WHEN THE UNNAMED TRAVELLER is set upon on the way to Jericho, the Good Samaritan treats his wounds with oil and wine. In allegorical literature, however, the wounds require rather more than that. In Langland's Vision of Piers the Plowman, once again, even Faith and Hope – which is what the oil and the wine are usually taken as representing – have fled from the wounded traveller, and the Samaritan is left to explain the situation:

A more vivid representation of the medicinal nature of Christ's blood is provided iconographically in the cathedral at Spoleto, where there is a painting by Alberto di Sozio dated 1187, depicting Christ on the Cross with the Virgin and St John. Beneath the Cross and buried deep in the hills – we look down towards it through a black opening – is a skull, a reminder of the name Golgotha, and traditionally the skull of Adam; into its open mouth flows the blood from Christ's feet in a memorable symbol of the soteriology implicit in the eucharist, curing death itself.