medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

One really has to be more precise than this.  The vast majority of those venerated as incorrupt neither showed (past tense) signs of mummification (unless by mummification one means any form, however slight, of drying out--but that stretches the common meaning of the word unreasonably) at the first exhumation nor had they been embalmed at the time of burial.  Some (still less than the majority of the cases in Cruz, _The Incorruptibles_, were treated with one or another form of preserving techniques after the first or a later exhumation.  And even where "embalming" took place prior to initial burial, it did not normally involve Egyptian or modern forms of injecting the blood vessels with preservative.  At most it involved removal of the viscera.

I have read Nickell's work on the Shroud of Turin.  He plays fast and loose with the evidence there--it is not merely a matter of tone.  A critical reader would, I think, have trouble taking him very seriously, at least on the Shroud--he simply does not face the perponderance of evidence with an open mind--we can all agree, can we not, that openness to results that contradict our expectations is what makes true scientific advances possible: if a needle moves the opposite direction that one expected in measuring electric current in an experiment, one first checks the equipment, repeats the experiment etc. but once one is sure that one's eyes are seeing what one did not expect given previous explanatory models, one does not at that point close one's mind and say, "It can't be pointing the direction it is pointing."  Rather, one begins to reassess existing explanatory models.  Nickell simply does not do that in the case of the Shroud.  Nearly all the scientific work on the Shroud has been undertaken by people who began as skeptics but were honest enough scientists to believe the empirical evidence as it came out.   For these reasons, I would be very skeptical of Nickell on incorrupt bodies. but I have not read the book mentioned here.

I do recommend Herbert Thurston, _The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism_.  Joan Cruz may have been an amateur (though she is fundamentally fair and critical, within the limits of the resources for research she had at hand), but Thurston was a professional.  He has no qualms about recognizing "natural causes" where they apply, e.g., in the question of stigmata.  He is not out to prove the miraculous at all costs.  His assessment of the phenomenon of incorrupt bodies is sober and empirical.  He recognizes that some day a scientific explanation may be found for the phenomenon, but he skewers simplistic efforts to explain it away.  The high statistical correlation of incorrupt bodies with reputation for sanctity is simply a fact, allowing for stronger and weaker instances of incorruption. 

I quote: "The very large proportion of cases in which the bodies of saintly persons are preserved from decay may, I submit, fairly be urged as an argument of some weight against the view which would attribute this phenomenon entirely to natural causes.  If it be contended that the abstemiousness with regard to food and drink characteristic of all such ascetics may profoundly modify the conditions of normal metabolism and tend to eliminate certain classes of microbes which are most active in the process of putrefaction, we may reply that the very poor are of dire necessity abstemious, while no observations point in their case to any similar immunity.  Moreover, it ought to follow that when famine reigns in the land the corpses of its victims should be proof against the agents of corruption, but no recorded experience seems to bear this out, rather the contrary." (259-60)

And the most extreme instances of incorruption surely must be taken seriously.  E.g., Thurston's account of the case of Maria Anna Ladroni of Jesus, aTertiary of the Order of Our Lady of Ransom, 1565-1624.  A few years after her death, the Cardinal Treso, Bishop of Malaga, drew up a deposition regarding her sanctity; he was present at the first exhumation, 
Thurston quotes from his deposition: "I saw, and was greatly astonished to see, a body some years dead, which had never been opened or had any of the viscera removed, or been embalmed in any way, so completely preserved that neither in the abdomen nor in the face was there any trace of decay, except a spot on the lip, though this was something by which she had been marked in much the same way during life." (260)

At the second exhumation in 1731 (107 years after her death), as part of process of beatification, the body was soft, supple, flexible and elastic to the touch, emitted a remarkable perfume, "From the whole body there exuded a certain oily fluid, like some kind of fragrant balsam, which moistened both the internal organs and the surface of the skin, and with which the clothing was also saturated."

