Sanguis Jesu Christi The worship of Holy Blood in the Middle Age (CD)

 Gregorian chant from the Holy Blood office of Weingarten (13th century)

Legend of the Holy Grail In the medieval cult of the relic, one relic played a quite special role: The Blood of Jesus, which Joseph of Arimathea is said to have been able to collect from the crucified body in the Holy Grail. The Blood is supposed to have been brought eventually to Europe by Mary Magdalene. In the Middle Ages there was a series of important monasteries, which boasted about the possession of this precious relic, though it was only the Weingarten monastery which built up the worship and cult of the Holy Blood, so that the tradition continues to this day. It reaches its climax in the "Weingartener Blutritt", a mounted procession on so-called "Blutfreitag". The musicologist and director of the ensemble, Stefan Johannes Morent, has reconstructed, from various medieval sources of the thirteenth century, the Gregorian chants for the prayers of the canonical hours used in the "Feast of the Holy Blood" in Weingarten, and recorded them for the first time with his ensemble Ordo virtutum.