They Flew

This seventeenth-century copy of a lost painting by Jusepe de Ribera, previously attributed to

Francisco de Zurbarán, depicts Saint Francis receiving the mystical gift of the stigmata while levitating.
 They Flew
A History of the Impossible

Carlos M. N. Eire

N ew H aven and L ond on

​Published with assistance from the Kingsley Trust Association Publication Fund
established by the Scroll and Key Society of Yale College and from the
foundation established in memory of Philip Hamilton McMillan
of the Class of 1894, Yale College.

Copyright © 2023 by Carlos M. N. Eire.

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 ​To all my students, past and pre­sent,
Who have taught me so much,
And to all ­those I have yet to meet,
From whom I have so much more to learn
​Jesus replied, “What is impossible for ­humans is pos­si­ble for God.”
—Gospel of Luke 18:27

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
—Flannery O’Connor,
letter to Betty Hester, September 6, 1955
 Contents

Preface ix

Acknowl­edgments xvii

Introduction: Huge Claims, Vague Proof 1

pa r t o n e . a l o f t

1. Hovering, Flying, and All That: A Brief History

of Levitation 27

2. Saint Teresa of Avila, Reluctant Aethrobat 72

3. Saint Joseph of Cupertino, Shrieking

Aerial Ecstatic 98

4. Making Sense of the Flying Friar 136

pa r t t w o . ­h e r e . . . ​
and h ­ ere to o
5. Transvection, Teleportation, and All That:
A Brief History of Bilocation 171

6. María de Ágreda, Avatar of the Impossible 199

7. The Trou­ble with María 222

vii
 viii contents

pa r t t h r e e . m a l e v o l e n t

8. Tricksters of the Impossible 255

9. Protestants, Dev­iltry, and the Impossible 289

10. The Devil Himself 317

Epilogue: Vague Logic, Leaps of Faith 354

Appendix 1: Seventeenth-­and Eighteenth-­

Century Bilocators in Amer­ic­ a and Eu­rope 379

Appendix 2: The Emergence of the “Lady

in Blue” Legend: A Chronology 383

Notes 387

Credits 469

Index 475
 Preface

The subject m
­ atter of this book is strange stuff, for sure, and ­there is no pre-
dicting how anyone might react to it. Levitation, bilocation, and other such
anomalous phenomena that are considered “impossible” have always elicited a
wide range of responses, from absolute delight or disbelief to stupefaction or
sheer terror. But in a culture such as ours, which tends to reject the concept of
a super­natural dimension or not take it seriously, ­these phenomena can be light-
ning rods for disagreement. Moreover, not all this disagreeing is purely intel-
lectual. All talk about the super­natural and the impossible, even of the most
scholarly kind, can often be emotionally charged.
No surprise, then, that the history of the impossible has an abrasive edge
to it, as well as competing approaches, and that writing about it requires mak-
ing some hard choices. Given the sharp differences of opinion that contend
against each other, anyone who writes about the impossible is always forced to
pick a side or take a stand of some sort—­regardless of which approach one
chooses or how objective one tries to be in making that choice—­which means,
naturally, that what­ever is written about this subject is bound to please some
readers im­mensely and also inevitably baffle, bore, offend, or annoy the hell out
of every­one ­else.
So why would anyone venture into this subject? ­After all, annoying some
readers is only one risk involved in writing about the super­natural. Having one’s
work end up in the crackpot section on bookstore shelves is also highly likely to
happen, maybe even a certainty. And that is far worse than annoying readers
who might not realize that they need some annoying. A reviewer of the first
manuscript draft of this book expressed concern that this book might make
the author seem “eccentric.” That reviewer was being very kind. To be honest,
“eccentric” would be the most polite and least offensive of adjectives that could
end up being attached to the name of anyone who dares to write about the

ix
 x p r e fa c e

impossible, or to my name specifically (and not just b

­ ecause some website has
compared me to Satan or b
­ ecause I have been denounced as “very dangerous”
and proclaimed an official “­enemy of the state” in my native country).1 So, one
must ask again: Why write this book?
The answer is s­ imple enough: ­Because this impor­tant subject has been
ignored or sidelined for far too long, and taking it on is something that sorely
needs to be done, for vari­ous reasons that should become obvious in the follow-
ing chapters. In addition, it is the right subject to tackle for a historian who has
always been intrigued by the ways in which religions and cultures conceive of
the relation between the natu­ral and the super­natural. Personal preferences,
then, have a lot to do with the writing of this book. This should not surprise
anyone. The writing of history is always an intensely personal quest for histori-
ans, although some ­will try to hide this from themselves, their students, and their
readers. Ask historians why they write the kind of history they do, and if they
are honest, they w
­ ill tell you that when all is said and done the history they write
has every­thing to do with their life story, their yearnings, and their obsessions.
This author is no dif­fer­ent. Allow me to switch to first-­person mode and show
you how this is so by means of a brief narrative.
This proj­ect began to take shape unexpectedly, like a proverbial bolt out
of the blue, on a bright summer day in 1983 at the Carmelite Convent of the
Incarnation, outside the medieval walls of Ávila. The individual responsible for
this turn of events could not have been aware of the impact her words would
have on me and ­will never know how much I owe to her.
I and a dozen other pilgrims ­were being led around the convent by a local
tour guide. We w
­ ere all pilgrims of one sort or another, ­whether we wanted to
admit it or not. The tour was conducted in Spanish, and our guide was young,
though not much younger than me. She had been escorting us from room to
room, pointing out significant details related to the life of the convent’s famous
resident, Saint Teresa of Avila. “This was the refectory where the nuns ate. . . . ​
The kitchen is over ­there. . . . ​­Here is the chapel. . . . ​This is the staircase where
Saint Teresa fell and broke her arm,” and so on, room a­ fter room. Mundane de-
tails. Then we walked into the locutorio, the room where the nuns could speak
with visitors through a grille-­covered opening in the wall. “And this is where Saint
Teresa and Saint John of the Cross levitated together for the first time,” she said,
as if ­there ­were no difference between that levitation and the grille, the stair-
case, the refectory, or the pots and pans in the kitchen (fig. 1). It was simply
another detail, that dual levitation. Just another fact.
 p r e fa c e xi

Figure 1. Eyewitness accounts claim that Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint John of the Cross
levitated together ecstatically on one occasion while conversing about the Holy Trinity. This
painting by José Garcia Hidalgo (1675) seeks to capture the details provided in t­ hose accounts.

Whoa.
I knew about levitation, of course. I had heard about it since childhood
and had encountered it in fiction, especially in comic books. Superman could
levitate. Gravity meant nothing to him. Years l­ater, I encountered it again as a
gradu­ate student, in hagiographies and mystical texts, and especially in The Phys-
ical Phenomena of Mysticism by Montague Summers, which I read with equal
mea­sures of amusement, fascination, and suspicion.2 I had also stumbled into
levitation in A Hundred Years of Solitude, a novel that sneaks it into the narrative
fairly often as a bit of magical realism.3 But I had never encountered levitation
as a fact, as something that was as undeniable as my presence in that room right
­there and then or as real as any object I could see or touch in that convent.
It was a fact in the tour guide’s narrative, and I had never before heard a living
­human being speak of levitation as a fact at the very spot where it had ostensibly
happened.
To say that a w
­ hole new dimension opened up for me on the spot at
that instant is to understate the magnitude of the experience. T
­ here was
nothing mystical g­ oing on. It was a purely rational moment that would have
pleased Immanuel Kant im­mensely.4 Suddenly, I saw the super­natural and
 xii p r e fa c e

the impossible in a w
­ hole new light. It is hard to explain what actually hap-
pened, ­really, but somehow, that very rational moment of clarity immediately
sparked some kind of cognitive firestorm that I cannot describe in precise
terms. In fact, even a­ fter writing this book, I am still tongue-­tied. Eureka mo-
ments can be like that.5
At that instant I knew for sure that I had to venture into the dimension
this tour guide had exposed. I knew it would not be an easy journey, or brief. I
had been trained to never, ever take the super­natural or miraculous as facts in
any way, ­under any circumstances. So the journey of writing this book began
with questions. Why was that double levitation a fact for the young tour guide?
Had she been coached to speak of it this way? Did she r­ eally take it as a fact?
Was she being insincere? Was she merely parroting a script written for visitors
to the convent, who are normally only devout folk interested in Saint Teresa?
Such questions did not m
­ atter too much to me at that moment, how-
ever. She had made that specific levitation a fact, and that was that. A dis-
carded and oft-­ridiculed mentality from the past had rudely elbowed its way
into the pre­sent and asserted its survival. As I saw it, what she said and the
way she said it—­even if insincere—­should have been as impossible in 1983
as the levitation she was describing. But it obviously was not for her, and that
was a fact.
So I started writing this book right then and ­there, in midsummer 1983.
In my head, at least. That is all I could do. I was neck-­deep in another proj­ect
at the time, and my tenure at the University of ­Virginia was hanging in the
balance.
And now this book is being published in 2023. Forty years have passed.
That is a big number, freighted with biblical connotations. But I have not been
working on this book constantly during t­ hese past four de­cades. I have written
other books in the meantime—­a ­couple of them without footnotes—­and have
only spent the past two years assiduously writing this text you are perusing right
now. But the thinking, reading, research, and note-­taking condensed into it have
been ­going on since that bright summer day in 1983, on and off, on and off, with
many a long pause and occasional spurts of intense archive-­diving, library-­raiding,
and note-­shuffling now and then. But as I write this preface, right now, I can
recall being in that locutorio at the convent of the Incarnation so vividly that
the 3,449 miles between me and Ávila seem to have instantly vanished. I am in
two places at once, and I am not bilocating, but this is perhaps as close as I can
get to experiencing that impossible feat.
 p r e fa c e xiii

Enlightening moments of insight such as this can transcend language and

linear reasoning wonderfully, but they can also exact a high price.
To write a history of the impossible is risky for any scholar nowadays,
especially if one suggests, even tentatively, that the assumed impossibility of
certain events deserves closer scrutiny and some challenging. This is what I am
­doing ­here, in this book. Read on and see. Keep in mind, however, that I ­will be
raising more questions than I dare to answer. The history of the impossible is all
about questioning, about being evenhandedly skeptical—­that is, being as skep-
tical about strictly materialist interpretations of seemingly impossible events as
about the a­ ctual occurrence of the event itself. Counterintuitive as this might
seem—­given that the impossibility of certain events is deemed unquestionable
in our dominant culture and that dogmatic materialists tend to think of them-
selves as the only truly objective skeptics—­this sort of nonconformist skepti-
cism is necessary if one is to claim any kind of genuine objectivity. As Francis
Bacon (1561–1626) once suggested, doubting is essential for inductive reason-
ing: “If a man w
­ ill begin with certainties,” he warned, “he s­ hall end in doubts;
but if he ­will be content to begin with doubts, he ­shall end in certainties.”6 Nearly
four centuries ­after Bacon’s death, his warning applies as much to doubts about
the dogmatic scientific materialism he engendered as to doubts about events
considered absolutely impossible by that dominant worldview. Bacon might have
been peeved or bewildered by this assertion, but it is nonetheless valid.
Bacon’s younger con­temporary René Descartes (1596–1650) had another
way of delivering the same advice. “Every­thing must be doubted,” he suggested.7
So, please, consider this book a Cartesian exercise in doubt, then, even if the
twist it gives to Descartes’s method might have annoyed him as much as he an-
noyed his younger con­temporary Blaise Pascal (1623–1662),8 or as much as he
annoyed me in algebra class with his geometric calculus over half a ­century ago.
Annoyance of some sort is as unavoidable when writing about the impossible as
it is when dealing with polynomials, s­ imple curves, and differential equations in
a final exam.
This book’s structure and content have been ­shaped by questioning. This
is why the book is divided into three distinct sections and why saints, frauds,
demoniacs, and witches—­groups of ­people that ­were very dif­fer­ent from each
other and normally did not mingle—­are all examined together, side by side. And
this involves both Catholics and Protestants, p
­ eople who did not just avoid min-
gling but often hankered to kill each other and did so much too frequently, with
excessive zeal. Questions about impossible claims bring all t­ hese extremely odd
 xiv p r e fa c e

bedfellows into the same book in the same way that such questions brought
them face-­to-­face with official tribunals in their lifetime, civil as well as ecclesi-
astic, Catholic as well as Protestant. Who is levitating? Who is bilocating? Are
they r­ eally hovering and flying or suddenly becoming vis­i­ble in two distinct lo-
cations at the same time? If so, then who is causing t­ hese phenomena, God or
the devil? Or could they be faking every­thing? If so, then how do they manage
to fool ­people with their trickery, and what are their motives for messing with
­people’s minds? Who is g­ oing to examine t­ hese impossible events? What crite-
ria ­will guide their investigations and decisions? In the twenty-­first ­century we
can add another question, one which no inquisitor or judge would care to ask:
What can we learn from ­these freakish historical figures and from ­those in charge
of judging them?
Freakish folk are not necessarily ridicu­lous or dismissible, especially in
the study of religion. The impossible events and the aberrant individuals ana-
lyzed in this book are essential to religion, even of central significance. They w
­ ere
no sideshow in their own day, as they might seem now, centuries ­later. They ­were
the main event. One could argue that all encounters with a super­natural real­ity
are the bedrock upon which religions have been built. Such experiences can
be called “theophanies,” “hierophanies” or “irruptions of the sacred.” ­Those who
experience such events do not have to assume the existence of some unseen
power beyond the material world that can mess with nature, as well as with
their minds. They know it exists, most definitely. In the words of one of the most
influential historians of religion, such folk enter a “paradoxical point of pas-
sage from one mode of being to another.”9 In traditional religious mentalities,
­these experiences and the narratives they engender generate belief and validate
the assumption that the material world we access with our senses and our intel-
lect is only a minute sliver of a much larger and complex real­ity beyond our ken
and that some ­things that are normally impossible do occasionally happen.
­Whether one knows it or not, and ­whether one likes it or not, an essential com-
ponent of the transition to modernity in the West has been the rejection of this
assumption by an ever-­increasing number of p
­ eople and its gradual slippage into
near oblivion in the realm of the ridicu­lous and trivial.
Curiously, this partial eclipse of the super­natural began to creep forward
at precisely the same time as the events analyzed in this book w
­ ere taking place.
Was all this levitating and bilocating a reflex of sorts? Maybe, yes. One could
argue that the sudden rise in such impossible events might have been some sort
of ­dying gasp of an ancient and fading mentality, a collective rage, or a nearly
 p r e fa c e xv

prophetic expression of the personal sentiments voiced three centuries ­later by

the poet Dylan Thomas: “Do not go gentle into that good night, / Old age should
burn and rave at close of day; / Rage, rage against the d
­ ying of the light.”10 But
the historical truth is that this mentality has not yet died and is still actually
thriving and raving in the twenty-­first c­ entury, h
­ ere and ­there, sometimes in un-
likely places and even at august institutions of higher learning. This is not to
say that some collective “raging against the d
­ ying of the light” could not have
had something to do with all ­those levitations and bilocations reported at that
time. All of this is certainly pos­si­ble. But that is not the ­whole story. Far from
it. Such facile reductionism is only applicable to one part of a much greater
­whole, and it does not get very far into the mystery of ­these impossible events,
or of their meaning back then or now.
The history of the impossible deserves some rationalizing that transcends
reductive functionalism, dogmatic materialism, or any other one-­dimensional
approaches that fail to take belief in a super­natural dimension into account as
a very real ­thing for ­those long-­gone folk one is analyzing. ­After all, ­these weird
events are manifestations of a mentality in which multiple dimensions are be-
lieved not only to coexist but to constantly intermingle. (A mentality, inciden-
tally, that bears an eerie resemblance to the multiverse cosmology proposed by
some astrophysicists in our own day and age,11 as well as to philosophical and
scientific speculations about our universe being a simulation.12) To deal ade-
quately with such a mentality, one must grapple with it, dive deeply into its core
and try to think along the same lines, and burrow as deeply as one can into
its assumptions, even to the point of suspending disbelief. And above all, one
must accept complexity and paradox as givens and involve both of ­these in one’s
own reasoning while growing more and more comfortable with unanswerable
questions.
Easier said than done, yes, for sure. But this is what I have tried to do in
this book and what I hope its readers ­will try to do too. As I have already said
and w
­ ill say again in the pages to follow, dealing with the impossible requires
one to end up with more questions than answers. This can prove unsettling. But
the best t­hing about all ­things truly unnerving and all t­hings impossible and
ostensibly super­natural, such as t­ hose that are the focus of this book, is the hard
fact that none of ­these questions are trivial, even though our dominant culture
aggressively suggests that they are.
This page intentionally left blank
 Acknowl­edgments

Most of this book was written during the ­great pandemic of 2020–2022. ­There
are many nameless folk who helped me write this book during the crisis, mainly
­those individuals who scanned and uploaded onto the web so many texts, old
and new, all of which would have been other­wise inaccessible. E
­ very now and then
I could see their fingertips at the edge of some page, furtively caught by the
scanner, and whenever their ghostly presence came into view, I would thank
them, whoever they w
­ ere. The same goes for t­ hose ­here at Yale and other institu-
tions who would retrieve books from library shelves, pack them up, and mail them
directly to my plague bunker. T
­ hose who delivered t­hese pre­sents need to be
thanked too.
Among ­those with whom I could interact virtually who helped make
this impossible book pos­si­ble, I would first like to thank Alice Martell, my lit­
erary agent, whose wise counsel has guided me e­ very step of the way through
this journey and many ­others, whose ability to move mountains astounds me,
and whose friendship I trea­sure. I would also like to thank the following col-
laborators in this proj­ect: Jennifer Banks, my editor, whose perceptive guid-
ance has ­shaped my thinking and my writing all along the way; Abigail Storch,
assistant editor, who has patiently guided me through the labyrinth of manu-
script preparation; John Donatich, director at Yale University Press, whose
vision has made edgy books like this pos­si­ble; and the anonymous readers of
the first draft of this book and the editors at Westchester Publishing Services,
who saved me from entrapment by my own blind spots. I would also like to
thank four of my closest and dearest friends and colleagues, Bruce Gordon,
Craig Harline, Ron Rittgers, and Victor Triay, for always inspiring me, steering
me in the right direction, bringing light into the darkness, and constantly en-
lightening me in more ways than I could ever count. Most of all, I thank t­ hose

xvii
 xviii acknowled gments

closest to my heart: my wife, Jane, and our three miraculous offspring, John-­
Carlos, Grace, and Bruno, who have always proven in infinite ways that love is
a super­natural realm and that the impossible is never as impossible as it
might seem, or as impossible as so-­called experts might imperiously tell us
that it is.
They Flew
This page intentionally left blank
 Introduction
Huge Claims, Vague Proof

While strolling in the garden one day . . . ​a priest said to him, “­Father Joseph, oh,
how beautiful God has made heaven!” Then Joseph, as if he had been called to
heaven, gave a loud shriek, leapt off the ground, flew through the air, and
knelt down atop an olive tree, and—as witnesses declared in his beatification
inquest—­that branch on which he rested waved as if a bird ­were perched
upon it, and he remained up ­there about half an hour.

What kind of nonsense is this? Who is this liar quoted above?1 ­Human beings
­can’t fly, or kneel on slender tree limbs like ­little birds, and they have never, ever
done so. Such a feat is absolutely impossible, and every­one can agree on this,
for certain. Or at least every­one nowadays who ­doesn’t want to be taken for a
fool or an unhinged eccentric. So, how is it that in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries—­the very era that gave birth to aggressive skepticism and empirical
science—­countless ­people swore that they had witnessed such events? And how
is it that some of ­these sworn testimonies are l­egal rec­ords, archived alongside
lawsuits and murder t­ rials, from all sorts of ­people, not just illiterate, mud-­caked
peasants but also elites at the apex of the social, intellectual, and po­liti­cal hier-
archy? What sense are we to make of this? How does any historian deal with
such accounts? How does one write a history of what could never have happened,
a history of the impossible?2
This book attempts to address ­these questions and to make sense of what
seems nonsensical. Naturally, given the nature of the subject, making sense of
it requires accepting the fact that lingering questions are bound to outnumber

1
 2 introduction

Figure 2. This eighteenth-­century painting by an unknown artist depicts one of Saint Joseph of
Cupertino’s most extreme flying ecstasies, which took place when he first laid eyes on the shrine of
the Holy House of Loreto and the angels flocking above it.

definitive answers. Its focus is Western Eu­rope at the dawn of modernity, when
reports of flying or hovering ­humans reached a peak, along with reports of
other phenomena also deemed impossible by many in our own day and by some
doubters back then. Focusing intensely on levitation—­the act of rising into
the air and remaining aloft—­and to a lesser extent on other unnatural phenom-
ena, such as bilocation—­the act of being pre­sent at two distinct locations
si­mul­ta­neously—­this book examines the redrawing of bound­aries between
the natu­ral and super­natural that marked the transition to modernity. It does so
by focusing on some of the most exceptional cases of “holy” levitators and evil
“demonic” ones, including witches, as well as on some nuns whose levitations,
bilocations, and visions ­were highly problematic. ­Because of the richness of
source materials available, as well as the exemplary nature of the phenomena
involved, our case studies are ­those of Saint Teresa of Avila (1515–1582);
Saint Joseph of Cupertino (1603–1663); the Venerable María de Jesús de Ágreda
(1602–1665); and three disgraced nuns, Magdalena de la Cruz (1487–1560),
 introduction 3

María de la Visitación (1551–1603), and Luisa de la Ascensión (1565–1636).

Cases of impossible miracles involving witchcraft and demonic possession are
also analyzed, along with the early modern development of demonology through
which such cases ­were approached. Other unnatural phenomena linked with
levitation and bilocation come into view too, but only as ancillary to them and to
the pro­cess whereby authorities determined ­whether any such won­der was the
work of God or the devil.

The Trou­ble with Levitation and Bilocation

Unlike spontaneous healing miracles, which ­really do occur with some frequency
and are acknowledged by skeptics and believers alike, including medical profes-
sionals who are atheists,3 levitations and bilocations are extremely rare events
that are seldom taken seriously outside certain belief systems. Levitation and
bilocation are but two of several physical phenomena that have been linked to
mystical ecstasy in vari­ous cultures and religions around the world for thousands
of years. They are also among the oddest of won­ders, everywhere, not just ­because
they seem to happen infrequently but also ­because by suggesting the presence
and power of an unseen force that can toy with nature, they tend not to serve any
practical purpose other than confirming the special status of the person who
levitates or bilocates. In a religious context—­and most accounts of levitations
and bilocations have religious origins—­the unseen force is usually ascribed to
some higher being, but it can also be ascribed to the levitators and bilocators
themselves, who are so obviously unlike most of their fellow ­human beings for
whom the tug of gravity within a single location is inescapable. In Chris­tian­ity,
that higher being could be God or the devil, and levitators could be viewed as
­either holy or diabolical, or, in some cases, as clever frauds. As awesome dis-
plays of raw unnatural power, the phenomena of levitation and bilocation have
few equals, and this fact alone makes them inherently ambiguous and power­ful
all at once.
But how is it pos­si­ble to speak about something that c­ an’t possibly hap-
pen? Where is the fact, that most essential component of history? “Fact” is an
En­glish word with many meanings. The Oxford En­glish Dictionary lays out doz-
ens of them. But only one of ­these applies in this case: “A ­thing that has ­really
occurred or is actually the case; a t­ hing certainly known to be a real occurrence
or to represent the truth. Hence: a par­tic­u­lar truth known by ­actual obser-
vation or au­then­tic testimony, as opposed to an inference, a conjecture, or a
 4 introduction

fiction; a datum of experience, as distinguished from the conclusions that may

be based on it.”4 So where is the “datum of experience” in any account of levita-
tion or bilocation? What is the fact of any levitation or bilocation that anyone
can hope to deal with in accounts from the distant past? Acts of levitation or
bilocation are “wild facts,” to use a term coined by philosopher-­psychologist Wil-
liam James over a ­century ago. As he defined it, a wild fact is any occurrence
that has “no stall or pigeonhole” into which “the ordinary and critical mind”
can fit it. The alterity of any such phenomenon is so extreme, said James, that
it becomes “unclassifiable” as well as an unimaginable “paradoxical absurdity”
that must be considered inherently untrue as well as impossible. Such wild facts
puzzle scientists so much, he observed, that they “always prove more easy to ig-
nore than to attend to.” James was intensely interested in psychic and mystical
phenomena and greatly pained by the dismissive attitude his fellow scientists
displayed t­ oward ­these phenomena. Most of them, he quipped, thought that
passing “from mystical to scientific speculations is like passing from lunacy
to sanity.”5
The situation James described long ago has not changed all that much, and
in some re­spects has worsened for anyone who wants to take wild facts such as
levitation and bilocation seriously. This leaves the historian or anyone with a
critical mind in a tight spot. If wild facts are “paradoxical absurdities,” are
­there any facts whatsoever left to study? The answer is yes, of course, and this
book is proof of it. The fact we can explore is not the act of levitation itself, the
wild fact that is inaccessible to us. The fact we can deal with is the testimony.
This issue is as brutally ­simple as it is brutally circumscribed: since we have no
films or photo­graphs to analyze for authenticity with the latest cutting-­edge tech-
nology, all we have is the fact that thousands of testimonies exist in which
­human beings swore they saw another ­human being hover or fly, or suddenly
materialize in some other location. As one historian has argued, facts can be
“hammered into signposts, which point beyond themselves . . . ​to states of af-
fairs to which we have no direct access.” They are “the mercenary soldiers of
argument, ready to enlist in yours or mine, wherever the evidentiary fit is best.”6
Testimonies, then, are the only fact—as well as the only evidence—­upon which
any investigation of levitation and bilocation, or history of any “impossible”
event that might have occurred in the past, can rest.
Consequently, a history of the impossible is a history of testimonies about
impossible events. Our dominant culture dismisses ­these testimonies as unbe-
lievable and merely “anecdotal”—­that is, as accounts that have no point of ref-
 introduction 5

erence beyond themselves, no wider context, and ­little or no credibility.7 So

why not call it a history of lying, a history of hallucinations, or a history of the
ridicu­lous? The answer to this question is as brutally ­simple as the issue itself:
We need not dismiss all accounts of the impossible as mere anecdotes or false-
hoods ­because the testimonies themselves self-­consciously accept the impossible
event as impossible, as well as bafflingly and utterly real—­even terrifying—­and
of g­ reat significance. Moreover, the sheer number of such testimonies is so rela-
tively large, so widespread across time and geo­graph­i­cal bound­aries, and so
closely linked to civil and ecclesiastical institutions that they most certainly do
have a broader context into which they fit. And that is a very rare and credible
kind of evidence, as unique as the events confirmed by it.
Levitation is one of the best of all entry points into the history of the
impossible, principally ­because it is an event for which we have an overabun-
dance of testimonies, not just in Western Chris­tian­ity but throughout all of
world history. Yet levitation is still a subject that attracts disparagement and
repels serious inquiry: the very claim that any ­human being can defy the laws of
gravity seems way too absurd nowadays, more than two centuries ­after Newton,
despite the existence of high-­speed trains that employ magnetic levitation to
hover and fly forward while suspended just a few centimeters above their
tracks.8 ­Human levitation seems incompatible with seriousness. It’s a light sub-
ject: weightless, flighty, insubstantial, the quintessence of levity. It smacks of oc-
cultism too, or overcredulity, especially if anyone dares to suggest it is pos­si­ble
rather than impossible.9 And such suggestions can seem shockingly unschol-
arly.10 Any study of levitation is difficult to get off the ground, as the pun would
have it, for the subject gets l­ittle re­spect and not much has been written about
it.11 Even a crank such as Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, a Spanish historian
who eagerly defended absurd notions—­including the claim that Catholic ortho-
doxy was genet­ically transmitted among pure-­blooded Spaniards—­had no pa-
tience with levitation and other physical phenomena associated with mystical
ecstasy. What this most unreasonable man had to say long ago about levita-
tion and other related phenomena, such as stigmata, is still very much in line
with prevailing thought: “Leave all ­these cases lying in oblivion. Let them be
brought to light, in due course, by ­those who are researching folk customs, or
­those who wish to satisfy a childish sort of curiosity.”12
Bilocation is another entry point into the history of the impossible and
another subject that Menéndez Pelayo would have wanted to sink into obliv-
ion. Like levitation, it is a phenomenon found in many religions and cultures
 6 introduction

from ancient times to the pre­sent. But, like levitation, it seems incompatible
with seriousness, and therefore it receives an equal amount of disrespect and
contemptuous dismissals, even though we now have the technology to make bi-
location or multilocation pos­si­ble via the internet. Testimonies of bilocations
are fewer in number than ­those of levitations in Christian history, and the phe-
nomenon is impossible in a double way: not just as something that “cannot”
happen but also as something that no one can ever witness in both locations
si­mul­ta­neously. Verifying its occurrence requires matching up eyewitness ac-
counts from dif­fer­ent locations ex post facto, something that makes all testimo-
nies less immediate and therefore more open to the likelihood of fraud. But t­ here
is no denying the fact that such corroborations have been recorded and accepted
as factual, as in the case of the bilocation of Saint Ignatius Loyola to the bed-
side of the ailing Alexander Petronius (fig. 3).
Circling back to Menéndez Pelayo’s dismissal of all such testimonies, we
conclude that since this is not a book on folk customs, then, the only other op-
tion open to us is a childish one. But what is more childish: to ignore levitation
and other such impossible phenomena or to acknowledge their presence in his-
tory? If the past itself includes bizarre events and beliefs, are t­hese to be dis-
missed simply ­because they seem illogical or ­because our current frame of
reference differs so much from that of previous centuries? The easiest path is to
say, yes, of course. But a wiser path to take might be to say, no, of course not. As
Lucien Febvre, a very savvy historian, once said: “To comprehend is not to clar-
ify, simplify, or to reduce ­things to a perfectly clear logical scheme. To compre-
hend is to complicate, to augment in depth. It is to widen on all sides. It is to
vivify.”13 And this vivifying requires not only embracing what might seem strange
in the past but accepting the strangeness as an essential rational feature of the
past, not as something irrational. As Darren Oldridge has observed, in tandem
with Febvre: “However peculiar they now seem, the beliefs of pre-­modern p
­ eople
­were normally a rational response to the intellectual and social context in which
they w
­ ere expressed.”14
To bring the past to life in Febvre’s sense, then, one must take stock of
what might seem outrageously alien, especially if it was once an essential com-
ponent of a culture’s worldview. Yet, what seems alien is only analyzed piece-
meal in our day and age. Take witchcraft, for instance. Hardly anyone nowadays
would doubt the significance of this subject or the interest it generates in West-
ern cultures. In fact, witchcraft studies are very much in vogue. Thanks to his-
torians who have vivified it, we now have so many books and articles on this
 introduction 7

Figure 3. This engraving from an illustrated hagiography of Saint Ignatius Loyola depicts his
bilocation to the bedside of Alexander Petronius in Rome, who was very ill. Eyewitnesses reported
that Ignatius simply showed up unexpectedly, even though the doors w ­ ere locked, and that the
bright glow of his body lit up the ­whole room.

subject that it has become im­mensely difficult to gain expertise in it. But many
of ­those who specialize in witchcraft often ignore levitation, a key trait associ-
ated with witches, choosing instead to focus on other issues, especially ­those
concerning social, economic, and po­liti­cal ­factors. So, one needs to ask, why is
the study of witchcraft so popu­lar, even though it entails dealing with reports
 8 introduction

of “evil” ­human flight, while the study of “holy” levitation is so disdainfully over-
looked? Is belief in flying witches worthier of attention than belief in flying
saints? This book argues that both deserve equal attention.15
In addition to being a light subject that instantly gives rise to punning
and joking, levitation also has a shady reputation to overcome, and not just
­because of its association with demoniacs, witches, and magicians. Levitations
are among the most ambiguous of mystical phenomena in Catholic Chris­tian­
ity for two reasons: ­because of the belief that they can be caused by the devil
rather than God and ­because of the fact that they can also be faked, and have
been regularly faked for millennia by all sorts of wizards and hucksters. Con-
trived acts of levitation performed ­under tightly controlled conditions can seem
real indeed when ­those performing them are experts at creating illusions and
at fooling their audience’s senses. It ­matters ­little if the illusion is performed
on a stage as entertainment or in a chapel or some dimly lit parlor as deceit. A
well-­faked levitation is still an illusion rather than a miracle. This fact casts a
huge dark shadow over all levitations, for it is widely known that anyone who
devotes enough time and effort to creating such an illusion might be able to
pull it off.
Reports of bilocations are even more vulnerable to dismissal than levita-
tions, simply b
­ ecause no single witness can attest to the simultaneous presence
of anyone in two dif­fer­ent locations. To fake a bilocation seems easy enough.
All one needs to do is to recruit or bribe expert liars at both locations. Conse-
quently, believing in reports of bilocations requires a more intense leap of faith
than believing in levitations.
Nonetheless, religious levitations—­that is, ­those ascribed to super­natural
or spiritual ­causes—­can also raise all sorts of questions about the possibility of
deceit, especially when they happen in intimate indoor settings. But when they
occur unexpectedly in locations where rigging up contraptions to perform a trick or
to create mass hallucinations seems more impossible than a miracle, then other
sorts of questions pop up concerning their feasibility. In such levitations we are
faced with two impossibilities si­mul­ta­neously, that of the phenomenon itself
and that of the lack of hidden contrivances or sensory illusions. And, much more
so than bilocation, it is precisely t­ hese kinds of levitations—­those where deceit
itself seems impossible—­that are the most puzzling of all and serve as the best
of entry­ways into the history of the impossible.
The likelihood of deceit haunts levitations and bilocations in yet another
way, figuratively and literally, for not too long ago ­these phenomena became
 introduction 9

intensely linked with ghosts and spirits rather than God or the devil. This hap-
pened due to a rise in popularity of the quasi-­religious occult movement known
as Spiritualism, which spread like wildfire across North and South Amer­i­ca,
Eu­rope, and other corners of the Western world between the 1860s and the
1920s. Spiritualism had its detractors, for sure, especially among the Christian
clergy, professional illusionists, and an array of skeptics,16 but it was not re-
stricted to quirky outcasts on the margins of respectability. Quite the contrary.
As hard as it might be to imagine nowadays, Spiritualism attracted a broad
spectrum of devotees, some of whom belonged to the upper echelons of society,
such as the eminent chemist and physicist Sir William Crookes; novelist Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the hyperrational and im­mensely popu­lar
fictional character Sherlock Holmes; evolutionary biologist Alfred Russel Wal-
lace, Charles Darwin’s closest collaborator and competitor; the Nobel laureates
Pierre and Marie Curie, pioneers in the study of radiation; and Mary Todd
Lincoln, the wife of American president Abraham Lincoln, who attended the
séances she held regularly at the White House.
The term “levitation” was coined by spiritualists in the nineteenth c­ entury.
Although accounts of hovering or flying men and w
­ omen stretch back to an-
tiquity, no specific term had ever been applied to the phenomenon. But, given
its centrality in spiritualist ritual, especially during séances at which mediums
levitated objects, their own bodies, or ­those of ­others—­ostensibly through the
agency of spirits—­the amazing feat needed a name, and “levitation” seemed to
suit the cult’s quasi-­scientific needs perfectly. Derived as it was from the Latin
levitas, or “lightness,” the exact opposite of “gravitas,” or “heaviness,” the newly
minted term had a distinctly Newtonian feel to it, evoking his law of universal
gravitation and empirical objectivity while conveying a sense of the mysteriously
spiritual and otherworldly. “Bilocation” was another quasi-­scientific term favored
by spiritualists, who believed that the h
­ uman body had an “astral double,” a spiri-
tual component that could leave the physical body and appear elsewhere.17
Spiritualism never dis­
appeared completely. In fact, the ever-­
popular
Ouija board, still a best-­selling game, made and marketed as a toy by Hasbro,
the same com­pany that makes Mono­poly, is a spiritualist device.18 But as
Spiritualism’s heyday waned, so did interest in levitation and bilocation. By
1928, when Olivier Leroy published the one and only comprehensive history
of levitation written in the twentieth ­century, the popularity of Spiritualism
was already fading fast. And no comparable effort was ever made to cover
the history of bilocation. Doyle, who died in 1930, seemed to embody the
 10 introduction

cult’s decline in his final years. His zealous defense of communication with the
dead and of photo­graphs of ghosts and fairies had by then become more of a
disposable Victorian curiosity than a set of beliefs to embrace, and since levita-
tion and bilocation w
­ ere part of the spiritualist package deal, they, too, gradually
vanished, except in occultist circles, into the cobwebbed attic of the public’s
imagination.19

