IN one of the most bizarre, yet very common miracles of the Middle Ages, the bread of the Eucharist is transformed between the very hands of the priest at Mass into a small living child, then slain and dismembered before the eyes of the congregation. Commentators identified the child as the Infant Jesus and often cited such miracles as proof that the Mass is an actual re-sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ. But why should He appear as a child rather than the adult who died on Calvary? This question is more than a minor doctrinal quibble, for it widens out immediately into a much larger issue the issue of just what impact the myriad pictorial and verbal images of the Christ Child had, or were expected to have, on a medieval popular audience. Works like the pseudoBonaventura's widely-read Meditationes Vitae Christi emphasize the Child's humanity. They seek to kindle a joyous form of devotion by bringing Him to life as a winsome infant and inviting the reader to a sentimental response. But the miracle of the host become child is based on a harsher parallel tradition. Medieval writings, from early Latin tracts to late English popularizations, persist in conflating the Incarnation and the Passion, in fusing the Babe of Bethlehem and the sacramental Victim of the Mass. Materials from this tradition regularly appear in the English Corpus Christi Cycles, but have been just as regularly ignored by critics.' It would be easy to overemphasize the sacramental motifs in English medieval drama, thus freezing a living art form into the rigidity of a theological treatise. But to bypass these themes entirely, however fleetingly they appear, is to miss subtle overtones which would reach any fifteenth-century viewer at all familiar with vernacular sermons and devotional manuals. The Second Shepherds' Play makes particularly skilled use of the child-host motif. By approaching the play through this tradition, we can more clearly recognize the artistry of the Wakefield Master and more fully appreciate the thematic unity which critics as recent as Eleanor Prosser have denied his work.2 The Vitae Patrum tells of an aged and saintly Egyptian monk who found himself unable to believe that the bread of the Sacrament is indeed the body of Christ. Two of his fellow monks expostulated with him in vain, then prayed for divine revelation and accompanied him to Mass. When the loaves were placed on the altar, it seemed to the three monks that a little Boy lay there. As the priest stretched out his hand to break the bread, an angel of God came down from heaven and stabbed the Child with a knife, catching His blood in a chalice. When