Vita Wenceslai (Legenda Gumpoldi)
The Blood That Would Not Wash Away
After Wenceslas's martyrdom, attendants repeatedly tried to wash his blood from the church wall, but it miraculously reappeared and spread each day until they ceased their efforts, leaving the bloodstain as a lasting sign of reverence.
Once the most passionate champion of God had suffered his venerable passion, certain attendants thoroughly washed away the blood that had been sprinkled on the church wall at the very hour of his martyrdom, and that still showed through the planks. The next day, when they came back there, they saw that the blood had spread no less widely on the wall than when it had first clung to it, in the very same spot. Terrified not a little by what they had seen, they brought water again and tried much harder to wash it away. The following day, however, to test whether they would still be frustrated if they returned, they found the wall no less stained with blood, even though it appeared to have been washed three times. Because they wondered deeply about this, and after that gave up the exhausting work of trying to wash it away, to this day the wall itself still gleams with the stain of his blood as a sign worthy of reverence.
Read the original Latin
Peracta fortissimi dei athletae venerabili passione, ministri quidam sanguinem, qui per tabulas aecclesiae ipsa martiri hora aspersus apparet, iussi aqua lavantes, penitus absterserunt. Posteraque die illuc venientes, non minus quam cum primum parieti adhaesit cruorem ipsum eodem loco dilatatum conspiciunt. Non parum ipsi hoc viso territi, aqua iterum allata, multo studiosius abluere decertant. Crastino autem probandi causa, si etiam adhuc frustrati sint, redeuntes, non minus tinctum sanguine parietem, quamvis ter ablutus videatur, agnoscunt. Quibus multum super hoc mirantibus, eoque abluendi labore post inde cessantibus, usque hodie sanguinis eiusdem intinctione paries ipse pro signo venerando nitescit.
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