The Trou­ble with Miracles

Levitation and bilocation might have had a shady lineage to overcome, but they
nonetheless had—­and continue to have—­a very dif­fer­ent past upon which to
claim legitimate significance. Within the Catholic tradition, which s­ hall be our
main focus, levitation has an im­mensely rich history, and so does bilocation, to
a lesser extent, especially in the lives of the saints. Although their significance
in Catholic culture and devotional life has diminished somewhat, due mostly
to the Catholic Church’s shift in focus to social and po­liti­cal issues, holy levita-
tion and bilocation are still officially considered genuine miracles that are most
definitely pos­si­ble. Demonic levitations and bilocations are still considered
pos­si­ble, too, but have received much less attention since the nineteenth
­century. Consequently, despite some decline in frequency and in popularity,
­these miraculous phenomena are still very much alive and far from consigned
to oblivion.
­Because holy levitation and bilocation are considered miracles in Catholi­
cism—­that is, super­natural gifts, or “charisms,” that accompany mystical ec-
stasy and can be markers of exceptional sanctity—­they have never completely
lost their luster and are not likely to lose it. The Greek term charisma denotes
any gift bestowed on h
­ umans through God’s benevolent love (charis). Belief in
such gifts is as old as Chris­tian­ity itself and was initially given theological
shape by the apostle Paul, who delineated their function in the shaping of the
church:

Every­one has his proper gift [charisma] from God; one a­ fter this manner,
and another ­after that. . . . ​­There are dif­fer­ent kinds of gifts [charismaton], but
the same Spirit distributes them. T
­ here are dif­fer­ent kinds of ser­vice,
but the same Lord who works all ­things in all. Now to each one the manifes-
tation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one ­there is given
through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge
 introduction 11

by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another
gifts [charismata] of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous pow-
ers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to an-
other speaking in dif­fer­ent kinds of tongues, and to still another the
interpretation of tongues. All t­ hese are the work of one and the same Spirit,
and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.20

Among such extraordinary super­natural gifts, some not mentioned by Paul ­were
­later recognized as legitimate, including levitation, bilocation, and several o
­ thers
that accompanied mystical ecstasy.
Consequently, b
­ ecause they are deemed divine charisms, extraordinary
gifts of grace, holy levitation and bilocation remain strictly within God’s om-
nipotence and agency in the Catholic tradition. As such, they are never
“achieved”; that is, they can never be willed to happen by the mystic in ecstasy.
An intersection of the natu­ral and super­natural, as well as of the physical and
the spiritual, t­hese are highly charged ambiguous phenomena that always
need to be placed in the context of the life of the levitator. Simply put, for any
levitation to be considered of divine origin in Catholicism, the levitator needs
to be holy, virtuous, and orthodox. Levitation and bilocation are caused by ho-
liness and serve as signs of holiness. And, unlike spiritualist mediums of the
Victorian era for whom ­these phenomena ­were absolutely necessary markers of
legitimacy, Catholic saints do not need to display t­hese rare charisms. Their
status as holy individuals does not depend on them. Moreover, ­these gifts are
only two of the many optional super­natural charisms that sometimes accom-
pany mystical ecstatic states. To contextualize levitation properly, then, it is
essential to consider the full range of ­these dif­f er­ent charisms.
During the ­Middle Ages, a long list of ­these divine mystical gifts evolved,
especially through the pro­cess of evaluating the holiness of candidates for
sainthood and of writing narratives of their lives as part of that pro­cess. The
technical term for any such narrative is “hagiography,” derived from the Greek
words hagios, meaning “holy,” and graphia, meaning “writing.” Hagiographies
served multiple purposes at once, but their two principal aims w
­ ere inter-
twined: to prove someone’s sanctity and to encourage the text’s readers to imi-
tate and venerate that person. By the thirteenth c­ entury, when bilocation and
levitation accounts begin to appear regularly in Western hagiographies, many
super­natural phenomena w
­ ere believed to be definite signs of sainthood, but
­there was no fixed list of the miraculous physical phenomena that could
 12 introduction

accompany mystical ecstasy in the life of any saint. Much in the same way
that a medical text might contain lists of all the known symptoms for specific
maladies, this list of miraculous mystical gifts or charisma would have simply
cata­logued ­those known to occur, but the sole undisputed primary characteris-
tic of holiness was always a virtuous life, rather than any miraculous mystical
phenomena. T
­ hose w
­ ere always an ad extra trait: a bonus. In the seventeenth
­century this attitude deepened in the Catholic Church as the pro­cess of can-
onization was revamped, and “heroic virtue” came to be emphasized more
than miracles.
No holy mystic was ever expected to have all the charisms that could be
listed, but it was considered normal for some of ­these to be inextricably joined
to mystical transports in a saint’s life. In some cases t­ hese phenomena w
­ ere
linked up—­such as levitating and emitting an unearthly glow si­mul­ta­neously—­
but such pairings ­were not considered normative, much less essential, in the
lives of other levitating saints. Moreover, t­ hese charisms could manifest them-
selves in varying degrees: some saints could levitate more often or higher than
­others; some might just hover; ­others might actually fly. All t­ hese gifts ­were wild
cards of sorts, and so ­were the par­tic­u­lar combinations any mystic might be dealt
by God. The most significant of ­these charisms could be sorted into two cate-
gories: first, ­those phenomena that w
­ ere overtly physical and visibly involved
the body; second, ­those phenomena that ­were not vis­i­ble but could be conjoined
with mystical ecstasy.
In the first category, ­there ­were at least fifteen overtly physical phenom-
ena commonly linked with holiness and mystical experiences:

• Vis­i­ble ecstasies, raptures, and trances: When the body enters a cataleptic state and
becomes rigid, insensible, and oblivious to its surroundings.
• Levitation: When the body rises up in the air, hovers, or flies.
• Weightlessness: When the body displays a total or nearly total absence of weight dur-
ing trances and levitations or ­after death.
• Transvection: When the body is transported through the air from one location to an-
other in some indeterminate mea­sure of time.
• Mystical transport or teleportation: When the body transverses physical space instan-
taneously, moving from one place to another without any time having elapsed, some-
times over g­ reat distances.
• Bilocation: When the body is pre­sent in two places si­mul­ta­neously.
 introduction 13

• Stigmatization: When the body acquires the five wounds of the crucified Christ or
other wounds inflicted during his passion.
• Luminous irradiance: When the body glows brightly.
• Super­natural hyperosmia: A heightened sense of smell that allows the mystic to de-
tect the sins of o
­ thers.
• Super­natural inedia: The ability to survive without any food or with very l­ittle food
at all.
• Super­natural insomnia: The ability to survive without much, if any, sleep.
• Vis­i­ble demonic molestations: Physical attacks by demons that wound the body.
• Odor of sanctity: When the body emits a unique and im­mensely pleasant smell.
• Super­natural incorruption: When the corpse of a saint does not decompose but re-
mains unnaturally intact for many years, de­cades, or centuries.
• Super­natural oozing, or myroblitism: When the corpse of a saint discharges a pleasant-­
smelling oily substance capable of performing healing miracles directly or through
cloths dipped in it.

And in the second category, holy mystics could have at least ten dif­fer­ent kinds
of otherworldly experiences not vis­i­ble to o
­ thers or super­natural powers with
which they could be imbued. Some of ­these ­were physical gifts, some spiritual,
and some m
­ ental.

• Visions, locutions, and apparitions: When the mystic has vari­ous sorts of encounters
with the divine that are not vis­i­ble to o
­ thers, and the mystic receives communications
from God that are visual, aural, or purely spiritual. T
­ hese can occur suddenly or dur-
ing ecstatic states.
• Invisible demonic molestations: When the mystic is assailed by demons spiritually or
mentally, sometimes with a visual component that is invisible to ­others.
• Telekinesis: The ability to move objects at a distance by nonphysical means, without
touching them.
• Telepathy: The ability to read the minds and consciences of ­others or to communi-
cate mentally.
• Prophecy: The ability to know and predict f­uture events accurately, including one’s
own death.
• Super­natural remote vision: The ability to see events that are occurring elsewhere.
• Super­natural dreams: The ability to receive divine communications while sleeping.
• Infused knowledge: Learning directly from God, without formal education, through
ecstasies, visions, locutions, and apparitions.
 14 introduction

• Super­natural control over nature: The ability to command the be­hav­ior of weather,
fauna, and flora and to communicate with animals.
• Discernment of spirits: The ability to distinguish w
­ hether any event is of divine or
demonic origin.

Tellingly, only one of the phenomena listed above can be called genuinely
and exclusively Christian: that of the stigmata, the miraculous duplication of
the wounds of Christ on the mystic’s hands, feet, and torso, the first recorded
instance of which involves Saint Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth ­century.21
All other physical phenomena can be found in accounts from other cultures and
religions, in which such gifts are linked to individuals with spiritual powers. Cu-
riously, the growth of Western interest in Asian religions, Spiritualism, and the
occult cultures in which ­these marvels are common has led some filmmakers
in the late twentieth and early twenty-­first centuries to create similarly gifted
fictional characters, such as the Jedi knights in the Star Wars series, especially
Obi-­Wan Kenobi and Yoda.22 Obviously, it is also easy enough to discern how
the very concept of “superpowers” reflected in such characters is closely linked to
the alternative universes and mythologies created in comic books and the films
based on them.23
So, obviously, Christian saints who received super­natural gifts ­were dif­
fer­ent from ordinary h
­ umans. In essence, the charismatic saint could become
superhuman—­a superhero—at least during ­those instances when ­these ex-
traordinary phenomena w
­ ere manifest. Consequently, t­hese phenomena re-
flected a certain mind-­set or mentality and w
­ ere si­mul­ta­neously a confirmation
or reification of that mentality. Naturally, fraud and delusion could certainly be
involved in claims about such charisma and the miracles associated with them,
and the likelihood of that could be obvious to anyone, but in cultures where
such phenomena ­were assumed to be pos­si­ble, it was belief in the charismata
that had to be suspended rather than disbelief.

The Trou­ble with Thaumaturgy

Accepting t­ hese phenomena as pos­si­ble requires a certain way of thinking about
the fabric of real­ity and of accepting as fact that the cosmos consists of two
dimensions, the natu­ral and the super­natural, and that ­these two dimensions,
though distinct, are nevertheless intertwined in such a way that the natu­ral is
 introduction 15

always subordinate to the super­natural. In this mentality or worldview, which

was reinforced culturally by social custom and the po­liti­cal forces of church and
state, the natu­ral order could be constantly interrupted and overpowered by the
super­natural. Any such irruption of the super­natural was a miracle (miraculum
or prodigium), and the natu­ral world constantly pulsated with the possibility of
the miraculous.24
By the thirteenth c­ entury, scholastic theologians w
­ ere proposing, analyz-
ing, and dissecting vari­ous definitions of a miracle. One of the most influential
was Thomas Aquinas, who subdivided miracles into three categories: The high-
est ­were t­ hose of substance, in which “something is done by God which nature
never could do,” such as levitation and bilocation; next in gradation ­were ­those
of subject, “in which God does something which nature can do, but not in its
proper order,” such as the power of speech granted to Balaam’s ass; and fi­nally
­there ­were ­those of mode, in which “God does what is usually done by the working
of nature, but without the operation of the princi­ples of nature,” such as the heal-
ing of illnesses by relics of the saints.25 Aquinas also stressed the super­natural
divine causality of miracles, as well as the fact that their most recognizable feature
is the effect they produce in their recipients or witnesses.26 Miracles, therefore,
­were an intrusion of the super­natural into the natu­ral realm and always identi-
fiable by their effects.
This binary approach to real­ity extended to the h
­ uman being, for h
­ umans
­were believed to have been created in “the image and likeness of God” and to
be composed of a mortal material body and an immortal spiritual soul.27 Saints
could tap into the super­natural ­because they ­were “holy”—­that is, they ­were
more spiritual than other h
­ uman beings, more attuned to the sacred and di-
vine. As individuals who embraced self-­denial and focused intensely on spiri-
tual realities rather than on the needs of their corruptible material bodies, they
­were able to avoid sinful be­hav­ior and live virtuous lives. This made them “holy”
and therefore closer to God, and that closeness transformed their mortal bod-
ies, imbuing them with super­natural abilities.28
Such abilities ­were deemed celestial in origin: charisma granted to holy
­human beings in whom and through whom God worked miracles. Some of ­these
charismata had dark parallels in pagan magic and witchcraft, inherently, so dis-
cerning the a­ ctual source of the gift was always necessary for Catholic Christians,
and that pro­cess of discernment could be im­mensely complicated, awkward,
and often painful. In essence, the pro­cess involved reckoning the difference
 16 introduction

between religion—­that is, what­ever was truly super­natural—­and magic, which

was never truly super­natural but rather involved the diabolical agency or some
sort of humanly devised trickery.
Given this conundrum, and the inherent instability and ambiguity of the
miraculous, ­every levitation or bilocation—no ­matter how wondrous—­had an
unavoidable tragic dimension, and all miracle-­workers had to contend with it
in vari­ous ways. As we ­shall see, the more extreme the miracle claim, the worse
the ordeal that the miracle-­worker had to face. ­Whether it was being grilled
by the Inquisition or being confined to a small monastic cell like a prisoner
or having one’s writings destroyed or hidden away ­under lock and key, all of the
miracle-­workers analyzed h
­ ere had to be refined in some sort of crucible. In
essence, achieving the impossible was always potentially dangerous, not just for
oneself but for one’s community, even if that community was enthralled by the
impossible or drawn to it. Magic, religion, and the demonic w
­ ere too closely in-
tertwined to allow church authorities to approve of miracles instantaneously.
Distinctions had to be maintained, and ­those distinctions ­were understood in
precise terms by educated folk, especially the clergy tasked with the job of d
­ oing
the discerning. But at street level, among the faithful, the line between religion
and magic was anything but precise, especially when it came to popu­lar piety
and the ways in which most Christians approached what they believed to be
super­natural.
Naturally, the fuzziness of the line between religion and magic in popu­lar
piety vexed many a cleric and gave rise to all sorts of tensions and conflicts
within late antique and medieval Chris­tian­ity. That fuzziness attracted the at-
tention of social scientists in the late nineteenth ­century and throughout the
twentieth as well, and vari­ous definitions of the distinction between religion
and magic eventually seeped into the writing of religious history. Ironically, one
result of this social-­scientific turn has been the adoption of the term “thauma-
turgy” as the favored descriptive term for all miracle-­working and of “thauma-
turge” for miracle-­workers. Etymologically derived from the Greek thaûma,
meaning “miracle,” “won­der,” or “marvel,” and érgon, meaning “work,” ­these
terms circumvent the issue of differentiating between magic and religion by
turning all miraculous events into a “scientific” area of study—­with a scientific-­
sounding name—in which transcendent or super­natural forces are not consid-
ered whatsoever. Conceptually, the invention and ac­cep­tance of thaumaturgy
and thaumaturge are derived from Protestant attitudes t­ oward Catholic piety,
and whenever ­these terms are used, they still echo sixteenth-­century Protestant
 introduction 17

polemics, often unknowingly. This quirky epistemological turn requires some

explaining.

The Trou­ble with Protestants

The advent of the Protestant Reformation brought about a sudden redefinition
of concepts such as religion, magic, superstition, and idolatry, as well as of assump-
tions about the relation between the natu­ral and super­natural realms. Distinc-
tions that had reigned largely uncontested in the Catholic Church of the West
and the Orthodox Churches of the East since the first ­century suddenly began
to be challenged in the early 1520s when an earth-­shaking paradigm shift took
place. The change in thinking resulting from this new Protestant take on real­
ity was similar in scope and significance to the one caused by Copernicus in
astronomy, but its impact was much more immediate and widespread. It gave
rise to a disparate mentality that still saw real­ity in binary terms but drew the
line between religion and magic differently, rejecting the intense intermingling
of the natu­ral and super­natural as well as of the material and the spiritual, thus
placing much of Catholic ritual and piety in the realm of magic. Moreover, this
Protestant mentality also involved a redefinition of the concepts of holiness and
sainthood, and a rejection of the assumption that self-­denial and virtuous be­
hav­ior could allow h
­ uman beings to be gifted with super­natural powers.
As if this ­were not enough of an assault on medieval assumptions about
the relation between the natu­ral and the super­natural realms, Protestants of all
stripes also rejected the proposition that God had continued to perform mira-
cles beyond the first c­ entury, a doctrine that came to be known as “the cessa-
tion of miracles” or “the cessation of the charismata.”29 The miracles mentioned
in the Bible had r­ eally occurred, they argued, but such marvels became unnec-
essary ­after the birth of the early church and would never, ever happen again.30
Consequently, all of ­those miraculous super­natural phenomena associated with
holiness throughout the ­Middle Ages, including levitation, could not be the work
of God. To be more precise, however, by deigning t­hese phenomena “false”—­
that is, not attributable to God—­Protestants did not declare them impossible.
Not at all. As most Protestant Reformers and their l­ater disciples saw it, ecstatic
seizures, levitations, luminous irradiance, and all such phenomena w
­ ere still
pos­si­ble indeed and did in fact occur. But they ­were all diabolical in origin. So,
simply put, Protestants stripped God’s agency from all such Catholic miracles
and gave credit to the devil instead.31
 18 introduction

Given the religious, social, po­liti­cal, and intellectual turmoil caused by the
advent of Protestantism and its ­great paradigm shift, it is not at all surprising that
miracles became a marker of difference between Catholics and Protestants, as
well as a flash point of discord and a polemical weapon. And it could be argued
that no miracle was more redolent of the odor of “difference” than levitation—­a
variant on the odor of sanctity—or more freighted with polemical potential.
For Catholics, holy levitation could serve as proof of the divine source of their
church’s authority and of the truth of their teachings and sacraments. If mira-
cles such as this occurred in the Catholic Church, could it r­ eally be the seat of
the Antichrist, as Protestants argued? Protestants simply countered by insisting
that if such weird phenomena ­were not fraudulent, they could only be demonic,
their existence damning evidence of the falsehood of the Catholic Church,
which employed the dev­il’s ability to easily fool the unwary. ­After all, witches
hovered and flew too. As Thomas Browne argued in 1646, since Satan was a
“natu­ral Magician” he could “perform many acts in ways above our knowledge,
though not transcending our natu­ral powers.”32 Meanwhile, however, Protestants
and Catholics alike continued to believe that witches hovered and flew and should
all be exterminated.
Aye, ­there’s the rub, as Hamlet might say.33
Quite an odd rub too, that the phenomenon of levitation should be con-
sidered real enough by both Catholics and Protestants. Their interconfessional
squabbling was not about the possibility or impossibility of the phenomenon
itself but rather about its source. Both opposing camps thought levitation was
pos­si­ble, but their disagreement about its causation had an odd asymmetry to
it, for they agreed not only on its possibility but also on the assumption that
the phenomenon had an ethical dimension to it that had a lot to do with the
agency of the ­human w
­ ill. Whereas Catholics believed that levitation was re-
stricted to ­human beings who chose to surrender their ­will e­ ither to God or to
the devil, Protestants believed it was restricted only to ­those who willed to be-
come allies of the devil.
Something e­ lse that makes this difference of opinion seem odd is its tim-
ing, for at exactly the same time that Catholics ­were canonizing levitating saints
and burning flying witches and Protestants ­were busy tossing flying witches into
the flames too—by the thousands—­modern empirical science was emerging and
creating paradigm shifts of its own. For some quirky set of reasons, then, the peak
period for flying ­humans in Western history coincides with the initial development
of a new materialistic way of thinking about real­ity that would reject all this
flying as absolutely impossible nonsense.
 introduction 19

Consequently, one could also say that the oddest fact about two of the
most extreme exemplars of miraculous baroque Catholicism, Joseph of Cuper-
tino (1603–1663), “the Flying Friar,” and María de Jesús de Ágreda (1602–1665),
the bilocating and levitating nun, is that they walked the earth and ostensibly
hovered over it at the same time as Isaac Newton (1642–1727). Although it is
unlikely they ever crossed paths with him, it is not wholly impossible. If this
book w
­ ere an exercise in counterfactual history, it would be appropriate to
suggest the following “what if ” scenario: What if Newton had run away from
Woolsthorpe Manor, his home in Lincolnshire, ­England, and traveled to Osimo,
Italy, and Ágreda, Spain, in 1659 in a fit of pique a­ fter his recently widowed
­mother removed him from the King’s School in Grantham so he could become
a yeoman farmer, just like his f­ather?34 And what if he had caught sight of Jo-
seph and María hovering in the air? Or, at the very least, what if he had run
into eyewitnesses who swore they had seen t­ hese monastics levitating and glow-
ing? Would that have changed his take on gravity, and if so, how would that
have changed history? Or what if he had traveled through Scotland in 1665–
1666, when the plague forced him to leave Cambridge temporarily,35 and had
stumbled upon a witch trial or had met ­people involved in the many Scottish
witch t­ rials in which flying was one of the legally valid proofs offered for some-
one having made a pact with the devil? Or what if he had run into someone
who claimed to have seen a flying witch? Might that have changed history too?
­These are not idle speculations. Counterfactual history is a valuable
thought exercise, and some of its prac­ti­tion­ers are quite rigorous about their
approach to alternative scenarios and their probable consequences and argu-
ably more attentive to the interplay of specific f­ actors than many historians who
never venture to imagine dif­fer­ent outcomes. Quirky juxtapositions of facts with
alternative scenarios can yield useful insights into the significance of specific
details in the unfolding of history, for sure.36 And juxtapositions of this sort
cannot get quirkier or potentially more revealing than linking the potential tra-
jectories of Saint Joseph of Cupertino, the Venerable María de Jesús de Ágreda,
and Sir Isaac Newton.
Beyond the factual historical dimension of baroque-­era levitators, divine
or demonic, one runs into more abstract issues in the metaphysical and episte-
mological dimension of ­these accounts. And the questions t­ here, in ­these con-
ceptual dimensions, make historians very uncomfortable. What about all this
hovering and flying? Did t­ hese ­people ­really float in the air? If so, how and why,
and how could it be proved? Could all t­ hese testimonies be taken at face value? As
soon as ­these questions begin to pop up, we historians proudly bring out our
 20 introduction

brackets and wield them with all the epistemological brawn we can muster. “We
bracket the question of ­whether this happened or not,” we say, and by that we
mean that since we cannot prove that any of this hovering and flying happened,
we put t­ hose questions aside and instead ask other ones, admitting that all we can
analyze is the fact that some ­people believed that such ­things did happen. So we
limit ourselves to analyzing narratives and the beliefs expressed in ­those narratives
but not the events reported in them. ­Those events remain suspended in an ether
of their own, much like some stiff-­jointed levitating saint, in that vast limbo where
all unprovable and unusable testimonies get squirreled away. And all we are left
with is the fact of the testimonies given and of the beliefs reflected in them.
That bracketing w
­ ill be inescapable in this book: The issue of ­whether
so-­and-so ­really flew cannot be addressed. And the same goes for bilocation or
any other charisma associated with mystical ecstasy, for ­there is no way anyone
­today can prove that someone ­really hovered or flew or bilocated in the sixteenth
or seventeenth ­century. No one’s testimony from the distant past—­when photo-
graphing or filming did not yet exist—­can be taken as absolute proof, not for
something as uncommon and unnatural a phenomenon as levitation, even if
corroborated by hundreds or thousands of similar testimonies, for a ­simple rea-
son: Like all miracles, by definition, phenomena such as levitation and biloca-
tion are totally unlike o
­ thers in history. They are wild facts, as William James
would say. If in fact they have taken place, the number of witnesses has been far
too small, relatively speaking. And the further back one goes in time, the more
difficult it becomes to defend the credibility of ­those witnesses. The argument
made by David Hume in 1748 about the impossibility of proving any miracle
solely from testimony is applicable to this proj­ect. Hume’s argument is still very
much in play in con­temporary Western culture and worth quoting at this point:

A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable

experience has established t­ hese laws, the proof against a miracle, from the
very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can
possibly be ­imagined. . . . ​Nothing is esteemed a miracle, if it ever happens
in the common course of nature. . . . ​­There must, therefore, be a uniform ex-
perience against ­every miraculous event, other­wise the event would not merit
that appellation. . . . ​The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim
worthy of our attention), “That no testimony is sufficient to establish a
miracle, ­unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would
be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish.”37
 introduction 21

Nonetheless, while it is ultimately impossible for anyone to prove that any

levitation or bilocation actually took place, the fact that t­here are eyewitness
testimonies of such instances is easy enough to prove. And t­hose testimonies,
which are often rich in details, need no brackets. They can be closely examined
as facts as well as evidence, especially b
­ ecause ­these testimonies tell us some-
thing about the past that our present-­day culture predisposes many ­people to
overlook or deride. This brings us back to Febvre’s observation: “To comprehend
is to complicate, to augment in depth. It is to widen on all sides. It is to viv-
ify.”38 As another very wise historian has pointed out, some events force us to
face the fact that ­there are “complexities and ambivalences everywhere.” The tes-
timonies of witnesses to impossible events, which are themselves full of com-
plexities and ambivalences, vivify the past. In the absence of ironclad conclusive
proof, they allow us at least to obtain “conjectural knowledge and pos­si­ble
truth.”39 One could argue that sometimes they do much more than that, for they
can allow us a glimpse of the world as some of ­those who lived long ago actu-
ally saw it.

The Trou­ble with Modernity

In the Whiggish view of history, phenomena such as witchcraft and levitation
are power­ful markers of cultural difference, telltale traits of an older, inferior
civilization, of the “superstitious” and “magical” culture of the ancient and me-
dieval worlds. In fact, it is precisely ­these markers that provide one of the most
certain bound­aries between what is “modern” and what is not.40 Super­natural
phenomena are modernity’s foil, significant foci for the articulation of the norms
of “modernity” itself.41 They are also markers that distinguish what is impor­
tant from what is not. And this is not only true of Whiggish history, which puts
forward the Protestant rejection of medieval piety as the first step ­toward “mo-
dernity.” It is also true of postmodern history.42
Conversely, witchcraft and magic are seen as “impor­tant” subjects ­because
they bespeak of Whiggishness itself and of all attempts by elites to dominate
their subalterns. Witches and New World natives share the same universe of
meaning for postmodern and postcolonial history. Both are victims of the an-
cien régime writ large—­that is, the hyperrationalist, exploitative, moralizing,
male-­dominated, patriarchal, homophobic, sexist, chauvinist, exploitative, Euro-
centric imperialist world order. Nuns and friars who levitate, and, incidentally,
reject the central values of Eurocentric hegemony in their monastic vows, somehow
 22 introduction

do not seem to belong in that same universe of trendy significance. Why not?
That is a post-­postmodern question waiting for an answer. Perhaps the question
itself is a marker of the boundary between the postmodern and what­ever may
succeed it? The post-­postwhatever?
Levitating saints raise questions that no historian should avoid. Never
mind the metaphysical questions, that floating ten-­ton anvil that historians
dare not touch, much less acknowledge. Aside from the fact that they reify so-
cial constructions of real­ity, levitating saints allow us to peer into the very pro­
cess of cultural change, offering unique insights into an essential component of
the transition to modernity. Their flying and hovering reveal complexities about
an epistemological revolution that up u
­ ntil very recently was assumed to follow
a steep and well-­defined upward curve: the triumph of rationality over primi-
tive credulity and superstition. When Max Weber argued in the early twentieth
­century that the Protestant Reformation was instrumental in the gradual “dis-
enchantment” of the world and the rise of rationalism and empirical science,
the miraculous and super­natural had already been stripped of legitimacy.43 Some
bits and pieces of this history have been claimed—as in the case of witchcraft—
by t­ hose who have found it useful for the promotion of certain social, cultural,
and po­liti­cal ­causes in their own day. Some historians have been an exception
to this rule, straining to understand the past on its own terms and accepting
the transition to modernity as a very complex pro­cess in which the redefinition
of the bound­aries between the natu­ral and super­natural did not always follow a
Whiggish or Weberian upward curve.44
Anyone who examines the early modern period carefully should eventu-
ally discover that the public sphere in Western Eu­rope was rife with levitating
saints and flying witches and other impossible events. This should seem odd,
not only ­because this was the age of Galileo, Descartes, Newton, and Leibniz
but also ­because—as Weber assured us all—­Protestantism had already “disen-
chanted” the world.45 ­Under the Weberian formula, how can one explain the
Protestant belief in flying witches? How does one account for the fact that Prot-
estants left the devil in full control of his preternatural powers while they
stripped God of his super­natural powers on earth? And how does one account
for the fact that John Frederick of Saxe-­Lüneberg, a Lutheran prince converted to
Catholicism as a result of Joseph of Cupertino’s levitations, was Leibniz’s patron?
Or that Newton, born in 1643, could have journeyed to Fossombrone or Osimo
as a young man to lay eyes on Saint Joseph, “the Flying Friar”?
 introduction 23

In the past few de­cades, some historians have begun to call attention to
the way in which both Catholics and Protestants started redefining the concepts
of natu­ral and super­natural.46 Much of this work stresses the fact that the epis-
temological and metaphysical gap between Catholics and Protestants was one
of their principal ­battle lines. Since Protestants tended to reject the miraculous
as impossible, most of this recent work has focused on Catholics and on how
they tried to identify “real” miracles or on how they tried to argue rationally for
their occurrence, relying on the concepts of natu­ral and super­natural or preter-
natural that ­were commonly shared by priest, minister, and scientist alike.47 Pre-
cise definitions and bound­aries ­were of im­mense concern for Protestant and
Catholic alike in the early modern period, as w
­ ere t­ hose individuals who seemed
to trespass the laws of nature. Levitating saints and flying witches w
­ ere no side-
show but part of the main act, 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 ap-
ple.48 Distinguishing between the natu­ral and super­natural was as crucial as tell-
ing right from wrong and as necessary as classifying the airborne as ­either
“good” or “evil.” The shocking truth is that both Protestants and Catholics pro-
fessed belief in ­human flight and tried to sort out the airborne among them. No
one can deny that the sorting took place at the very same time that calculus,
empirical science, and atheism emerged in Western culture.
That is a fact.
But what does this fact tell us about the impossible? What does it tell us
about the past and the way we strain to understand it or the pre­sent and its
concerns and unquestioned assumptions? Why do we have high-­speed magnetic
levitation trains but feel the need to bracket all reports about hovering saints
or witches? How can millions of us h
­ umans be in multiple locations si­mul­ta­
neously via the internet, day ­after day, but still feel the need to scoff at biloca-
tion? Why is the only fact that we can accept about ­human levitation the fact
that o
­ thers, long ago, thought it was pos­si­ble? What difference does that make?
More than a question mark? Yes. Much more than the question mark missing
from the following sentence:
“They flew.”
This page intentionally left blank
 pa r t o n e

Aloft

­There is no impropriety in saying that God does something against

nature when it is contrary to what we know of nature. For we give the
name “nature” to the usual and known courses of nature; and
what­ever God does contrary to this, we call “prodigies” or “miracles.”
—Saint Augustine of Hippo, Contra Faustum
This page intentionally left blank
 1. Hovering, Flying, and All That
A Brief History of Levitation

Like a traveler exploring some distant country, the won­ders of which have hitherto
been known only through reports and rumors of a vague or distorted character, so
for four years I have been occupied in pushing an enquiry into a territory of
natu­ral knowledge which offers almost virgin soil to a scientific man.
—William Crookes

So said an eminent scientist in 1874 about his empirical research on unnatural

phenomena, such as levitation, which ­were part and parcel of the cult of Spiri-
tualism very much in vogue at that time.1 William Crookes, a distinguished
chemist and physicist, wanted to unlock the secrets of levitation and of all the
other marvels that spiritualists claimed to perform. And a­ fter four years of look-
ing into it, he had to admit that he was flummoxed: “The phenomena I am
prepared to attest are so extraordinary and so directly oppose the most firmly
rooted articles of scientific belief—­amongst ­others, the ubiquity and invariable
action of the force of gravitation—­that, even now, on recalling the details of
what I witnessed, ­there is an antagonism in my mind between reason, which
pronounces it to be scientifically impossible, and the consciousness that my
senses, both of touch and sight—­and ­these corroborated, as they ­were, by the
senses of all who ­were pre­sent—­are not lying witnesses when they testify against
my preconceptions.”2
Crookes was but one of many in his generation who tried to shine a
spotlight on the claims of spiritualists and of ­those who witnessed their
occult unearthly powers. As a skeptical scientist, his investigation involved

27
Figure 4. Engraving of Daniel Dunglas Home (1833–1886), a Scottish spiritualist medium whose
frequent levitations ­were confirmed by numerous witnesses, including prominent scientists such as
William Crookes, who proclaimed them genuine.
 h o v e r i n g , f ly i n g , a n d a ll t h at 29

digging into the history of ­these phenomena, and in ­doing so he was among
the first to collect data and come up with an analytical narrative of the phe-
nomenon that spiritualists had dubbed “levitation.”3 And so it was that the
history of levitation began to be written, largely by critics and opponents of
Spiritualism, and of spiritualists who staged levitations, such as Daniel Dunglas
Home (fig. 4). Eventually this trend led to the first comprehensive history of
the subject by Olivier Leroy, published in 1928 and still unsurpassed, nearly a
­century ­later.
Leroy’s book, however, appeared a bit too late. Spiritualism and its phe-
nomena ­were already waning in popularity. So, tinged as it was with a residual
spiritualist glow, the marvel of levitation gradually ceased to attract serious
attention in the West. Left in the hands of cultists, illusionists, and magicians,
levitation slipped unceremoniously into the realm of the fantastical and trivial,
alongside other ostensibly unscientific subjects such as haunted ­houses, were-
wolves, vampires, and abductions by aliens from outer space. Among Catholic
and Orthodox Christians, however, levitation remained a very serious subject
that could not be thrown into the ash heap along with Spiritualism.
Levitating saints continued to be part and parcel of Christian history in
non-­Protestant churches, even as secularism and skepticism increased, and
reports of levitations became more infrequent. In the Orthodox tradition,
for instance, two notable post-­Enlightenment levitators w
­ ere the monk Saint
Seraphim of Sarov (1754–1833) and Saint John the Wonderworker (1896–1966).
In Catholicism, instances of levitation never ceased being reported and accepted
as genuine. Four of the best-­known Catholic levitators from modernity are
Saint Alphonsus Liguori (1696–1787), Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich
(1774–1824), Saint John Vianney (1786–1859), and Saint Gemma Galgani
(1878–1903). In the twentieth c­ entury, the best-­known Catholic levitator was
Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina (1887–1968), who during the Second World War
was credited with intercepting Allied bombers in midair and preventing them
from pulverizing the town of San Giovanni Rotondo, where his monastery was
located.4 When he was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2002, Padre Pio’s
levitations—­though somewhat controversial in some circles—­were declared gen-
uine, along with his many other miracles, including his bilocations.5
In secular culture, belief in levitation has not died altogether e­ ither. In
the early twenty-­first ­century, it is still easy enough to find books that claim levi-
tation is pos­si­ble or even an easily learned skill.6
 30 aloft

