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13. City of God, 22, 10, at the end.
14. On Augustine’s doctrine of miracles, see especially, Friedrich Nitzsch, Augustinus’ Lehre vom Wunder, 1865; especially pp. 32-35 on the “Continuance of Miracles in the Church,” and pp. 35-37, “Miracles outside the limits of the Revelation-history and the Church.”
15. City of God, 22, 8.
16. Cf. T. R. Glover, Life and Letters in the Fourth Century, 1901, pp. 40, 287.
17. How little the abounding miracles of the lives of the saints were noted—or we should better say, known—in medieval times, we may learn from a remark of H. Giinter’s (Legenden-Studien, 1906, pp. 176 f.): “For the proper estimate of these things we must bear in mind that contemporary profane history very essentially corrects the literature of the Lives: the very names which here seem to move the world, scarcely receive bare mention there: of the flood of miracles in the Lives there is not even a trace. The Chronicles and Annalists were nevertheless children of those times, and receptive enough for everything that was miraculous. The notion which might occur to one, that the Chronicles, the newspapers of the day, purposely left the domain of the saints to biography and romance, is clearly untenable. He who reads Widukind’s History of the Saxons, the Continuatio Regionis, the Chronicle of Thietmar of Merceberg, will not fail to learn of the saints of the Saxon period. Thietmar’s description of the saint-bishop and ascetic Eido of Meissen (VIII, c. 25) is a true classic. But saints in the same sense of the legend, these figures are not.”
18. Dial, 111, 5.
19. Dial. 1, 26.
20. Cf. T. R. Glover, as cited, p. 289: “Sulpicius says, and it is not improbable that he is presenting Martin’s view, as well as his own, that to doubt these marvels of healing, etc., is to diminish the credibility of the gospel, for when the Lord Himself testified that such works as Martin did were to be done by all the faithful, he who does not believe Martin did them, does not believe Christ said so.” Perhaps the logic is not above suspicion, but it is clear that it was held Martin’s miracles were proven no less by the words of the gospel than by ocular evidence.” J. H. Newman had already made much the same remark, Two Essays on Scripture Miracles and on Ecclesiastical, p. 209: “Sulpicius almost grounds his defence of St. Martin’s miracles on the antecedent force of this text.” It would be a curious and not unprofitable study to ascertain how large a part this spurious text has had in producing spurious miracles in all ages of the church.
21. Ep. 22: 9; Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, p. 438.
22. Hom. on I Cor. 6: 2, 3 (Hom. 6, vol. X, p. 45).
23. Hom. 8, in Col. No. 5 (vol. XI, p. 387).
24. Cf. e.g. Hom. 24 in Joan. (vol. VIII, p. 138); Hom. in Iscr. Act. (vol. III, p. 60).
25. De. Sacerd., lib. 4; Opera, ed. Sav., vol. VI, p. 35.
26. Ep. 4: So.
27. In Evang., 2, 29.
28. Isid. Hispal. Sententiarum lib. 1, cap. 27; ed. Col. Agripp., 1617, p. 424.
29. Serm. i. de Ascens., 2.
30. The Patristic citations in this paragraph have been taken largely, without verification, from Newman, op. cit., pp. 135 fi., 208, and W. Goode, The Modern Claims to the Possession of the Extraordinary Gifts of the Spirit, 1834, pp. 4 ff., 275 ff. Cf. also A. Tholuck, Vermischte Schriften, I, pp. 35 ff. Such passages abound. H. Giinter, Legenden-Studien, 1906, pp. 77 fi., very naturally raises the question whether the legends of the Middle Ages really wished to be believed, and whether they were believed. His conclusion is that there can be no doubt that they were put forth as literal facts, but that the credit accorded to them by men of independent mind left certainly something to be desired. No one of the theologians of importance,” he remarks (p. 82), “ever made an attempt to support scientific speculations by appeals to legendary tales as historical evidence, no matter how near at hand an illustration from them lay.” Cf. what he says in Legenden-Studien, 1906, p. 132: “I think it is not by accident, when Cassian observes that the monks of his time—he died in 435—were no longer subjected to the power of the demons as the Fathers’ were. Similarly Gregory the Great later finds that miracles do not manifest themselves now as in the past (Dial., I, c. 12). And the same reflection is repeated dozens of times in the literature of the Middle Ages. Is there not a sufficient suggestion in this?”
31. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. Smith, 1887, vol. 11, p. 180, note 81.
32. Op. il., p. 220.
33. Among the many anomalies of the legends of the saints, the question asks itself why the saints, many of whom had severe sufferings to undergo, many of whom were lifelong invalids, never rescued or healed themselves by the exercise of their miraculous powers? Bernard of Clairvaux, for example, when in extremities, needed to be saved from without—by the intervention of Mary, who gave him her breast. Christina Mirabilis, it is true, nourished herself with her own virgin milk; but this is an exception to the general rule. It is a proverb, “Physician, heal thyself’; yet even the most diseased of the saints did not do it—and all of them apparently died. That the Martyr-heroes of the Martyr-aretalogies ultimately succeeded in dying is a standing wonder. They are delivered apparently from every imaginable, and often unimaginable, peril, at the cost of every imaginable, and often unimaginable, miracle; fire will not burn them, nor steel cut their flesh; the sea will not drown them, nor will chains bind them. They bear a charmed life and walk unscathed through every conceivable danger. And then suddenly their heads are simply chopped off as if it were the most natural thing in the world—and they are dead. The reader catches his breath and cannot believe his eyes: the exceeding sang-froid with which the author kills at the end those whom nothing can harm in the meantime produces nothing less than an enormous anticlimax. Has the miracle-power of the martyr given suddenly out—been all used up in its wonderful action hitherto? Or is it merely that the invention of the author has been exhausted, and he has to close thus lamely because he can think of nothing else to say? We have something of the same feeling when we contemplate sick saints healing others with wonderful facility, while apparently wholly without power to heal themselves. Is it adequate to say with Percy Dearmer (Body and Soul, p. 133): ‘““And often, when they healed others they did not spare the strength to heal themselves; often they endured without thinking of themselves the infirmities which they could not bear to see unhelped in others. They thought so much of One of whom it is said, He saved others;
Himself He cannot save.””” The suggested comparison with Christ is, of course, offensive. The sufferings of the saints are not expiatory sacrifices offered to God in behalf of a sinful world—although it must be sadly acknowledged that many of them (e. g., the Stig-matics) fancied they were. Christ could not save Himself, not because He lacked the power to do so, but because the work which He came to do was precisely suffering—to give His life a ransom for many. There was no more reason in the nature of things, on the other hand, why the saints should suffer than others. And the description which Dearmer gives of the saints is not true to life, in many instances at least. They do not seem to have borne their sufferings without thinking of them; they apparently thought a great deal of them, either to bewail them or, by a spiritual perversion, to glory in them as a mark of spiritual distinction. And how does it do to say in one sentence, “ The saints have always seemed to regard their healing works as easy things, done by the way and out of compassion’; and then in the next, “They did not spare the strength to heal themselves”? If it cost them nothing to heal —if they did it with a passing wave of the hand—why should they have not healed themselves? The sicknesses of the saints is a standing puzzle.
34. Horstman, Richard Rolle of Hampole, vol. II, p. xxviii.
35. Cf. H. Glinter, Die christliche Legend des Abendlandes, 1910, p. 187, who cites the Vita of St. Gongolf at the end of the ninth century, and Gislebert of Sens, about 1150, as declaring that in the absence of good merit miracles are nothing, since they are performed by many evil men; as also the archdeacon Robert of Ostre-vand in his life of Aybert, of the same age, who remarks that the virtue of love which belongs to the good alone is of far more worth than the virtue of miracles which belongs alike to good and evil. Cf. also the like citation from Thomas of Reuil. Giinter refers on the general matter to L. Zopf, Das Heilegen-Leben in 10 Jahrh. in “Beitrige z. Kulturgesch. des Mittelalters u. des Renaissance,” herausgegeben von W. Gotz, Heft 1 (1908), pp. 62 {., pp. 181 fi.
36. This is of course the established doctrine; cf. The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. X, 1911, p. 351, where Benedict XIV is quoted (on Heroic Virtue, 1851, III, p. 130) to the effect that, since the gift of miracle-working is a grace gratis data, it is independent of the merit of the recipient; even bad men might be granted it (for God’s own purposes) and good men denied it. It forms no ground of inference then to saintliness. But do not difficulties arise then with reference to the customs of “canonization”?
