CHAPTER XXVII HEALING BY SAINTLY PERSONS I HAVE Spoken of certain methods of religious healing external methods by which faith and prayer were used to help the sick-unction, and the use of other materials, relics in the wider sense, incubation at sacred places, and the visiting of shrines. These take us over the period from the Apostles to the Reformation and indeed, in the greater part of the Christian world, to the present day, since incubation and the visiting of shrines have never ceased in the Eastern and the Roman churches. In addition to all this, there is right through Christian history a continuous record of healing by means of the exceptional virtue which belongs to those who live very near to God, and whom we call saints. Some such stories we have already had occasion to note; 1 but it will be well to give a small collection of typical instances, chosen not from legendary sources, but from contemporary witnesses. I have supplied such a collection in the first Appendix to this book.2 1 The material there given will, I think, bear careful reading. I have not attempted to classify or to criticise the very various cases which occur, think 1 See Chapters XVIII, XIX, XXIV-XXVI. 2 See Appendix I, pp. 353-400. ing it best to let the reader feel for himself the impression which they create by their sincerity and beauty. Their medical value the critical reader must also estimate for himself: I have purposely not omitted instances that were very simple on the one hand, or those on the other hand which to some may still seem incredible. They extend from the seventh century to the present day, and medical diagnosis in early times was naturally even more uncertain than it is now. Still there is much that doctors will recognise as familiar; and it will be noticed that the character of the cases does not change when we reach the nineteenth century. There are some in all ages that can be attributed to those disturbances of the mind which we call hysterical; but the majority of reported cases in all ages are not of this character. This collection in the Appendix could have been indefinitely extended. Other names, like those of St. Benedict and St. Edward the Confessor in old times, or Swedenborg and Edward Irving in the modern period, will occur to everyone. Indeed, in regard to canonised saints it must be remembered that what are called miracles formed part of the evidence which led to their canonisation. It is worth while to dwell on this; because many people still think that our forefathers were a credulous race, constantly gulled by the mendacity of priests, who are supposed to have been inexplicably below the common standard of morality. This relic of the thin rationalism of the eighteenth century will not bear the light of modern historical investigation. Miracles are not fungus-growths in the dark corners of the past: on the contrary they occur precisely in the brightest and wisest lives, and in periods and places of spiritual enlightenment and revival. Nor were our ancestors, even in average times, foolish, or quaint, or childish, as we sometimes fancy. They were commonsense, matter-of-fact people; and if we could be transported into some past age we should find the men and women to be just like ourselves, although they had fewer books and less machinery, and did not wear such ugly clothes. And the authorities both of Church and State were particularly alive to the dangers of popular credulity, and particularly anxious to investigate feigned miracles" in the lives of reputed saints. Their science was, of course, considerably more imperfect than our own, but they were excellent lawyers, and they appreciated the value of evidence. A very illuminating illustration of this is to be found in the ancient trials for witchcraft which have been largely investigated by modern French students of hysteria, with the result that all our ideas about that subject have been reversed. The magistrates did not wantonly consign "witches to their cruel fate at the bidding of popular credulity and rumor.1 They were only wrong in attributing the symptoms to the devil; the facts they investigated most conscientiously and carefully so thoroughly, indeed, that the records of the trials form a valuable field for students of 1 These trials take us down to comparatively modern times. The last known instance of a woman burned for witchcraft was at Posen, as late as 1793. hysteria, who find in them all the well-known symptoms of modern pathology accurately described.1 So it is with the enormous mass of healing miracles attributed to the saints; and to procure the canonisation of any saint miracles had to be proved. As with all historical matter, there are many stories for which the extant evidence is slight; but there is much also that is exceedingly well attested, and in this class must be put all that was examined in the processes of canonisation, voluminous records of which still exist in the Vatican. They would well repay scientific investigation. The procedure of the courts was conducted with the utmost rigour: the examiners were men of all nations, distinguished for their learning and uprightness; no witness was allowed to give evidence whose character was not beyond reproach: the court had to report on the character of every witness, and two were required for each miracle, who had to testify to the nature of the disease and the cure, and then to sign their deposition when it had been read to them. The evidence was sifted to the utmost, and every disqualifying feature was made the most of. Indeed the official name of the "devil's advocate," promotor fidei, shows how the authorities realised that the cause of criticism is also the cause of faith. Benedict XIV had a right to say that "the degree of proof required is the same as that required for a criminal case, 1 There is a large medical literature on the subject. See, for instance, the volumes of the Bibliothèque diabolique, edited by Dr. Bourneville, Paris: Alcan. since the cause of religion and piety is that of the commonweal." 1 These mediæval miracles, therefore, deserve respectful treatment; and the cumulative evidence of so much concurrent testimony by distinguished and upright men makes it impossible to think that they were all deluded and mistaken. This must be remembered in estimating the therapeutic miracles of the saints which we so often come upon in our ordinary reading. In the selection I have given, I have purposely not confined myself to those men and women who have been given official canonisation. My list is as follows St. John of Beverly, † 721 (Bede). St. Francis of Assisi, 1182-1226. ·P. 354 66 358 361 St. Thomas of Hereford, † 1282-(1303)..“ 363 ..... St. Francis Xavier, 1506-1552.. St. Philip Neri, 1515-1595.. Father John of Cronstadt, 1829-1908... 365 370 371 Let me conclude this chapter in the words of one who lived in the height of the materialistic reaction, and who saw beyond it. Richard Holt Hutton is justly esteemed as one of the most pro 1 Benedict XIV, Cultus Sanctorum, Tom. III, lib. III, p. 16. |