-throwing statue' of Conception is devoutly honoured to this day. (6)
I find it worthy of note that frequently visions are so far from 'ethereal' that they will even throw mud if they can ensure an effect on their, flock. The end justifies the means.
Tradition tells of 'a terrifying occurrence', dated 3rd December, 1712, in Besancon, a town in the French Jura, today the seat of an archbishopric. Magopholis describes this vision in his book Neue Galene des Ubematurlichen, Wunderbaren and Gehdmnisvotten, published in Weimar, in 1860.
The sun was shining brightly in a cloudless sky when, about nine o'clock in the morning, people saw the figure of a man floating in the air, at a height of 'nine lances'. He cried out thrice in a loud voice:
'People! People! People! mend your ways or your end is nigh!' This happened on a market day and Magopholis says that it took place 'in the presence of more than 10, 000 people'. After these harsh warnings the figure disappeared into a cloud as if it was ascending directly into leaven. An hour later the air had grown so dark that it was impossible to make out heaven or earth from a radius of twenty miles. In Magopholis's words: Alarm and terror seized all souls; many people died a sudden death. The population held processions and uttered fervent prayers to heaven. At last, when three days had elapsed the air cleared again; but a terrible wind storm arose, much worse than any of the oldest men in the town could remember, and lasted for about an hour and a halt Then came a fearful cloudburst so that water poured down from heaven as if great barrels were being emptied, and simultaneously there was a tremendous earthquake that destroyed the whole city. Over an area fourteen miles long and six miles wide only one castle, a church tower and in the middle of the area three houses had been left standing. You can see them standing there on a round hill; you can also see some parts of the city walls and you can see flags and standards fluttering in the tower and the castle from the side where the village of Quetz lies. No one can approach them. In the same way no one can say what all this means and no one can behold the scene without the hair of their head standing up, for this is a miraculous and terrifying occurrence.