37. Vol. II, p. 2049. On miracles connected with the host, see very especially Yrjo Hirn, The Sacred Shrine, 1912, pp. 120 ff., with the literature given on pp. so2 ff.
38. Newman, as cited, p. 134.
39. Middleton, as cited, vol. I, p. li.
40. Smith and Cheatham, as cited.
41. Dict. des Prophéties et des Miracles (Migne), vol. I, p. 370. For the miracle of Bolsena and its significance in the historical development of the legends, see H. Giinter, Legenden-Studien, 1906, pp. 174 fi.; cf. Yrjo Hirn, The Sacred Shrine, 1912, pp. 103 f.
42. Deut. 13:1 ff.
43. Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, April, 1856, pp. 255-285, article on ‘” Miracles and their Counterfeits.”
44. As cited, p. 99. 45+ Pp. 115 7, 46. Pp. 50f
47. This portion of Fleury’s great Histoire Ecclésiastique (Paris, 1601-1720, 20 vols., quarto), from 381 to 400 A. D., translated by Herbert (London, 1828), was republished in three volumes, Oxford, 1842, in a text carefully revised by Newman, and supplied with this introduction.
48. P. 188.
49. Nor indeed can John T. Driscoll writing as late as 19171 (The Catholic Encyclopedia, X, p. 346). If we may judge from reports of cases in the public press, modern surgery provides numerous similar instances. We have happened to clip the following two examples. The New York 7ribune for May 6, 1go1: “William H. Crampton, the lecturer, who some time ago had the greater part of his tongue cut out on account of a cancerous growth, is now able to articulate slowly so that he can make himself understood… Crampton, who for some years has made his living by lecturing, just before the operation was performed, spent two days in delivering his lectures into a phonograph. His idea was that when he left the hospital, bereft of speech, as he anticipated, he would still be able to earn a living by giving phonograph lectures… Doctor L. S. Pitcher, of the staff of the Seney Hospital, who performed the operation, has asked Mr. Crampton to appear before the next meeting of the Brooklyn Surgical Society in order that its members may get a thorough understanding of the case. Mr. Crampton will have his phonograph records with him to show the effects of the operation upon his speech.” The Lexington (Ky.) Leader, January 11, 1006 (Associated Press Telegram): “Chicago, Jan’y 10.—Frederick Power, actor and stage-manager, who had his tongue cut from his mouth in an operation for cancer five weeks ago, is again able to talk so as to be understood. The case is said by physicians to be a remarkable triumph for surgery. All of Mr. Power’s tongue and part of the root had to be removed in the operation. With his tongue gone, he is able to articulate, uttering some words quite distinctly. For several days Mr. Power has been attempting to sing, and the hospital attendants say that while the efforts were not entirely successful, they have encouraged the patient and made him quite hopeful. There is still some paralysis in Mr. Power’s lower lip, due to the operation, and there is a heavy gold bridge in his mouth. His jaw is still held in a heavy plaster cast, and when these impediments are removed it is believed he will be able to articulate fairly well.”
50. Philomythus: An Antidote against Credulity. A Discussion of Cardinal Newman’s Essay on Ecclesiastical Miracles. By Edwin A. Abbott, 1891. Second edition, 1891. st. St. Thomas of Canterbury: His Death and Miracles. By Edwin A. Abbott, M.A., D.D., 2 vols., 1893. 2.00 P. 130. 53. \ Lec.cit., p- 103, note 2. 54.1 0p. it., p. 53; of. pp- Se fi. 55. Pp. 54ff. 6. Loc. cit., p- 334.
57. Pp. 81 f. On the integrity of the present text of the Life of Hilarion, see H. Giinter, Legenden-Studien, 1906, p. 130, note 3.