An Ancient Global Phenomenon

Accounts of men and ­women who hover or fly abound in ­human history, in many
dif­f er­ent cultures.7 Throughout history, levitation has been linked to spiritual
power, be it benevolent, indifferent, or malevolent, and in many cultures and
religions, down to the pre­sent, it tends to be taken for granted as a fact, as some-
thing which ­really occurs and does not involve deception of any sort. Among
Catholic and Orthodox Christians, levitation is believed to have divine or de-
monic origins. Among Protestant Christians, it has usually been deemed of
strictly demonic origin and is most often interpreted as diabolical trickery. In
the non-­Protestant Christian tradition, “good” or “holy” levitation has always
been understood as an involuntary bodily response to intense spiritual experi-
ences. A by-­product of mystical ecstasy, always controlled by God rather than
the levitator, this phenomenon is only one of several that are associated with a
life of asceticism and prayer, along with other phenomena listed in the intro-
duction.8 Within this same tradition, “evil” or “demonic” levitation is found
among ­those who consort with Satan, and this includes witches, wizards, and
sorcerers of all stripes, along with pagan priests and shamans and ­those who
are possessed by demons.9
Of course, deception has been as much a part of the history of levitation
as belief in its authenticity. In many cultures, especially in the ancient world,
the line between the illusionist and the sorcerer or thaumaturge was somewhat
blurry, as was the line between what we might call a “trick” and a “miracle.” More-
over, given the fact that levitations have been faked for millennia, anyone as-
sociated with levitation cannot help but cast a trickster’s shadow, as was the case
with the spiritualist mediums of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centu-
ries.10 And levitation is still a common trick in the twenty-­first c­ entury, ­after
all, performed by illusionists around the world, on stages large and small, or on
tele­vi­sion or the internet.11 The question h
­ ere is not how magicians or medi-
ums fool their audiences, however, but how belief in levitation as a real miracle
flourished among Catholic Christians, especially in the early modern period.
Although the term “levitation” is relatively new, having been coined in late
nineteenth-­century ­England, the phenomenon of gravity-­defying ecstatics has
ancient roots in Asian, Near Eastern, and Western cultures and can also be found
in African, American, and Australasian tribal and shamanistic religions. Trac-
ing the origins of Western levitation and, more specifically, of Christian levita-
tion is difficult. This is due to a lack of sources and the absence of any proof for
 h o v e r i n g , f ly i n g , a n d a ll t h at 31

direct lines of transmission. Nonetheless, as far as Asia is concerned, it is well

known that vari­ous Indian Yogic traditions have accepted levitation as a fact
for millennia. We have second­hand testimony of this from a con­temporary of
Jesus, Apollonius of Tyana (ca. 15–100 AD). Apollonius was a Pythagorean phi­
los­o­pher and wonder-­worker from Greece who traveled to India and whose bi-
ography was written in the third c­ entury. According to his biographer Philostratus
(ca. 170–245 AD), levitation is one of the many won­ders that Apollonius saw
while visiting Indian Brah­mans: “He says that he saw them levitating themselves
two cubits high from the ground, not for the sake of miraculous display, for they
disdain any such ambition; but they regard any rites they perform, in thus quit-
ting earth and walking with the Sun, as acts of homage acceptable to the God.”12
Levitation accounts can also be found in several types of Buddhism, some of
which ascribe this power to the Bud­dha himself.13 In Tibetan Buddhism belief
in levitation is particularly strong and not necessarily linked to Western notions
of asceticism, for some levitators in this tradition have female consorts with
whom they engage in tantric sex while airborne.14 ­Whether Asian traditions in-
fluenced developments in the Near East and Eu­rope is a valid question that
cannot be answered with definite confidence. The case of Apollonius points
to at least some minimal contact. But no one knows for sure how many other
Western theurgists might have brought home Asian beliefs and rituals related
to levitation.
In the West, some accounts of aethrobats—­“air walkers”—­can be found
in Near Eastern and Mediterranean cultures before the advent of Chris­tian­ity.
Among t­ hese, two of the most famous are Abaris the Hyperborean, a priest of
Apollo, and the Greek mathematician and phi­los­o­pher Pythagoras (sixth c­ entury
BC).15 Although both men ­were well known in the pre-­Christian world, most of
what we know about their levitations—­which is not much at all—­can be found
in the work of Iamblichus (ca. 242–325), a Neoplatonist phi­los­o­pher and mys-
tic whose students believed in his own ability to levitate and glow while in ec-
stasy.16 Western pre-­Christian levitation accounts are infrequent and skimpy, at
best. Nonetheless, it is impor­tant to note that in the three cases mentioned
above, as in the Yogic and Buddhist traditions, levitation was attributed to the
physiological effects of asceticism and meditation. This causal link caught the
eye of some interpreters in the late nineteenth ­century. One of ­these, Helena
Blavatsky, cofounder of the occultist Theosophical Society, made the following
observation: “Christian ascetics, through contemplation and self-­denial, acquire
powers of levitation which, though attributed to the miraculous intervention of
 32 aloft

God, are nevertheless real and the result of physiological changes in the ­human
body.”17 ­Whether or not Madame Blavatsky was correct is a moot question. Her
observation makes evident the fact that an undeniable pattern runs like a red
thread across time, continents, and traditions: the linkage of levitation, of self-­
denial, and of the pursuit of intense spiritual activity.
Jewish antecedents are exceedingly rare, not exactly instances of levita-
tion, and not at all linked to asceticism, which suggests that when it comes to
levitation, t­ here is prob­ably a greater degree of continuity from paganism to
Chris­tian­ity than from Judaism. The Old Testament contains only two accounts
of airborne men, both prophets, neither of whom can be considered a genuine
levitator. The first is Elijah, who was snatched up to heaven in a fiery chariot
and therefore conveyed off the ground by a vehicle, much like some present-­
day airline passenger. The second is Habakkuk, who was flown from Judea to
Babylon and back to Judea by an angel who grabbed him by the hair, just so he
could provide Daniel with lunch in the lion’s den (fig. 5).18 Since his body did
not rise off the ground by itself but was in the hands of another being (literally),
this cannot be counted as a levitation. Moreover, in the precise terminology of
Catholic mystical theology, a flight that long counts as a transvection rather
than a levitation.
The New Testament mentions no levitations at all, strictly speaking, but
it is full of miracle accounts, all of which upend the laws of nature in some way.
A few of ­these have something to do with the laws of gravity but are not levita-
tions per se. The account of Jesus walking on ­water is not a levitation since he
did not rise into the air,19 and neither is his ascension to heaven a­ fter his resur-
rection since this was not a case of hovering or flying but of being taken up to
heaven, much like Elijah, albeit without a chariot of fire.20 Yet in both accounts
the body of Jesus defies the normal gravitational pull of the earth. The account
of the apostle Philip suddenly being carried away by the Spirit of the Lord
from one location to another is not a levitation e­ ither.21 Since Philip’s reloca-
tion was instantaneous rather than a flight in the hands of an angel, like Hab-
bakuk’s, this miracle is deemed to be a transvection, spiritual transport, or
teleportation. This same criterion applies to the Gospel narratives that speak
of Jesus being taken by the devil to the pinnacle of the ­temple in Jerusalem
and to the zenith of a very tall mountain, especially since no mention is made of
how Jesus reached ­these high places.22 Another New Testament figure associ-
ated with levitation is Mary Magdalene, who is mentioned in all four canonical
Gospels. The Magdalene is said to have levitated many times l­ater in life, a­ fter
Figure 5. Gianlorenzo Bernini’s 1661 sculpture of the flight of
Habakkuk, who was transported over ­great distances by a flying angel
who grabbed him by the hair. This account found in the Book of
Daniel (14:36) is one of the oldest recorded instances of h
­ uman flight
in the Judeo-­Christian tradition.
 34 aloft

she left the Holy Land and moved to Gaul, but this claim is nonbiblical, surfaces
much ­later, and can only be found in medieval legends from the area around
Marseilles (fig. 6). ­These local accounts gained a much wider audience through
Jacob de Voragine’s extremely popu­lar Golden Legend (thirteenth ­century), which
told of the Magdalene “being borne aloft by angels ­every day during the seven
canonical hours.”23 The Golden Legend, in turn, inspired a good number of ar-
tistic repre­sen­ta­tions of this miracle. So, despite popu­lar traditions linking the
Magdalene with levitation, it must be kept in mind that we have no such ac-
counts from late antiquity.
Early Christians may not have left b
­ ehind any rec­ord of levitations in
the canonical books of the New Testament,24 but they nonetheless had to face
competition and opposition from charismatic miracle-­working wizards such as
Apollonius of Tyana, previously mentioned, and Simon Magus, who reportedly
performed all sorts of won­ders, including levitation.25 Fixing upon a single de-
scriptive term for such figures is difficult. As Simon’s name implies, a wonder-­
worker could be called a magus (plural magi), like the three so-­called wise men
from the East who visit the infant Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. In its original
meaning, the term applied to the priestly caste of ancient Persia, but it evolved
to have a broader meaning, signifying ­those who had occult knowledge, as well as
spiritual and magical powers. They w
­ ere sages who knew how to discover and ma-
nipulate the divine secrets hidden in the cosmos, and they could be called wizards,
magicians, or sorcerers in En­glish. They could also be called thaumaturgs (wonder-­
workers) or hierophants (revealers of the sacred).26 And ­there is yet another for-
mal name for them: theurgists, which is applicable ­because ­these wizards claimed
to be engaged in divine work (theurgia in Greek). Lines that we might draw in the
twenty-­first ­century between philosophy, religion, magic, sorcery, and science
­were so blurry in the first c­ entury that one could say they did not r­ eally exist. A
theurgist could be a polymath, engaged with all ­these disciplines at once—­and
­others as well—­not just intellectually, but spiritually and practicably. In sum, if
some of ­these theurgists could have time traveled to the twenty-­first c­ entury, they
might have been cheeky enough to claim membership in at least two dozen de-
partments of any university, and in some of its professional schools, including its
seminaries and schools of drama and medicine, while serving as chaplains and
psychiatrists too. Fortunately, none of them seem to have done so, at least not yet.
The world of the first Christians was teeming with such wonder-­workers,27
and even the miracles of Jesus himself have been interpreted in this context.
A sixth-­century Hebrew text, The Life of Jesus, did precisely this, portraying
Figure 6. Albrecht Dürer, The Ecstasy of Saint Mary Magdalen (sixteenth c­ entury). Legends that
ascribed levitating ecstasies to Mary Magdalene developed during the M ­ iddle Ages. Dürer is one of
the most prominent artists to have depicted her as an ecstatic levitator, borne aloft by angels.
 36 aloft

Jesus as a levitating wizard, and it was published a millennium l­ater in 1681, by

Christians, in a collection of texts that ostensibly exposed Jewish anti-­Christian
blaspheming.28 Several early Christian texts, written between the second and
fourth centuries—­some orthodox, some not—­focus on Simon Magus, especially,
and charge that he clashed with the apostles and challenged them to surpass
his “miracles” (fig. 7).29 The apocryphal Acts of Peter (second ­century) relates
how Simon “amazed the multitudes by flying” and how Peter reacted to it:

And beholding the incredible spectacle, Peter cried to the Lord Jesus Christ:
“If thou allow him to do what he has undertaken, all who believed in you
­shall be overthrown, and the signs and won­ders which you have shown to
them through me, ­will not be believed. Make haste, O Lord, show your mercy
and let him fall down and become crippled but not die; let him be disabled
and break his leg in three places.” And he fell down and broke his leg in
three places. And they cast stones upon him, and each went to his home
having faith in Peter.30

The legend of Simon Magus is clear evidence that the earliest Christian
community could see levitation in a negative light, as a dark art associated with
malevolent spirits. And it was not only the pagan “other” who could levitate—­
the magus, thaumaturge, or theurgist—­but also anyone touched by the devil,
­whether baptized or not. A case in point is the emperor Julian, known as “the
Apostate” (331–363), who renounced his Christian faith and fell ­under the spell
of Neoplatonic philosopher-­theurgist Maximus of Ephesus (310–372). The ­great
theologian Gregory Nazienzen (329–370), who had attended school in Athens
with Julian, was convinced that his former schoolmate “was bent on one object
alone, namely, how to gratify the demons who had often possessed him.”31 Con-
sequently, Gregory and all other like-­minded Christians could only attribute Ju-
lian’s levitations to demonic forces, including the one that took place during
his initiation into the mysteries of the goddess Artemis by Maximus of Ephe-
sus: “As if he had embraced an invisible being, Maximus spread out his arms,
bent his head backward, ­rose in the air and remained suspended, motionless,
wrapped in a luminous cloud. . . . ​Julian moved t­owards him unhesitatingly, as
if drawn by an overpowering force. . . . ​Maximus clutched his hair at once, pulled
him up to himself, and they began whirling round the cave, several feet above
the ground, with a rapidly increasing speed.”32
From very early on, Christians drew very sharp binary distinctions between
themselves and o
­ thers: between their religion, which worshiped the only true
Figure 7. The lower half of this fifteenth-­century German woodcut depicts Simon Magus
and Peter preaching while a demon whispers in Simon’s ear. The upper half captures the
moment when Saint Peter’s prayers cause Simon to plummet to earth as a sword-­wielding
avenging angel attacks the demons who are keeping him aloft.
 38 aloft

God, and all o

­ thers, which worshiped false gods and demons, and between their
miracles, which w
­ ere divine in origin, and the won­ders of all other cults and
religions, which w
­ ere the work of the devil. In essence, then, Christians saw them-
selves as hemmed in on all sides by the devil, for all religions other than their
own worshiped him and did his bidding. Consequently, as far as Christians w
­ ere
concerned, all wonder-­working theurgists ­were the dev­il’s minions, and the warn-
ing found in the First Epistle of Peter applied to them as much as it did to the
devil himself: “Stay alert! Watch out for your ­great ­enemy, the devil. He prowls
around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.”33
By the fourth ­century, then, belief in the demonic origin of some levita-
tions was well established among Christians and taken for granted among cler-
ics schooled in theology, like Gregory Nazianzen. But belief in the divine origin
of levitation was also very much a part of the Christian faith. Threatened as
they ­were by the presence of pagan wonder-­workers, Christians naturally came
to accept the fact of levitation in binary terms, as a phenomenon that was never
neutral in value but had to derive e­ ither from the devil or from God. Hilary of
Poitiers (315–368) and Sulpicius Severus (363–425) w
­ ere among the first to rec­
ord accounts of demonic levitation.34 One of the most vivid accounts comes
from Sulpicius, who described one of the exorcisms conducted by Saint Martin
of Tours: “I saw a demoniac snatched up into the air as Martin approached him,
and he remained suspended ­there with his hands stretched upwards, and totally
unable to touch the ground with his feet. . . . ​Then, one could plainly see the
vari­ous torments endured by t­ hese wretches. Some of them ­were suspended in
the air upside down, with their feet turned upwards, as if in the clouds, and yet,
instead of flapping down over their f­aces, their garments stayed put, thus pre-
venting their shameful body parts from being exposed.”35
This binary early Christian approach to levitation was passed on to suc-
ceeding generations, throughout the ­Middle Ages and early modernity, and even
down to the pre­sent in vari­ous traditions, especially in the Roman Catholic
Church, where levitation has been considered one of the surest signs of demonic
possession since medieval times, along with preternatural strength, unnatural
body contortions, and the ability to read minds and speak arcane languages. As
an exorcist’s manual published in 1651 put it, one of the surest physical signs
of possession was “the transporting and uplifting of the body against the pa-
tient’s ­will, without it being pos­si­ble to see what­ever is carry­ing it up.”36
For Christians, demonic levitation had to have a divine counterpart; God’s
omnipotence seemed to demand it. So it is not too surprising that at the very
 h o v e r i n g , f ly i n g , a n d a ll t h at 39

same time that Christians ­were struggling against the levitations of theurgists
and demoniacs, a contrary divine phenomenon began to manifest itself within
their own society. And it was directly linked to the emergence of monasticism.
“Good” or “holy” levitation evolved in the desert, sometime between the second
and fourth centuries, among the ascetic Christians who devoted themselves to
constant prayer and a life of solitude. And it is ­there, in that setting, that holy
levitation came to be understood as a side effect of contemplation or a physical
reaction to an exalted spiritual experience of a super­natural character. It is ­there,
too, that this ecstatic phenomenon came to be understood as wholly involun-
tary, a gift from above that can never be demanded or controlled.
The ­great monastic pioneer Saint Antony (ca. 250–350) and a fellow
monk, Amun, w
­ ere among the first to be lifted up in the air.37 Another early
levitator was the monk Shenute (ca. 360–450), who was raised “high into the
air by the angels of the Lord” at the tribunal of the governor of Upper Egypt.38
­Women, too, numbered among the earliest levitators, and one of the most ex-
ceptional was Mary of Egypt (344–421), a penitent whore who had become a
hermit.39 According to Sophronius of Jerusalem, Mary r­ ose “a forearm’s distance
from the ground and stood praying in the air” when she met the monk Zozimus
in the desert, filling him with terror. ­Later, she also crossed the River Jordan on
foot to receive communion from him, walking on the surface of the ­water, just
as Jesus had done on the Sea of Galilee.40
From the fifth c­entury on, accounts of holy levitations can be found in
Christian lit­er­a­ture, especially in monastic circles and particularly in areas u
­ nder
control of the Byzantine emperor, where ­after the collapse of the Western Roman
Empire literacy levels remained higher, and more hagiographies tended to be
written. In some cases, holy miracle-­workers such as Theodore of Sykeon (ca.
550–613)—­a gifted and very busy exorcist—­engage with levitating demoniacs.41
In most cases, however, it is the holy men and w
­ omen themselves who levitate.
Some of ­these Byzantine hagiographies made it to the West and can be found in
the massive Acta Sanctorum published between the seventeenth and twentieth
centuries.42 Among t­ hose Eastern monks known for their levitations, three of the
most notable lived in the latter part of the first millennium: Joannicus the G
­ reat
(752–846), Luke of Steiris (896–953), and Andrew Salos, “the Fool” (ca. 870–
936). Joannicus was a farmer, swineherd, and soldier before a conversion experi-
ence led him to become a hermit at the age of forty. Devoted to a life of extreme
asceticism and constant prayer, he is said to have glowed “brighter than the sun”
when he levitated.43 Luke of Steiris, also known as Luke Thaumaturgus, was a
 40 aloft

Greek herdsman turned monk, who, according to his hagiography, began levi-
tating as a child, before becoming a monk, much to the astonishment of his
­mother.44 Andrew Salos was a one-­time slave whose erratic be­hav­ior as a “fool for
Christ” caused him to be taken for insane, much like Saint Francis of Assisi three
centuries ­later. Unlike Francis, however, Andrew lived in a religious culture in
which “fool [salos] for Christ” was a venerable hagiographical category like “mar-
tyr” or “virgin.” His mystical gifts included visions, clairvoyance, telepathy, and
levitation, and his suspensions in the air w
­ ere witnessed by his closest friend
Epiphanius, who would eventually become patriarch of Constantinople.45

Holy Levitations in the ­Middle Ages

In the Catholic Christian West, which broke communion with the Orthodox Chris-
tian East in the G
­ reat Schism of 1054 and developed its own hagiographic tradi-
tions, accounts of levitations are relatively infrequent up u
­ ntil the tenth ­century,
when a modest increase in literacy and the writing of hagiographies begins to take
place and continues at the same pace u
­ ntil the early thirteenth c­ entury, when a
dramatic upswing occurs. To a considerable extent this steadily increasing number
of recorded levitations corresponds to rising literacy rates and the production of an
ever-­growing number of hagiographies. In other words, producing more texts for an
ever-­widening audience has much to do with the increase in levitation accounts.
For all we know, innumerable oral accounts of levitations might have circulated
during ­those centuries of low literacy, most of which have been irretrievably lost.
Oral histories remain invisible to succeeding generations ­until they are written
down, and this is why the only instances of levitation we can identify or enumerate
are ­those preserved on velum or paper, in a wide array of texts.46
Beginning in the tenth ­century, holy levitations are reported with more
regularity and become more closely associated with mystical ecstasy. To this day,
however, ­there is no exact tally of the number of Christian levitators from this
or any other period. The only attempt ever made to compile a list of levitating
saints was that made by Olivier Leroy in 1928, drawn mostly from the Acta Sanc-
torum. His list, though far from complete, includes many of the better-­known
holy men and w
­ omen of medieval Christendom, as well as lesser-­known figures.
Among the most notable are Bernard of Clairvaux (twelfth ­century), Christina
the Astonishing (twelfth–­thirteenth centuries), Dominic de Guzmán (fig. 8),
Francis of Assisi, Anthony of Padua (fig. 9), Elizabeth of Hungary, Bonaventure,
Albert the G
­ reat, Thomas Aquinas (thirteenth c­ entury), and Catherine of Siena
Figure 8. As became common in baroque Catholicism, religious ­orders commissioned artists to
depict their saints in ecstasy. This seventeenth-century painting of the founder of the Dominican
order shows him hovering over an altar, drawn to an image of the crucified Jesus.
Figure 9. Saint Anthony of Padua was best known in popu­lar piety for his mystical encounters with
the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus. In this seventeenth-­century painting, artist Vicente Carducho
intermingles the earthly and heavenly dimensions and depicts Saint Anthony hovering, with his
shadow clearly vis­i­ble beneath his feet.
 h o v e r i n g , f ly i n g , a n d a ll t h at 43

(­fourteenth ­century).47 Among t­ hose missed by Leroy, one of the most impres-
sive is Douceline de Digne (thirteenth c­ entury) a levitating Beguine who played
a significant role in the court of Charles of Anjou, Count of Provence.48
Many of ­these medieval accounts involve modest hoverings, in which
the saint is raised a relatively short distance off the ground. A good number of
­these levitations occur in private too and are only witnessed by accident, when
someone stumbles upon the aethrobat by pure chance. O
­ thers, however, are very
public and witnessed by more than one person. All of them involve prayer in
some way and are interpreted as a by-­product of mystical ecstasy. A good num-
ber of ­these medieval levitations involve more than hovering and could almost
be classified as flights. The heights reached and the distances traversed in some
of the more extreme cases surpass t­ hose attributed to any Christian levitators
from the first millennium. Three such extreme cases are t­hose of Dunstan of
Canterbury, Christina the Astonishing, and Francis of Assisi.
Dunstan (909–998) was an abbot and monastic reformer who served suc-
cessively as bishop of Worcester, London, and Canterbury and as a minister for
several En­glish kings. He is said to have risen all the way to the ceiling of the
cathedral at Canterbury, in the presence of many witnesses.49 The g­ reat height
of Dunstan’s astounding flight is among the first of its kind to be recorded in
any Catholic hagiography.
Far more impressive is Christina the Astonishing (1150–1224), a Flemish
holy ­woman of peasant stock who earned the Latin title of Mirabilis ­because of
the many miracles associated with her extreme asceticism. Her wonder-­working
began at the age of twenty-­one, at her own funeral Mass. Taken for dead by her
­family ­after she suffered a violent seizure and about to be buried, Christina sud-
denly came back to life during the singing of the Agnus Dei, soared out of her
open casket “like a bird” to the roof beams of the church, and stayed perched
up ­there for quite a while in order to escape the stench of common sinners.50
Filled with terror, every­one fled except for her ­sister and a priest, who eventu-
ally managed to coax her down from the raf­ters. Given the well-­known possibil-
ity of demonic levitation, Christina was at first suspected of being a demoniac
and imprisoned, but she managed to convince the authorities she was not de-
mon possessed at all and was eventually freed.
From that day forward, Christina embarked on a life of constant pen-
ance and prayer, performing outrageously incredible miracles, such as emerging
unscathed from blazing furnaces into which she threw herself or surviving total
 44 aloft

immersion in frozen rivers for very long stretches of time. Constantly shunning
­human com­pany, she lived in treetops, towers, and church steeples.51 Her levita-
tions ­were often spectacular and witnessed by many. Eyewitnesses claimed she
could perch like a bird on slender tree branches (as Joseph of Cupertino would
do centuries ­later). Many also claimed to have seen her squatting atop a pole,
singing psalms.52
Imprisoned a second time ­because of her f­ amily’s concern over her bizarre
be­hav­ior and extreme acts of self-­punishment, Christina was freed again and
soon recognized as genuinely holy by townsfolk and church authorities alike,
including the noted theologian Cardinal Jacques de Vitry (ca.1165–1240), who
met with her and vouched for her genuine holiness. A mere eight years a­ fter her
death, a hagiography based on eyewitness testimony and written by Thomas de
Cantimpré, a Dominican professor of theology, made her outlandish super­
natural feats widely known throughout the Catholic world.53
Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) is so unique that he has led some experts
on levitation to gloss over him dismissively. “Of St. Francis of Assisi’s life noth-
ing needs to be said,” huffed Olivier Leroy. “Every­body knows something about
it.”54 While that might have been true or close to the truth in France a ­century
ago, the same cannot be assumed now. Moreover, then as now, Francis is best
known not for his levitations but rather for his nature mysticism and interac-
tions with animals and, most of all, for his stigmata, the miraculous replication
of Christ’s five wounds on his own body (fig. 10). Since Francis was the first Chris-
tian saint ever to receive ­these wounds, the miracle of the stigmata was sui ge-
neris, totally unique, and perhaps more astounding than any other mystical
miracle in post-­Apostolic Christian history. Its sheer physicality, some have said,
“marked a new stage in the history of the miraculous.”55 Yet, it could be argued,
Francis’s levitations, recorded as they ­were in multiple hagiographies, would play
an im­mense role in the history of the miraculous too, making this ancient and
extremely physical mystical phenomenon more widely known and acceptable
and more paradigmatic of sanctity for subsequent generations of mystics and
would-be mystics, including the greatest Christian levitator of all time, Joseph
of Cupertino, a Franciscan friar wholly devoted to imitating Saint Francis.
The role played by Francis in the history of levitation should never be over-
looked. One way of reckoning his im­mense significance is to consider how
quickly he was canonized and how many hagiographies ­were written within a
relatively short time span ­after his death. Francis died on October 3, 1226, and
Figure 10. In this very unusual depiction of the stigmatization of Saint Francis, artist Vicente
Carducho chose to set this mystical rapture up in the air, as a levitation. As is common in many
baroque depictions of levitations, Carducho includes an eyewitness in the background.
 46 aloft

was canonized a mere twenty-­two months l­ater on July 16, 1228, by which time
a hagiography commissioned by Pope Gregory IX had already been written by
Thomas of Celano, a Franciscan friar who had known Francis. This text came
to be known as the Vita Prima, or First Life. Then, due to frictions within the
Franciscan order over the issue of poverty, the Franciscan minister-­general com-
missioned Thomas to write another hagiography in 1244, which he completed
in 1247. It came to be known as the Vita Secunda, or Second Life. And once again
a few years l­ater, growing interest in the miracles performed by Francis led the
minister-­general to commission Thomas to write a detailed account of them.
This text, which was completed in 1253—­but not printed ­until 1899—is known
as the Treatise on the Miracles of Saint Francis.56 Curiously, Thomas of Celano
does not mention levitations directly in ­either of his hagiographies, but he does
say that Francis “dedicated not only his w
­ hole heart, but his ­whole body as well”
to Christ and that he “was often suspended in such sweetness of contempla-
tion, caught up out of himself” that he “paid no attention to the ­things that
happened, as though he ­were a lifeless corpse.”57
As squabbling among the Franciscans intensified over their interpretation
of the rule written for the order by Francis, another hagiographer took up the
task of interpreting Francis’s life. This was Giovanni di Fidanza (1221–1274), bet-
ter known as Saint Bonaventure, a brilliant Franciscan theologian-­philosopher—­
and a schoolmate of Thomas Aquinas at the University of Paris—­who eventually
became minister-­general of his order in 1257. Observing a request made of
him by the general chapter of the Franciscans that elected him as their leader,
Bonaventure wrote two hagiographical texts, the Legenda Major, intended for
reading, and a shorter Legenda Minor, intended primarily for liturgical use in
the choir—­that is, for the ritual life of Franciscans. Hoping he could bring an
end to the extremism and fracturing within his order, Bonaventure synthesized
the work of Thomas de Celano and other texts that ­were in circulation, fash-
ioning an account of Francis’s life that tamed the wildness of Francis’s commit-
ment to radical poverty without diminishing the intensity of his mysticism,
miracles, and super­natural encounters (fig. 11).
Completed in 1261, both Legenda quickly eclipsed Thomas of Celano’s work,
thanks largely to the fact that soon ­after their completion, a General Chapter of
the Franciscan order in 1266 decreed that the Legenda Major would henceforth
be the official and definitive hagiography.58 According to one interpreter, the
Legenda Minor had a profound impact too ­because the incorporation of the mir-
acle stories in ritual “removed Francis from the category of local thaumaturge
 h o v e r i n g , f ly i n g , a n d a ll t h at 47

Figure 11. Giotto is one of the first Western artists to depict a levitation. In this fresco, he attempts
to faithfully re-­create Bonaventure’s description of the event.

and reformulated his memory as that of a universal miracle, accessible to all

through contemplation, and transferable, so to speak, to any locale.”59 And, un-
like Thomas of Celano, Bonaventure does mention levitation explic­itly in both
Legenda. In the Major, he writes: “He was occasionally seen raised up from the
ground and surrounded with a shining cloud, as he prayed at night with his
hands stretched out in the form of a cross.” Then he attributes the miracle to the
connection between body and soul, adding: “The brilliance that enveloped his
body was a sign of the miraculous light which flooded his soul.”60
 48 aloft

About a hundred years ­after Francis’s death, as rancorous divisions over

the issue of poverty continued to plague the Franciscan order, a third major ha-
giography was written by Ugolino di Monte Santa Maria (ca. 1260–1348), a
Franciscan friar who belonged to the Observant, or Spiritual, branch of the
order, which observed the vow of poverty more strictly than the Conventual branch.
This text was an anthology of narratives, some gathered from the e­ arlier hagi-
ographies and o
­ thers taken from the texts and oral traditions that circulated
among the Spiritual Franciscans, many of which had not been collected by
Bonaventure or Thomas of Celano. Originally written in Latin,61 Ugolino’s text
was condensed and translated into Italian with the title Fioretti di San Francesco,
or ­Little Flowers of Saint Francis, in reference to the Latin term for anthologies,
florilegium, a gathering of flowers.
­Whether the narratives in this bouquet of stories ­were genuine eyewitness
accounts that had been circulating orally for a ­century is unknown, but some
experts have argued that they ­were indeed.62 What is beyond dispute is that due
to the im­mense popularity of the Fioretti, t­hese accounts—­regardless of their
provenance—­became part and parcel of Franciscan lore and gave the world a
Francis who levitates dramatically. In contrast to Bonaventure, who in his sole
reference to levitation simply says very dryly that Francis “was occasionally seen
raised off the ground,” the Fioretti states: “St. Francis, through constant prayer,
began to experience more often the sweet consolations of divine contemplation,
as a result of which he was many times so rapt in God that he was seen by his
companions raised bodily above the ground and absorbed in God.”63 So this
text not only indicates that t­ hese levitations began to increase t­ oward the end
of Francis’s life but asserts that they took place very frequently. The Fioretti also
claims that “­because of his purity,” B
­ rother Leo, one of Francis’s closest com-
panions, “merited time and time again to see St. Francis rapt in God and raised
above the ground.” Leo’s access to Francis’s ecstasies was apparently constant,
and according to the following description of what he often witnessed, ­these
experiences could perhaps be as overwhelming as they ­were astonishing: “He
found him . . . ​raised up into the air sometimes as high as three feet, sometimes
four, at other times halfway up or at the top of the beech trees—­and some of ­those
trees w
­ ere very high. At other times he found him raised so high in the air and
surrounded by such radiance that he could hardly see him. Then B
­ rother Leo would
kneel and prostrate himself completely on the ground on the spot from which
the holy F
­ ather had been lifted into the air while praying.”64
 h o v e r i n g , f ly i n g , a n d a ll t h at 49

Making no effort to enumerate ­these levitations or to distinguish them

from one another, the text of the Fioretti provides two extremely significant de-
tails: first, that Francis could rise to g­ reat heights, and second, that the glow he
radiated was bright enough to blind observers and conceal his body. We also
learn that B
­ rother Leo would respond with a gesture of abject submission by
kneeling and then prostrating himself “completely,” flat on the ground ­under the
hovering Francis. In another passage, however, we are told that on at least one
occasion, Leo stood below Francis and tried to touch him: “One time among
­others, when he was standing ­there ­under St. Francis’s feet,” we read, he was
“raised so high above the ground” that he could not be reached.65
The most unusual levitation recorded in the Fioretti does not involve Leo
but rather ­Brother Masseo, another close companion of Francis. And the phe-
nomenon described is unparalleled in the annals of Christian levitation. While
praying in a church with Masseo, Francis went into an ecstasy so intense that
“flames of love seemed to issue from his face and mouth.” As if this ­were not
extraordinary enough, Francis then involves Masseo in his rapture: “And ­going
out to his companion, all afire with love, he said forcefully: ‘Ah! Ah! Ah! ­Brother,
Masseo, give yourself to me!’ And he said it three times. And ­Brother Masseo,
greatly amazed at his fervor, threw himself into the holy ­Father’s arms when he
said for the third time: ‘Give yourself to me!’ Then St. Francis, with his mouth
wide open and repeating very loudly ‘Ah! Ah! Ah,!’ by the power of the Holy
Spirit lifted B
­ rother Masseo up in the air with his breath and projected him
forward the length of a long spear.” ­After returning to the ground, an astounded
Masseo would l­ater say that the “spiritual consolation and sweetness” he felt
while levitating was the greatest experience of his life.66
Francis is unusual in so many ways that it would be wrong to say that his
levitations—­including the one with Masseo—­were a chief distinguishing trait of
his mysticism. Levitations w
­ ere but one of Francis’s many mystical gifts. What truly
stands out in the case of Francis is the way in which his levitations are not
explic­itly mentioned by Thomas de Celano and then how they barely surface in
Bonaventure’s hagiography. ­There is something odd about this silence and re-
straint and about the way in which the levitation accounts show up a hundred
years ­after his death, and even then, t­ here is no attempt to enumerate or show-
case them. And what makes it difficult to dispel the oddness is the fact that we
have no definite knowledge of the provenance of the levitation accounts in the
Fioretti. This void raises questions. On the one hand, if ­these stories ­really did
 50 aloft

circulate for a ­century before being written down, perhaps some ele­ment of fear
drove them under­ground. Why the fear? On the other hand, if ­these accounts
­were l­ater inventions, we must assume that someone deemed it useful or neces-
sary to add levitation to Francis’s astounding trea­sure chest of won­ders. Why
should anyone have felt the need to do so? Despite the oddness of it all, and the
questions raised by it, one ­thing is certain: thanks largely to the Fioretti, Fran-
cis adds luster to the phenomenon of levitation due to his unquestionable holi-
ness, and on top of this he establishes paradigms subsequently used in the
mea­sur­ing up of ­future levitators. So, when all is said and done, the oddness of
Francis’s levitations is eclipsed by the significance bestowed upon them by his
ecstatic glow, so to speak, which, as B
­ rother Leo said, could be blindingly bright.
Another peculiar circumstance to consider is that Francis was a trail-
blazer, a holy man on the cutting edge of the miraculous, for it is during his
lifetime and immediately afterward that we begin to see a steadily increasing
number of levitations in hagiographies. And while some of ­these levitations
involve relatively minor figures, some involve extremely prominent saints. One
of the most spectacular accounts, in fact, involves none other than Francis’s ha-
giographer Bonaventure and the best-­known of all medieval theologians, Thomas
Aquinas (1225–1274). At the center of this narrative we find Francis himself.
As it turns out, in 1260, while he was collecting material in and around Assisi
for his hagiography of Francis, Bonaventure spent some time at the friary of
La Verna, and by sheer coincidence Aquinas happened to be t­here too. One
day, while Bonaventure was working on his Francis research in his cell, Aquinas
went to visit him and found him hovering in the air rapt in ecstasy. According
to one account of this rare encounter between two of the greatest doctors of
the Catholic Church, Aquinas quickly backed out of Bonaventure’s cell, saying
as he gingerly closed the door: “Let us leave him alone, this saint is working
for a saint.”67 We have reports of Thomas Aquinas levitating, too, on other oc-
casions, although he is certainly not best known for that. According to his
hagiographer William of Thoco, who had known him personally, Thomas was
seen levitating in ecstasy at Salerno and Naples, about two cubits high (three feet)
off the floor.68
The list of thirteenth-­, fourteenth-­, and fifteenth-­century levitators gleaned
from the Acta Sanctorum indicates a marked increase in reports of this phenom-
enon in the latter part of the ­Middle Ages. The individuals on this list, however,
all made it through the rigorous pro­cess of beatification and canonization, which
means that we are looking at only a small portion of the total number of men
 h o v e r i n g , f ly i n g , a n d a ll t h at 51

and ­women deemed holy and worthy of the coveted title of “blessed” or “saint,”
some—or many—of whom might have had a reputation as levitators. This list,
therefore, gives us only a partial glimpse of the pos­si­ble sum total of levitation
accounts from this time period. Yet this glimpse, ­limited as it is, suggests an
increasing number of levitation accounts during t­hese three centuries. In the
list of beatified and canonized levitators, we find well-­known figures alongside
­those of vari­ous lower levels of fame or obscurity.
And we find some revealing patterns too. First, we can see a high number
of female levitators, indicating that this was one rare area in which ­women could
excel alongside men, or perhaps even surpass them: In the three centuries be-
tween 1200 and 1400, for instance, nearly half of the levitation accounts in the
Acta Sanctorum—­a full 47 ­percent—­are ­women. Second, we also note a broad
geo­graph­i­cal reach for this phenomenon, with representatives from at least a
dozen language areas, stretching from Sicily in the south to E
­ ngland and Ger-
many in the north, and Castile in the west to Hungary and Croatia in the east.
Third, we can find some extreme levitators who rival Francis when it comes to
heights reached, such as Agnes of Montepulciano, who embraced a crucifix that
hung high off the ground,69 and Colette of Corbie, who ­rose so high that every­
one lost sight of her.70 And, fourth—­especially in the fifteenth ­century—we find
a good number of effulgent aethrobats too—­that is, levitators who glowed dur-
ing their ecstasies, such as Venturino of Bergamo, Catherine Colombini, Vin-
cent Ferrer, Peter Regalado, and Antoninus of Florence. In one extreme case of
luminance, the Dominican friar Peter Jeremias of Palermo shone so brightly that
the light poured out through the cracks in his door, as if his cell ­were on fire.
When an alarmed superior broke down the door, thinking Peter Jeremias needed
rescuing, he was surprised to find him hovering and glowing in ecstasy.71

