A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

by Barbara W. Tuchman

Clouded by the metaphysics of transubstantiation, it was little understood by the ordinary layman, except for the magical powers believed to reside in the consecrated wafer. Placed on cabbage leaves in the garden, it kept off chewing insects, and placed in a beehive to control a swarm, it induced the pious bees, in one case, to build around it a complete chapel of wax with windows, arches, bell tower, and an altar on which the bees placed the sacred fragment.