EUCHARISTIC MIRACLE - 1290 A.D. PARIS, France.

During Easter of 1290 a non-believer who harbored animosity toward the Faith and who did not believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist was able to gain possession of a consecrated Host with the intent to desecrate the Holy Eucharist. He stabbed the Host and threw the Blessed Sacrament into boiling water. The Host miraculously came out of the water right in front of the man, who was distressed by this. And so he put the Host in the basin of a pious woman. The woman immediately brought the Host to her pastor.

There are numerous documents that testify to the events of this miracle. The Italian historian Giovanni Villani in Book VII, Chapter 136, of his celebrated History of Florence reports all the principal facts of the miracle. A deep study of the sources was done by Mrs. Moreau-Rendu in a work entitled. A Paris, Rue des Jardins published in 1954 with a preface by Bishop Touzé who was the Auxiliary Bishop of Paris. The author, after a detailed list of the documents, placed them under rigorous examination and declared with confidence the authenticity of the facts. The best known version of the story is found in the History of the Church of Paris written by the French archbishop, Archbishop Rupp, who tells of the Eucharistic miracle of Paris in the pages dedicated to the episcopate of Simon Matifas of Busay who held the See of St. Denis from 1290 to 1304: “Easter Sunday, April 2, 1290, a man named Jonathas, who hated the Catholic Faith and did not believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, was able to gain possession of a consecrated Host.

“The man stabbed the Host with a knife and the Host began to bleed. The Blood filled the container in which he had placed the Host. Panic-stricken, the man decided to throw the Blessed Sacrament into the fire, but the Host miraculously arose from the fire. Desperate, he threw the Eucharist into boiling water and the Host arose from the water, hovering in mid-air, and then taking the form of a crucifix. Finally, he deposited the Holy Eucharist in the bowl of a parishioner of Saint Jean-en–Grève who brought the Blessed Sacrament to her parish priest. Over the centuries, the Sacred Relic remained in a small reliquary in the church of Saint-Jean.

During the French Revolution the Precious Relic was lost without a trace.” Here are some other equally significant facts: The ecclesiastical authorities, the people and the king decided to transform the home of the one who desecrated the Sacred Host into a chapel in which the Holy Eucharist would be kept; the confiscation of the house of Jonathas, called “The House of Miracles” by King Phillip the Fair which was registered in a bill of sale from 1291; the transformation of the house into an oratory after the Bull that was obtained from Pope Boniface VIII; the name of the “Rue du Dieu bouilli” (The Street of God-boiled) given by the people of Paris to the “Rue des Jardins”; the Eucharistic celebration in the Chapel des Billettes of the Department of the Reparation on the second Sundays of Advent and Lent.