The reading
How it began
In 1254, during Mass, a priest let a consecrated Host fall. He took it up and found the place where it had lain marked with blood, on the corporal or the stone, according to the tellings. The cloth was reserved. Douai’s later reputation as a city of the Precious Blood owes as much to this as to any later relic brought from elsewhere.
The day itself
The collegiate church kept the memory through the centuries of the Spanish Netherlands and after. The grade is local and medieval: a fall, a stain, a city that did not wash the linen and forget.
Reading
How to read Douai
Dropping a Host is an accident the missal already knows how to meet, with water and reverence. Douai’s claim is that the accident left a sign the city refused to treat as a stain to be bleached.
Church status
How this sign has been received
Long veneration
Medieval civic cult at Douai.
Sources
- Collegiate memory of Douai
For the classroom
Douai (1254, Douai). Grade in this encyclopedia: Long veneration. A priest dropped a Host. When he lifted it, blood had marked the altar cloth. Douai kept the cloth and built the cult of the Precious Blood around it.
