To study the medieval roots of the experience of apparitions, William Christian analyzes direct accounts of appearances of Mary and other saints in rural Spain from 1399 to 1523. Drawing on verbatim testimony from children, farmers, shepherds, and servants, in addition to his own visits to the villages and his presence at a number of contemporary visions, he reveals people's experience of both the world of daily life and the world of images in their minds. Using notarized investigations of the apparitions by church and village authorities in parish, diocesan, and national archives, Dr. Christian also describes the reactions of skepticism and devotion the visions provoked in the local community and the reasons why the seers' accounts were accepted or rejected. The author first examines visions in Castile and Catalonia and their antecedents in monastic lore, sermon stories, and shrine legends. He then discusses the prosecution of visionaries by the Inquisition at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Finally, he compares the church's criteria for verifying these apparitions with those applied in France to the visions of Jeanne d'Arc. An appendix contains the original Castilian and Catalan texts. -- from dust jacket.

The description for this book, Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain, will be forthcoming.

"Based on thorough archival research combined with stunning visual analysis, Maya Stanfield-Mazzi demonstrates that Andeans were active agents in Catholic image-making and created a particularly Andean version of Catholicism. Object and Apparition describes the unique features of Andean Catholicism while illustrating its connections to both Spanish and Andean cultural traditions"--Provided by publisher.

Lourdes was at the very centre of nineteenth century debates on religion, science and medicine. Both the Church and secularists championed the 'miracle' town as crucial in shaping how society should think about the mind, body and spirit. Since the ‘visions’ of Bernadette Soubirous in 1858 transformed the quiet Pyrenean town into an international tourist and pilgrimage destination, it has been a site for controversy. In her well-crafted and carefully researched book, Harris deftly places Lourdes and its attendant spiritual movement firmly at the centre of French history and shows its significance in the country’s development.

This volume explores the role of belief in the existence of angels in the early modern world.

This volume deals with the origins and rise of Christian pilgrimage cults in late antique Egypt. Part One covers the major theoretical issues in the study of Coptic pilgrimage, such as sacred landscape and shrines' catchment areas, while Part Two examines native Egyptian and Egyptian Jewish pilgrimage practices. Part Three investigates six major shrines, from Philae's diverse non-Christian devotees to the great pilgrim center of Abu Mina and a Thecla shrine on its route. Part Four looks at such diverse pilgrims' rites as oracles, chant, and stational liturgy, while Part Five brings in Athanasius's and an anonymous hagiographer's perspectives on pilgrimage in Egypt. The volume includes illustrations of the Abu Mina site, pilgrims' ampules from the Thecla shrine, as well as several maps.

An award-winning historian’s examination of impossible events at the dawn of modernity and of their enduring significance Accounts of seemingly impossible phenomena abounded in the early modern era—tales of levitation, bilocation, and witchcraft—even as skepticism, atheism, and empirical science were starting to supplant religious belief in the paranormal. In this book, Carlos Eire explores how a culture increasingly devoted to scientific thinking grappled with events deemed impossible by its leading intellectuals. Eire observes how levitating saints and flying witches were as essential a component of early modern life as the religious turmoil of the age, and as much a part of history as Newton’s scientific discoveries. Relying on an array of firsthand accounts, and focusing on exceptionally impossible cases involving levitation, bilocation, witchcraft, and demonic possession, Eire challenges established assumptions about the redrawing of boundaries between the natural and supernatural that marked the transition to modernity. Using as his case studies stories about St. Teresa of Avila, St. Joseph of Cupertino, the Venerable María de Ágreda, and three disgraced nuns, Eire challenges readers to imagine a world animated by a different understanding of reality and of the supernatural’s relationship with the natural world. The questions he explores—such as why and how “impossibility” is determined by cultural contexts, and whether there is more to reality than meets the eye or can be observed by science—have resonance and lessons for our time.