The Man of Sorrows

Sebald Beham renders his engraving of The Man of Sorrows in intricate detail. Christ’s blood gushes into a chalice as it becomes Communion wine, and he grasps a Communion wafer imprinted with the Crucifixion in his right hand. This sizeable wafer is meant for the act of consecration, in which visibility was vital, rather than the individual consumption of smaller hosts that would have been also been produced by the nearby host iron. A priest holding the wafer aloft broke it at the culminating moment, copying Christ’s breaking of bread at the Last Supper.