Wonderful Blood Book

List of Illustrations     xi
Preface     xv
Some Notes on Usage     xix
Introduction: A Frenzy for Blood     1
The Emergence of Blood Piety     1
Blood in the Fifteenth-Century North     5
Some Recent Approaches     9
Cults in Northern Germany     23
Wilsnack     25
The Events     25
Historiography     29
Blood at the Center     31
Treatises de Sanguine     36
Larger Questions     43
Cults in Mecklenburg and the Mark Brandenburg     47
Historiography and the Problem of the Evidence     49
Blood Cult in Middle Germany and the Havelland     52
North and West of Wilsnack     61
Anti-Jewish Libels Circa 1500: Sternberg and Berlin     68
The Fate of Cults in the Sixteenth-Century North     73
Holy Matter and the Jews     75
Blood Disputes in Fifteenth-Century Europe and Their Background     83
Debates About Eucharistic Transformations and Blood Relics     85
Visions and Transformations     86
The Practical Issue of Transformed Hosts     90
Concomitance and the Cup     92
The Debateover Blood Relics: Background     96
Grosseteste, Bonaventure, and Aquinas on Blood Relics and Identity     98
Gerhard of Cologne     106
Discussions of Blood Relics in the Fifteenth Century     108
Christ's Blood in the Triduum Mortis     112
Mayronis and the Barcelona Controversy of 1350-51     113
John of Capistrano on the Precious Blood     116
The Triduum Mortis Debate of 1462-64     120
Some Arguments Attributed to Nicholas of Cusa     125
Patterns in Dominican and Franciscan Theology     127
Conclusion     130
The Assumptions of Blood Piety     133
A Concern for Immutability     135
The Immutability Theme at Wilsnack     137
The Transformed-Hosts Debate: A Deeper Issue     138
Immutability in Debates over Blood Relics and Treatises de Sanguine     141
Wholeness and Immutability in Story and Cult     146
Devotional Images     150
Conclusion     151
Living Blood Poured Out     153
Blood as Fertility     155
Blood as Social Survival     157
Blood as Engendering and Gendered     158
Blood as Sedes Animae     161
Continuity in Discontinuity: The Exsanguination of Christ     166
Blood as Alive     168
Blood as Separated and Shed     173
The Stress on Separation     173
Blood as Drops     175
The Revelation of the Hundred Pater Nosters     178
Accusation and Reproach     180
Blood as Symbol     185
The Deeper Paradox: Sacrifice     188
Sacrifice and Soteriology     193
Late Medieval Soteriology     195
Salvation as Satisfaction and Response: The Conventional Account     196
Salvation as Participation     202
Julian of Norwich     204
Conclusion     208
Sacrificial Theology     210
The Biblical and Patristic Background     210
Destruction and Oblation     215
Sacrifice in Blood Cult and Controversy     221
The Sixteenth Century     226
The Aporia of Sacrifice     229
Questioning Blood: The Meditations on the Life of Christ     230
Avoiding Sacrifice     234
Who Sacrifices? Including/Excluding Christians and Blaming Jews     239
Sacrifice and the Marking of Matter     244
Conclusion: Why Blood?     249
List of Abbreviations     259
Notes     263
Bibliography of Works Cited     351
Index     387
Acknowledgments     401