Early Modern Mayhem: The Catholic Inflationary Spiral

By the beginning of the sixteenth ­century, “good” or “holy” levitations had be-
come a common hallmark of genuine sanctity. And it is no mere coincidence
that the invention of the printing press in the mid-­fifteenth ­century coincides
with a marked increase in the number of recorded levitations. Printed hagiog-
raphies, read by both monastics and laypeople, helped raise awareness of all pat-
terns of holiness, including levitation. By the mid-­sixteenth ­century, when the
printing industry was already a hundred years old and the reading public
had grown in size substantially, the writing and publishing of hagiographies had
 52 aloft

become a very popu­lar—­and profitable—­venture. In Spain alone, for instance,

the number of hagiographic titles published grew from 23 between 1500 and
1559 to 350 between 1600 and 1639.72
In addition, other currents of change had begun to redefine the religious
landscape of Christendom, overturning medieval assumptions and enhancing
the significance of the miraculous within Catholicism. With the advent of the
Protestant Reformation, which denied not only medieval concepts of sainthood
but the metaphysical assumptions that ­shaped them, miraculous phenomena
such as levitation became markers of difference. While Protestants denied that
anyone could ever become holy through asceticism, or that mystical ecstasy and
miracles such as levitation ­were pos­si­ble, Catholics responded by seizing upon
what­ever Protestants denied, augmenting its value. So as Protestants mocked
asceticism, monasticism, mysticism, and belief in miracles or, even worse, as-
cribed such phenomena to the devil, Catholics focused all the more on such
­things, not just to deny Protestant claims but to strengthen traditional faith
from within. Consequently, saints proliferated throughout the sixteenth ­century,
especially in ­those lands that remained resolutely Catholic, such as Italy and
Spain, and the magnitude of the outward signs of their holiness increased in
inverse proportion to their extinction in Protestant lands.
Along with the increase in the number of exceptional men and w
­ omen
who accomplished incredible ­things came an increase in the number of printed
hagiographies that extolled what was most distinctively Catholic about them.
Sainthood became more formulaic than before and so did the hagiographies,
many of which ­were published ­under the nearly identical, pro forma, fill-­in-­the-­
blank title of The Life, Virtues, and Miracles of the [Venerable, or Blessed, or Saint]
So-­and-­So, with a heavy emphasis on the virtues and miracles that Protestants
deemed impossible.73 Spain and Italy, ­those two regions where Protestantism
had made no significant inroads, suddenly seemed full of otherworldly men and
­women who lived suspended between heaven and earth, figuratively or literally.
Credulity was strained by the sheer volume of miracle accounts. In the 1580s,
for instance, the Jesuit Pedro de Ribadeneira complained of a “spirit of illusion
­running rampant” and “the crowd of deceived, evil w
­ omen whom we have re-
cently seen in many of Spain’s most illustrious cities; t­hose who with their
trances, revelations, and stigmata have excited and deceived their priests and
confessors.”74 By 1600, a prominent Spanish observer could say: “It seems as if
one had wished to reduce ­these kingdoms to a republic of enchanted beings,
living outside the natu­ral order of ­things.”75
 h o v e r i n g , f ly i n g , a n d a ll t h at 53

Oddly enough, then, the advent of modernity brought with it to Catholic

Eu­rope an increase in precisely the kinds of phenomena that would be dismissed
as thoroughly impossible and “medieval” by Protestants and skeptics of all
stripes, especially a­ fter the Enlightenment of the eigh­teenth ­century reduced
all religion to mere ethics or sheer nonsense. Olivier Leroy’s list of sixteenth-­
century aethrobats culled from the Acta Sanctorum is a veritable who’s who of
the Catholic Reformation: Francis Xavier, Ignatius Loyola, Peter of Alcántara,
Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, and Philip Neri, to name but a few. The list
for the seventeenth ­century is even longer and the exploits of some of ­these
levitators even more incredible. But ­these lists do not include the hundreds of
­others who never came to be well known, such as Saint Hyacintha Mariscotti
(1585–1640),76 or ­those who never made it to sainthood or whose cases for can-
onization stalled or w
­ ere never launched. Perhaps one could even assume that
a total listing might number in thousands rather than hundreds, for it is a case
of counting not just ­those whose canonization fizzled—­for what­ever reason—­
but also all t­ hose ­others whose cases w
­ ere never promoted at all or whose levi-
tations ­were recorded in manuscripts or simply reported by word of mouth. In
addition, one must reckon with all ­those cases of levitation that ­were reported
to the Inquisition ­under the rubric of “feigned sanctity,” many of which ­were
judged to be demonic or simply deceitful.77 For, not surprisingly, the religious
mayhem of the era brought the devil back into the phenomenon of levitation
with a vengeance.
As far as holy levitations ­were concerned, the most significant figure is
Saint Teresa of Avila, whose role in the history of levitation is im­mense. Teresa
reflected and intensified the inflationary spiral in Catholic levitation in unique
ways. First, she not only wrote about her own levitations but dissected the mir-
acle from within, giving it an oddly empirical sense of real­ity as first-­person
testimony. Second, the number of eyewitness testimonies concerning her levi-
tations is so ­great, and the descriptions so detailed, as to appear mundane,
despite their otherworldliness. Moreover, Teresa did not just experience levita-
tion but objected to it, complaining to God and eventually convincing Him to
banish it from her life. To fully understand what holy levitation was supposed
to be, then, it seems best to devote an entire chapter to her, immediately ­after
this one.
Nonetheless, what­ever Teresa reified—as personally intense and unique
as it was—­can only be understood in a communal or social context, as sharing
in a very specific mentality in which certain expectations w
­ ere commonplace
 54 aloft

and in which no mystic could be wholly sui generis, totally unlike any o
­ thers.
Like all canonized saints of her age, to be regarded as genuinely holy Teresa had
to reflect common expectations while giving them her own personal stamp, for
any levitator who did not meet a very specific set of criteria was bound to crash
or be brought down quickly.
As one of the many levitators who ­were ­under scrutiny around the same
time, Teresa needs to be viewed alongside her contemporaries. And among ­these
levitators of her era, some stand out, not just for their leading roles in the Cath-
olic Reformation but also for the characteristics of their ecstasies, which further
expanded the marvel of levitation beyond mere hovering in terms of height,
duration, location, posture, and accompanying phenomena.
Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556), the founder of the Jesuit order, was observed
levitating vari­ous times, rapt in ecstasy with his knees bent and his arms out-
stretched, four or five palms above the floor. He was also known to fill a room
with dazzling light when he was aloft.78 Due to the fact that several illustrated
hagiographies of Saint Ignatius ­were published around the time of his beati-
fication and canonization, we have three dif­fer­ent depictions of ­these events
(figs. 12–14).
Francis Xavier (1506–1552), the best known of all Jesuit missionaries, re-
portedly r­ose into the air frequently while he celebrated Mass—­according to
one of his baroque hagiographers—­and levitated with his knees bent, his face
aglow in a radiant light. And some witnesses in Goa, India, saw him levitating
in a kneeling position as he distributed communion.79
Tomás de Villanueva (1488–1555), an Augustinian priest and reformer
who served as a councilor for Emperor Charles V and was eventually appointed
archbishop of Valencia, has the distinction of having stayed aloft for twelve hours
while celebrating Mass, far longer than any other levitator of his era.80
Pedro de Alcántara (1499–1562), a Franciscan mystic who mentored
Teresa of Avila, was an extreme ascetic and exceptional levitator who reportedly
soared outdoors, as high as the tallest trees, and was also seen flying ecstatically
from a garden to a nearby church.81 In addition, he could stay aloft for as long
as three hours and become as luminous as the sun.82 Philip Neri (1515–1595),
a mystic, reformer, and founder of the Congregation of the Oratory, was another
frequent levitator, especially while celebrating Mass, when he would sometimes
rise ten or fifteen feet off the ground or as high as the ceiling. His body was
often bathed in light too. But Philip felt uncomfortable with such public levita-
tions, and whenever he was in the com­pany of o
­ thers inside a church or any
 h o v e r i n g , f ly i n g , a n d a ll t h at 55

Figure 12. Engraving from an illustrated hagiography of Saint Ignatius Loyola that describes one
of his levitations, as follows: “He was observed many times at night, his room filled with a bright
light; and he was seen raised up in the air, with his knees bent, weeping and sighing, and saying
‘My God, how infinitely good You are; You even put up with ­those who are evil and perverse, which
is what I am.’ ”

other sacred space, he tried to keep his prayers short, fearing that he might be-
come airborne. Philip might have had good reason for keeping his levitating
out of view as much as pos­si­ble, for not every­one was ready or willing to accept
any hovering person as holy, as happened with a young girl whose immediate
reaction upon seeing him aloft was to tell her m
­ other that Philip must be a
demoniac.83
 56 aloft

Figure 13. Another engraving from a hagiography of Saint Ignatius Loyola depicting him in ecstasy,
levitating and glowing, with an eyewitness included in the image for good mea­sure.

Salvador de Orta (1520–1567), a lay Franciscan ­brother who served as

a cook, porter, and designated beggar for his friary during much of his life,
was one of many miracle-­working holy men and ­women denounced to the
Spanish Inquisition on suspicion of being ­under demonic influence. Cleared
of all charges against him but still viewed by his superiors as something of a
prob­lem ­because of the attention his miracles attracted, Salvador was shuf-
 h o v e r i n g , f ly i n g , a n d a ll t h at 57

Figure 14. One of the earliest depictions of Saint Ignatius in ecstasy, levitating and glowing.

fled to vari­ous friaries h

­ ere and t­ here and ended up spending his final years in
remote Sardinia. His distinction in the history of levitation involves his love
of nature—­a very Franciscan trait—­which could send him into ecstatic levi-
tations. Once, for instance, while he was out begging, a prominent ­family in-
vited him to join them for dinner and at some point handed him a pomegranate.
 58 aloft

Upon slicing it in two, seeing the tightly packed purple grains, and marveling
at their beauty and order, Salvador ­rose up in ecstasy with outstretched arms
and remained suspended in the air, much to the surprise of his hosts, who ran
out and gathered their neighbors so they could see this miracle with their
own eyes.84

Early Modern Mayhem: The Protestant Attack

Protestantism created a culture decidedly uneasy with the mixing of heaven and
earth or the sacred and the mundane while at the same time retaining early
Christian and medieval binary assumptions about the dev­il’s activity in the
world. In ­doing so, Protestantism not only desacralized the world substantially
but si­mul­ta­neously suffused it with an intense demonic presence by ascribing
all levitations to the devil, along with all other miracles claimed by the Catholic
Church.
This Protestant reconfiguration of the medieval cosmos was a synchro-
nous mixture of desacralizing and demonizing, and this somewhat paradoxical
change in worldview and mentality was derived from certain concepts innately
central to Protestant thinking. Four essential reconfigurations of real­ity stand
out most starkly—­all of them paradigm shifts equal in magnitude to the rejec-
tion of the geocentric cosmos by Copernicus and Galileo—­each of which con-
cerned some of the most fundamental concepts in the Christian religion: first,
how m
­ atter relates to spirit; second, how the natu­ral relates to the super­natural;
third, how ­human nature relates to the divine; and fourth, how the living relate to
the dead. When it came to levitation, that fourth paradigm shift concerning the
living and the dead mattered ­little, but the first three ­were of enormous signifi-
cance. This is not to say that external ­factors—­political, social, economic, or
cultural—­had no role to play in the evolution of a new Christian viewpoint but
rather to emphasize that Protestants, who ­were themselves affected by ­these
­factors, became very aggressive agents of the twin pro­cesses of desacralization
and demonization.
While this ­great paradigm shift spearheaded by Protestants affected nearly
­every aspect of daily life, and especially of the place of symbols and rituals in
it, our sole concern h
­ ere is to gauge the effect it had on conceptions of the mi-
raculous and, more specifically, on levitation. So let us focus on the three con-
cepts that changed the meaning and function of levitation in the eyes of
Protestants of all stripes.
 h o v e r i n g , f ly i n g , a n d a ll t h at 59

First, let us consider the reconfiguration of the relationship between

­matter and spirit. Ever since the inception of their religion, Christians had ac-
cepted a binary understanding of the cosmos: God was spirit, and He had cre-
ated a material world, ontologically related to Him but metaphysically dif­fer­ent
and inferior. ­Humans w
­ ere the pinnacle of this creation, part m
­ atter and part
spirit, composed of a mortal body and an immortal soul. Bridging t­hese two
essential realms of existence was the role of religion or, more specifically, of the
Church and its clergy, and the bridging was effected in myriad ways through
rituals and symbols. In sum, the medieval Christian world pulsated with acces-
sibility to the divine, replete as it was with material points of contact with the
spiritual realm.
Protestants made ­matter and spirit much less compatible. And their re-
jection of material access points to the spiritual realm redrew the bound­aries
between the sacred and the profane, restructuring the conceptual structure of
Chris­tian­ity as well as its social and cultural realities, turning all Protestants
into iconoclasts, literally and figuratively, including ­those who retained some ma-
terial aspects of Catholic worship, such as the Lutherans and Anglicans.85
This ontological and metaphysical reconfiguration varied among Protes-
tants but found its most extreme expression in the Reformed tradition and in two
of their guiding princi­ples: “Finitum non est capax infiniti” (The finite cannot
contain the infinite) and “Quantum sensui tribueris tantum spiritui detraxeris”
(The physical detracts from the spiritual). ­These princi­ples, in turn, ­were de-
rived from three key assumptions. First, the Reformed Protestant tradition as-
sumed that God was radically transcendent and that the super­natural realm
was wholly “other,” above and beyond the natu­ral and created order. Ulrich
Zwingli argued that the ­things of earth ­were “carnal” and that they w
­ ere “en-
mity against God.” He also argued that ­matter and spirit ­were incapable of mix-
ing and that “­those who trust in any created t­hing whatsoever are not truly
pious.”86 John Calvin was equally adamant: “What­ever holds down and confines
the senses to the earth is contrary to the covenant of God; in which, inviting us
to himself, He permits us to think of nothing but what is spiritual.”87 Moreover,
Reformed metaphysics proposed that m
­ atter is not only incapable of bridging
the gap between heaven and earth; it actually acts as an obstacle. “The more
you focus on material t­ hings,” said Zwingli, “the more you take away from the
spiritual.”88 John Calvin agreed: “What­ever holds down and confines the senses
to the earth is contrary to the covenant of God; in which, inviting us to Him-
self, He permits us to think of nothing but what is spiritual.”89
 60 aloft

The Protestant redefinition of m

­ atter and spirit was revolutionary on two
fronts. First, it was a theological upheaval and a redefinition of the sacred. Sec-
ond, it was also a redefinition of the role of the ordained clergy, who w
­ ere no
longer viewed as conduits to the realm of the sacred but rather as ministers of
the Word. Religion was no longer a search for the immanence of the divine in
this world or an attempt to encounter heaven in the sacraments or in sacred
spaces through pilgrimages and the veneration of images and relics. Nor was it
a search for the miraculous and otherworldly mediated by priests who enjoyed
a higher ontological status than their flocks and through whose agency the tran-
substantiation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ could be
effected. Religion was something ­else, something less immanent and more tran-
scendent, something more focused on an unseen spiritual realm and on a code
of ethics, something internalized by individuals and communities, something
less tactile and definitely more this-­worldly.
Next, let us move on to the second Protestant conceptual shift: the re-
configuring of the interaction between the natu­ral and the super­natural. Overall,
despite the many differences and heated squabbles among themselves, Protes-
tants rejected the commonplace irruptions of the sacred that w
­ ere central to
medieval religion. More specifically, Protestants did away with the miraculous
phenomena of Catholicism and denied the possibility of merging with God in
mystical ecstasy.
In many ways, this second paradigm shift was a desacralization of the
world much more intense than that brought about by the Protestant war against
idolatry and more profound than that against ­those non-­Christian practices la-
beled as “magic” or “superstition.” This was the ultimate demystification and
a Copernican revolution in worldview, even though Max Weber failed to see it
as such.
One of the most distinctive traits of Protestantism was its rejection of
postbiblical miracles and all t­ hose practically oriented super­natural events that
historians now classify as thaumaturgy. God could work miracles, certainly, as
revealed countless times in the Bible, but as Protestants saw it, the age of mir-
acles had ended long ago, and God’s super­natural interventions ­were a t­ hing of
the distant past, strictly l­imited to biblical times. Luther was blunt about it:
“­Those vis­i­ble works are simply signs for the ignorant, unbelieving crowd, and
for the sake of ­those that are yet to be attracted; but as for us who already know
what we know, and believe the Gospel, what do we need them for? . . . ​Conse-
quently, it is not at all surprising that they have now ceased since the Gospel
has been sounded everywhere and preached to t­ hose who had not known of God
 h o v e r i n g , f ly i n g , a n d a ll t h at 61

before, whom he had to attract with outward miracles, just as when we throw
apples and pears to ­children.”90
As if this ­were not enough, Luther added one crowning objection to all
the miraculous claims made by Catholics: the devil could manipulate nature and
deceive p
­ eople, and often did, especially in the Catholic Church, which, as he
saw it, was led by the Antichrist. This polemically charged Protestant tradition
of attributing Catholic miracle claims to the devil was above all an affirmation
of their conviction in the inviolability of natu­ral laws. Nature could be manipu-
lated by Satan and h
­ umans could certainly be fooled by him, Protestants ar-
gued, but genuine super­natural miracles w
­ ere restricted to God’s interventions
in biblical times. This assumption about the cessation of miracles was voiced
repeatedly among Protestants, as if in a ­giant echo chamber, and could be found
in the work of many of their polemicists. One of ­these was William Tyndale,
the first Protestant translator of the Bible into En­glish, who argued that mira-
cles ceased at the end of the first ­century, as soon as “the scripture was fully
received and au­then­tic.”91
Ulrich Zwingli also argued against miracles, as did his successor Heinrich
Bullinger, who charged that Catholic miracles required “the help of witchcraft,”92
but it was their French disciple, John Calvin, who gave the Protestant denial of
the miraculous its definitive contours. Like Luther before him, Calvin argued
that the only function of miracles was to confirm the authority of God’s mes-
sengers and that they ­were restricted to ­those rare occasions when God had
something to reveal. But Calvin also took a metaphysical turn, explic­itly stating
that the ultimate purpose of all biblical miracles was not to alter the fabric of
the material natu­ral order but simply to authenticate revelation.93 Moreover, ar-
gued Calvin, since Protestants ­were not revealing anything new, but rather as-
serting the primacy of the Bible, it was therefore wrong for Catholics to demand
miracles from them. Moreover, Calvin also proposed that all the miracles claimed
by the Catholic Church came straight from hell. “We should also remember,” he
pointed out, “that Satan has his miracles.”94
Accusing the Catholic Church of being possessed by Satan and his Anti-
christ was a polemical tactic employed by Protestants everywhere, at all levels,
by propagandists such as Georg Schwartz in Germany, Philips van Marnix in
the Netherlands, and John Bale in ­England.95 And this was often done with
obsessive zeal. In ­England—­where this zeal kept printers very busy96—­the
mathematician and scientist John Napier drew up a very long list of medieval
wonder-­workers who ­were frauds, necromancers, and magicians. This list included
the tenth-­century levitator Saint Dunstan as well as twenty-­one medieval popes.97
 62 aloft

John Bale was another propagandist who never tired of railing against “the syna-
gogue of Satan” and the “spouse of the devil”—­that is, the Catholic Church—­and
“the dev­il’s unholy vicar at Rome, with all his cursings and conjurings.” Bale,
too, drew up a list of diabolical magician-­popes, and he called one of them, John
XII (955–964), “the holy vicar of Satan and successor of Simon Magus.”98 Not
to be outdone, the Puritan theologian William Perkins came up with a similar
list, adding more popes to it and referring to them as “sundry mal-­contented
priests of Rome” who “aspired unto the chair of supremacy by Diabolical assis-
tance.”99 In ­England, in par­tic­ul­ar, due to the presence of Catholic Dissenters
and their clandestine priests within the realm, the association of Catholic
rituals and miracles with demonism and witchcraft became common among
Protestant polemicists. Denouncing Catholic priests as “a nest of conjuring mass-­
mongers” who engaged in “magic and conjuration” became a familiar trope.100
Major treatises on sorcery and the dark arts, such as Reginald Scot’s A Discovery
of Witchcraft or King James I’s Daemonologie, took ­every opportunity they could
to link Catholicism with demonic magic.101
So, even though some Protestants (especially Lutherans) continued to be-
lieve in demonic skullduggery and natu­ral signs and portents that conveyed
messages, such as cloud formations, astronomical and meteorological anoma-
lies, or monstrous births—­won­ders (mirabilia) rather than miracles (miraculi)—­
and even though super­natural miracles eventually worked their way back into
Protestant piety in vari­ous ­limited ways during the late seventeenth and eigh­
teenth centuries,102 Protestantism might have desacralized and disenchanted
the world much more through its take on miracles than through any of its other
princi­ples. Ironically, as Bale’s quip about Pope John XII being the “successor
of Simon Magus” suggests, this desacralization si­mul­ta­neously increased the dev­
il’s presence in the world’s history as well as in the pre­sent.
Fi­nally, let us turn our attention to the third major Protestant conceptual
shift: the redefinition of the relationship between the ­human and the divine,
which naturally led to a new take on levitation and all mystical phenomena. All
Protestants—­even ­those few Radical extremists who claimed to have access to
the divine realm—­shared in a common rejection of the three basic steps of the
mystical quest: purgation, illumination, and ­union. T
­ hese hallowed steps and all
other enumerations of them had been the bedrock of the mystical tradition of
the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches since the second ­century. Now, sud-
denly, the very idea of becoming ever purer and more godlike seemed repul-
sively false to Protestants, along with the assumption that anyone could ever
 h o v e r i n g , f ly i n g , a n d a ll t h at 63

have super­natural encounters with God in this life, especially of the sort that
caused h
­ uman bodies to float in the air. The truth, as Protestants saw it, was
that no one can truly rise above this world (figuratively and literally) or become
a dif­fer­ent kind of ­human being suffused with super­natural gifts. As Luther put
it: “What would the nuns and monks do if they heard that in the sight of God
they are not a bit better than married ­people and mud-­stained farmers?”103 So,
in one fell swoop, by rejecting what had been the ultimate claims of medieval
Christian mysticism, Protestants sought not only the abolition of monasticism
but also the relegation of all such outrageous claims to the demonic sphere. The
Protestant argument was as clear as it was s­ imple: since God does not levitate
bodies or stigmatize them, all such Catholic claims must be ­either false tricks,
or delusions, or nonsense, or—if such ­things actually do ever happen—­the work
of the devil, undoubtedly.
The Protestant rejection of monasticism, based as it was on a very dif­fer­
ent understanding of the perfectibility of ­human nature and of the way in which
­humans are redeemed by Christ, figures prominently as a social change effected
by theology: it not only caused the largest re­distribution of property in Western
history before the Bolsheviks came along in the early twentieth c­ entury but also
brought about a social and economic revolution. Suddenly, an entire social class
was eliminated and all their substantial wealth seized. In addition, on both the
material and conceptual level, a way of life that focused intensely on otherworld-
liness was extinguished. The desacralizing impact of the extinction of monasti-
cism seems obvious enough and needs ­little elaboration. The impact of the
rejection of mysticism—­the main goal of monasticism—is harder to discern
but no less significant. Within Catholicism, men and ­women who reached the
pinnacle of holiness w
­ ere considered living proof of the divinization of ­matter.
They not only conversed with Christ and the Virgin Mary but had ineffable
encounters with the Godhead; they also swooned in rapture, went into trances,
levitated, bilocated, read minds, prophesied, manifested the wounds of Christ on
their bodies, and healed the sick and lame. And when they died, their corpses
could emit a wonderful aroma and remain intact.104
Protestants rejected all this intimate commingling with the divine and
super­natural. Even Martin Luther, who was influenced by the fourteenth-­century
mystics John Tauler and Henry Suso, could not abide the ultimate claims made
by medieval ecstatics and despised all who claimed direct contact with the divine
as schwärmer, unhinged fanatics. John Calvin recoiled in horror at the thought
that ­humans might claim any sort of divinization, for his God was “entirely
 64 aloft

other” and “as dif­fer­ent from flesh as fire is from ­water.”105 Such a crossing of
bound­aries was impossible, argued Calvin, for the h
­ uman soul “is not only bur-
dened with vices, but is utterly devoid of all good.”106 Protestants sometimes
used the word “saint” to refer to the elect of God, but they had no saints in the
Catholic sense; that is, they denied that anyone could ever reach moral and spiri-
tual perfection in this life, embody super­natural phenomena, work miracles, or
intercede for the living in the next life from their perch in heaven. Protestant
saints lived out their call on earth without otherworldly encounters or miracu-
lous feats. Moreover, they ceased to be links with the numinous and w
­ ere not to
be venerated or approached as intercessors.
To restrict the super­natural to heaven and the ancient past in this man-
ner was to change the very essence of the Christian religion as it had been lived
for the previous fifteen centuries. Religion was no longer a dimension of life in
which one could encounter the miraculous and mystical—as documented in the
New Testament and all the hagiographies of the previous millennium and a
half—­but rather a way of seeking and finding inner and outer conformity to
the Word and w
­ ill of God. Religion was still definitely focused on a super­natural
real­ity, but that real­ity was manifest on earth in a much less intense, direct, or
otherworldly way than in Catholicism. So, as Protestantism made the laws of
nature more fixed and less malleable in the hands of God, religion itself became
something much more natu­ral and more this-­worldly. Consequently, it is no g­ reat
surprise that by the late seventeenth c­ entury, miracles began to be ascribed to
natu­ral ­causes rather than super­natural intervention in the laws of nature. An
anonymous En­glish author, for instance, published a pamphlet in 1683 in which
he argued that no miracle—­not even ­those recorded in the Bible—­had ever
contradicted the laws of nature.107 And he was not alone in thinking this way.
Nehemiah Grew, a botanist, made the same argument, and so did Edmund Hal-
ley, the famed astronomer a­ fter whom the world’s best-­known comet is named.
Clerics, too, joined this assault on super­natural ­causes, putting a theological
spin on it. The Anglican Thomas Sprat (1635–1713), bishop of Rochester, pro-
posed that Chris­tian­ity should be based on reason rather than emotion. Conse-
quently, he also suggested that since God had established the laws of nature
and ­every event had natu­ral ­causes, the Christian religion therefore had no
need for the kinds of “extraordinary testimonies from Heaven” favored by “en-
thusiasts who pollute . . . ​religion with their own passions.”108
This is not to say, however, that Protestant attitudes t­oward the miracu-
lous have ever remained fixed. The miraculous has wound its way back into Prot-
 h o v e r i n g , f ly i n g , a n d a ll t h at 65

estant piety in vari­ous ways and in differing degrees over the past four centuries,
especially during the twentieth ­century. We can catch a glimpse of the subtle
changes that began to take place in the eigh­teenth ­century, especially in the En­
glish colonies of North Amer­i­ca, during the spiritual revival known as the G
­ reat
Awakening. Intense emotional and physical reactions bordering on mystical ec-
stasy ­were a distinguishing feature of the fervor generated by this awakening. The
wife of Jonathan Edwards, one of the leading lights of the ­Great Awakening,
was among ­those deeply affected in a physical way by her religious experiences.
Sarah Pierpont Edwards wrote a detailed description of an intense period of
religious ecstasies she experienced in early 1742. This document, recently discov-
ered, brims over with kinesthetics—­agitations, convulsions, fainting, intense
elation.109 And the way she writes about t­ hese ecstasies brings her closer to the
language found in Catholic mystics than to that of Calvin’s Institutes. Take this
elocution, for instance: “I Knew that what the foretaste of Glory I then had had
in my soul came from him & that I certainly should Go to him & should as it
­were drop into the divine being & be swallowed up in him.”110 Some passages
even hint at levitation, at least figuratively. Four of ­these are startling: “I could
not help as it ­were flying out of my chair without being held down”; “Some
verses which still Kept my Body in an Exceeding Agitation Constantly endeav-
ouring as it w
­ ere to leap & fly”; “My soul was so Exceedingly drawn a­ fter God
& Heaven that I hoped out of my Chair, I seemed soul & body as it ­were to be
drawn up from the Earth ­towards Heaven it seemd to me I must naturally &
necessarily ascend thither”; “It so exceedingly moved me that I could not avoid
Jumping & as it ­were flying Round the Pew with Exultation of soul.”111
Obviously, t­hese expressions of ecstatic bliss only make oblique meta­
phorical references to levitation, but they nonetheless employ language one
would not expect to find in a Calvinist. They also clearly indicate that by the
eigh­teenth c­ entury the vast gulf created between Catholic and Protestant piety
two centuries e­ arlier by the first and second generations of magisterial Reform-
ers was being bridged, at least in some corners of New ­England.

Miracles as Polemic
But even before such bridging took place, Protestants had never made miracles
dis­appear altogether. Not at all. As Calvin said, Satan had his own miracles, and
­those would not go away. Helen Parish has observed: “The miracles of the me-
dieval Church ­were not abandoned, but rather turned into polemical weapons
 66 aloft

that could be used to condemn Catholicism as a faith which was founded upon
deceit, manipulation, and credulity. Miracles that had provided the foundation
for the cult of the saints ­were recast as the tools of its destruction.”112 In an
additional polemical maneuver, Protestants went beyond portraying Catholic
miracles as products of “deceit, manipulation, and credulity” by giving them a
diabolical stench as well. And by arguing that the miracles claimed by the Cath-
olic Church ­were demonic, Protestants added a very potent weapon to their po-
lemical arsenal: Could any church in which the devil works so freely and constantly
­really be the true church?
If Protestants could turn the miraculous into polemic, so could Catho-
lics, for the conceptual and polemical mayhem flowed in two directions, natu-
rally and easily. Of the many Catholic polemicists who argued that miracles w
­ ere
an essential proof of the genuine divine origin of the one true church, Thomas
More stands out, principally b
­ ecause of the printed debate in which he engaged
the En­glish Protestant William Tyndale in the years 1529–1532. The first salvo
in this heated exchange was contained in More’s “A Dialogue concerning Her-
esies,” which Tyndale replied to in his “Answer to Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue,”
which, in turn, prompted More to write a blistering “Confutation of Tyndale’s
Answer.” More’s arguments for the necessity of miracles hinged on their role as
proof of divine power and of its presence in the true church. Arguing that God
“hath from the beginning joined His Word with wonderful works,” More insisted
that God still “causeth His church to do miracles still in e­ very age.” Pushing his
argument further, More added that miracles w
­ ere the surest proof of the church’s
divine origin, confirming time and time again “that the doctrine of the same
church is revealed and taught unto it by the Spirit of God.”113 Conversely, the
lack of miracles among Protestants proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that
the only “true” ­thing about their bickering newfangled churches was their de-
monic origin.
More was far from alone. Many Catholic hagiographers sharpened the po-
lemical edge of miracles too, even in countries where Protestants w
­ ere barely a
threat, such as Spain. The Dominican theologian Luis de Granada (1504–1588),
for one, argued that the continuity of the miraculous in the Catholic Church
was proof that it was still u
­ nder the same divine protection that had assisted
all of God’s p
­ eople in the Bible and in Christian history: “It is the same God at
work now as then,” he said. “One should not think it incredible that He should
do now what He did back then.”114
 h o v e r i n g , f ly i n g , a n d a ll t h at 67

Not surprisingly, one holy w

­ oman whose many miracles provided hagiog-
raphers with a golden opportunity to polish, sharpen, and push the argument
made by Thomas More and Luis de Granada was none other than Teresa of
Avila, that levitator who is the subject of chapter 2. One of her biographers,
Diego de Yepes (1530–1616), made no effort to conceal his delight over Teresa’s
usefulness in anti-­Protestant polemics, boasting that she was “an impressive
weapon in God’s hands.”115 Elaborating on this image, Yepes switched to an-
other meta­phor, saying, “It should cause ceaseless admiration to see the birth
of a new resplendent sun during ­these miserable times, in ­these most wretched
centuries during which the darkness of heresy and other sins have seemed in-
tent on blotting out the light of the Church.”116 Leaving meta­phors ­behind, Yepes
then moved in for the kill, bluntly: “This, too was planned by God that at al-
most the same time that the wicked Luther began to plot his lies and decep-
tions, and to concoct the poison with which he would ­later kill so many, God
should be forming this sainted w
­ oman so she could serve as an antidote to his
poison, so that what­ever was withdrawn from God on one side by Luther should
be gathered and collected on another side by her.”117
Yepes was in good com­pany, as one might expect. In sermons preached
throughout Spain on the occasion of Teresa’s beatification, this same theme
came up several times. Juan de Herrera, a Jesuit, exclaimed that Teresa had
crushed Luther’s head with the Rock of Christ. Similarly, Juan Gonzalez, a Do-
minican, crowed that Teresa had effectively won the war against Protestants who
scoffed at miracles and profaned sacred spaces and holy objects.118 In 1588, a
mere eight years ­after her death, the editor of her collected works, Luis de León,
wrote in his preface to that massive proj­ect: “God willed at this time—­when it
seems that the devil is triumphant among the throng of infidels who follow him,
and in the obstinacy of so many heretical nations who take his side . . . ​to disgrace
and ridicule him by putting before him not some valiant and learned man, but
a lone poor ­woman, to sound the challenge and raise the ­battle flag, and to openly
beget ­people who can trample, ­humble, and defeat him.”119
What are we to make of all this boasting and Protestant bashing, and of
the place of the miraculous in it? What light might this polemical melee shed
on the history of levitation and especially about its place in early modern West-
ern culture? And what about the issue of credulity and skepticism? What role,
if any, did t­ hese binary epistemological opposites play in this heated debate on
miracles?
 68 aloft

It has been argued that belief in miracles was one of the essential compo-
nents of baroque Catholicism, especially in Spain. As Julio Caro Baroja put it,
“The ‘­will to miracle’ ” ruled the day.” In hagiography and sermons, miracle was
essential; disbelief an improbable and largely invisible ­enemy. The few Catholic
clerics who tried to downplay miracles usually met with re­sis­tance. Fray Hor-
tensio Félix Paravicino, a preacher famous enough in his day to merit a portrait
by El Greco, found his congregation most unreceptive at the church of San Sal-
vador in Madrid when he told them that miracles might have been impor­tant
for the early church but w
­ ere no longer appropriate for the pre­sent.120
Official theology and popu­lar piety moved in tandem, propelled by faith
in miracle and guided by hagiography. In this mentality or “social imaginary,”
the natu­ral order was constantly subverted or invaded by the super­natural. The
laws of the physical world ­were malleable, subject to the super­natural power of
God and his saints. It was commonly believed that super­natural irruptions con-
stantly upended the laws of nature. “Real­ity” was defined according to such an
understanding: m
­ atter and flesh seemed but a gossamer veil that frequently re-
vealed the brilliance of a stronger, brighter force. This was a worldview con-
structed on faith rather than reason, a perpetual motion machine fueled by
miracles.121
Nonetheless, the arguments against skepticism raised by some of ­those
who wrote about Teresa suggest that not all Catholics ­were equally ready to be-
lieve in the miraculous dimension of her death and afterlife. A
­ fter publishing his
first edition of Teresa’s works, Luis de León found it necessary to write an “apol-
ogy,” to be included in subsequent editions, in which he openly challenged doubt-
ers and skeptics and in which he stated: “You do not want to believe? Go ahead
and doubt, you are f­ ree; you are lord and master of your own judgment; no one is
forcing you; go ahead, then, be skeptical, be know-­it-­alls, let ­there be as many of
you unbelievers as you want.”122 Another of Teresa’s hagiographers, the Jesuit Fran­
cisco de Ribera, also apparently suspected that his testimony might be doubted
and proffered the same disdainful advice when dealing with the subject of Tere-
sa’s postmortem miracles: “­There ­will be some who ­shall ask me why they should
believe what I relate in this chapter, ­because all of ­these accounts come only from
certain ­people who w
­ ere quite fond of la Madre [Teresa] and could have i­ magined
it all in order to fulfill their wishes. To t­ hese I reply: believe only as much as you
want to believe; I cannot push you any further, and I have no desire to do so
anyway.”123 This lit­er­a­ture was not aimed at skeptics but at believers. Obviously,
 h o v e r i n g , f ly i n g , a n d a ll t h at 69