Eleven professors of medicine and surgery, among the most famous in the city and court of Madrid, cut open the body, indeed, dissected it, found the "interior organs, the viscera and the fleshy tissues were all of them entire, sound, moist, and resilient.  The fluid which was observed to exude from the body impregnated all the interior and all the substance of the flesh.  The deeper the incisions which were made, the sweeter was the fragrance which was emitted from them, so much so that one of the surgeons would not for several days afterwards wash the hand with which he had manipulated the viscera for fear of losing the supernatural perfume which it had thus acquired."

Obviously most of these, perhaps all of these, observers, were Christian believers, as evident from the behavior of the one who refused to wash his hand.  However they were also physicians.  Whatever one thinks of the state of medical science at this time, physicians since antiquity have been keen observers, because the whole success of a physician,whether in ancient Greece or today, depends on careful observation.  No, they did not have the means of microscopic and computerized observation we have nor did they have the theory (explanatory models) that have resulted from far more sophisticated observation over the centuries.  But one does not need a microscope or a computer to make the observations they claimed to be making in this instance.  This is macro-observation and it required no fancy explanatory models--they were not even attempting diagnosis or explanation, merely recording observations--basic science.  Simply to dismiss their report as unreliable requires more credulity than to take it as essentially accurate.

Then, thirty-fife years later, when Maria Anna was actually beatified, a third inspection was made; this time "the body was no longer flexible or soft to the touch.  The tissues had hardened and wasted, though they were by no means reduced to dust."  This is simply a phenomenon that is empirically attested, that obviously involves elements of natural causes that are somehow redirected in unusual ways.  That is what a _miraculum_ is--only those unacquainted with the theology of miracles, e.g., Hume, claim that miracles violate nature.  Chesterton, for example, simply points out that there are realms of the natural world that we have not yet or not yet fully observed.  Indeed, we can never fully observe all that has ever happened, is happening or will happen.  Only if we were able to do that could we categorically state that existing patterns, existing models of explanation, fully explain everything.  The miraculuos operates in that area of nature that has not yet been fully observed.

Thus, my purpose in disputing an assessment that more or less half of incorrupt bodies exhibit signs of mummification or embalming and half do not is not because the miracle claims are threatened by elements of "natural processes" or "artificial intervention"; rather, I have intervened once more because I believe a more accurate empirical statement would be that the vast majority were not embalmed, certainly not by injecting preservatives, at burial and the minority exhibit even slight signs of mummification upon first exhumation.

Medieval., early modern, and contemporary believers were and are not stupid.  They were aware of the effects of natural mummification and artificial embalming.  It would make no sense for them to venerate as incorrupt bodies whose state of preservation was caused largely by artificial embalming or natural mummification.  What aroused their wonder at the miraculum was precisely the fact that the body had not been embalmed and was not mummified.

Religious devotion can and does abuse such phenomena.  Popular Catholic  fascination with incorrupt bodies can (but does not always or even normally, in my experience) shade off into exaggeration.  That is why the Vatican was very quick to point out that John XXIII's well preserved body had been embalmed and enclosed in triple caskets.  They were trying to make the point that this was _not_ a miracle and at the same time to preserve the legitimate inexplicable (wonder, miraculum) character of, say, the case of Bernadette of Lourdes or Father Damien de Veuster  (when he was buried, his body was covered with sores from leprosy; when he was exhumed about 40 or 50 years later, the once decayed flesh was whole) or any number of other 19th and 20thc cases of 'traditional" incorruption.  There are plenty of cases of incorrupt bodies of people who died in the 20thc, not back in the "credulous" Middle Ages, and whose cases have been examined by modern scientists.

Dennis Martin


Thurston, Herbert, S.J., The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism, ed. by J. H. Crehan, S.J. (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1952)



>>> [log in to unmask] 08/22/01 11:17AM >>>
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

At 11:37 AM -0400 8/21/01, Tom Izbicki wrote:
>As I recall it, some of the "uncorrupted" show signs of
>embalming/mummification but other do not.

True. There is a listing of a number of cases in Joe Nickell's
_Looking for a Miracle_ and several pages of discussion, if you don't
mind his tone of voice. (He's a professional skeptic, usually polite
but sometimes not.)
--
_________________________________________________________
O    Chris Laning
|     <[log in to unmask]>
+    Davis, California
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