58. Th. Trede, in the chapter on ‘” Monchtum,” in his Wunder-glaube im Heidentum und in der alten Kirche, 1901, has some very useful remarks (pp. 213 ff.) on Athanasius’s Life of Antony and its relation to the miracle-love of the times. “As apostle of Monasticism,” he says, ‘” Athanasius becomes a rhetorician, with reference to whom we ask, Where does fancy stop and where does reality begin? When the great doctor of the church assures us that he has throughout looked only to the truth, his idea of the truth was not different from that which we have found among other leaders of the church and permitted him such means to reach his purpose as were looked upon as self-evident in the heathen notions of the time.” With an appeal, then, to Lucian’s exposition of the different laws which govern history and panegyrics (The Way to Write History, 7 and 8: “The panegyrist has only one concern—to commend and gratify his living theme some way or other; if misrepresentation will serve his purpose, he has no objection to that. History, on the other hand, abhors the intrusion of any least scruple of falsehood…”), he continues: “The Life of Antony by Athanasius is a panegyric, just such as Gregory of Nyssa wrote about Gregory
Thaumaturgus…”” When Gregory of Nazianzus describes Athanasius as setting forth in this book ‘“év m\douar. of a narrative, the laws of the monastic life” (Oration XX1, 5, Post-Nicene Fathers, p. 270), does he not really suggest that it is fiction, in part at least? Trede discusses in a similar spirit Jerome’s Lives of Paul and Hilarion. On the Vita Pauli, see Weingarten, PRE? X, 760, and Griitzmacher PRE?, XIII, 217. The reality of Paul’s existence is defended by Butler, The Lausiac History, I, 231, and Workman, The Evolution of the Monastic Ideal, 1913, p. 96, both of whom defend also the historicity of the Life of Antony, I, 178 and 354 respectively. The Lausiac History is interpreted as a mere romance also by Lucius and Amélineau, but defended as history by Butler, I, 257 ff. There is a good brief statement of Athanasius’s relation to miracle-working in the Vita Antoni: and elsewhere, in A. Robert-son’s preface to the English translation of the Vita Antoni: printed in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 11, 11, p. 192.
58. Day Monchthum, seine Ideal und seine Geschichte,! 1881, p. 21; ed. 3, 1886, p. 27; f. G. Griitzmacher, Hieronymus, I, p. 162. 60. Op. cit, pp- 1 1.
61. See Acts of Peter and Andrew, in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, Am. ed., vol. VIII, p. 527: “Peter says to him: One thing I say unto thee: it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to go into the kingdom of heaven. When Onesiphorus heard this, he was still more filled with rage and anger,… saying,… If thou wilt show me this miracle, I will believe in thy God,… but if not thou shalt be grievously punished… The Saviour appeared.. and he says to them, Be courageous and tremble not, my chosen disciples, for I am with you always: let the needle and camel be brought… And there was a certain merchant in the city, who had believed in the Lord,.. and,.. he ran and searched for a needle with a big eye, to do a favour to the Apostles. When Peter learned this, he said, My son, do not search for a big needle, for nothing is impossible with God: rather bring us a small needle. And after the needle had been brought… Peter looked up and saw a camel coming… Then he fixed the needle in the ground, and cried out with a loud voice, saying, In the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, I order thee, O camel, to go through the eye of the needle. Then the eye of the needle was opened like a gate, and the camel went through it, and all the multitude saw it. And Peter says to the camel: Go again through the needle. And the camel went through the second time.” Even this is not enough. Onesiphorus now provides a needle and a camel of his own, and sets a woman on the camel—and the same thing is done. Is not the conception here, mere magic?
62. The Ancient Catholic Church, 1902, pp. 302 f.
63. Cdsarius von Arelate, 1804, p. 165.
64. P. 166, note 545 (see Migne, Pat. Lat., XXXIX, 2257, 3).
65. E. T., pp. 33f. His reference is Cesar of Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum (Strange’s ed., Cologne, 1851, 2 vols., 8vo; vol. II, pp. 255 and 125).:
66. Sabatier, op. cit., p. 192. His references are: Egbert von Schénau’s Contra Catharos, Serm. I, cap. 2 (Migne, Pat. Lat., vol. CXCV), f. Heisterbach, loc. cit., 5:18; Luc de Tuy’s De altera Vita, lib. 2: 9; 3: 9, 18 (Migne, Pat. Lat., vol. CCVIII).
67. Inquisit. in verit. Miraculor. F. de Paris, sec. 1, as cited by Newman, 0p. cit., p. go, note I. On the Jansenist miracles f. the excellent criticism of A. Tholuck, Vermischte Schriften, 1839, I, pp. 133-148; he mentions the chief sources of information, among which f. especially Carré de Montgeron, La Verité des Miracles Operés par I Intercession de M. de Paris et Autres Appelans, Cologne, 1747, with the comments on it by J. M. Charcot in The New Review, January, 1893, vol. VIII, pp. 25 ff., and the comment on Charcot’s use of this book by G. Bertrin, Lourdes, E. T., 1908, pp. 138 fi. On the use made of these miracles by Hume, see James Orr, Hume, p. 215, who refers us for the real facts to Campbell and Leland.