Ribera was willing to entertain the possibility of doubters picking up his book,
but the subject made him bristle impatiently.
In contrast, Teresa’s confessor Jerónimo de Gracián seems to have been
keenly aware of the shadow of doubt that lurked among the learned, perhaps
more attentively than Ribera, and he used this as an artifice in a dialogue he
wrote about Teresa’s death, in which he sought to contrast belief and unbelief.
One of the characters in this text, named Anastasio, personifies skepticism. Act-
ing as a gadfly to two unskeptical characters who are ­eager to believe in miracles
and apparitions, Anastasio constantly tries to cast doubt on their assump-
tions, usually ascribing such phenomena to natu­ral pro­cesses. Anastasio does
not disagree that t­here are dif­fer­ent kinds of apparitions but maintains that
they are r­eally figments of the imagination. Illness, melancholy, bad humors,
and the “thick vapors that rise from the heart to the brain” often produce some
of the visions that are mistaken for apparitions. Fantasy and wish fulfillment,
combined with overactive imaginations, he argues, are the real cause of many
reported apparitions.124
And it was not only apparitions that could be explained away: doubt could
also be cast on all the other miracles associated with Teresa, including her levi-
tations. “In our ignorance of the way in which many natu­ral ­things work, they
seem miraculous to us,” says Anastasio. ­There could be some natu­ral cause for
the fact that Teresa’s corpse simply refuses to decompose, for the bodies of some
obviously unholy p
­ eople, such as Cicero’s d
­ aughter, a pagan, had also remained
uncorrupted. Sick p
­ eople “cured” with relics might have been recovering natu-
rally when the relics w
­ ere taken to them. Loud knocking noises heard in the
night might be caused by unknown natu­ral ­causes or by overheated imagina-
tions. In this way, says Anastasio, “Miracles are made from nothing.” Fi­nally, he
raises the same argument leveled against Catholic miracles by Reformed Prot-
estants: they occurred only in the Apostolic Age when they w
­ ere needed to lend
credibility to the Gospel, but they are no longer necessary and therefore never
happen anymore.125 As one might expect, despite its parroting of skeptical ar-
guments, this text is not a primer on unbelief. Gracián employs Anastasio’s ar-
guments as a foil. Ultimately, the other two characters Cirilo and Eusebio prevail
by raising doubts of their own about Anastasio’s logic, making faith and credu-
lity seem more acceptable than disbelief.126
Diego de Yepes did not seem too worried about skepticism. On the con-
trary, he asserted that ­those who thought that God no longer worked miracles
 70 aloft

could be easily proved wrong by Teresa’s miracles. And he had two arguments
against ­those few who might have doubted Teresa’s holiness or ascribed her mir-
acles to the devil. Diabolical causation was out of the question, he said, ­because
the devil would never want to credit and honor any saint and also b
­ ecause it
would be impossible for the devil to have sufficient power to delude so many
devout, holy, and respectable witnesses.127
The potentially self-­destructive circularity of ­these arguments against skep­
ticism suggests that Teresa’s hagiographers w
­ ere painfully aware of the skepticism
with which miracle accounts could be met, even by Catholics, but ultimately, they
­were more interested in bolstering the faith of believers than in changing the
minds of skeptics. Ribera, Yepes, Gracián, and Luis de León thought that the evi-
dence they presented could convince any “dispassionate” reader. Reports of Teresa’s
miracles had to be true ­because they conformed to hagiographic tradition; any-
one who chose to doubt t­ hese reports or who thought them to be delusions would
also have to disbelieve “many similar t­ hings, which fill the histories of ancient
and modern saints.” This argument was as ancient as the hagiographies used in
its construction and as ­simple as a perfect circle.128
Ultimately, then, Catholic polemics that employed miracles and hagiog-
raphies could lead polemicists to make a vertiginous wager of the sort made by
Luis de León. If one did not believe in the won­ders effected by God through
Teresa, he huffed, then one would have to doubt it pos­si­ble for God to work any
miracles at all in h
­ uman history. “Out with revelations, then!” he railed against
Catholic skeptics and Bible-­thumping, miracle-­denying Protestants. “Let us not
believe in visions or read about them!”129 Suspecting that few Protestants, if
any, would be willing to carry their skepticism about miracles to its logical con-
clusion and discard the Bible or that Catholics would turn into atheists, infi-
dels, or pagans, t­hese polemicists wagered that the credibility of Chris­tian­ity
itself depended on belief in the continuity of God’s power to perform miracles.
Their test case was Teresa, but the scope of their argument was much larger. If
one was ready to doubt the truth of Teresa’s miracles—­including her levitations—­
then one would also have to concede that the truthfulness of the Christian
faith itself was questionable.
­Whether or not Teresa would have welcomed knowing that accounts of
her levitations could be invested with such a fervid polemical edge is immate-
rial. ­Those accounts are among the most surprising in Christian history, as well
as in the history of the impossible, and they deserve close scrutiny. Saint Teresa
of Avila, perhaps the best-­known levitator of her day, reflected and intensified an
 h o v e r i n g , f ly i n g , a n d a ll t h at 71

inflationary spiral in levitations in unique ways. First, she not only wrote about
her own levitations but also dissected the miracle from within, giving it a quirky
empirical sense of real­ity, as first-­person testimony. Second, the number of ex-
ternal eyewitness testimonies concerning her levitations was so g­ reat, and their
descriptions so detailed, as to appear mundane, despite their otherworldliness.
Moreover, Teresa did not just experience levitation but objected to it, complain-
ing to God and convincing Him to banish it from her life. To fully understand
what holy levitation was supposed to be, then, one must turn to Saint Teresa.
2. Saint Teresa of Avila, Reluctant Aethrobat

The holy ­Mother was very ­humble, and she dearly wished not to be considered
a saint, so she constantly begged me and her other ­daughters to pull down hard
on her vestments whenever we saw her rising into the air; and whenever s­ he’d
begin to feel that the Lord wanted to elevate her, ­she’d grab on to floor mats
and the grilles in the choir. At the very same instant, ­she’d also beg Our
Lord to stop bestowing such ­favors on her from now on, and one day
she eventually attained this from Our Lord.

One of the best-­known levitators of the early modern age, and one of the most
unwilling, is Saint Teresa of Avila. Her re­sis­tance to levitation, reflected in the
account above,1 might seem peculiar at first glance. But in many ways, she is
a quin­tes­sen­tial levitator who reflects patterns of holiness set in Christian
hagiography and, in turn, sets patterns for ­those who follow in her wake. Her
uniqueness is undeniable, too, for many reasons. Three of ­these are her earthy
approach to t­ hings divine, her unease with absolute precision, and her disarm-
ing honesty. For instance, consider her take on mystical terminology: “I would
like, with the help of God, to be able to describe the difference between ­union
(unión) and rapture (arrobamiento), or elevation, (elevamiento) or what they call
flight of the spirit (vuelo de espíritu), or ravishment (arrebatamiento)—­which are
all ­really one. I mean that all t­ hese dif­fer­ent names refer to the same t­ hing, which
is also called ecstasy (éstasi).”2
So she says in her autobiography, struggling for precision yet dismissing
it, fully aware that inquisitors would be scrutinizing her ­every word to deter-
mine ­whether her extraordinary trances ­were of divine origin. Ordered by her
superiors to write about her own life, especially her ecstasies and visions—­and

72
 s a i n t t e r e s a o f av i l a , r e lu c ta n t a e t h r o b at 73

her levitations—­Teresa had no choice but to put quill to paper and hope for the
best. Given the fact that many in Ávila and beyond w
­ ere alarmed by her ecstasies
and opposed to her reform of the Carmelite order, Teresa was closely scrutinized.3
Her autobiography, then, was as much a test of her orthodoxy as a testimony of
her holiness.4 Teresa was forced to write her Vida (Life) because vari­ous authori-
ties in the Carmelite order and the Catholic Church wanted to examine her prayer
life and her mystical claims in detail.
In Teresa’s case, as in many o
­ thers like hers, raptures, ravishments, and
ecstasies occurred at unpredictable times and always had some observable
trance-­like aspect to them. Since many of ­these trances produced physical
changes in her appearance while she was in the com­pany of other nuns, or of
visitors, ­these trances could not be ignored, and reports of her extraordinary
altered states began to circulate rapidly in monastic, clerical, and lay circles
throughout Spain and beyond. Nonetheless, gaining a reputation as a mystic or
a saint—­especially one who falls into trance-­like states, or floats in the air mi-
raculously, or claims to commune with God—­was somewhat perilous in mid-­
sixteenth-­century Spain, where suspicions of heresy, fraud, or demonic activity
ran high.
Certain questions had to be asked by ecclesiastical authorities of anyone
who claimed to have experiences such as Teresa’s, and ­these questions w
­ ere
deemed especially necessary in the case of ­women, for it was widely believed
that females w
­ ere weaker, less intelligent, and less psychologically and emotion-
ally stable than males and much less trustworthy when it came to any claim of
super­natural encounters. The g­ reat theologian and conciliarist Jean Gerson cer-
tainly thought so.5 And so did the apocalyptic Florentine reformer Girolamo
Savonarola and the Spanish cleric Diego Perez de Valdivia.6 Questions of vari­
ous sorts arose ­under this cloud of suspicion. Was Teresa genuinely engaging
with the divine, or was she a fraud? Was she “inventing the sacred,” a charge
that the Inquisition made in cases of fraudulent claims to mystical experience?7
Could it be that her experiences involved the devil rather than God? Did her
be­hav­ior in any way contradict or challenge authority? Was her be­hav­ior appro-
priately holy? What kinds of revelations was she claiming? W
­ ere her messages
orthodox or heretical? Was she in any way linked to any heresy? Had she chal-
lenged authority in any way? Was she genuinely holy? Teresa’s Vida was an at-
tempt to answer all t­ hese questions as clearly as pos­si­ble.
And in this remarkable text, which was r­ eally a judicial document, more
a forced confession than an autobiography,8 Teresa had no choice but to
 74 aloft

confirm what ­others had already reported numerous times: that she sometimes
­rose into the air during her ecstasies and that t­hese levitations ­were not just
frequent but also spectacular—­and witnessed by many. Some eyewitnesses would
­later testify ­under oath that the raptures they saw w
­ ere so constant and numer-
ous that they “­couldn’t even dare to count them.”9 And the distraction caused by
her raptures was also evident. “Ordinarily, she was so elevated and absorbed in
God, and so beside herself,” said one of her hagiographers, “that having to h
­ andle
daily tasks, including writing, was sheer torment for her.”10 Given the fact that
eyewitness accounts of her levitations had spread far and wide and that some
of ­these reports ­were very graphic and even told of efforts to restrain her or pull
her down, Teresa had no choice but to dwell on ­these details in her Vida, as in this
description of one of her arrobamientos, or raptures, during which she suddenly
­rose up into the air uncontrollably:

Once, when we w
­ ere together in choir, and about to take communion, and
I was on my knees, it caused me the greatest anguish, b
­ ecause it seemed to
me a most extraordinary ­thing that would cause ­people to fuss over it in-
tensely; so, I ordered the nuns not to speak of it. . . . ​On other occasions,
when I have felt that the Lord was about to do this to me again, I have lain
on the ground and the ­sisters have strained to hold down my body, but the
rapture has been observed, anyway, as once happened during a sermon, on
our patronal festival, when some ­great ladies ­were pre­sent.11

Her analy­sis of this phenomenon is a cautious interweaving of opin-

ions, questions, and statements of fact, in a voice that has both the ring of
authority and a mea­sure of deference. And throughout her texts, her termi-
nology is not always consistent, especially in the case of arrobamiento and
arrebatamiento, which sometimes seem to be interchangeable terms.12 Add-
ing to the lack of clarity in her terminology, Teresa has no specific word for
distinguishing her levitations from the states of high ecstasy in which they
occur. Although Teresa’s levitations are clearly restricted to the most intense
ecstasies she reaches in the top two levels (or “mansions”) in her text Libro de
las Moradas (The Interior C
­ astle), ­those ecstasies may or may not include levi-
tations. The levitations are an additional physical effect, apparently nones-
sential, and she has no name for them.
But while her terminology can be fuzzy, her descriptions of her levitations
are arguably the most detailed first-­person accounts on rec­ord, much more so
than ­those provided by any other medieval or early modern Christian mystic.
 s a i n t t e r e s a o f av i l a , r e lu c ta n t a e t h r o b at 75

For instance, in attempting to differentiate between “rapture” (arrobamiento)

and “­union” (unión) in her autobiography, she explains that what she has expe-
rienced in levitations is uncontrollable, precisely ­because levitation is a divine
event and totally beyond her willpower or physical strength. “When I tried to
resist ­these raptures, it seemed to me that I was being lifted up by a force be-
neath my feet so power­ful that I know nothing to which I can compare it, for it
came with a much greater intensity than any other spiritual experience and I
felt as if I ­were being torn to shreds, for it is a mighty strug­gle.”13
Even more remarkable than the details she provides is her attitude t­ oward
her levitations, which she detested and which she begged God to remove from
her life. To better understand her unique place in the Christian mystical tradi-
tion and in the history of levitation, one must first come to terms with the con-
text in which her story unfolded.

Teresa’s Life
Teresa de Ahumada y Cepeda (1515–1582) became a Carmelite nun in her teens,
at the Convent of the Incarnation in her native Ávila, a walled city in Old Cas-
tile. Her religious name was Teresa de Jesús, but in the English-­speaking world
she is best known as Teresa of Avila (without an accent on the A). During her
twenties she was plagued by an illness no doctor could properly diagnose or cure.
Brought to death’s door, literally, she was taken for dead and readied for burial
but regained consciousness only a few hours before being lowered into her grave.
Teresa remained para­lyzed afterward for quite some time and eventually recov-
ered, albeit slowly and painfully. A lukewarm nun for many years a­ fter returning
to her convent—­according to her own disparaging estimation—­Teresa began to
experience visions and raptures in her forties, and as t­ hese intensified quickly
and dramatically, she naturally came ­under suspicion of being ­either demoni-
cally influenced or a brazen fraud. At the same time, however, many around her
­were convinced that her experiences ­were genuinely divine in origin. Conse-
quently, her superiors ordered her to write a detailed account of her life and her
ecstasies, u
­ nder the watchful eye of the Inquisition. That text, which came to
be known as her Vida, or “autobiography,” is an attempt to convince every­one
that her remarkable experiences are truly super­natural. And an essential part of
the narrative is Teresa’s constant emphasis on her own humility and on the pain
and embarrassment caused by the ecstasies she experienced in public, or which
became public knowledge, especially ­those ecstasies in which she levitated.
 76 aloft

Proving her humility was essential, for nothing could peg an ecstatic nun
as a brazen fraud more convincingly than the perception that she might be call-
ing attention to herself or trying to pass herself off as exceptionally holy or
spiritually gifted. Since absolute humility was assumed to be inseparable from
genuine holiness and one of its chief characteristics, all levitating nuns ­were
trapped in a dilemma, for levitation attracts attention, naturally, and excess at-
tention could easily lead to disaster, or at least to close scrutiny of the sort re-
ceived by Teresa, which could be a heavy burden to bear, not just for a nun but
for the Catholic Church as a ­whole. Investigations such as the one launched in
Teresa’s case could end badly, and sometimes did so spectacularly, as in the case
of the Dominican nun María de la Visitación, a highly revered mystic similar
to Teresa, whose stigmata, levitations, ecstasies, and miracles—­accepted and
revered for many years by many prominent churchmen as genuinely divine
in origin—­were eventually declared to be nothing more than “trickery and
deceit.”14
Teresa was painfully aware of the dangers of adulation and the need for
humility and spoke openly about her fears: “I was greatly tormented—­and still
am, even now—to see so much fuss made over me, and so many good ­things
said about me, especially by impor­tant ­people. This has made me suffer a g­ reat
deal, and still does. . . . ​And when I thought about how t­ hese ­favors granted to
me by the Lord became public knowledge, my torment was so excessive that it
greatly disturbed my soul. And this went as far as making me wish, whenever I
thought about it, that I could be buried alive.”15
Such intense fear was not only driven by Teresa’s own awareness of the
way in which any nun’s ecstasies could be her undoing. This fear was also in-
stilled in her by her confessors and spiritual directors, who pressured her to curb
her raptures and warned her constantly about the dangers she faced as an ec-
static nun. Speaking in the third person in her Interior ­Castle, Teresa complains:
“She is not hurt by what ­people say about her except when her own confessor
blames her, as though she could prevent t­hese raptures. She does nothing but
beg every­one to pray for her and beseech His Majesty to lead her by another
road, as she is advised to do, since the road she is on is very dangerous.”16 This
was not her only prob­lem. An additional danger was far worse than adulation:
that of demonic influence.
Belief in the dev­il’s ability to pass himself off as an “angel of light” or
even as Jesus Christ Himself was an ancient Christian tenet, deeply embed-
ded in monastic culture. This was an unquestioned assumption, linked to
 s a i n t t e r e s a o f av i l a , r e lu c ta n t a e t h r o b at 77

Figure 15. Saint Teresa’s visions of Christ ­were interpreted by some of her confessors as demonic
illusions.

another: a firm belief that the devil always assailed ­those who aimed for holi-
ness and closeness to God. In Teresa’s case, as soon as she began to have vi-
sions and other mystical ravishments, her confessors suspected the worst and
warned her that her experiences ­were demonic in origin.17 As Teresa dutifully
confessed that Christ kept appearing to her (fig. 15), the confessors grew in-
creasingly alarmed—­and perhaps also peeved—­and ordered her to greet her
visions of Christ with an obscene hand gesture known as “giving the fig,” an
equivalent of ­today’s “giving the fin­ger.” Dealing with the devil on his own level
with obscenities and insults was fairly common advice in monastic culture, as
common as the belief that the devil could easily deceive anyone. Teresa duti-
fully obeyed, despite the pain it caused her to greet Christ in such an offensive
way.18 Years ­later, in 1622, in his bull of canonization for Teresa, Pope Gregory
XV would emphasize the value placed on such obedience: “She was wont to say
that she might be deceived in discerning visions and revelations, but could
not be in obeying superiors.”19
Teresa’s writing paid off, for her autobiographical account convinced t­ hose
who scrutinized the text that she was neither a fraud nor a demoniac, thus giving
 78 aloft

Figure 16. Saint Teresa claimed she had become quite an expert at driving away the many demons
who constantly tormented her. In this image she is vanquishing them with a cross.

her the freedom to write several other extraordinary texts and to establish a
new reformed branch of the Carmelite order. Nonetheless, the detailed mystical
content of her autobiography was considered so potentially open to misinter-
pretation that the Inquisition ordered all but one manuscript copy destroyed
and then kept what it believed to be the sole surviving text u
­ nder lock and key
for the rest of Teresa’s life. And it was not u
­ ntil 1588, six years a­ fter her death,
that the text was eventually edited and published, in large mea­sure ­because post-
mortem miracles w
­ ere proving her holiness to be genuine. Yet, despite the In-
quisition’s positive verdict and the fact that Teresa was credited with miracles
and fast-­tracked to canonization soon ­after ­dying, the Inquisition kept receiv-
ing denunciations from some clerics—­mostly from the Dominican order—­who
accused Teresa of heresy and called for the condemnation and destruction of
all her printed texts. It was not u
­ ntil 1619, when she was beatified, that such
accusations ­stopped.20
By then, ambivalence about her visions, raptures, and levitations had
come to seem wrong. Doubt had been triumphantly pushed aside by her own
texts, as well as by popu­lar acclaim. Teresa had become a levitating demon-­
 s a i n t t e r e s a o f av i l a , r e lu c ta n t a e t h r o b at 79

slayer and much more of a threat to the devil than any obscene gesture that
meek ­little nuns might flash at him and at the fake visions he used in his at-
tempts to fool them (fig. 16). Luis de León, the editor of her collected works,
was well aware of this and of the need to shout it out: “God willed at this
time—­when it seems that the devil is triumphant among the throng of infi-
dels who follow him, and in the obstinacy of so many heretical nations who
take his side . . . ​to disgrace and ridicule him by putting before him not some
valiant and learned man, but a lone poor w
­ oman, to sound the challenge and
raise the ­battle flag, and to openly beget p
­ eople who can trample, h
­ umble,
and defeat him.”21

Teresa’s Super­natural Encounters

Teresa’s raptures and levitations are unique for several reasons, three of which
are most significant. First, no other Christian levitator has provided as full a
first-­person account or described and analyzed the experience in as much de-
tail as Teresa. Second, no other levitator has complained as often and as loudly
about levitating as Teresa. And third, few other levitators have brought about an
end to levitations as suddenly and dramatically as Teresa. Obviously, her detailed
analy­sis of her own levitations cannot be taken as empirical “proof” of the real­
ity of her levitations, but they do provide an exceptionally clear win­dow into
her perceptions, or at least into how she wanted o
­ thers to understand the phe-
nomenon. And as of yet, no other Christian levitator has ever surpassed Teresa
on this account.
When it comes to her description and analy­sis of her raptures, trances,
and levitations, the bulk of it—­the ­mother lode, so to speak—­can be found in
chapter 20 of her autobiography, which is primarily an account of her attain-
ment of the highest stages of mystical ecstasy. Sorting out her descriptions of
vari­ous ecstasies is challenging, for it requires grappling with her own terminol-
ogy and her understanding of the vari­ous levels of super­natural encounters with
the divine, as well as with her conception of the relation between the natu­ral
and the super­natural, the physical and the spiritual, and the divine and the
­human. Moreover, one must come to terms with her assumptions about the re-
lation between body, mind, and soul, in addition to flesh and spirit and earth
and heaven, all of which rely on terms drawn from scholastic and mystical
theology and which she never employs in the same precise manner as the letra-
dos, t­ hose educated male clerics to whom she always deferred.
 80 aloft

Teresa’s chief assumption, which undergirds her mystical claims, is that

­human beings can have intimate encounters with the divine and that t­ hese in-
volve the w
­ hole person and include both the physical and spiritual components:
soul, body, mind, and spirit and all the “faculties”—­that is, the intellect, the ­will,
and all seven senses. A correlate assumption of hers is that ­these encounters
bridge two dimensions: the heavenly and the earthly, sometimes spoken of as
the divine and the created or the spiritual and the material or the eternal and
the temporal. This bridging of dimensions, in turn, is assumed to entail—­
unquestioningly—­a highly paradoxical coincidence of opposites beyond normal
­human cognition, a transcending of binary oppositions in which contradictions
dissolve and in which emotional and physical or spiritual and physical oppo-
sites such as pain and bliss, logic and emotion, embodiment and disembodi-
ment, materiality and spirituality, and creature and creator become perfectly
and blissfully compatible.
And it is this matrix of unquestioned assumptions about what is ultimately
real and what is ultimately pos­si­ble for ­humans to achieve that governs Teresa’s
attempts to explain her experiences, all of which, as she constantly reminds her
readers, are ineffable and beyond description. Quite often, ­human language
fails, but the failure itself gets a point across, as in her attempt to explain what
happens in the highest levels of mystical rapture: “The soul is often engulfed—
or, better said—­the Lord engulfs it in Himself.”22 This claim is as significant as
it is vague, and so is the even vaguer claim that mystical ­union leads to a “total
transformation of the soul in God.”23
Chapter 20 of Teresa’s autobiography deals with t­ hese highest levels of rap-
ture, which correspond to the two highest of the seven levels that she identifies
in The Interior C
­ astle, which she wrote immediately a­ fter completing the autobi-
ography, at the urging of many of her fellow nuns and superiors. At this summit
of the mystical life, Teresa claims, one begins to shut­tle back and forth between
earth and heaven, and in all this shuttling the body and the soul take part but are
affected in dif­fer­ent ways.
In her Vida Teresa tends to use the term “arrobamiento,” or rapture, for
the experiences that take her into the heavenly realm of the divine. Sometimes,
however, she also uses “arrebatamiento,” or ravishment, for such experiences
or suggests that arrebatamiento is in fact a kind of arrobamiento, as she does
when she says, “While I was reciting a hymn, t­ here came to me an arrebatamiento
so sudden that nearly took me out of myself: something I could not doubt, for
it was so clear. This was the first time that the Lord had granted me the f­avor
 s a i n t t e r e s a o f av i l a , r e lu c ta n t a e t h r o b at 81

of any kind of arrobamiento.”24 Yet in another text written in 1576, eleven years
­after her Vida, Teresa makes a distinction that she did not apply consistently in
the Vida, asserting that arrebatamientos overtake the mystic more quickly and
forcefully: “The difference between arrobamiento and arrebatamiento is this: In
an arrobamiento one loses use of one’s senses slowly, ­dying in small increments
to external ­things, step by step; but an arrebatamiento arrives suddenly in the
innermost recess of the soul without any warning from His Majesty and with
such a tremendous speed that it seems as if the soul is rapt to a superior level
and one feels as if it is leaving one’s body.”25
In her Interior ­Castle, written in 1577, Teresa adds more uncertainty to
her terminology, saying that “­there is another kind of arrobamiento which I call
‘vuelo de espíritu’ (flight of the spirit)—­and although ­these are all the same ­thing,
what they make you feel inside is very dif­fer­ent.” As she explains it, what makes
a vuelo feel dif­fer­ent is the speed at which it overtakes her, which is much faster
and more frightening than that of any other rapture or ravishment.26

The Physical Phenomena of Rapture

Regardless of the term used, Teresa makes it clear that w
­ hether one levitates or
not during an arrobamiento, the body is often affected intensely, even violently,
primarily through sense deprivation and paralysis and a lapse into a trance-­like
state accompanied by physical aftereffects that linger for a while. “Let us now
return to raptures (arrobamientos), and to their most common traits. I can at-
test that ­after a rapture my body often felt so light that it seemed to weigh noth-
ing at all: and sometimes this was so overwhelming that I could hardly tell if
my feet ­were touching the ground. For, during the entire rapture, the body re-
mains as if dead and unable to do anything itself.” And in whichever way it was
positioned when seized by the rapture, that is how the body stays: ­whether stand-
ing, or sitting, or with the hands open or clasped.27
This state of suspended animation brings the body close to death and
takes quite a toll on it. In one passage, Teresa says that during ­these raptures
one can feel “like someone who is being strangled, with a rope around their neck,
still struggling to catch a breath.”28 Tellingly, Teresa interprets this near-­death
experience as a sundering of body and soul that is resisted by the h
­ uman self
and which pits lower and higher parts of the self against each other. “What
cries out ‘help me breathe’ at such moments,” she says, “is the desire that body
and soul have for not being separated, and by saying it, and complaining, and
 82 aloft

distracting itself, the soul seeks a way to live that is very contrary to the w
­ ill of
the spirit, or of its own higher part, which would prefer not to flee from this
suffering.”29
Again and again, Teresa stresses the physical dimension of her raptures,
prob­ably ­because it was the visibly alarming way her body behaved that drew
attention to her mystical experiences. She needed to explain what o
­ thers ­were
witnessing as something inherently spiritual rather than any of the awful alter-
natives: demonic fits, mere fakery, m
­ ental illness, or a physical malady. Based
on her own descriptions of her body’s responses to rapture, ­others could easily
­mistake such reactions—which would instantly paralyze her and leave her as rigid
and insensate as a marble statue—for mere cataleptic seizures:30 “The hands
get freezing cold and sometimes stretched out stiffly like pieces of wood, and
the body stays in what­ever position it is when the rapture hits, be it standing or
kneeling . . . ​and it seems as if the soul has forgotten to animate the body.”31
Teresa also claims that all sensory input ceases to function, as if the con-
nection between body and soul is temporarily sundered. At the highest point of
rapture, she says, “one w
­ ill neither see, nor hear, nor perceive,” and this is b
­ ecause
the soul is then so “closely united with God” that “none of the soul’s faculties are
able to perceive or know what is taking place.”32 Even if the eyes remain open,
she adds, “one neither perceives nor notices what one sees.”33 And in The Interior
­Castle, she comments that to be in such a state requires courage “­because the
soul truly feels that it is leaving the body when it sees the senses leaving it and it
does not know why they are g­ oing away.”34 Elsewhere, she also highlights the ef-
fects of this near-­death experience on the body, not only while the event is unfold-
ing but also afterward: “Occasionally, I come close to losing my pulse altogether,
according to ­those of my ­sisters who have sometimes found me like this . . . ​with
my ankles disjointed, and my hands so stiff that sometimes I cannot even clasp
them together. U
­ ntil the next day my wrists and my body w
­ ill continue to hurt, as
if my joints had been torn asunder.”35
­These aftereffects are described as profound. “­After one regains conscious-
ness, if the rapture has been intense, the faculties might remain absorbed for a
day or two, or three, as if in a stupor, so that one seems not to be oneself.”36
Once again in trying to describe what she has experienced repeatedly and how
she has felt ­after any of ­these bodily raptures, Teresa is at a loss for words. “This
­favor also leaves a strange detachment (desasimiento), the nature of which I’m
unable to describe, but I think I can say it differs somewhat from that produced
by purely spiritual ­favors, I mean; for, although ­those cause a total detachment
 s a i n t t e r e s a o f av i l a , r e lu c ta n t a e t h r o b at 83

of spirit, in this ­favor it seems that the Lord wants it to be shared by the body
itself, and it ­causes one to experience a new estrangement from earthly ­things,
which makes life much more vexing. Afterwards it produces a distress (pena)
which we cannot ourselves bring about or cast away once it has come. I would
like very much to explain this g­ reat distress, but I do not think I can possibly
do so. If I could say something more about this, I would.” Stressing the raw physi-
cality of ­these experiences alongside their exalted spiritual nature—­and again
flummoxed by the inadequacy of ­human language—­Teresa also dwells repeat-
edly on the paradoxical intertwining of pain and bliss, both bodily and spiri-
tual. “­These raptures seem like the very threshold of death,” she avers, “but the
suffering they cause brings such joy with it that I do not know of anything
comparable.” Consequently, she adds, t­ hese raptures are “a violent, delectable
martyrdom.”37 Elsewhere, Teresa confesses that during ­those days when her
arrobamientos ­were constant, she went about “as if stupefied” (embovada) and
adds: “I did not want to see or speak with anyone, but only to hug my pain, which
caused me greater bliss than can be found in the ­whole of creation.”38

Resisting the Irresistible Divine Gift

As a paradox within a paradox, Teresa emphasized a strong ambivalence t­ oward
her blissful yet painful arrobamientos and arrebatamientos, for they w
­ ere some-
thing to enjoy and fear si­mul­ta­neously, as well as something one could both
crave and detest. A key worry for Teresa was that of agency: Was she willingly
bringing ­these raptures on herself, out of self-­indulgence and pride, or was God
showering her with irresistible ­favors? ­Were ­these raptures something she could
effect at ­will or control, or ­were they wholly uncontrollable and irresistible, of
divine origin? Not only ­were such questions being asked by her confessors and
superiors, but for quite some time a­ fter her raptures began, some of ­these male
clerics commanded her to suppress or resist them. And one of the chief pur-
poses of her autobiographical narrative was to address this question as precisely
and fully as pos­si­ble.
The issue of irresistibility being so crucial, then, forced Teresa to dwell on
this subject and to describe the overpowering nature of her arrobamientos—­
including ­those that included levitations—in some detail. Moreover, Teresa’s
­handling of this issue is inseparable from her concerns about o
­ thers witnessing
her trances and levitations and about the pos­si­ble negative repercussions of all
the adulation that ­these phenomena could generate. Consequently, convincing
 84 aloft

God that He should stop showering her with physical raptures and, in turn, con-
vincing her confessors and superiors that she was d
­ oing her utmost to persuade
God of the uselessness and dangerousness of her levitations w
­ ere one and the
same for Teresa.
One way of stressing the irresistible nature of her raptures was for Teresa
to emphasize their suddenness and unpredictability, as well as their overpower-
ing force. Relying on meta­phor, as usual, Teresa crafted a stunning and very post-
medieval description of what it felt like to go into raptures, including t­hose
that involved levitations: “When all is said and done, I d
­ on’t know what I’m say-
ing; but the truth is that, as quickly as a bullet leaves a gun when the trigger is
pulled, t­here begins within the soul a flight—­I ­don’t know what ­else to name
it—­which, although it is noiseless, is so clearly a movement that it cannot pos-
sibly be an illusion.”39 Emphasizing that this “flight” of the soul is no mere fancy
or wish-­fulfilling illusion (antojo), Teresa highlights the vehemence and sudden-
ness of the event, in addition to the fact that what is g­ oing on is not something
physical but rather spiritual, despite what­ever physicality might be involved or
whichever bodily phenomena might be witnessed. Teresa also indicates that the
event involves an upward motion, a flight. This point is a significant one, espe-
cially for the issue of levitation. Over and over, Teresa stresses the futility of re­sis­
tance alongside references to upward motion, flight, and utter helplessness, as in
this passage: “With arrobamiento, as a rule, ­there is no possibility of resisting:
almost always, it comes like a power­ful and swift force, without any forewarn-
ing to your mind, and you are left helpless; you see and feel this cloud, or this
mighty ea­gle, rising and bearing you up with it on its wings. And I say that you
then realize and see that you are being carried away, not knowing where.”40
Discerning when Teresa is speaking of the spiritual effects of rapture rather
than the physical ones is often difficult, if not impossible. But in some passages
she explains that trying to resist arrobamientos takes intense physical effort, fur-
ther reinforcing her claim that body and soul share in ­these events with equal
intensity and making it abundantly clear that levitations are nearly as impos-
sible to resist as purely spiritual raptures.

