The miracle took place in 1411, when a priest celebrating Mass in the chapel doubted the truth of transubstantiation. The Papal Bull explains how he was so shocked by the miracle that he hid what has happened from everyone. However, God didn’t want such a famous miracle and the confirmation of the Catholic faith to stay hidden any longer, as can be expected. So, when the priest fell into his death bed, he confessed to what has happened, and displayed the chalice with the liquid naturally and visibly colored as blood to be forever kept in the Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Ludbreg. Since then, many miracle cures happened around the holy relic.
The relic is currently kept in a beautiful baroque monstrance, made in 1721 in Augsburg goldsmith school, a gift by the Countess Eleonora Batthyany Strattmann.
The Chapel of the Holy Cross in which the miracle happened is currently within the Castle Batthyany in Ludbreg. The chapel is painted with the images related to the miracle of the appearance of the Holy Blood of Christ.
In the Batthyany castle, a monument of culture of the first category has been the location of the Restoration centre Ludbreg, which is developing to become one of the most important restoration centres in Europe.
The Croatian Parliament vowed in 1739 that a chapel would be built in Ludbreg to celebrate the Holy Blood of Christ, which they called the “greatest treasure of the Croatian kingdom”. The chapel was only built in 1993, after the Croatian people were finally independent and a democratic Croatia was established.