The Passau Art

Those soldiers with their conjured wafers could not die, even when they had been beaten to pieces; but when they had suffered their fill, they would at last beg the people to cut those wafers, on account of which they could not die, out of their arms and finish them off — which was granted them very readily. It is otherwise related that at Passau the executioner sold the soldiers magic slips of paper to swallow; this sorcery was called the Passau art.