I have wanted to resist many, many times, and have put all my strength
­behind it, especially with raptures in public, and often also with ones in private,
when I feared I was being deceived. Sometimes I could resist somewhat, at
the edge of exhaustion. Afterwards I would be completely worn out, like
someone who has fought against a power­ful ­giant. At other times resisting
 s a i n t t e r e s a o f av i l a , r e lu c ta n t a e t h r o b at 85

has been impossible, and my soul has been carried away instead, and quite
often my head too, along with it, without being able to stop it, and some-
­ hole body too, which has even been lifted off the ground.41
times my w

In other instances, Teresa explic­itly refers to levitations, and what she has
to say about her inability to resist ­these “­favors,” as well as the physical trauma
involved in resisting, is basically identical. A passage previously quoted only par-
tially now deserves to be quoted in full, due to its significance. “When I tried to
resist ­these raptures,” she says, “it seemed to me that I was being lifted up by a
force beneath my feet so power­ful that I know nothing to which I can compare
it, for it came with a much greater intensity than any other spiritual experience
and I felt as if I ­were being torn to shreds, for it is a mighty strug­gle, and, when
all is said and done, t­ here is no point to it if this is the Lord’s w
­ ill, for His power
can never be overcome by another.”42
In one of the Vida’s longest and most explicit passages about levitation,
Teresa draws theological lessons and makes practical observations, and she
begins by contrasting God’s omnipotence with her helplessness: “Such effects
reveal ­great ­things. First, they are a display of the Lord’s mighty power: as we
are unable to resist His Majesty’s w
­ ill, ­either in soul or in body, and are not
our own masters, we realize that, however much this may pain us, ­there is
One stronger than ourselves, and that it is He who grants us t­ hese ­favors, and
that we, on our own, can do absolutely nothing. This imprints a g­ reat deal of
humility in us.”43
So, once again, we see Teresa returning to the issue of humility, that key
virtue she absolutely must always display to prove that her raptures and levita-
tions are of genuinely divine origin. Then, having made it clear that her levita-
tions “imprint” her with the exact opposite of hubris and stressing her humility
further, as well as her uncontrollable passivity, she highlights her own fright in
the face of her levitations: “Moreover, I must confess that it produced an ex-
ceedingly ­great fear in me at first—­a terrible fear, in fact—­because one sees one’s
body being lifted up from the ground; and although the spirit draws it up ­after itself,
and it does so very g­ ently if no re­sis­tance is offered, one does not lose conscious-
ness and one is able to realize that one is being lifted up. At least, this is what
has happened to me.”44
This passage is mostly self-­referential, focused on her own reaction to
levitating, but as Teresa often does in her Vida, she inserts a very weighty ob-
servation as an aside. That key passage, in italics above, is at once theological
 86 aloft

and “scientific”—if one may stretch the meaning of that term—­and it is her
personal take on what it is, exactly, that ­causes the body to rise in the air during
a rapture. For lack of a better term, her explanation could be classified as “theo-
logical physics,” based on that thick bundle of unquestioned metaphysical, on-
tological, and epistemological assumptions from which mystical theology is
spun, especially certain assumptions about the ways in which body and soul re-
late to one another and how earthbound h
­ umans relate to heavenly realities.
Simply put, what Teresa says h
­ ere is that the spirit—or soul—is pulled upward
to heaven during arrobamientos, and the body simply follows that upward mo-
tion due to the unbreakable bond between body and soul.
Then, returning once again to the issue of the absolute disparity between
God’s power and ­human helplessness, Teresa emphasizes divine love as the very
essence of all arrobamientos and levitations, and she does so in a way that not
only highlights God’s love as the bridge linking the chasm between the ­human
and the divine but also reemphasizes the abject loathsomeness of the ­human
self and the ­human body. “The majesty of Him Who can do this is manifested
in such a way that one’s hair stands on end, and one cannot help but fear of-
fending so ­great a God. But this fear is overpowered by the deepest love, newly
enkindled, for this God who, as we can see, loves such a foul worm so much that
He seems unsatisfied by drawing the soul to Himself so literally, and must also
claim the body, mortal though it is, and befouled as its clay is by all the offenses
it has committed.”45
Teresa’s stress on the irresistibility of raptures and levitations ultimately
needs to be placed in the context of the power relationship between her and
her confessors and superiors, as much as in the context of what­ever she might
have felt or thought about the power relationship between her and God. Urged
to resist her raptures when they first began and blamed by her confessors for
not preventing them,46 Teresa needed to highlight this issue of re­sis­tance in the
autobiographical account she was ordered to write. And she also needed to un-
derscore the point that she continually begged God to refrain from showering
her with arrobamientos, especially t­ hose in which she levitated in the presence
of eyewitnesses who would immediately broadcast news of the wondrous mira-
cle they had just seen. As Teresa saw it, the wider that tales of her levitations
spread and the more that adulation of her intensified, the worse for her and the
church as a ­whole. Outlining the experiences that can be expected in the pen-
ultimate stage of the mystical ascent—­the sixth of the seven mansions in The
Interior ­Castle—­Teresa has this to say: “In this mansion arrobamientos occur
 s a i n t t e r e s a o f av i l a , r e lu c ta n t a e t h r o b at 87

continually without any way of avoiding them, even in public, and then the
persecutions and murmurings follow, and even though the soul wants to be f­ ree
from fears, she is never f­ ree of them, ­because so many p
­ eople foist them on her,
especially her confessors.”47
In a remarkable letter to her ­brother Lorenzo de Cepeda on January 17,
1577, Teresa lays bare the full extent of her anguish over ­those uncontrollable
levitations:

Since the last time I wrote to you my arrobamientos have been casting me
off like a falconer does with a hawk, and it has caused me grief, b
­ ecause
sometimes it has happened out in public, and it also during matins with
the ­sisters. Resisting is futile, and it is also impossible to dissemble. ­These
raptures make me feel so intensely ashamed that I would like to hide away
somewhere. I continually beg God not to do this while I’m out in public;
please, have mercy, ask Him too, b
­ ecause ­these raptures cause too many
prob­lems, and they add nothing to my life of prayer. Lately, I’ve been walk-
ing about like a drunkard.48

This letter does not actually employ the Spanish words for “falconers” or
“hawks,” but its reference to falconry is clear. What Teresa says is “me han tor-
nado los arrobamientos.” The verb tornar is unusual and has several meanings,
but one of ­these comes straight out of the art of falconry, and it is the one that
makes the most contextual sense.49 The En­glish equivalent of this verb is “to
cast off,” which means “to throw off a bird from a raised glove.”50 So Teresa, the
mystic who is close to God and whose levitations leave her feeling ashamed and
tottering about like a drunkard, has no recourse but to compare her enraptured
self to a captive trained raptor in the hands of its master and to beg for her
­brother’s prayers ­because hers are definitely not changing God’s mind on the
issue of raptures. One is left to won­der ­whether all this densely packed irony is
intentional or purely accidental, but t­ here is no mistaking the display of humility
and verbal dexterity embedded in it.
Teresa’s efforts to control her levitations ­were much more than purely ver-
bal or l­imited to prayer. According to eyewitnesses, ­there was a brute physical-
ity to her re­sis­tance. Domingo Bañez, a prominent Dominican theologian who
served as one of Teresa’s spiritual advisors, said he and many other ­people once
saw Teresa levitate immediately a­ fter receiving communion and that she clung
to a grille in the church, “greatly distressed,” and begged God, out loud: “Lord,
for something that is as unimportant as putting an end to ­these f­avors with
 88 aloft

which you shower me, do not allow a ­woman as wicked as me to be mistaken

for one that is good.” ­Others, too, would testify that they saw her clinging to the
mats on the choir floor and rising up in the air with them in her hands, which
she did to signal the other nuns to pull on her habit and bring her back down.51
Turning to The Interior C
­ astle, one finds Teresa still speaking about the
issue of re­sis­tance to raptures, more than ten years a­ fter the completion of her
Vida. What she has to say ­there is aimed at fellow nuns who might be embark-
ing on the mystical path, and it sheds light on her strug­gles with raptures. “So,”
she asks, “is ­there any pos­si­ble way to resist?” Her answer is a clear warning to
all would-be mystics: “No, t­ here is none at all: on the contrary, re­sis­tance only
makes ­things worse.” Pretending she has gathered information from someone
­else, rather than from her own experience, she then goes on to say: “I know this
from a certain person who said that it seems that God wants the soul . . . ​to re-
alize that it is no longer in charge of itself, so, notably, He begins to enrapture
it with much greater vehemence.” And, once again, as in the Vida, she empha-
sizes the imbalance of power between the ­human and the divine meta­phor­ical­ly:
“This person, then, chose to offer no more re­sis­tance than a straw does when it
is lifted up by amber—if you have ever seen this—­and to surrender herself into
the hands of Him Who is so power­ful, realizing that it is best to make a virtue
of necessity. And, speaking of straw, if a g­ iant can easily snatch up a straw, then,
most certainly, so can our ­great ­Giant carry away a soul.”52
Teresa’s reference to amber’s effect on straws is apt, given what she had to
say in the Vida about the soul and body being pulled up irresistibly in levita-
tions. Though the natu­ral princi­ples involved in the amber-­and-­straw trick ­were
barely understood in her day, the levitation of very light ­matter through static
electricity and magnetism had been a well-­observed and accepted fact since an-
cient times, and it is obvious that Teresa herself was familiar with this natu­ral
phenomenon.53 Although the term “levitation,” which derives from the Latin levi-
tas, or “lightness,” did not exist in her day, minor instances of this phenomenon
in nature ­were in fact observable. So, as Teresa could not help but levitate, one
cannot help but won­der if ­there was any intentional punning on her mind when
she asks peevishly at one point in The Interior C
­ astle: “Do you think this is such
a light ­thing” [tan liviana cosa, meaning a trivial m
­ atter], “when it seems to you
that the soul is leaving the body and it sees the senses fleeing from it without
knowing what is ­going on?”54
When all is said and done, one of the most remarkable aspects of Teresa’s
levitations is her attitude ­toward them and how much she complained about
 s a i n t t e r e s a o f av i l a , r e lu c ta n t a e t h r o b at 89

them, not just to ­those around her but to God Himself. As she says in The Inte-
rior ­Castle, speaking of herself in the third person: “She does nothing but beg
every­one to pray for her and beseech His Majesty to lead her by another road,
as she is advised to do, since the road she is on is very dangerous.”55 Much like
Saint Catherine of Siena, who received stigmata that w
­ ere invisible, Teresa pre-
ferred to receive raptures that ­were hidden from ­others’ eyes.56
What is truly surprising is not her complaining but the fact that accord-
ing to her and to ­those around her, she suddenly ­stopped levitating, and her
nonlevitating public raptures became much less frequent. Although she men-
tions this in the Vida and says that it happened when she was writing the final
version of the twentieth chapter,57 she does not dwell on the subject. In fact,
this information is easy to miss, tucked away as it is in a long rambling narra-
tive, somewhat cautiously, almost as an aside. Chances are that Teresa did not
want to press her luck, for she would not want her superiors and confessors to
think that she was boasting in any way or that she was underestimating God’s
omnipotence and His absolute control of her ecstasies. “I often begged the Lord
not to grant me any more ­favors with vis­i­ble external signs,” she explains, “for I
was weary of having to contend with such worries and, ­after all, His Majesty
could grant me such ­favors without anyone knowing it. Apparently, He, in His
kindness, was inclined to hear my pleas, for up ­until now—­even though in truth
it has only been a short while—­I have never again received any such f­ avors.”58
Tracing this issue across time in her other writings is as difficult as fol-
lowing a very sparse trail of crumbs b
­ ecause she continued to skirt the issue. In
1570, five years a­ fter she finished the Vida, we find her saying that God gave
her to understand why her public arrobamientos had become so infrequent: “ ‘It
is not necessary now,’ said God, ‘­you’ve received enough credit for what I have
intended.’ ”59 Turning to the inquests of her beatification and canonization pro­
cess, we can find corroborating testimonies from t­ hose who knew Teresa, such
as that of Isabel de Santo Domingo, who had much to say in 1595 about the
levitations and their cessation. Sor Isabel was not only an eyewitness to Teresa’s
levitations, and her efforts to resist them, but also one of the nuns who strug­gled
unsuccessfully to keep her earthbound whenever she ­rose up in the air. “The
sainted ­Mother was very h
­ umble,” says Isabel, “and she dearly wished not to be
considered a saint, so she constantly begged me and her other ­daughters to pull
down hard on her vestments whenever we saw her rising into the air.” She also
adds that Teresa would do her utmost not to levitate by grabbing hold of ob-
jects that w
­ ere firmly affixed to the floor or the walls and that she constantly
 90 aloft

prayed for an end to such public raptures. ­After being sent by Teresa to the
convent she had founded in Seville, Isabel and Teresa kept in touch, and she let
Isabel know that the levitations had suddenly ­stopped and that she was experi-
encing “greater raptures, but in a much more secret and hidden way.”60

Additional Accounts
Looking for accounts of Teresa’s levitations outside her own texts, one can find
additional details, none of which contradict her narrative. Most of ­these can be
found in the beatification and canonization inquests. O
­ thers can be found in
the two hagiographies published before her beatification and canonization. The
first of ­these was written by the Jesuit Francisco de Ribera, and it appeared in
1590, only eight years a­ fter Teresa’s death and only one year before his own.
Ribera had known Teresa and served as her confessor. The second hagiography
was penned by the Hieronymite friar and bishop Diego de Yepes, and it first
came off the presses in 1606, when Teresa was well on her way t­ oward beatifica-
tion. Like Ribera, Yepes had been Teresa’s confessor and confidant. Yepes was
uniquely poised to further the cause for Teresa’s canonization, for in addition to
becoming bishop of Tarazona in 1599, Yepes served as confessor to the Spanish
king Philip II—at whose deathbed he stood watch—­and also to Philip III, his
successor. Both Ribera and Yepes rely on Teresa’s Vida for their narratives, but
not exclusively. Their personal acquaintance with Teresa and with ­others who
lived with her or knew her allowed them to add many significant details to the
story of her life, and the relatively quick translation of their hagiographies into
Latin and several vernacular languages helped to make Teresa and her levita-
tions known throughout the Catholic world.
Among the accounts of Teresa’s levitations provided by Ribera, the most
surprising and odd, by far, tells of a levitation that overtook Teresa while she
was cooking. This incident resembles a parable drawn from Teresa’s Book of
Foundations, in which she says, “So, hey, my d
­ aughters, ­don’t get upset when your
vow of obedience requires you to do menial external tasks: understand that if
you end up in the kitchen, God walks amidst the pots and pans, helping you
with what’s internal and external at the same time.”61 Ribera’s narrative is very
brief, but it is so perfect a reification of the pots and pans proverb that it seems
tailored to serve as a meditation on it. “One day, upon entering the kitchen,” he
says, “the nuns found her [Teresa] totally elevated and transfixed, her face beau-
tifully aglow, with the frying pan in her hand, suspended above the flames, and
 s a i n t t e r e s a o f av i l a , r e lu c ta n t a e t h r o b at 91

she was gripping the frying pan so tightly that it c­ ouldn’t be wrested from
her hand.”62
A more detailed version of this story can be found in a hagiography of
Teresa’s close companion Isabel de Santo Domingo, published in 1638. Rely-
ing on accounts left by Isabel, who often did kitchen duty alongside Teresa,
the author—­Miguel Batista de Lanuza—­reveals that Teresa was frying some
eggs with the convent’s last smidgen of olive oil. Obeying Teresa’s ­orders on
how to deal with her levitations, Isabel attempted to pull Teresa down, but
failed, and then strug­gled to remove the frying pan from Teresa’s hand ­because
she feared that the oil in it would spill out and be lost. He also adds that this
vigorous tug-­of-­war between Isabel and the enraptured levitating Teresa lasted
a while, but the oil did not spill, and the cooking resumed as soon as the rap-
ture ended.63
Diego de Yepes also relates some levitation accounts that eventually be-
came well known, not just ­because his hagiography became very popu­lar but
­because one of ­these accounts was included in the graphic hagiography Vitae
Beatae Virginis Teresiae a Iesu (Antwerp, 1613), which consisted of twenty-­five
engravings with very brief captions in Latin and may have reached a much wider
audience than ­either of the two lengthy Vidas of Yepes and Ribera.64 This
par­tic­u­lar levitating episode took place at Teresa’s newly founded convent of
Saint Joseph, and it involved Alvaro de Mendoza Bishop of Ávila, and several
other eyewitnesses (fig. 17). According to Yepes, “The force of this arrobam-
iento was so tremendous that, without being able to resist it, she [Teresa] r­ ose
up higher than the win­dow through which the bishop was about to give her
communion.”65
But Yepes did more than simply recount instances of Teresa’s “celestial
inebriations,” as he called her raptures: He also drew lessons from them and of-
fered his own theological analyses. Some of his efforts to interpret her lev­
itations employed Teresa’s theological physics and expanded upon them. For
instance, in addition to mentioning Teresa’s amber-­and-­straw levitation anal-
ogy, Yepes brings up the magnetic properties of lodestone. Intertwining meta­
phorical swagger with theological physics, Yepes concludes, “So her soul was so
full of this divine fire, that, as if her soul ­were a flame, it ­rose up high, and
passed on to the body its lightness and agility.”66
Accounts of Teresa’s levitations can also be found in texts related to indi-
viduals she knew and interacted with, as we have already seen in the case of
Isabel de Santo Domingo. Among such accounts none is more significant than
 92 aloft

Figure 17. Engraving from an illustrated hagiography of Saint Teresa of Avila that depicts her
levitating as she is about to receive communion from the Bishop of Ávila.

the one that tells of her joint levitation with her fellow mystic Saint John of the
Cross, one of the very few recorded instances of two Christian mystics levitat-
ing in unison.
Juan de Yepes y Álvarez (1542–1591), a Carmelite friar who took the re-
ligious name Juan de la Cruz (John of the Cross), was educated at the University
of Salamanca and was ordained a priest in 1567. By sheer happenstance, his
path crossed with Teresa’s at Medina del Campo, while Teresa was ­there on
monastic business, and not long ­after this meeting Teresa recruited John to im-
plement her monastic reform program among the male members of the Carmel-
ite order. In 1570, he became confessor to Teresa and the nuns at the Convent
of the Incarnation at Ávila and remained ­there ­until 1577, when fellow male
Carmelites opposed to his reform program—­which was also Teresa’s—­kidnapped
him and took him to Toledo, where he was imprisoned in a tiny cell and abused
­every day for eight months, simply for trying to reform his order. Although he
failed as a reformer and paid dearly for it during the remainder of his brief
life, receiving unrelenting mistreatment from his brethren, John would go on
 s a i n t t e r e s a o f av i l a , r e lu c ta n t a e t h r o b at 93

to write a series of texts and poems that are among the most sublime and com-
plex in the Christian mystical tradition.
John’s indebtedness to Teresa was im­mense, and the two mystics bonded
intensely during his stint as confessor at Ávila. And it was ­there that one of the
most remarkable levitations in Christian history occurred, in the tight space at
the Convent of the Incarnation known as the locutorio, or parlor. This space
was ­really two rooms, not one, separated by a thick wall, where the nuns in one
room communicated with visitors in the other through a grille-­covered win­dow.
Like Teresa, John was prone to raptures and ecstasies and intent on keep-
ing them private. “He tried to hide or to impede his raptures as much as pos­si­
ble,” said one of his hagiographers.67 But on one occasion, while visiting Teresa
in the parlor on Trinity Sunday, neither John nor Teresa could control a spec-
tacular arrobamiento that suddenly sent them both up into the air while con-
versing about the topic of that feast day, the Holy Trinity. Holding on to his
chair as he felt the rapture coming, John suddenly shot up in the air, all the way
to the ceiling, “still in his chair, as in a chariot of fire, in imitation of his g­ reat
patron Elijah.” Teresa, who was kneeling, immediately shot up too, along with
John, her knees stiffly bent. And, as luck or divine Providence would have it, the
event was witnessed by one of the convent’s nuns, Beatriz de Jesús, who had
been tasked with delivering a message to Teresa and happened to walk into the
locutorio at the very instant that this dual levitation occurred (fig. 18).68

Tidying Up Teresa’s Gracious Disorder

Making sense of Teresa’s levitations requires assembling widely scattered puz-
zle pieces, some of which do not fit neatly into the spot where they belong. What
she has to say is a bit disorderly, scattered, and full of jagged edges and gaps,
and in the end, when all said and done, the picture that emerges ­after much
effort leaves one with some rough and fuzzy spots. Part of the reason for this is
Teresa’s writing style, which some have called “gracious disorder.”69 In the Vida,
especially, digressions are frequent, and when she stops digressing, she does not
always return to the same topic, or if she does, she might return to some other
issue ­after a few sentences or paragraphs. Quite often, too, she ­will loop back to
a topic previously covered as part of one of her digressions. What this means is
that even in a chapter with a substantially narrow focus—­such as chapter 20
of the Vida, which is mostly about raptures and levitations—­issues that belong
together are addressed in dif­fer­ent contexts or are never fully developed, and
 94 aloft

Figure 18. Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint John of the Cross levitate together while conversing
about the Holy Trinity.

issues related to a dif­fer­ent chapter suddenly pop up unexpectedly. Teresa was

aware of this quirk in her writing, which is why she constantly reminds her read-
ers of two of her shortcomings: first, that she lacked a university degree and
therefore could not think or write as a scholastic theologian; and second, that
what she was straining to explain or illustrate was not just way beyond her
 s a i n t t e r e s a o f av i l a , r e lu c ta n t a e t h r o b at 95

capacity as a w
­ oman and a nun but beyond the ability of h
­ uman language and
reason as well.
Nonetheless, fuzzy rough spots and all, Teresa’s take on levitation does
have a g­ reat deal of consistency and an impressive mea­sure of theological so-
phistication. And all of it can be succinctly summarized point by point:

• A life of constant prayer and intense asceticism is absolutely necessary for the mysti-
cal quest. Conversely, mystical experiences are super­natural gifts that are never show-
ered at random on the unprepared or the unwilling. Additionally, the mystical quest
is understood and explained as an intimate relationship driven by love.
• ­Those who pursue intimacy with the divine are never in control of what­ever super­
natural experiences they might have. Mystical experiences—­which Teresa calls mer-
cedes, or f­avors—­cannot be brought on or halted at w
­ ill by the mystic, and resisting
them is ultimately impossible. God is always in control.
• Mystical experiences vary in intensity and are given by God in gradually increasing
increments, usually growing in intensity and complexity as the mystic makes pro­gress.
But this pro­gress is not strictly linear or on a straight upward trajectory, and the fre-
quency and intensity of ­these experiences is never predictable.
• Since all mystical ecstasies involve the convergence of the natu­ral and super­natural—
or a crossing over from earth to heaven—­they are often spoken of in terms of an upward
movement of the ­human self from lower to higher or, more specifically, from earth to
heaven, in both a metaphysical and physical sense.
• Teresa accepts it as a fact that h
­ uman beings are composed of a soul and a body,
which are inextricably united to form a single “self.” Moreover, that self is stratified,
for as she sees it, a hierarchical relation exists between soul and body, with the soul
being the “higher” part. The most intense mystical experiences involve the highest
parts of the soul, and at ­these highest levels, super­natural experiences can also in-
volve the body, robbing it of sensation, sending it into a trance-­like state, and lift-
ing it off the ground.
• Teresa maps out her mystical experiences on a spectrum, moving up from the lowest
(least supernaturally intense) to the highest (most supernaturally intense), and she em-
ploys specific terms for vari­ous types of experiences but does not always do so
consistently.
• Although the greatest cluster of passages on levitation can be found in chapter 20 of
Teresa’s Vida—­a text she wrote u
­ nder ­great duress—­the narrative and analy­sis of her
experiences found ­there can only be fully understood by pairing them up with what
she says in her Interior ­Castle, written over a de­cade ­later, which provides a detailed
systematic outline of the vari­ous levels of mystical pro­gress.
 96 aloft

• When examined in relation to the mystical path that Teresa outlines in her Interior
­Castle, it becomes very clear that the rapture and levitation accounts found in her
Vida correspond to the two ultimate levels of mystical ecstasy, the sixth and seventh,
and that levitation can only begin to happen in the sixth level. Consequently, levita-
tion is a phenomenon reserved for very advanced mystics, and it happens ­because the
body rises up alongside the soul as the soul is drawn ­toward heaven.
• Despite some inconsistencies, Teresa tends to reserve the terms “arrobamiento” (rap-
ture) and “arrebatamiento” (ravishment) for the highest and most intense levels of mys-
tical ecstasy, and both terms—­derived as they are from the Latin verb rapere, which
means “to seize, snatch, grab, carry off, abduct, or rape”—­indicate a loss of control.
The body is not always involved in e­ very arrobamiento or arrebatamiento, but when
it is, the following altered states can occur: a cataleptic suspension of all five senses,
a substantial slowing down of one’s pulse and breathing, a loss of body heat, and a
severe stiffening of the entire body. Sometimes, in addition to the above, the body
can rise into the air uncontrollably and remain suspended above the ground for an
indeterminate amount of time.
• Teresa insists that it is impossible to resist arrobamientos or arrebatamientos and the
levitations that sometimes accompany them. Re­sis­tance can be offered, but it is ex-
tremely painful and eventually futile.
• Teresa begged God to take away the physical phenomena that accompanied her rap-
tures, including her levitations, since, as she says, “His Majesty, ­after all, could grant
me such ­favors without anyone knowing it.”70 And she lets it be known that her pleas
­were constant and that she asked ­others to plead on her behalf too.
• Teresa claims that her prayers ­were answered eventually, and the physical manifestations
of rapture ceased—­including levitation—­even though she continued to experience
purely spiritual arrobamientos and arrebatamientos.

Beyond Ambivalence and Fear

­Whether or not one believes Teresa or the eyewitnesses who claimed to have
seen her levitate is a moot point. The fact remains that we have many such tes-
timonies and that she reified many Catholic beliefs that ­were being challenged
in her day and age. Moreover, it is undeniable that she provided a logical expla-
nation of a strange phenomenon that her culture believed in while avoiding neg-
ative judgments by her superiors. Perhaps even more remarkable than her
ability to prove the divine origin of her raptures, or her annoyance and embar-
rassment in the face of such a divine f­ avor, is her successful bargaining with God
 s a i n t t e r e s a o f av i l a , r e lu c ta n t a e t h r o b at 97

Himself, much like that of Abraham, Moses, and Hezekiah.71 And as a result,
she transcended her time and place in yet another way.
What are we to make of Teresa’s ambivalence and fear of being seen sus-
pended in the air? Why should it be virtuous for anyone to resist a gift from
God, especially one that defies the laws of nature and could be viewed as proof
of His existence and power? Perhaps this is as clear a testimony as we can have
of the dangers posed by ­every levitation due to the potential ambiguity of the
miraculous and some peculiar wrinkles in the texture of early modern Catholi-
cism. In Teresa’s day and age, in a land awash with demoniacs and aspiring
saints, the Inquisition looked askance at anyone who drew attention to them-
selves.72 The best way not to be found guilty of dev­iltry or feigned sanctity was
to convince the inquisitors that one did not seek to exalt oneself. Teresa summed
up the value of levitation in precisely such a way, by complaining about it and
counting it as a hard lesson in humility and selflessness rather than as a telltale
sign of holiness.
Yet no m
­ atter how much Saint Teresa sought to distance herself from levi-
tation, belief in this phenomenon would only intensify among Catholics ­after
her death, thanks in no small mea­sure to her fame. During the seventeenth
­century, the beginning of the so-­called Age of Reason, levitators kept popping
up throughout the Catholic world, not just in Eu­rope but also in t­ hose places
where Spain, Portugal, and France had colonies. And quite a few of them walked
the earth—or hovered over it—at the same time as Isaac Newton was using em-
piricism and inductive reasoning to come up with his law of universal gravita-
tion. Many of ­these baroque aethrobats followed the paradigms established
by the likes of Saint Teresa. O
­ thers, however, flew higher and more spectacu-
larly than ever before.73 To fully appreciate the inflationary spiral that drove
seventeenth-­century levitating, and to come face-­to-­face with the history of the
truly “impossible,” one must turn to its most extreme case, Saint Joseph of
Cupertino.
 3. Saint Joseph of Cupertino,
Shrieking Aerial Ecstatic

This is the life of a ­great servant of God, who lived so much out of the world
rather than in it, that he experienced stupendous elevations of spirit and amazing
raptures of body. One could say marvels ­were his daily routine, prophecy his way
of speaking, and miracles the very nature of his being. . . . ​A man of lowly
bloodlines, but of exalted virtue, he lived among men but was familiar with angels
and enjoyed God’s companionship in constant elevated contemplation.

So begins the Vita del Venerable Padre Fr. Giuseppe Da Copertino De’ Minori Con-
ventuali, penned by Domenico Bernino, son of the g­ reat baroque artist Gian­
lorenzo Bernini, published in 1722, fifty-­nine years a­ fter Joseph’s death, as the
Flying Friar was on his way to beatification and canonization.1 From the very
start, then, the reader is alerted to expect an encounter with unearthly ­things.
Joseph was far from an ordinary man, says Bernino. He was an avatar of the
impossible, closer to God and the angels than to other ­humans. He was a won­
der, pure and ­simple, and miracles ­were “the very nature of his being.” This is a
prob­lem.
Most of what we know about Joseph of Cupertino was recorded by men
like Bernino who w
­ ere already convinced that he was a saint and w
­ ere ­eager to
prove or confirm it. The historical Joseph—­that is, the Joseph who lived and
breathed in seventeenth-­century Italy—is largely inaccessible and irretrievable,
save for a few devotional hymns and letters that he left ­behind, which reveal very
­little about the details of his life. The only Joseph we can access, then, is Saint
Joseph, beatified in 1753 and canonized in 1767, who is more of an archetype

98
 s a i n t j o s e p h o f c u p e r t i n o , s h r i e k i n g a e r i a l e c s tat i c 99

than a flesh-­and-­blood individual, as much a myth as a symbol, and more of a

paradigm than a ­human being. As is the case with many saints in the Catholic
tradition, the only Joseph accessible to us is a holy man who is painfully aware
of his own sinfulness but at the same time nearly perfect, morally and spiritu-
ally, and also uniquely capable of tapping super­natural power.
Does this mean that the Joseph available to us is a mere invention, irrel-
evant and dismissible? Is he ­little more than a carefully constructed illusion or
a projection of early modern Catholic wishful thinking? Not necessarily. The
myth of Saint Joseph is inseparable from the man who became that myth and
from the events that led to the creation of that myth. Even at the most extreme
end of the skeptical spectrum, the most hardened of skeptics should have to
admit that if Saint Joseph is merely an “invention,” that invention itself is a real
­thing, connected to Joseph and his time and place, insofar as it can be attrib-
uted to individuals with a commonly shared worldview who knew the historical
Joseph, knew ­people who had known him, or drew upon the testimony of ­people
whose lives had intersected with Joseph’s in some way.

Reconstructing Joseph’s Life

The chain of testimonies that link saint-­making to ­human beings who some-
how crossed paths with the saint-­to-­be-­made is the chief characteristic of the
canonization pro­cess devised in the early modern era by the Catholic Church,
in an effort to adjust to sea changes in thinking brought about by the Re­nais­
sance and the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, as well as by the nascent
scientific revolution. ­These changes required the “rationalization” of the super­
natural and miraculous, a subject to which we ­will need to turn l­ater.
Saint Joseph is as much a product of the Catholic Reformation and its
baroque culture as he is a reflection of the historical Joseph, a product of ba-
roque Catholicism who was canonized in the Age of Enlightenment. Moreover,
Saint Joseph is inseparable from the voluminous rec­ords of the beatification and
canonization inquests (pro­cessi) carried out ­after his death, mostly between 1664
and 1695—­when many of ­those who had interacted with the historical Joseph
­were still alive—as an essential component of the post-­Tridentine saint-­making
pro­cess.
Most of what we know about Joseph of Cupertino comes from the many
testimonies in t­ hese inquests, which w
­ ere then painstakingly combed through
and turned into narratives by hagiographers intent on broadcasting Joseph’s
 100 aloft

unique story to the world in order to confirm and enhance his status as a saint
and intercessor, as well as to prove the super­natural nature of the Catholic
Church. The documents produced by ­these inquests are voluminous and scat-
tered over vari­ous archives.2
Saint Joseph’s beatification and canonization inquests provided much of
the material l­ater mined by most of his hagiographers, who relied on the manu-
scripts themselves or perhaps on much briefer printed summaries and abridg-
ments.3 On the way to canonization, four hagiographies w
­ ere published over a
span of seventy-­five years. The first of ­these was written by Roberto Nuti, a Con-
ventual Franciscan who had known Joseph and served as his confessor at As-
sisi. Nuti relied not only on his own memory but also on the testimonies provided
for the pro­cessi, the beatification and canonization inquests undertaken imme-
diately ­after Joseph’s death. Published in 1678, Nuti’s lengthy 736-­page hagiog-
raphy would be heavi­ly used by all subsequent hagiographers. Nuti’s Vita was
followed by that of Domenico Bernino,4 a lay author who claimed to have wit-
nessed one of Joseph’s ecstasies.5 Relying on Nuti and the pro­cessi, Bernino’s
work was published in 1722, as part of the effort to have Joseph beatified and
canonized. Then in 1753, around the time of Joseph’s beatification, two more
hagiographies appeared, almost si­mul­ta­neously: one by Paolo Antonio Agelli, a
Conventual Franciscan and inquisitor general of Florence, and another by An-
gelo Pastrovicchi, another Conventual Franciscan. Since Bernino, Agelli, and Pas-
trovicchi focus more intensely on Joseph’s levitations than Nuti, their texts
have more to offer on this subject and ­will therefore be more heavi­ly relied upon
­here. And t­ hese three texts can be compared to a hall of mirrors, wherein one
finds multiple reflections of the same details. Pastrovicchi and Agelli relied
heavi­ly on Bernino and offer very similar narratives, but the first editions of
Bernino and Pastrovicchi provide abundant marginal citations to the inquest
pro­cessi, while Agelli keeps his sources hidden from the reader.
To date, the most comprehensive narrative account of Saint Joseph’s life
is Gustavo Parisciani’s monumental San Giuseppe da Copertino alla luce dei nuovi
documentti, over a thousand pages long, thoroughly based on manuscript sources,
especially ­those related to the beatification and canonization inquests, and other
texts that had been previously overlooked.6 Parisciani’s meticulous combing of
archives has not made all previous hagiographies obsolete, given that the four
early ones are now historical documents with merit of their own, worthy of scru-
tiny. T
­ here is no need to duplicate Parisciani ­here, much less to deconstruct
his work. What is needed is a succinct summary of Joseph’s life that focuses
 s a i n t j o s e p h o f c u p e r t i n o , s h r i e k i n g a e r i a l e c s tat i c 101

primarily on his “impossible” levitations and the effects they had on his own
life and on the Catholic Church of his day and age. This narrative ­will take Jo-
seph’s hagiographies at face value, for what ­matters most at this point is not
analyzing ­those hagiographies but laying bare their mindset and what­ever facts
and observations the authors sought to convey. Analyzing the hagiographical
narratives w
­ ill be the focus of chapter 4.

