medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Though I imagine this post was largely tongue-in-cheek, from the standpoint of the Catholic Church, miracles are credible. Difficult of credibility but credible because based on empirical observation. When one see's something out of the ordinary, one's impulse is to deny that one has seen it but if one stops trusting (starts disbelieving/incredibilizing) one's senses, then all science comes to an end. If Farady had looked at a needle pointing the opposite way from that which his previous experiments had led him to _believe_ it would point, even though his eyes plainly told him it was pointing the "wrong" way, he would never have made his breakthrough discovery. (Example borrowed from Stanley Jaki, _Miracles and Physics_) So much for the direct recipient of a miraculous (marvelous) experience.
Obviously, historical accounts of miracles are second and third and thousandth-hand accounts. All historians have to confront what is believable and not believable. The study of the lives of saints is no more and no less a historical process than all other history work. Even the non-factual "Legendary" material is of devotional value (as Delehaye pointed out in his manual on hagiographic method). That would argue in favor of leaving Barbara in the calendar but not because historical facticity cannot to any degree be distinguished from legend. In removing Barbara and others from the calendar the intent was _not_ to deny the devotional value of her legend, merely to make a distinction between those saints enjoying universal liturgical veneration and those who enjoy something less than that. The calendar can only accommodate a limited number of mandatory and a few more optional feasts if it is not to become a useles welter of saints' days. If the list needed to be pruned, the obvious candidates were those whose historical facticity was most doubtful.
Finally, miracles are only corroboratory evidence in canonization proceedings. The fundamental basis for canonization is a life of heroic Christian virtue, in some cases culminating in martyrdom, all of which is to be demonstrated by credible historical method. Miracles then are corroboratory, important but secondary.
Dennis Martin
>>> [log in to unmask] 12/04/01 09:30 AM >>>
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Phyllis Jestice <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Barbara (d. 306?) ....was deleted from the Roman Calendar in 1969 because of
the lack of historical evidence of her existence---but who could doubt a story
like this!
indeed.
*all* saints' lives being, by their nature, inherently incredible (what *is* a
miracle, after all, if not something not to be believed?), the criteria
mustered up to banish one or another from The List can hardly be anything
other than arbitrary.
i say, leave 'em *all* on the Calendar and let God sort them out.
besides, i remember 1969, and there were a *lot* of very, very bad decisions
being made that year.
c
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