68. Cf. Middleton, as cited, I, p. 357; Newman, as cited, p. 45; Hastings’s Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. VII, p. 480.
69. The first of the ten miracles which Montgeron discusses at large was wrought on a young Spaniard, who was stone blind in one eye and saw but dimly with the other. Only the better eye was healed, and the famous oculist Gendron told him that he ought to be content with that, since the restoration of the other eye, in which many parts were absolutely destroyed, would require a miracle of creation comparable to giving a cripple two new legs, and no one ever heard of such a miracle. Yet Charlotte Laborde, we are told, who on the certificate of two surgeons had no legs at all, recovered a serviceable pair by one of these Jansenist miracles. Here is a miracle which overtops all other miracles—even that of the famous Pierre de Rudder at Lourdes, who only had an old fracture of the leg mended. Compare pp. 118 ff.
o. The literature of the subject is sufficiently intimated in the course of the lecture. The following may be profitably consulted: E. Lucius (ed. G. Anrich), Die Anfinge des Heiligenkults in der christlichen Kirche, 1904; H. Achelis, “ Die Martyrologien, ihre Geschichte und ihr Wert,” in the Abkandlungen d. kaiserl. Gesellschaft des Wissensch. zu Gottingen, N. F. III, 1900; P. Allard, Dix legons sur le martyre, 1907 (E. T. by L. Cappadelta, Ten Lectures on the Martyrs); L. Leclerq, Les Martyrs, 1902-1906; A. van Gennep, La Formation des Légendes, 1910; H. Delehaye, Les Légendes Hagiographiques, 1905 (E. T. by N. M. Crawford, The Legends of the Saints); H. Glinter, Legenden-Studien, 1906, Die christliche Legend des Abendlandes, 1910, article “Legends of the Saints” in the Catholic Encyclopedia; E. von Dobschiitz, article “Legend” in Haupt-Herzog?; G. H. Gerould, Saints’ Legends, 1916.
Naturally the same infection from heathenism which produced the Christian miracles of these ages, showed itself also among the Jews. For the earliest period, see P. Fiebig, Jiidische Wunder-geschichten des neutestamentl. Zeitalters, 1911 (original texts in same author’s Rabbinische Wunderges. d. N. T. Zeitalters, 1911). S. Schechter (Jewish Quarterly Review, April, 1900, pp. 431-432) writes: ‘““Again our knowledge of the spiritual history of the Jews during the first centuries of our era might be enriched by a chapter on Miracles. Starting from the principle that miracles can only be explained by more miracles, an attempt was made some years ago by a student to draw up a list of the wonder-workings of the Rabbis recorded in the Talmud and the Midrashim. He applied himself to the reading of these works, but his reading was only cursory. The list, therefore, is not complete. Still it yielded a harvest of not less than two hundred and fifty miracles. They cover all classes of supernatural workings recorded in the Bible, but occur with much greater frequency.” As the Christians did not think of denying the reality of the heathen miracles, but had their own way of accounting for their occurrence (see the interesting discussion in Augustine, City of God, X, 16), so the Jews. P. J. Hershon (Genesis with a Talmudic Commentary, E. T., p. 284) quotes from the Avoda-zarah, fol. 51, col. 1, as follows: “Zonan once said to Rabbi Akiva: Both I and thou know that an idol has nothing in it, and yet we see men who go to it lame and return sound; how dost thou account for it? He replied: I will tell thee a parable. There was a faithful man with whom his townspeople deposited their goods, without the presence of witnesses. One man did so likewise, but was careful to bring witnesses with him. Once, however, he deposited something with him when no one else was present. Oh, said his wife, after his departure, let us keep that deposit for ourselves. What! replied the husband, because the fool acted improperly shall we forfeit our faith? So also when chastisements are sent on men, they (the chastisements) are adjured not to leave them before a certain day, a certain hour, and then only by a certain medicament. It happens that the heathen man repairs to the heathen temple at that very time. The chastisements then say: By right we should not depart just now; but, on reflection, they add: Because that fool acts improperly, shall we violate our oath?” Where the Christians invoked demons, Akiva fell back on coincidence.