summoned in the year 1495 to Venice by the Master-General of the Order, Fr. Joaquin de Torres, in order that he might give public lectures, and hold disputations concerning public worship and the adoration of the Most Holy Sacrament. For there were some theologians about this date who taught that the Blessed Sacrament must only be worshipped conditionally, with an implicit and intellectual reservation of adoring the Host in the tabernacle only in so far as It had been duly and exactly consecrated. Fr. Kramer, whose disputations were honoured by the presence of the Patriarch of Venice,78 with the utmost fervour publicly confronted those who maintained this view, and not infrequently did he preach against them from the pulpit. The whole question had recently arisen from a certain circumstance which happened in the vicinity of Padua. When a country fellow was collecting wood and dry leaves in a little copse hard by the city he found, wrapped up in a linen cloth beneath some dry brambles and bracken and dead branches of trees, two pyxes or ciboria containing particles which some three years before had been stolen from a neighbouring church, the one of which was used to carry the Lord’s Body to the sick, the other being provided for the exposition of the Sanctissimum on the feast of Corpus Christi. The rustic immediately reported what he had discovered to the parish priest of the chapel hard by the spinnery. The good Father immediately hastened to the spot and saw that it was exactly as had been told him. When he more closely examined the vessels he found in one pyx a number of Hosts, and so fetching thither from the church a consecrated altar-stone which it was the custom to carry when the Viaticum was taken to the dying in order that the ciborium might be decently set thereon, he covered the stone with a corporal or a fair linen cloth and reverently placed it beneath the pyx. He built all around a little wooden baldaquin or shrine, and presently put devout persons to watch the place so that no indignity might be done. Meanwhile the incident had been noised abroad and vast throngs of people made their way to the place where the thicket was; candles were lighted all around; “Christ’s Body,” they cry, “is here”; and every knee bent in humblest adoration. Before long news of the event was reported to the Bishop of Padua,79 who, having sent thither two or three priests, inquired most carefully into every detail. Since in the other ciborium they only found some corrupted particles of the Sacramental Species, in the sight of the whole multitude the clerics who had come from the Bishop broke down the tiny tabernacle that had been improvised, scattered all the boughs and leafery which were arranged about it, extinguished the tapers, and carried the sacred vessels away with them. Immediately after it was forbidden under severest penalties of ecclesiastical censures and excommunication itself for anyone to visit that spot or to offer devotions there. Moreover, upon this occasion certain priests preached openly that the people who resorted thither had committed idolatry, that they had worshipped nothing else save brambles and decay, trees, nay, some went so far as to declare that they had adored the devil himself. As might be supposed, very grave contentions were set astir between the parish priests and their flocks, and it was sharply argued whether the people had sinned by their devotion to Christ’s Body, Which they sincerely believed to be there, but Which (it seems) perhaps was not there: and the question was then mooted whether a man ought not to worship the Blessed Sacrament, ay, even when Christ’s Body is consecrated in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and elevated and carried as Viaticum in procession to the sick, only conditionally, that is to say, since he does not perhaps know if It is actually Christ’s Body (or whether some accident may not have occurred), since no man can claim to be individually enlightened by God on this point and desire to have the Mystery demonstrated and proved to him.80 It was much about the same thing that Fr. Kramer undertook to refute and utterly disprove the bold and wicked theories put forward by another preacher who at Augsburg dared to proclaim from the pulpit that the Catholic Church had not definitely laid down that the appearances of Christ in His human body, and sometimes bleeding from His Sacred Wounds, in the Blessed Sacrament81 are real and true manifestations of Our Saviour, but that it may be disputed whether Our Lord is truly there and truly to be worshipped by the people. This wretch even went so far as to say that miracles of this kind should be left as it were to the good judgement of God, inasmuch as with regard to these miraculous appearances nothing had been strictly defined by the Church, nor yet do the Holy Fathers or Doctors lay down any sure and certain rule. These doctrines Fr. Kramer opposed with the utmost zeal and learning, delivering many an eloquent sermon against the innovator and utterly condemning the theories which had been thus put forth and proclaimed. Nay, more, by virtue of his position and his powers as delegate of the Holy Office he forbade under the pain of excommunication that anyone should ever again dare to preach such errors. Fr. Kramer wrote several works, of which some have been more than once reprinted:
1. Malleus Maleficarum Maleficas & earum haeresim, ut framea potentissima conterens per F. Henricum Institorem & Jacobum Sprengerem ord. Praed. Inquisitores, Lyons, Junta, 1484.82 This edition is highly praised by Fontana in his work De Monumentis. Another edition was published at Paris, apud Joannem Paruum, 8vo; also at Cologne, apud Joanem Gymnicium, 8vo, 1520; and another edition
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