From Dimwit to Priest

According to tradition, Giuseppe Maria Desa, the man who would come to be
known as Saint Joseph of Cupertino, “the Flying Friar,” was born in a stable, just
like Jesus Christ and Saint Francis of Assisi, his destiny auspiciously foreshad-
owed by this rare coincidence.7 As fate, or chance, or divine Providence would
have it, Joseph shared another auspicious resemblance to Jesus Christ, for his
­father, too, was a carpenter.
Joseph was born on June 17, 1603, in Copertino, a town in Apulia, near
the southernmost tip of Italy’s “heel,” a region much closer to Albania and Greece
than to Rome. Copertino was u
­ nder Spanish rule at that time, along with the
rest of the Kingdom of Naples—as it had been since 1504 and would be u
­ ntil
1714—­and its Spanish overlords preferred to call the town Cupertino, with a
“u” as the first vowel rather than an “o,” a spelling still used in English-­speaking
countries, where Giuseppe is known as Joseph of Cupertino.8
Joseph’s ­father was Felice Desa, a carpenter and master wainwright by pro-
fession, as well as a caretaker of the local ­castle owned by the Apulian noble-
man Galeazzo Francesco Pinelli, who was not only Count of Copertino but
also Duke of Acerenza and Marquis of Galatone. Joseph’s ­mother was Francesca
Panaca, better known as Franceschina, a strict disciplinarian with a quick
temper and a fierce devotion to Catholic piety. Franceschina, a Franciscan ter-
tiary who “worked hard at home, weaving and sewing,”9 often corrected her son’s
misdeeds—­“even the smallest”—­with corporal punishment. According to Ro-
berto Nuti, the earliest of all his hagiographers, young Joseph was “impetuous
by nature, ill-­tempered and volatile, and easily angered,” so perhaps the punc-
tilious and devout Franceschina might have had good reason for feeling a bit
overwhelmed by her maternal responsibilities.10 Joseph had one ­sister, Livia, who
is seldom mentioned by his hagiographers, and four other siblings who died very
young and of whom nothing is known. His extended f­amily seemed religiously
inclined, and some relatives w
­ ere clerics, including two who belonged to the
 102 aloft

Franciscan order: ­Father Francesco Desa, a paternal u

­ ncle, and ­Father Giovanni
Donato, a maternal ­uncle.
Some other members of his extended f­amily ­were relatively well off and
educated, but Joseph’s own f­ ather proved to be somewhat improvident, too easy-
going, perhaps a tad too generous or careless, and too easily roped into secur-
ing loans taken by friends and neighbors who failed to pay him back. B
­ ecause
­these delinquent loans became his responsibility and he lacked the means to
pay all of what was owed, Felice feared being thrown into debtor’s prison and
took to hiding from creditors and lawmen. Eventually, in 1603, he fled to a
church, where he avoided arrest by claiming the right of asylum. But this eva-
sion proved disastrous. Frustrated by his escape from their hands, local authori-
ties swooped down on his ­house and seized it, along with all its contents. As
the ­house was being ransacked, his pregnant wife, Francesca—­who was already
beyond the normal childbearing age—­headed out in a panic for a nearby place
of refuge, only to find herself g­ oing into l­abor en route. And so it was that Fran-
ceschina delivered Joseph all by herself in a stable, the nearest shelter could find
during this emergency.
Joseph endured a difficult childhood, due mainly to his ­father’s negligence,
absence, and unpaid debts, which hung like a dark cloud over the ­family. His
austere ­mother also instilled fear and devotion in him with such g­ reat fervor that
he could ­later boast that “he never needed to go through the novitiate in his reli-
gious life, having already gone through it effectively ­under her maternal ­will.”11
Drawn to spending time in churches and precociously inclined to prayer—­
perhaps as a way of escaping from his surroundings—­Joseph began to exhibit
be­hav­iors at a very young age that are normally associated with mature ascetics
and mystics, such as praying frequently and falling into trance-­like states unex-
pectedly. Easily distracted at school, where he proved to be a slow learner and
something of a class dunce, he would often drop his books and remain immo-
bile for long spells, “with his eyes fixed heavenward and his mouth half open, as
if he w
­ ere listening to the singing and the sound of the angels up t­ here.”12 Soon
enough, young Joseph came to be known by his schoolmates and neighbors
as Bocca Aperta, or “open mouth,” a mocking reference to his trances and his
reputation as a dimwit.13
Being teased at school proved to be the least of Joseph’s worries, for at
the age of seven his education was rudely cut short by an illness that lasted sev-
eral years.14 Covered from head to toe with sores variously described by his
hagiographers as “ulcers,” “abscesses,” “pustules,” “tumors,” or “cancers,” racked
 s a i n t j o s e p h o f c u p e r t i n o , s h r i e k i n g a e r i a l e c s tat i c 103

with constant pain, and subjected to in­effec­tive cures that sometimes amounted
to torture, Joseph grew increasingly weak. Bedridden and unable to walk yet
still impulsively pious, he begged his ­mother to carry him in her arms to church
daily. Fi­nally, at the age of eleven, he was miraculously healed when his ­mother
strapped him to a h
­ orse and took him to the shrine of Our Lady of Grace at
Galatone, where he was anointed with an unction made by a local holy hermit
from the oil of one of the shrine’s lamps. Healed instantly, he walked all the way
back home to Copertino, about ten miles, aided only by a cane.
­Little is known about the remaining years of his childhood, other than
his continual absorption in prayer, his extreme fasting, his self-­mortification with
hair shirts, and his obsessive churchgoing. Although he had learned to read, he
was not very proficient at it and remained “mostly untutored in learning.”15
Nonetheless, he became acquainted with some devotional texts—­perhaps read
to him by his m
­ other—­and was drawn to seek the “elevated and sublime mys-
teries” mentioned in that lit­er­a­ture. As he transitioned to adolescence, he be-
gan to display an awkward ineptitude for work that would plague him for much
of his young adulthood. First, he tried his hand at selling vegetables, somewhat
unsuccessfully, and then ventured to serve as an apprentice to a shoemaker, most
disastrously. Unable to ­handle the simplest tasks and lapsing into trances fre-
quently, Joseph proved useless to the cobbler and was quickly dismissed from
his shop.
Having failed at ­simple commerce and menial ­labor, Joseph set his sights
on becoming a Franciscan friar, which he perceived as his true calling, but the
ineptitude he had displayed in the secular world proved to be an even more se-
rious obstacle to his admission into monastic life.
Feeling attracted to the Conventual Franciscans, who followed the rule
of Saint Francis somewhat loosely, especially on the issue of absolute poverty,
Joseph first reached out to two relatives who had prob­ably influenced him and
seemed obvious potential patrons, his paternal and maternal u
­ ncles, F
­ ather Fran-
cesco Desa and ­Father Giovanni Donato, both of whom ­were well-­respected
members of that order. ­These ­uncles, however, turned Joseph down, closing the
door on his dreams of becoming a Franciscan friar. Both of them had long con-
sidered their nephew something of an embarrassment and wholly unfit for reli-
gious life, not just ­because of his poor education but also ­because of his
awkwardness and his proven rec­ord of failure. Undeterred by this rejection, Joseph
kept begging his ­uncles to find him a place within one of the other branches of
the Franciscan order, ­either the Friars Minor (also known as Observants), who
 104 aloft

followed the rule of Saint Francis more strictly than the Conventuals, or the rela-
tively new Capuchins, founded in 1525, who ­were the strictest and most austere
of all Franciscans.16
Joseph’s per­sis­tence paid off in due time. Somehow, e­ ither through his
­uncle Francesco directly or through his own initiative, hapless Joseph obtained
access to ­Father Antonio da Francavilla, provincial of the Capuchins, and was
accepted into that order as a lay ­brother.17 So in August 1620, at the age of sev-
enteen, the ever-­incompetent Bocca Aperta entered the Capuchin friary at
Martina Franca as a novice, where he donned the much-­coveted Franciscan habit
and took the religious name of Stefano. But his clumsiness and utter distrac-
tion yet again proved his undoing, despite his devotion, humility, and apparent
holiness.
Employed in the kitchen and refectory, the novice Stefano created con-
stant mayhem, breaking dishes, spilling the contents of cooking pots, retrieving
the wrong items from the pantry, serving food incorrectly, fumbling even the
simplest of tasks and stumbling at e­ very turn, or simply ignoring his duties. Al-
though his hagiographers would l­ater ascribe ­these disasters to his constant
mystical raptures, the hard truth seemed obvious to every­one in the friary: this
novice was dreadfully “dull-­minded, corporeally unsound, spiritually intolerant,
and blind to the friary’s need for manual l­abor.”18 Consequently, a­ fter eight
months of failure upon failure, ­Brother Stefano, the holy fool, was stripped of
his religious name and Franciscan habit and expelled from the Capuchin ­house
at Martina Franca. This rejection was so devastating to him that he would l­ater
say: “It seemed to me as if my skin was peeled off with the habit and my flesh
rent from my bones.”19
Returning to the “deceitful world” he had tried to flee was made all the
worse for Joseph ­because his expulsion took place during the penitential sea-
son of Lent, a sacred time that emphasized the rejection of every­thing he now
faced unprotected by cloister walls—­the world, the flesh, and the devil—­and
also ­because some items of secular apparel that he had joyfully shed eight months
­earlier had been lost or discarded, forcing him to reenter the secular realm be-
reft of shoes, stockings, or a hat.20 Worse yet must have been the thought of
facing his ­mother in such disarray, that stern ­woman whose disappointment and
shame he feared would be far worse than his own and whose scoldings and la-
ments he might not have dared to imagine. So, barefoot and bareheaded, hop-
ing to avoid abject humiliation at home, Joseph went straight to his Franciscan
paternal u
­ ncle Francesco Desa.
 s a i n t j o s e p h o f c u p e r t i n o , s h r i e k i n g a e r i a l e c s tat i c 105

Prostrating himself at U
­ ncle Francesco’s feet, Joseph cried, “The Capuchin
­Fathers have taken the habit from me b
­ ecause I am good for nothing.” His u
­ ncle
agreed, scolding him for being “incompetent” and a “vagabond.”21 Since ­Father
Francesco was involved in a Lenten preaching mission at that time, he allowed
Joseph to stay with him ­until Easter, when he accompanied him home to Cop-
ertino, where, as Joseph expected, his ­mother berated him mercilessly. Mean-
while, however, she also pleaded with the authorities not to imprison him for
his ­
father’s unpaid debts, which had become his responsibility upon his
­father’s death. And she also begged her ­brother ­Father Giovanni and her brother-­
in-­law F
­ ather Francesco to gain Joseph entrance into some other Franciscan
friary. Her pleading paid off, even though both of Joseph’s u
­ ncles initially turned
a deaf ear to her requests. A
­ fter spending six months hiding from the authori-
ties and bounty hunters in the attic of a chapel, Joseph was admitted as a ter-
tiary novice by the Conventual Franciscan community of La Grotella in
Copertino, thanks to his maternal ­uncle ­Father Giovanni, who resided at that
friary and served as provincial of the Franciscans of Puglia and had by then
obviously caved into his ­sister’s incessant appeals.
Placed in charge of the friary’s mule and assigned to other menial tasks,
Joseph rejoiced. He was a Franciscan once again, admitted back to his true calling.
Moreover, his clerical status now gave him immunity from any l­egal responsi-
bilities for his f­ather’s debts. He was not yet a full-­fledged Franciscan and still
needed to prove himself, but having learned a hard lesson with the Capuchins,
he tried to be less incompetent and succeeded, completing tasks fully, even the
most difficult ones intentionally thrown his way by superiors wanting to test
his mettle. In time, his ­uncle Giovanni grew more trustful, making him his as-
sistant and assigning him duties beyond the stable, kitchen, and garden, such
as begging for alms in the streets of Copertino, where he soon came to be ad-
mired by the p
­ eople he encountered. Within La Grotella, Joseph gave himself
over to prayer and asceticism, g­ oing barefoot, wearing a hair shirt, wrapping a
chain tightly around his lower torso and groin, fasting more than was required,
and sleeping only a few hours each night on wooden planks covered by some
straw and a worn-­out bearskin. During ­those nighttime hours when he abstained
from sleep, he prayed and studied on his own, in secret, trying to make up for
his insufficient and haphazard education.
About four years a­ fter he entered La Grotella, having won the admiration
of his community and his superiors and having also reached the age of twenty-­
two, Joseph became a full-­fledged novice in the Franciscan order in June of 1625.
 106 aloft

Taking the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, he immediately began pre-
paring for the priesthood, with full support from his u
­ ncle Giovanni. Although
he was now a shadow of his former bumbling self, learning some basic Latin,
memorizing the rules of his order, and acquiring proficiency in doctrine proved
difficult for the poorly educated friar previously mocked as Bocca Aperta. None-
theless, with the help of a patient novice master and of both of his u
­ ncles, Jo-
seph made enough pro­gress to move on to the study of dogmatic and moral
theology, to receive minor ­orders in January 1627, and to be ordained as a sub-
deacon a month ­later.
Moving up to the next step on the way to the priesthood—­becoming a
deacon—­was an even greater challenge, for all candidates to the diaconate w
­ ere
required to pass a rigorous exam that required them to read, chant, and com-
ment on some randomly chosen Gospel passage. Fully aware of his weak com-
mand of Latin and his rather ­limited acquaintance with the Bible, Joseph prayed
to the Madonna of La Grotella for assistance and faced his examiner, Girolamo
de Franchi, bishop of Nardo, “as if armed with a formidable shield” given to him
by the “Madonna Santissima,”22 not knowing which Gospel passage he would
be asked to wrestle with. Then, to Joseph’s delight, and that of his hagiographers,
the story quickly veers into the realm of the miraculous as divine Providence
rescues him from failure, for the text selected by Bishop Franchi was “Beatus
venter qui te portavit” (Luke 11:27, “Blessed is the womb that bore Thee”), the
only passage out of the entire Bible that Joseph—­still something of a dullard
and barely proficient in Latin—­had been able to memorize. So, miraculously,
Joseph passed his exam.
Ordained a deacon with miraculous assistance from heaven, Joseph had
one more hurdle to clear before he could become a priest: an exam more daunt-
ing than the previous one. He knew that the examiner this time would be
Giovanni Battista Detti, bishop of Castro, who was proud of his reputation for
toughness and his zeal for ordaining only the ablest of candidates to serve as
priests.23 ­After praying for another miracle all through the night to his “Advo-
cate and Protector, the Most Holy Virgin ­Mother of God,” Joseph entered the
examination room along with other candidates from the Franciscan friary at
Lecce,24 expecting to fail. And once again, much to his delight and that of his
hagiographers, Heaven intervened. That morning, as the exam began, Bishop
Detti suddenly learned through an urgent message that he needed to devote his
attention to some emergency immediately, and he had no choice but to cut short
the exam session. So, ­after questioning some candidates and being very impressed
 s a i n t j o s e p h o f c u p e r t i n o , s h r i e k i n g a e r i a l e c s tat i c 107

by their answers, Bishop Nardi de­cided that every­one ­else in that room must
be equally well prepared, and he passed them all, including Joseph, without ask-
ing him a single question.
So, on March 28, 1628, Joseph Desa was ordained a priest.
The seemingly daft and frail son of Felice Desa and Franceschina Panaca
had come a long way from his days as Bocca Aperta and Stefano, but he had
not yet begun to reach the heights he would eventually reach as Padre Giuseppe
da Copertino, the flying saint.

From the Altar to the Inquisition

Joseph’s ordination was followed by joy at first and then by desolation. Elated
by the “miracle” of his final exam and his consecration as a priest, the first t­ hing
he did upon returning to Copertino was to throw himself to the ground at the
feet of an image of the Virgin Mary in the chapel of La Grotella and thank her
profusely. But soon afterward, a­ fter celebrating his first Mass and feeling utterly
unworthy to consecrate the Eucharist, a dark night of the soul descended on
him, unexpectedly, as happens to many mystics. “Overcome inside by a fierce
melancholy, prolonged distrust, and a deep affliction of spirit,” Joseph would
­later confess that he “doubted that he could endure it.”25 During this agonizing
time, which lasted for two years, Joseph was deprived of his customary trances
and divine consolations. Then, as Joseph would ­later relate, that dark night lifted
as suddenly as it arrived when a friar whom he had never met entered his cell
and gave him a new Franciscan habit to replace the tattered one he was wear-
ing. Naturally, Joseph immediately realized that the stranger must have been
an angel.26
Joseph’s awareness of his own sinfulness, enhanced by his experience with
the Eucharist and coupled with the melancholy that followed, drove him to take
his asceticism to new extremes. Aiming for holiness and more intimacy with
God, he devised penances that mirrored a well-­established pattern found in many
hagiographies with which he was undoubtedly familiar, and one of the chief char-
acteristics of that pattern was excessive fasting that turned into inedia or near-­
inedia, the feat of surviving without food. Joseph had been abstaining from meat
long before he was ordained, and continued to do so, but now he ­stopped eating
bread and drinking wine. Surviving on a meager diet of herbs, dried fruits, and
beans, all laced with a b
­ itter powder that repulsed all o
­ thers who tasted it, he
made his punishing diet even worse by eating vegetables on Fridays that ­were so
 108 aloft

foul that a fellow friar who dared to sample them remained nauseous for several
days. In addition, he strictly observed seven sets of forty-­day fasts throughout
the year, in imitation of Saint Francis. ­These 280 days of fasting per year—­
which involved abstaining from all food for five days each week and eating very
small amounts on Sundays and Thursdays—­brought Joseph very close to star-
vation. So, like many other holy men and ­women one encounters in hagiogra-
phies, Joseph could claim he was kept alive by the “Bread of Angels,” the
Eucharist, which he eagerly consumed ­every day.
As if all this fasting w
­ ere not enough, Joseph also waged a brutal war on
his own body, “armed for combat against the flesh.”27 He reduced the number
of hours he slept even further and scourged himself twice a week with a metal-­
studded whip that cut deeply into his shoulders and back, leaving the walls of
his cell caked with spattered blood. D
­ oing this vigorously seemed essential to
him, for whenever he felt too weak to do it himself, he would ask a fellow friar
to wield the whip. In addition, Joseph tightened the chain he already wore ­under
his hair shirt, causing it to embed into his skin. The heavy toll taken on his
health by all this self-­abuse can be easily ­imagined and must have been obvious
to his brethren in the friary, but since asceticism was an essential component
of monastic life and unquestioningly assumed to be a pathway to holiness, no
one ­stopped Joseph ­until he was close to the edge of death. Noticing that Jo-
seph “could barely breathe,” his superior took a close look at the emaciated friar
and his wounds. Taking off his habit and seeing “his body was one ­whole single
sore” that looked “like a torn cadaver rather than a living man,”28 the superior
immediately ordered him to stop mortifying himself so severely. Joseph, ever
the obedient friar, did as he was commanded and moderated his self-­punishment,
prob­ably saving himself from an early death.
While this excessive self-­mortification might seem caused by Joseph’s
dark night of the soul, which he endured between 1628 to 1630, such an as-
sumption would be wrong, or only partially correct. The hair shirt and chain, the
fasting, the scourging, the sleep deprivation, and all such t­hings ­were part of
Joseph’s life before the dark night and may have in fact intensified alongside
Joseph’s melancholy, but they ­were also part and parcel of a major mystical
transformation within Joseph that led to the miraculous feats that gained him
a reputation as a very special saint. His levitations and the other super­natural
phenomena associated with him w
­ ere inextricably linked to his self-­mortification
and his life of prayer. Joseph was “­either detached from his senses or disdainful
of providing relief for his body,” said Agelli, “as if its natu­ral weight aggravated
 s a i n t j o s e p h o f c u p e r t i n o , s h r i e k i n g a e r i a l e c s tat i c 109

his soul, which only yearned to soar in the upper reaches of Heaven.”29 In this
re­spect, Joseph was no dif­fer­ent from any of the ­great and well-­known mystics
who preceded him and ­after whom he modeled himself. They all embodied the
paradoxical contradictions that shape the Christian mystical tradition, above
all that ultimate paradox in which agony and ecstasy are conjoined ineffably,
perhaps most dramatically expressed by Saint Teresa of Avila when she tried to
sum up that mystical ecstasy known as the transverberation, in which an angel
plunged a spear into her chest: “So g­ reat was the pain, that it made me moan;
and so utter the sweetness that this sharpest of pains gave me, that t­here was
no wanting it to stop, nor is t­ here any contenting of the soul with anything less
than God.”30
Joseph had been experiencing trances, visions, and ecstasies since the
age of eight, and his altered states ­were not only observed by many but became
a defining characteristic of his identity. But it was precisely at the tail end of
Joseph’s dark night that levitations began to accompany his ecstatic trances.
Joseph’s mystical transformation began in 1630, at first subtly and indirectly,
with seemingly uncontrollable physical reflexes, especially twitching during the
reading of sacred texts at meals and also random cries and shrieks that sounded
“as if someone had stabbed him with a knife.”31 His trances also began to in-
tensify at the same time, and to last longer, and some of his fellow friars no-
ticed and began to keep a worried eye on him, alarmed by what­ever seemed to
be developing within Joseph. Then, on the feast of his beloved role model Saint
Francis, October 4, 1630, the mystical dam broke, so to speak, and the super­
natural torrent that flowed out surprised every­one. While taking part in a pro­
cession through the town of Copertino in honor of Saint Francis, Joseph suddenly
­rose up off the ground and remained suspended in the air, ecstatic, hovering
above an astonished crowd of clerics and townspeople.
From this point forward, life would be very dif­fer­ent for Joseph, his friary
of La Grottella, and the residents of Copertino. Joseph’s levitating ecstasies
became frequent, and most of them ­were very public, often witnessed by ­others.
According to eyewitness reports, Joseph would regularly take to the air, always
­after emitting a loud cry, and hover above the ground anywhere from “one
hand” to several “paces” or cubits, even higher than the altar, or over ­people’s
heads. Joseph could remain perfectly still in the air, sometimes for hours; he
could also gyrate or sing and dance. Many times, at the most unexpected mo-
ment, Joseph would let out one of his shrieks—as loud as a cannon blast, by his
own description—­and take to the air.32 His levitations ­were not always predictable
 110 aloft

but could easily be triggered by anything that affected Joseph spiritually. Sim-
ply hearing the names of Jesus or Mary could do it, as could sacred ­music
or the beauty of nature. Prayer, especially, was a common trigger. And saying
Mass caused him to rise in the air frequently, especially at the moment of
consecration.
Joseph did more than hover or float in the air, transfixed. Sometimes he
wept, too, or shouted, or even blurted out a confession of his own sins. So as
word of his miraculous levitations spread, the chapel and friary at La Grottella
became a magnet for the curious as well as the skeptical and the devout, and
the resulting tumult caused by visitors could sometimes turn carnivalesque.
Some p
­ eople would circle around Joseph as he hovered at the altar, gawking,
straining to see him from vari­ous ­angles. ­Others would dare to touch, prod,
and jab him with their fin­gers, poke his open uplifted eyes, or move his arms,
trying to make him flinch. Some would dare to test his trances by pricking
him with ­needles or holding candle flames close to his skin.33 According to nu-
merous eyewitness reports, this prodding and poking never elicited any reac-
tion from Joseph, who remained as still as a marble statue carved by Bernino’s
­father. The only stimulus that could bring him out of his trances was his supe-
rior’s voice, commanding him to snap out of it. Such was the power of the vow
of obedience for Joseph. Consequently, only Joseph’s superior could restore de-
corum when ­those gathered around the hovering friar acted as childish dolts at
a carnival.
Witnesses at Copertino—­lay as well as clerical—­reported more than sev-
enty feats of levitation for Joseph’s beatification inquest, not including his al-
most daily hovering ecstasies at Mass, which could last two hours. Although ­these
reports tell of miracles that defy the laws of nature and strain credulity with
fantastic details that border on farce or cross the line into it, blending the un-
believable and the comical, the stories are told in a matter-­of-­fact way, with a
perfunctory seriousness that one might expect from a police report. Among the
many accounts of Joseph’s levitations, a handful provide a glimpse of certain
patterns, as well as of certain characteristics of the levitations and of the dif­fer­
ent ways in which the Flying Friar could surprise the ­people of Copertino.
Holy feast days seem to have been triggers for Joseph’s ecstasies, many of
which took place within the friary’s chapel at La Grottella. One Christmas Eve,
at a reenactment cele­bration of the birth of the Christ child, Joseph began to
dance “like David before the ark” when he heard bagpipes and flutes being played
by shepherds and, suddenly, with a loud shout, sprang up and flew “like a bird
 s a i n t j o s e p h o f c u p e r t i n o , s h r i e k i n g a e r i a l e c s tat i c 111

through the air” about forty feet up the nave to the high altar, where he “em-
braced the tabernacle with both his arms” and remained ­there for about fifteen
minutes without burning himself or his vestments.34 One Holy Thursday, as he
was praying with his brethren, he r­ ose up and flew to the tabernacle at the high
altar and remained suspended in midair above a g­ reat number of candles and
stayed ­there, in ecstasy, venerating the Eucharist ­until his superior ordered him
to return to the ground. On another occasion, on the feast of Saint Francis, he
­rose from the ground “about fifteen palms” from the floor and hovered in ec-
stasy by the pulpit with his arms outstretched and his knees bent, kneeling in
midair for a long time.35
Rituals, prayers, and sacred m
­ usic could also be triggers for Joseph’s ec-
stasies. Once, at a veiling ceremony for nuns at a convent of Saint Clare, he heard
the choir sing, “Come, you bride of Christ” and hurried over to a nearby priest,
taking his hand and rising in the air with him “with a super­natural force.” Then,
as if this ­were not amazing enough, Joseph began dancing vigorously with this
priest in midair.36
Reminding Joseph of something sacred or bringing it to his attention
could also cause him to levitate. Once, when a friar was talking to him about the
flames that appeared above the heads of the apostles when the Holy Spirit de-
scended on them at Pentecost,37 Joseph flew up with one of his loud whoops,
ecstatic, fixing his gaze on a nearby candle flame. On another occasion, all it took
to send him up in the air was to hear a priest say how beautiful heaven must be.
This levitation took him up to the top of an olive tree, where he remained perched
for about a half hour, kneeling on a slender branch, seemingly weightless. As one
account of this event observes, “It was a strange sight to see how the branch
which bore him swayed as lightly as if a small bird rested on it.”38
Some of Joseph’s levitations took place outdoors, in public, and some of
them served practical purposes. Among t­ hese, one of the most remarkable com-
bined flying and superhuman strength. This event occurred when a replica of the
calvary was being built on a hill, and the largest of the three crosses proved too
heavy for the ten men who ­were trying to raise it and insert it into a hole in the
ground. Seeing the strug­gle of the laborers and sensing they could be crushed by
the cross they w
­ ere trying to lift, Joseph flew from the friary’s gate to the cross,
lifted it “as easily as if it ­were a straw,” and dropped it safely in its hole. Once in-
stalled, this cross became a special focus of devotion for Joseph, and he would
sometimes rise up to the top of it and perch himself on it, in ecstasy, just as he
had done previously on an olive tree (fig. 19).39
 112 aloft

Figure 19. Many of Saint Joseph of Cupertino’s levitations supposedly took place outdoors—­where
it is extremely difficult to deceive witnesses with trickery involving ropes, wires, or other devices—­
such as this incident involving the installation of a large cross into the ground.

Joseph also worked miracles of a more traditional sort, especially healings,

and—in emulation of Saint Francis—­miracles involving nature and animals.40
Joseph could also act as an agent of divine dis­plea­sure. Since he could also dis-
cern or smell or see the sins of o
­ thers, he could reprimand p
­ eople or deny them
absolution in confession and predict disasters or illnesses that would befall the
 s a i n t j o s e p h o f c u p e r t i n o , s h r i e k i n g a e r i a l e c s tat i c 113

unrepentant.41 But sometimes this harsh side of Joseph was only the flip side
of the coin, so to speak. Once, he warned local bigwig Count Cosimo Pinelli, a
sexual predator, that he would go blind if he kept abusing a certain girl. Pre-
dictably, the count refused to change his be­hav­ior, lost his sight, and came beg-
ging Joseph for a cure. Then, a­ fter showing genuine contrition and repentance
in the sacrament of confession, he was miraculously healed by Joseph.42 So it
was that Joseph “became so famous in that land of his, and in the w
­ hole prov-
ince of Apulia, that he was regarded not only as a ­great saint, but a miracle of
sanctity.”43 As one hagiographer put it, “­People from far and near flocked to see
him, to hear his teachings and implore his prayers, calling him ‘the apostle of
the country,’ and ­every place he visited tasted the effects of his prodigious
goodness.”44

From the Inquisition to the Papal Court

In Joseph’s day and age, being considered a “miracle of sanctity” overflowing with
“prodigious goodness” was risky. In fact, the more wondrous the miracles as-
cribed to you, and the more of a stir you caused, the higher your risk of being
closely scrutinized by church authorities. An uneasy binary dialectic was con-
stantly at play in religious life, an arduous strug­gle to distinguish between the
divine and the demonic, the orthodox and heretical, the genuine and the phony,
the credible and the incredible. Above all, in this contentious era of reform,
religious wars, and rising skepticism—­which also happened to be the age of mas-
sive witch hunts—­the Catholic Church found it necessary to take a cautious ap-
proach to claims of sanctity. Holiness had to be contested to winnow out all
fakers, heretics, and demoniacs, for the world was full of all three of ­these.
Monastics w
­ ere especially vulnerable to close examination and to charges of
feigned sanctity or heresy.45 Not even some of the greatest saints of the Catho-
lic Reformation could escape such scrutiny, which is why Ignatius Loyola,
founder of the Jesuits, and Teresa of Avila had their own run-­ins with the In-
quisition and kept being denounced to it even a­ fter death, up u
­ ntil the day they
­were beatified.
So it is not at all surprising that ­after Joseph’s tour of nearby sites in Apu-
lia with his provincial in 1636, which expanded his notoriety considerably, a
suspicious cleric denounced Joseph to the Inquisition in Naples.46 The charge
came from apostolic vicar Monsignor Giuseppe Palamolla, who accused Joseph of
“abusing the credulity of the ­people” with his feigned sanctity.47 The denuncia-
tion warned: “­There is a thirty-­three-­year-­old man scuttling around this province,
 114 aloft

acting like another Messiah, drawing the w

­ hole populace to himself with prodi-
gies ­every step of the way, admired by the ­simple folk who always believe every­
thing. We must inform our superiors, so they can remedy this and prevent
­future evils, especially of the sort that ­will be unfixable.”48
­After some foot-­dragging, Joseph’s superiors at La Grottella had no choice
but to hand him over to the Holy Office in Naples in late October 1638. Ac-
cording to his hagiographers, Joseph went to Naples fearlessly, even joyfully, fre-
quently levitating in ecstasy along the way,49 despite the sadness and worry of
his fellow friars and of the townspeople of Copertino. In Naples, he resided at
the Franciscan friary of San Lorenzo, where he was coldly received. In truth, he
was not a guest, but a prisoner. Detained t­ here for a few weeks and examined
three times by the tribunal of the Holy Office, on November 25, November 27,
and December 1, Joseph was declared to be a genuine holy man, innocent of all
charges leveled against him. This was a relatively quick trial by Inquisition stan-
dards, and its brevity lent weight to the verdict.50
The questioning was intense enough to leave Joseph a bit shaken, but sig-
nificantly, the inquisitors never doubted the facticity of Joseph’s levitations and
miracles. The Inquisition had two concerns: first, w
­ hether Joseph’s levitations
­were of divine or demonic origin and, second, ­whether he might be intention-
ally attracting attention to himself out of self-­aggrandizing vanity, as Monsignor
Palamolla had charged. Given that his ecstasies ­were preceded by loud shouts
that interrupted his Masses and drew attention to him rather than the Eucha-
rist, this was a key issue.
Joseph was asked why he did not celebrate Mass in private if he knew it
was highly likely that he would be overtaken by levitating ecstasies. Joseph re-
sponded that he would much prefer to celebrate the Eucharist ­behind closed
doors and had per­sis­tently begged his superiors to allow him to do that, but
they had denied all his requests. In sum, his superiors ­were responsible for his
public levitations during Mass; he was merely fulfilling his vow of obedience.
At one climactic point of the trial, Joseph was also asked w
­ hether he derived
plea­sure from his moti, the physical phenomena that accompanied his levitat-
ing ecstasies. Making a crucial distinction, he replied that while the ecstasies
brought him spiritual delight, the physical phenomena caused him nothing
but shame and embarrassment. He had prayed for the levitations to cease, he
said, and had asked his brethren at La Grottella to make the same request from
God, to no avail.51 His moti ­were unstoppable. As the inquisitors probed this
subject, Joseph insisted that he had no control whatsoever over his ecstasies,
 s a i n t j o s e p h o f c u p e r t i n o , s h r i e k i n g a e r i a l e c s tat i c 115

shouts, hoverings, and flights. Ultimately, Joseph’s self-­effacing demeanor won

over the judges, who might have already been inclined to assume his innocence
before the trial had begun. Humility was the key to proving one’s innocence in
cases like this, along with the ability to make clear distinctions correctly, and
nothing ­else reflected the proper attitude and state of mind more convincingly
than being ashamed of one’s levitations.52
Joseph might have breathed a sigh of relief, but further scrutiny awaited.
The tribunal’s decision had to be reviewed by the f­ ather general of the Con-
ventual Franciscans and the Inquisition in Rome, so he was ordered to go
­there. Given a few weeks of rest at San Lorenzo in Naples, where he was now an
honored guest rather than a prisoner, Joseph immediately received a g­ reat deal
of attention from clergy and laity alike, especially from the elite of Neapolitan
society, including the Spanish viceroy. Consequently, many in Naples also got
the chance to witness some spectacular levitations since he could now re-
sume saying Mass in public. At the church of San Gregorio Armeno, where
the Inquisition had ordered him to say Mass for the nuns of its cloister, Jo-
seph sprang up with one of his usual shrieks, “­rose in flight and placed him-
self upright at the altar with his hands outstretched as a cross, and he bent
forward at the waist among the flowers and the many candles which w
­ ere burn-
ing t­here.” At that point, the nuns began to scream loudly in terror, “He’s
burning himself, he’s burning himself,” but as usual, Joseph and his vestments
proved fireproof. Then, with another shriek, Joseph “returned in flight to the
­middle of the church, leaping excitedly, gyrating around very fast, full of inner
joy and outward exultation, dancing and singing, ‘oh Blessed Virgin, oh Blessed
Virgin,’ and then, becoming once again immobile and bereft of sensation, he
went into ecstasy.” Ironically—­but true to form—­after such a display of mi-
raculous excess, Joseph disparaged himself, telling the nuns that he was nothing
more than “a sinner unworthy of living with his devout brethren, fit only for
returning to the beasts in the stable.” Unconvinced by Joseph’s self-­deprecation,
the nuns flocked around him and snipped off bits and pieces of his habit
without him noticing as they asked for blessings, and he regaled them with
“pious teachings.” And when he fi­nally took off for Rome, he was still wearing
that raggedy habit, saying, “I would rather wear this chopped-up habit than a
new one.”53
Once in Rome, Joseph faced his superiors—­including the ­father general
of his order, Gianbattista Berardicelli, who greeted him somewhat coldly—as
well as inquisitors of the Holy Office, who grilled him anew about his ecstasies.
 116 aloft

Lodged at the friary of the Twelve Apostles, he was assigned to a secluded

cell. Ordered to celebrate Mass in public, Joseph obeyed, as always, and with his
superiors and the inquisitors and some cardinals attending, levitated again
during the ritual, giving them all the opportunity to see for themselves why he
had caused such a stir. In due time, not surprisingly, even Pope Urban VIII be-
came involved in Joseph’s case.
Taken to a papal audience by his F
­ ather General, an overwhelmed Joseph
bent down to kiss the pope’s feet, as every­one was expected to do, but before he
could do so, he went into a levitating ecstasy and ­rose high above Urban VIII’s
head, hovering ­there u
­ ntil a command from F
­ ather General Berardicelli brought
him back down to the ground. Duly astonished, Pope Urban VIII reportedly
said to the F
­ ather General that if Joseph ­were to die during his pontificate, he
would love to testify as an eyewitness on behalf of his canonization and confirm
the sacred real­ity of Joseph’s levitations (fig. 20).54
Hovering above the pope’s head, however, was not enough to save Joseph
from the consequences of his peculiar notoriety and the instability of his sta-
tus. The Flying Friar was too much of a good ­thing altogether, too otherworldly,
too much of a lightning rod for controversy, and too much of a wild card for
Catholic authorities and the Franciscan order. His closeness to the divine and
his supernaturally charged ecstasies did not fit easily into the structure of the
Catholic Church’s hierarchy or into its efforts to Christianize an increasingly
skeptical and secular world. Consequently, during his stay in Rome Joseph en-
tered a liminal space in which he remained trapped for the rest of his life, a
unique limbo all his own, a state of being that caused his superiors to be si­
mul­ta­neously awed and repelled by him and led to his being ever more seques-
tered, isolated, stripped of agency, and shuttled to ever more remote locations
without regard for his feelings or needs. Given a monitio, or warning, by his
examiners in Rome, Joseph was marked as someone who would forever remain
­under constant observation by the Holy Office and his superiors. All saints are
“abnormal” by definition, rare ­human beings whose lives are truly extraordi-
nary. The increasing isolation imposed on Joseph marked him as “hyperabnor-
mal.” A prisoner of his own holiness and his super­natural aura, he was turned
into a hermit, forced to live a solitary existence though surrounded by fellow
Franciscans, and he would spend much of the remainder of his life entombed
in his cell, celebrating Mass by himself, eating alone, and g­ oing into ecstasy out
of view.
Figure 20. This is one of vari­ous engravings and paintings that depict Saint Joseph levitating
above Pope Urban VIII.
 118 aloft

At Assisi with Saint Francis

­After meeting Joseph, Pope Urban VIII instructed F
­ ather General Berardicelli
to assign Joseph to a friary where the Franciscan rule was strictly observed, and
Berardicelli sent him to Assisi, the epicenter of the Franciscan world and a place
that Joseph had always longed to visit. The Flying Friar arrived ­there at the end
of April 1639, elated, but soon afterward he entered another dark night of the
soul, wholly deprived of divine consolation and of his ecstasies. Even worse, Jo-
seph was beleaguered by temptations, nightmares, and demonic attacks that
brought him close to the edge of despair. And this situation was made all the
worse by the attitude of the guardian of the Assisi Franciscans, Antonio di San
Mauro, the former provincial of Bari and a onetime friend of Joseph’s who had
inexplicably turned against him, treating him contemptuously and often “scolding
him for being a disobedient hypocrite and reproving him as such in public.”55
Trapped in an ever-­deepening gloom, which lasted for about two years, Joseph
longed to leave Assisi. “I would like to return to Our Lady of La Grottella,” he
said to a fellow friar, “­because she is my ­mother.”56
Fortunately for Joseph, he was rescued by ­Father General Berardicelli, who
had learned of his situation and summoned him to Rome during the Lenten
season of 1644. While in Rome, Joseph suddenly emerged from his dark night
and once again began to experience his much-­missed ecstasies. His sudden re-
moval from isolation might have had something to do with this improvement.
First, he was taken to all seven of Rome’s pilgrimage churches,57 beginning with
Saint Peter’s, which overwhelmed him so much that he kept his eyes fixed on
the floor at all times.58 He was also taken to meet vari­ous cardinals, bishops,
and other members of the higher clergy, and many of ­these encounters caused
him to levitate on the spot. Joseph was kept busy in Rome, too much on dis-
play, and too much in demand by the elites of the Holy City. In fact, according
to Agelli, Joseph was “wearied by the flocking of the ­great to him, each of whom
wanted to have him for himself.”59 Returning to Assisi a­ fter Easter as a changed
man, Joseph was quickly embraced more warmly by his fellow Franciscans and,
in August of that year, was awarded honorary citizenship in Assisi by its city
council. True to form, when the council delegates entered his cell to pre­sent him
with a certificate of this new status of “fellow citizen of St. Francis,” Joseph re-
acted by levitating up to the ceiling.60
Despite his intense day-­to-­day isolation at Assisi and the restrictions
placed on him by superiors, the Umbrian hill town proved to be the one place
 s a i n t j o s e p h o f c u p e r t i n o , s h r i e k i n g a e r i a l e c s tat i c 119

where Joseph interacted most intensely with the elite of church and state. Word
of the miraculous “holy friar” who lived in Assisi spread quickly and far and
wide in Catholic circles, and before long many high-­ranking individuals made a
special pilgrimage to visit him, including princes of the church such as Cardi-
nals Facchinetti, Ludovisi, Rapaccioli, Odescalchi, Donghi, Pallotta, Verospi,
Paluzi, Sacchetti, and ­others, many of whom saw him levitate, according to
­later testimonies. Secular heads of state and titled nobles from all corners of
Eu­rope flocked to see him too, such as Prince Leopold of Tuscany, who l­ater
became a cardinal; the Duke of Bouillon from France; Mary, ­daughter of Charles
Emmanuel of Savoy; Catherine of Austria; Isabelle, Duchess of Mantua, also
from Austria; Princes Radziwill and Lubomirski with their wives and Prince
Zamoyski and other grandees from Poland; and also the royal Prince of Poland,
John Casimir, who visited the saint repeatedly and corresponded with him.61
Additionally, two other elite visitors, one from Spain, the other from Germany,
figure prominently in Joseph’s hagiographies as eyewitnesses to remarkable
levitations.62
The first of ­these, Juan Alfonso Enríquez de Cabrera, who visited Joseph in
1645, was arguably the most power­ful Spaniard in Italy, a grandee and member
of King Philip IV’s Royal Council who held multiple titles, including Viceroy of
Naples, Viceroy of Sicily, Admiral of Castille, Ambassador to the Papal States,
Duke of Medina de Rioseco, and Count of Melgar. A
­ fter meeting with Joseph in
his cell, the count-­duke-­viceroy reported to his wife, who was traveling with him:
“I have seen and spoken with another Saint Francis.” Enthralled by such an as-
sessment of Joseph, the wife, Luisa de Sandoval Padilla, begged for an audience
with him. Ordered to meet with her and her ladies-­in-­waiting in the Basilica of
Saint Francis, Joseph complied, saying, “I know not w
­ hether I w
­ ill be able to
speak” due to his aversion to mingling with females. But as it turned out, Joseph
never had to utter a word or come close to any ­woman, for as soon as he entered
the huge church through a side door, he shrieked and flew twelve feet above the
heads of his illustrious visitors, hovered for a while in ecstasy before an image of
the Virgin Mary, shrieked again, flew back to his takeoff point near the door, and
returned to his cell silently, his head bowed, his face hidden from view by his
cowl. According to Agelli, the count-­duke-­viceroy’s wife and all the ladies in her
retinue fainted, and the count-­duke-­viceroy simply stood still “in a stupor, with
his arms spread wide, bereft of all feeling, as if somewhere between life and
death.”63 Meanwhile, the Viceroy’s wife had to be revived with smelling salts and
a generous amount of holy ­water sprinkled on her face (fig. 21).64
Figure 21. Gioan Antonio Lorenzini’s engraving of Saint Joseph’s flight over the heads of the
Spanish viceroy and his entourage.
 s a i n t j o s e p h o f c u p e r t i n o , s h r i e k i n g a e r i a l e c s tat i c 121

