Hadn't some Christian saint slipped his hand in Christ's wounds because the sight of them had not been sufficient?

Many German and Polish 15th-century examples in wood greatly emphasise Christ's wounds.

We are Christ's wounds,' he continued, 'the poor and the dispossessed, while the rich luxuriate in their comfortable sties.'

Blood rays spring up from Christ's wounds, ending in the Holy Chalice and turning themselves into the sacramental bread.

Blood from Christ's wounds is shown falling onto a map of the British Isles, and from this blood fire is springing up.

It is of course significant that the trick involves Christ's wounds on the cross, for only a dozen or so pages later, Red will announce that Rosa has died.

We encounter "the confounding perfume of the founder's mysterious blood" before we have an explanation of what this is all about and how it happened, of the association with Christ's wounds.

His 'obsession' with Christ's wounds was linked the eroticism of his language - in particular the spear-wound in Christ's side which he and the community called the Seitenhölchen ('little side-hole').

He encouraged followers to visualise Christ's wounds in great detail ('so moist, so gory', as he described them), and his sermons included exhortations to imaginitively 'enter into' these wounds and drink from them.

In Robert de Boron's version, the Grail is identified as "the dish in which Joseph of Arimathea gathers the blood that flows from Christ's wounds after the body is taken down from the Cross."

Even Jesus, they say, when he rose from the dead, chided a man who would have thrust his hands into the Christ's wounds to see that he was not a ghost or a spirit, for it was more blessed to believe without seeing."

The centerpiece of their frightening rituals is the Good Friday re-enactment of the crucifixion - in which one of their members is literally nailed to the cross, while others scar and mutilate themselves in the pattern of Christ's wounds.

There was in the medieval Missals a special Mass in honour of Christ's Wounds, known as the Golden Mass, During its celebration five candles were always lighted and it was popularly held that if anyone should say or hear it on five consecutive days he should never suffer the pains of hell fire.