Dramatic as this levitation was, it paled in comparison to the one witnessed

by the Lutheran Duke Johann Friedrich (1625–1679), ruler of Braunschweig-­
Lüneberg,65 who converted to Catholicism ­after meeting the Flying Friar. This
event, which merits closer examination in chapter 4, is perhaps the most sym-
bolically charged of Joseph’s miracles.
Johann Friedrich was a descendant of the Saxon princes who championed
Martin Luther’s Reformation, brother-­in-­law of King Frederick III of Denmark,
and an ancestor of the present-­day royal f­amily of ­England. While on a tour of
Eu­ro­pean courts with two noble companions, this Lutheran duke s­topped at
Assisi in 1649 so he could visit the famous friar he had heard about in Ger-
many.66 Taken to the chapel where Joseph was saying Mass through a side door—­
without Joseph being informed of his presence—­the prince and his companions
immediately experienced the Flying Friar’s super­natural powers. Suddenly, as he
was consecrating the Eucharist, Joseph found it impossible to break the host,
as required at that moment of the Mass. Staring at the host, he gave a “tearful
wail” and “with a very loud shriek, flew about five paces backwards in the air in
a kneeling posture, and then back to the altar.” Then, ­after floating back down
to the ground and remaining ecstatic for several minutes, he applied all his
strength to the sacred host and fi­nally broke it (fig. 22).67 The Saxon duke was
adequately astonished but puzzled by Joseph’s weeping and his strug­gle at the
altar, so ­after Mass, he asked the f­ather superior to question Joseph about it.
When asked, Joseph replied that the visitors brought to the chapel must have
been heretics with hard hearts b
­ ecause only ­under such circumstances does the
host becomes too hard to break.
Upon learning of Joseph’s reply, Johann Friedrich requested a chat with
Joseph and, a­ fter talking to him for an hour or two, asked permission to attend
Mass again the following day. Another miracle occurred at that Mass during con-
secration: A black cross suddenly appeared on the host, which all could see, and
Joseph levitated again, remaining aloft above the altar for fifteen minutes with
the host in his hands. As the duke wept openly, one of his companions who was
also Lutheran moaned: “Cursed be the instant I set foot in this country; at home
my mind was tranquil, but now h
­ ere I’m rattled by the furies and scruples of
conscience.”68
Johann Friedrich, in contrast, was enthralled. ­After Mass, Joseph spoke with
him ­until noon and again in the eve­ning ­after Vespers. Then, ­after spending
another day at Assisi during which he joined the friars in prayer and venerated
Figure 22. This painting by Giuseppe Cades depicts the moment when Joseph’s levitation at
Mass caused Duke John Frederick of Saxony, a Lutheran, to convert to Catholicism.
 s a i n t j o s e p h o f c u p e r t i n o , s h r i e k i n g a e r i a l e c s tat i c 123

the corpse of Saint Francis at his tomb, Johann Friedrich promised to become
a Catholic. In 1651, he returned to Assisi and, in the presence of Cardinals Fac-
chinetti and Rapaccioli, abjured his Lutheran beliefs and joined the Catholic
Church, making his profession of faith in the hands of Joseph, to whom he
would remain devoted for the rest of his life.
But not all of Joseph’s elite visitors came to see him out of devotion. He
was a curiosity, a spectacle, a miraculous won­der that some in the highest cir-
cles wished they could say they had seen. Such was the case of Artemisa, Mar-
chioness dei Medici, who gathered a retinue of ladies and traveled with them to
Assisi with the express purpose of seeing Joseph fly during Mass. We know of
her—­and of her humiliation by Joseph—­because of her testimony in Joseph’s
beatification inquest, in which she reported that he had glowered at her the in-
stant she stepped into the chapel, and said: “Eh, why have you come ­here out of
curiosity? Go away in the name of God!” Years l­ater in that beatification inquest,
she would also confess: “I was left like a wet hen, and this made me realize that
he could see the secrets of one’s heart.”69
Arguably, the seemingly endless stream of crowned heads, nobles, and
princes of the church that flowed through Assisi had more of a painful effect on
Joseph’s earthly destiny than the demonic assaults and beatings recorded in his
hagiographies.70 Joseph’s attractiveness was problematic. Elite visitors w
­ ere
surely welcomed for bringing in extra income, but they must have also been
something of a burden for the friars, especially ­those whose duty it was to cater
to their whims with the utmost courtesy. Joseph’s celebrity status was problem-
atic for higher church authorities too. On the one hand, he could be seen as
living proof of the existence of the divine realities that the church proclaimed.
On the other hand, he attracted too much attention and cast a belittling shadow
on prelates who lived less than exemplary lives and performed no miracles.
Within the Franciscan community t­here might have also been some fear of
Joseph eclipsing the seraphic Saint Francis, their founder, who was buried ­there
at Assisi, for Joseph attracted pilgrims from all walks of life, not just from the
upper crust. Then ­there was the issue of Joseph’s spiritual life. If, in fact, he was
genuinely close to the divine—as many believed—­was it correct or fair to use
him as a magnet who attracted constant visitors but had l­ittle time left over for
his life of prayer? And topping off all such concerns was the issue of the ex-
treme nature of Joseph’s ecstatic levitations, which resonated with an instabil-
ity of their own and therefore remained on the Inquisition’s radar even ­after
his holiness had been certified as genuine.
 124 aloft

Joseph’s expulsion from Assisi was not as predictable as his levitations at

Mass, but it proved inevitable, and when it came, it did so just as suddenly as
one of ­those ecstasies, except without any shrieking or whooping. Five weeks
­after his fiftieth birthday, on the morning of July 23, 1653, Joseph was ordered
to go to the visitor’s room, where, much to his surprise, the inquisitor general of
Umbria was waiting for him, along with his secretary, the chief of Assisi’s po-
lice, and four soldiers. F
­ ather Vincent Maria Pellegrini, the inquisitor, then read
a message from Pope Innocent X ordering Joseph to be transferred immediately
to the Capuchin friary at Pietrarubbia. Visibly shaken but reminded of the im-
portance of the vow of obedience by his superior, who was also ­there,71 Joseph
was quickly escorted out of the friary, taken to a carriage, and whisked away
from Assisi, wearing only his habit and a pair of slippers. His eyeglasses, bre-
viary, hat, and shoes—­his only possessions—­were left b
­ ehind in his cell.72 They
would never be returned to him. The friars, ­after all, ­were experts at recognizing
good relics when they saw them.

Back with the Capuchins

At the Capuchin friary of Pietrarubbia, Joseph found himself back in that branch
of the Franciscans where he had begun his monastic life and from which he had
been expelled as totally unfit. That, too, had been an indecorous departure. But
now, having been ordered by the Pope to take in Joseph and keep him u
­ nder
wraps, the Capuchins had no choice but to welcome him back. Their friary was
somewhat remote and isolated in a mountainous region of northern Italy, on
the eastern flank of the Apennines, about fifty miles inland from the port city
of Ancona. It seemed perfect for keeping a flying friar out of view.
Joseph was delivered to the Capuchins by Inquisitor Pellegrini, who
also brought along strict instructions on how to ­handle him from Pope In-
nocent X and Cardinal Francesco Barberini, ­grand inquisitor of the Holy
Office in Rome. Copies of ­these instructions ­were posted on the doors of the
refectory and of Joseph’s cell, as required by the Holy Office itself. The mes-
sage was clear: ­Under pain of excommunication, no one at Pietrarubbia was
to allow Joseph any contact with the outside world. He was to be totally se-
questered, much like a prisoner: no speaking with anyone except the Capu-
chins of that friary; no writing to anyone, regardless of that person’s eminence
or rank; no receiving of letters; and no venturing beyond the walls of the fri-
ary, ever.73 Having been read ­these instructions, Joseph was sent to his cell,
 s a i n t j o s e p h o f c u p e r t i n o , s h r i e k i n g a e r i a l e c s tat i c 125

which the provincial of the Capuchins would ­later describe as “the darkest
and meanest” of the entire friary.74
Despite his sudden dislocation and the severe restrictions placed on him,
Joseph continued to levitate “incessantly” at Pietrarubbia, especially during
Mass, which could sometimes take him two hours to complete. And despite the
Inquisition’s clear instructions about keeping Joseph squirreled away, word of
his presence at the friary spread quickly and widely, and before long the world
from which he was supposed to be shielded invaded Pietrarubbia. And as hordes
of p
­ eople arrived, the Capuchins spotted a gigantic loophole in the Inquisition’s
instructions, which said nothing about keeping non-­Capuchins away from Joseph’s
Masses and his constant levitating ecstasies.
Through that loophole, thousands of pilgrims flowed into Pietrarubbia.75
Obviously, the thought had never occurred to the Inquisition that something
like this could ever happen at such a remote friary. But it happened, hilariously
and with a vengeance, proving that the popu­lar appetite for miracles was insa-
tiable. ­Father Giovanni Maria di Fossombrone, provincial of the Capuchins, was
alarmed by the chaos and ­later described it in detail:

Many ­people, ecclesiastical and secular, and even lay ­people from distant
towns, flocked to our monastery of Pietrarubbia to attend his Masses, which
he celebrated publicly in our church. And ­these throngs who came to ogle
and admire his ecstasies and his raptures, or to be aided by his prayers in
their needs and infirmities w
­ ere so numerous that taverns w
­ ere built around
the monastery, along with shelters for the comfort of ­those who came but
­couldn’t fit into the church where the said f­ather celebrated Mass. To see
him, they removed tiles from the roof and punched holes in the very walls
of the Church.76

Worst of all, some of ­those who got close enough to Joseph during his ecstasies
would prod and poke him, squeeze his hands, or hug him, vainly trying to bring
him back to his senses.77
This carnivalesque free-­for-­all could not continue for long, however. On
the feast of Saint Augustine, August 28, the crowd at Pietrarubbia was so huge
that the vicar of the friary, Giovanni Batista di Santa Agata, brought the chaos
to an end by stopping Joseph from saying Mass and ordering “that henceforth
he could only be seen by the friars.”78
By then, it was too late to fix the colossal disaster at Pietrarubbia, which
was deemed irreversible by ­those elite clerics in Rome who acted as Joseph’s
 126 aloft

guardians. In late September 1653, a mere two months ­after his arrival at
Pietrarubbia, Joseph was transferred to an even more inaccessible Capuchin
friary at Fossombrone, thirty miles away atop a steep mountain. The com-
mand to remove him was given to Ascanio Maffei, the archbishop of Urbino,
who passed on the unpleasant task to his vicar-­general, Mario Viviani. “Where
are you taking me?” asked Joseph when he learned that he was being moved
again. But the vicar could not reveal any details to anyone, even Joseph, so
without knowing where he was headed, the Flying Friar was spirited away by
Vicar Mario Viviani.
Once again, Joseph found himself uprooted without proper explanation,
handled as a prob­lem child, traversing unfamiliar territory. Many of the ­simple
folk around Pietrarubbia sought to discover what route he might have taken, but
their efforts w
­ ere in vain. Joseph had simply vanished. The inquisitors ­were not
about to make the same ­mistake twice. This time their instructions w
­ ere loophole-­
proof: the Capuchins at Joseph’s new home w
­ ere to keep his presence an abso-
lute secret, and he was not to be seen by anyone but his brethren at the friary.
­Father Teodoro da Cingoli, who was charged with keeping Joseph imprisoned,
did his best to keep his whereabouts u
­ nder wraps, but so many p
­ eople sus-
pected he might be ­there that the friary had to contend with a steady stream of
pilgrims who came in search of Joseph, begging for his prayers. According to
Pastrovicchi, t­hese miracle-­seekers came “in such ­great numbers that, for fear
of vio­lence, the friars ­wouldn’t go out at all, and hid in the friary.”79
The throngs vanished gradually, frustrated by the cold response of the fri-
ars, and soon enough the friary at Fossombrone slipped back into its usual
obscurity. Chaos had been avoided. Joseph would spend three years ­there in rela-
tive calm, during which his fellow friars claimed to have seen him levitate nearly
­every day, not just at Mass but at random times, whenever something caused him
to be enraptured.
Some of ­these unpredictable ecstasies amazed his confreres. One of ­these
involved a lamb. Overcome by emotion at the sight of a living image of the Lamb
of God and the Good Shepherd, Joseph picked up the creature, ran around the
garden with it on his shoulders, and then threw it up in the air with “super-
human strength” high above the trees. He then followed ­after it, catching it in
midair and kneeling in ecstasy for two hours on a treetop.80 Another such im-
promptu ecstasy verged on comedy. Upon hearing a confrere’s praises of the
virtues of the Virgin Mary, Joseph lunged at him excitedly and knocked him
down. As both of them tumbled to the ground, they screamed si­mul­ta­neously,
 s a i n t j o s e p h o f c u p e r t i n o , s h r i e k i n g a e r i a l e c s tat i c 127

Joseph in ecstasy and the Capuchin in absolute panic. When the other friars
rushed to see what had occurred, they found Joseph lying on the ground, enrap-
tured. The Capuchin tackled by him was no longer ­there, having fled the scene
quickly “in ­great consternation.”81 In contrast, another ecstasy was so intensely
power­ful that it frightened all the friars. This one was of the predictable sort
since it took place while Joseph was saying Mass on Pentecost Sunday, but its
magnitude was a bit too surprising. According to Agelli, Joseph flew up “quickly
and most impetuously, gyrating like a lightning bolt around the chapel, blast-
ing out a very strange booming scream that shook the w
­ hole monastery with
its vehemence.” At that instant, “suddenly filled with fear,” the panicked friars
ran outdoors yelling, “Earthquake! earthquake!”82
Many other miracles ­were attributed to Joseph at Fossombrone, such as
healing the sick, being able to read the thoughts and consciences of o
­ thers, hav-
ing visions, seeing heavenly apparitions, and predicting ­future events. One of
his predictions concerned an event that would have a direct impact on him and
his brethren. In early January 1655, on the vigil of the Epiphany, Joseph in-
formed his brethren that he had experienced a revelatory vision of Pope Inno-
cent X lying in bed, on the brink of death. Two days l­ater, Innocent died, as
Joseph had predicted. Unbeknownst to him, this change in the leadership of the
Catholic Church immediately stirred the leaders of the Conventual Franciscan
order to petition for a revision of his imprisonment. This petition to the newly
elected Pope Alexander VII was a renewal of previous requests, for the Conven-
tuals had never given up on bringing Joseph back to his branch of the Francis-
can order, preferably back to Assisi.83 This time around, the request received a
favorable hearing, but the new pope, who had previously dealt with petitions in
Joseph’s case as an intermediary, approached it cautiously, well aware of the
excesses that had led to his removal from Assisi and Pietrarubbia. His decision,
while favorable to the petitioners, was somewhat disappointing to many of them.
In June of 1656, Alexander agreed to return Joseph to the Conventual Francis-
cans, as requested, but ordered that he be sent to their friary at Osimo rather
than to Assisi, pointing out that “it is enough to have Saint Francis in that
sanctuary.”84
The pope’s decision coincided with an outbreak of the bubonic plague in
Italy, however, and the toll taken by this epidemic—­which included 15,000
deaths in Rome alone—­was serious enough to close most roads and stop traffic
between all towns and cities. Consequently, Joseph’s move ended up being de-
layed by a year, but fi­nally, on July 6, 1657, he was removed from the Capuchin
 128 aloft

friary at Fossombrone and taken to the Conventual Franciscan friary at Osimo,

which would prove to be the final stop on his convoluted earthly journey.

From Osimo to Eternal Ecstasy

Pope Alexander VII’s o
­ rders to the friary at Osimo w
­ ere funneled through the
Inquisition, which was still in charge of monitoring Joseph, and they w
­ ere as
harsh and clearly detailed as they had been upon his transfer from Pietrarubbia
to Fossombrone: In essence, Joseph was still a prisoner, to be kept out of sight
and in isolation and even forced to eat alone in his cell rather than in the refec-
tory with his brethren. On pain of excommunication, the friars at Osimo w
­ ere
forbidden to grant him contact with anyone outside the friary, in person or
through letters, regardless of the rank or eminence of ­those seeking contact with
him, and he was to celebrate Mass in a “private oratory.85 Pope Alexander and
the Inquisition backed up their commitment to ­these injunctions by denying
all pleas from Queen Christina of Sweden, a recent convert to Catholicism who
had relinquished the throne and moved to Rome and eagerly longed to meet
Joseph in person.
News of Joseph’s transfer to Osimo shook his brethren at Fossombrone,
some of whom “wept bitterly” as they said farewell.86 Forced to take back roads
to maintain secrecy and avoid crowds, the journey took four days, much longer
than expected. Along the way, Joseph and his minders lodged and rested at the
Franciscan friary of Saint Victor as well as in some inns and farms. And it was
at one of ­these stops, near his destination, that Joseph had one of his best-­known
levitations, immortalized many years l­ater in a painting by Ludovico Mazzanti,
which now hangs in the friary at Osimo (fig. 23).
At a farm not far from Osimo, while gazing at his surroundings from a
balcony with his escort, Joseph spotted the dome of the shrine of the Holy
House of Loreto and cried out, “Oh God, I’ve never seen any such ­thing! So many
angels coming and ­going from heaven! ­Don’t you see them? . . . ​Tell me, what is
that place?” Informed that he was looking at the shrine that contained the Holy
­Family’s h
­ ouse from Nazareth, which had been brought t­here miraculously by
angels,87 Joseph cried out again, “No won­der, then, that so many angels come
down from paradise to that place; look at it and behold how divine mercy rains
down on this spot! Oh, happy place, oh, blessed place!” Then, as ever, an ecstatic
Joseph flew immediately off the balcony and perched for a while in a nearby
almond tree about twelve feet off the ground (see fig. 2).88
Figure 23. This painting by Ludovico Mazzanti is the most widely reproduced image of Saint
Joseph’s flight upon his encounter with the Holy Shrine of Loreto.
 130 aloft

Joseph would spend six years at Osimo, absorbed in prayer, in the strict
seclusion mandated by the Inquisition, rarely allowed to venture far from his
cell and its adjacent oratory save for t­ hose times when he was asked to visit fri-
ars who had fallen ill and once, each night, ­after all the doors of the friary had
been locked, when he was allowed to visit the friary’s chapel. All intermingling
with his brethren was tightly controlled. Assigned one constant companion, Jo-
seph was not allowed to chat with ­others ­unless they w
­ ere “the wisest and most
highly esteemed,” and t­ hose meetings had been arranged ahead of time and ap-
proved by his superiors.89 Joseph’s ecstasies continued unabated at Osimo. One
friar who was permitted access to Joseph would l­ater testify: “I can say that with
my own eyes I have seen his ecstasies take place in his cell thousands of times.”90
Given Joseph’s isolation, however, ­there are fewer accounts in his hagiographies
of ­these “thousands” of Osimo ecstasies than one might expect. The local bishop,
Antonio Bichi, a nephew of Pope Alexander VII, was among ­those who did
get to see Joseph levitate several times during their conversations. Nonlevi-
tating ecstasies also took place at Osimo. Pastrovicchi writes that sometimes
Joseph would be found “deeply in ecstasy” on the floor of his oratory and had
to be carried “like a corpse” to his cell next door. He adds that some of ­these
raptures lasted for six or seven hours and that if his eyes remained open, as they
often did, gnats and flies alighted on them without the slightest response from
Joseph.91
Osimo would be the destination in Joseph’s constant shuffling and the set-
ting for his ecstatic death. Like many a saint in Christian history, Joseph’s
clairvoyance allowed him to predict his own death as it approached, and ­these
prophecies intensified as he neared his sixtieth birthday. Much like his role
model Saint Francis, Joseph referred to his body as asino, or “jackass,” and
he also abused it through ascetic excesses as vehement as t­ hose of Saint Fran-
cis. As one might expect, such extreme asceticism took its toll on Joseph’s
health—so much so that by the time he reached his fifties, he “was always in
distress from serious and considerable illnesses,” most of which ­were digestive
disorders.92
In the summer of 1663, Joseph’s health worsened rapidly, as he began to
pass blood in his urine and to vomit up blood. On August 10 he developed an
unrelenting fever. Although he continued to celebrate Mass for five more days,
he was soon incapable of returning to the altar. Having said his last Mass on
August 15, the feast of the Assumption of Mary—­during which he reportedly
had “marvelous ecstasies and raptures,” including a levitation—­Joseph became
 s a i n t j o s e p h o f c u p e r t i n o , s h r i e k i n g a e r i a l e c s tat i c 131

too feeble to stand or walk. Allowed to attend Mass and receive communion
in his oratory, he continued to have ecstasies and to read the minds and con-
sciences of ­those around him, as well as to predict the ­future for them.93 At
this point he also began to say, “The jackass has now begun to climb the
mountain,” warning his brethren that his own death was near. By early Sep-
tember, despite his constant miracle-­working, his health worsened so that
­those around Joseph gave up what­ever hope they might have had of a recov-
ery.94 Joseph’s refrain changed at that point to “The jackass is about to reach
the top.” Some of Joseph’s last miracles involved his own body, which frequently
slipped into cataleptic trances and seemed impervious to pain. As was common
practice in seventeenth-­century medicine, Joseph was subjected to bloodlet-
ting, a procedure that required cutting into a vein and cauterizing the wound
afterward with a red-­hot iron. At one of ­these sessions, as the surgeon was
cauterizing the vein he had opened on Joseph’s leg, he noticed that the friar
was enraptured, “raised almost a palm’s height off the chair,” his body so rigid
that his limbs could not be moved, his mouth agape, his eyes wide open, star-
ing heavenward, impervious to a fly that kept scuttling back and forth on one
of his pupils. When Joseph came out of his ecstasy, a­ fter ordered to do so by
his superior, he was surprised to find that the bloodletting was over and his leg
was ban­daged, for his ecstasy had acted like potent anesthesia.95 And, accord-
ing to eyewitnesses, the same t­ hing occurred at each of the next three bloodlet-
tings carried out by this surgeon, who—as happened frequently to ­those who
encountered Joseph—­had been g­ ently reminded by Joseph of an old and se-
cret sin he had never confessed.96
Ecstasies of this sort also often accompanied Joseph’s encounters with the
Eucharist during ­these final days, although most of ­these left him earthbound,
spread-­eagled on the floor. But Joseph’s final communion, brought to him by
viaticum from the friary’s chapel, occasioned a spectacular levitating ecstasy.
Upon hearing the ringing of the bell that announced the arrival of the conse-
crated host, Joseph flew out of bed, literally, and out of his room—­despite the
weakness that prevented him from attending Mass—­and then fell to his knees
to partake of the Eucharist from the friars who ­were bringing it to him. This
would prove to be Joseph’s last levitation and also his last communion. Although
he appeared “filled with superhuman splendor” when he received the Eucharist,
the radiant Joseph collapsed soon thereafter and had to be carried back to his
cell. Surrounded by friars who prayed with him and for him, spoke words of com-
fort, or sang hymns as his condition worsened, Joseph received the sacrament
 132 aloft

of extreme unction, exclaiming, “Oh what songs, oh what sounds of paradise,

oh what fragrances, oh what odors, oh what sweetness of paradise.”97
The following day, September 18, Joseph had trou­ble swallowing and could
not receive communion. But he spent his remaining hours on earth conscious
and in good spirits, changing his refrain to “The jackass has reached the top of
the mountain. He can no longer move. He ­will have to leave his hide ­here.” With
some difficulty, due to a swollen tongue and dry mouth, he also began calling
on Jesus repeatedly and uttering short prayers such as “Take this heart, Jesus,
burn it and maul it” and “May God be praised, may God be thanked, may the
­will of God be done.” That eve­ning, Joseph took the ultimate flight into an eter-
nal ecstasy—­this time without one of his shrieks—­leaving ­behind the “jackass”
of his body, which he had maltreated since childhood. And, as all hagiographies
are expected to say, he left earth “with a placid smile that cheered ­those around
him, with a happy and serene countenance, resplendent with a sudden light.”98
Joseph was not yet gone from Osimo. On the contrary, he was now more
fully pre­sent than he had been while alive, for the Inquisition’s restrictions on
access to Joseph did not apply to his corpse. Fi­nally, Joseph was accessible to
the world. His body was now considered a wondrous relic and a point of con-
tact with Joseph himself in heaven. Of course, Joseph could not be venerated as
a saint yet, although he had been considered a living saint for de­cades. The
church had yet to certify his saintly status through its long and complex pro­
cess of canonization. But he could certainly be approached as an intercessor,
and according to traditional belief, that intercessory capability was always
heightened by nearness to his corpse.
Joseph’s body—­his “jackass”—­was cut open so it could be embalmed with
spices and fragrant herbs and so it could be examined by a surgeon, as had been
de­cided the day before he died, to discern the physical effects of his raptures, as
in the cases of Saint Carlo Borromeo and Philip Neri.99 As expected, the sur-
geon found certain anomalies in Joseph’s heart that could be attributed to his
ecstasies: his pericardium was shriveled, and the ventricles w
­ ere devoid of blood
and desiccated. According to the surgeon’s expert opinion, such unusual defor-
mities ­were most definitely proof that Joseph’s heart had been engulfed by “the
super­natural flame of divine love.”100
Placed on display in a cypress casket within the sacristy of the friary’s
church on September 19, the body was surrounded by a wooden barrier and
guarded by eight priests, eight friars, and eight local noblemen. Such precau-
tions ­were deemed necessary b
­ ecause of the huge number of p
­ eople that would
 s a i n t j o s e p h o f c u p e r t i n o , s h r i e k i n g a e r i a l e c s tat i c 133

surely show up. T

­ hese expectations proved true, for news of Joseph’s interment
at Osimo spread very quickly, and “an innumerable throng” flooded the friary
as many “who w
­ ere previously unable to see Joseph alive now came to see him
dead.” Some lucky few—­“­those deemed most worthy”—­even got to kiss Joseph’s
hand and feet. At the end of the first day of public viewing, which extended
into the night, many p
­ eople ­were still arriving and queuing up. Fearing that a
riot might ensue if that huge crowd was told to go home without having had a
glimpse of Joseph, the friars de­cided to extend access to his body for an addi-
tional day, on September 20, a­ fter the funeral rites had taken place.
That extra viewing time might have prevented a riot, but it proved too
brief and very disappointing for ­those who w
­ ere still waiting in line for their
turn when it ended. They “had to be pushed out of the church, ­either with pleas
or with threats.” The following day, September 21, the cypress casket containing
Joseph’s body was nestled inside an oak casket to doubly ensure the preserva-
tion of the relic inside. Then, fi­nally, Joseph was buried in a newly created vault
at the foot of the altar of the Immaculate Conception, where he had levitated
many times.101
Immediately, as expected, healing miracles began to take place, all of which
­were duly recorded in detail, as is fitting for someone already considered a saint
years before his death. A few months ­later, in March 1664, the canonization
pro­cess was set in motion.102 The first step was an Episcopal “informative” in-
quest (pro­cessus auctoritate ordinaria) that interviewed ­people in the dioceses of
Nardo, Assisi, and Osimo, in which Joseph had lived. Once that inquest was com-
pleted, another was set in motion in April 1668, this time from Rome, u
­ nder
the authority of Pope Clement IX. This apostolic inquest (pro­cessus auctoritate
apostolica) took a few more years to complete, and then, as was required, the
wheels in the canonization began to slow down as discussion of his case con-
tinued, on and off, ­until 1735, when the Congregation of Rites conferred the
title of “Venerable” on Joseph. With more miracles being reported, the pro­cess
gained some speed again—­relatively speaking—as Joseph moved t­ oward the
next big step, beatification. Eigh­teen years ­later, on February 24, 1753, Pope
Benedict XIV issued the brief “Aeternus Dei Filius” in which he elevated Jo-
seph to the rank of “Blessed,” thus granting him the right of being venerated
by all Catholics. This major change in status, which was accompanied by the
two hagiographies of Agelli and Pastrovicchi, increased devotion to Joseph
throughout Italy and the world, and with more miracles now being attributed to
him, he moved quickly and inexorably ­toward canonization. Fi­nally, on July 16,
 134 aloft

1767, the anniversary of Francis of Assisi’s canonization, Joseph was pro-

claimed a saint by Pope Clement XIII at Saint Peter’s Basilica, with all the ap-
propriate pomp.
A c­ entury had elapsed since Joseph’s death. During t­ hose ten de­cades,
twelve dif­fer­ent popes had dealt with the issue of his canonization, some more
intensely than o
­ thers. Ironically, Joseph’s extravagant miracles did not grant him
a sure and easy elevation to sainthood. During Joseph’s lifetime, due to the re-
vamping of the canonization pro­cess set in motion by the Council of Trent,
much more emphasis began to be placed on the “heroic virtue” of candidates
for sainthood than on their miracles. By the time of his death, this pro­cess was
in full tilt. Urban VIII, the pope over whose head he had flown, and Clement
XIII, the pope who canonized him, ­were strongly committed to this change in
priorities. Pope Clement had spearheaded the effort of bringing the pro­cess of
saint-­making more in line with rationalist and scientific Enlightenment princi­
ples. So it was, then, that Joseph’s impossible flights gained a rare degree of cred-
ibility within Catholicism at a time when skepticism and caution concerning
the miraculous had already crept deeply within that faith’s tradition.103
In the secular world, im­mense changes had taken place at an unpre­ce­
dented pace due to advances in science and technology. In 1709, during that
long lull in Joseph’s canonization pro­cess, Bartolomeu De Gusmão, a Portuguese
Jesuit priest who had been filling balloons with hot air and experimenting with
them, published a treatise titled “A Short Manifesto for T
­ hose Who Are Unaware
That Sailing through the Ele­ment of Air Is Pos­si­ble.”104 Experiments with
hot-­air balloons continued, ­here and ­there. Fi­nally, 120 years ­after Joseph’s
death and a mere 16 years since his canonization, two French b
­ rothers, Joseph-­
Michel and Jacques-­Étienne Montgolfier, successfully launched hot-­air balloons
in 1783. ­These balloons, equipped with gondolas in which h
­ umans could ­ride,
would initiate a new age in which flight was no longer some “impossible” miracle.
We ­shall return to this won­der ­later. Ironically—­and fittingly—­the Montgol-
fier ­brothers and their invention eventually relegated Saint Joseph of Cupertino,
“the Flying Friar,” to the dustbin of history, so to speak, while at the same time
making it pos­si­ble for him to become the potential patron saint of millions
of ­humans flying in aircraft routinely, thinking of it as not much dif­fer­ent from
flossing one’s teeth, taking out the trash, or standing in line for a white mocha
cappuccino at some trendy coffee shop.
An ironic twist, for sure, this new role of Joseph’s, since it was his flying
that had caused his imprisonment. Even more ironic is the fact that some of
 s a i n t j o s e p h o f c u p e r t i n o , s h r i e k i n g a e r i a l e c s tat i c 135

­those who made Joseph’s patronage popu­lar in the twentieth ­century w

­ ere Cath-
olic American airmen who prayed to him for protection as they dropped bombs
on Italy during the Second World War, especially on Monte Cassino, the birth-
place of Western monasticism.105
And that eerily intense irony, it could be said, borders on the impossible.
 4. Making Sense of the Flying Friar

His raptures ­were continuous, and one can say that he lived more
in ecstasy than in this world.
—Paolo Agelli

Saint Joseph of Cupertino is an enigma begging for deciphering. He was unique

in so many ways and so impossibly otherworldly as to defy rational analy­sis,
and his mysticism so extreme as to defy classification.
What are we to make of such a saint or his levitations? And we are refer-
ring ­here to the saint, not the man. The saint can be encountered in many docu-
ments, but the man himself is much harder to find. Saint Joseph not only
levitates more frequently than any other saint in Christian history but also rises
higher off the ground. He not only hovers but actually flies—­not just indoors,
where it is relatively easier to employ wires or other props and fool ­people, but
also outdoors, where such trickery is relatively more difficult or impossible. And
he flies forward and backward too. Unlike Saint Teresa of Avila, whose levita-
tions ceased ­after she complained to God about them, Joseph’s gravity-­defying
ecstasies continued to occur up u
­ ntil the last few days of his life. Moreover, his
levitations often point beyond themselves: while they are always carefully de-
scribed as a side effect of sudden ecstasies brought on by God, rather than as
events willed by Joseph himself, they often serve practical purposes and thus
are much more than mere won­ders. Their instrumentality makes them miracle-­
working miracles.
Why ­isn’t this common knowledge?
Saint Joseph’s relative obscurity is somewhat puzzling. His levitations
­were ostensibly witnessed by more ­people than t­ hose of any other saint, and the

136
 m a k i n g s e n s e o f t h e f ly i n g f r i a r 137

number of lay witnesses—as opposed to clerical ones—is also higher, even though
his superiors tried to keep him u
­ nder wraps and out of public view as much as
pos­si­ble. High clergy and nobility from all corners of Eu­rope went out of their
way to visit him and testified that they had beheld his levitations firsthand or
begged for the privilege of visiting him, unsuccessfully. And some of ­these elites
­were among the most progressive boosters of the so-­called Age of Reason, such
as the Lutheran Duke John Frederick of Braunschweig-­Lüneberg, patron of the
very rational mathematician-­philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who served
as his privy councillor and librarian, and the Lutheran Queen Christina of Swe-
den, who employed mathematician René Descartes as her court phi­los­o­pher,
possibly ­because he advised that “every­thing must be doubted.”1
In Joseph’s case, then, holy levitation is taken to a higher level, literally and
figuratively. Given the extreme nature of his hovering and flying and given the
context of his time and place, as well as the impressive number of witnesses, Jo-
seph is truly unique. He reifies and surpasses the expectations of his Catholic
culture. And the questions raised by his uniqueness are intensely pointed, sharp
edged, and problematic, for even if one dismisses all of his flying as absolutely
impossible and nothing more than papistical deceit, trickery, and inanity, one is
left with all sorts of questions concerning all that lying, tricking, and unreason-
ing, not to mention questions about what might have been “­really” ­going on in
his life and the lives of ­those who swore ­under oath that they had seen him fly.
So, again, one must ask: Why do so few ­people on earth know about Saint
Joseph? Why is the evidence ignored or trivialized? Why has he been relegated
to the history of the ridicu­lous rather than to the history of the impossible,
or to the science of antigravitational forces?
Several ­factors make it difficult to dismiss testimonies about his levitations
as lies, sheer nonsense, or mass hysteria. First, the levitations are so extreme as
to make the likelihood of trickery seem remote, unlikely, or technologically
impossible. The use of wires, ropes, stilts, trampolines, or other contraptions
used by illusionists is out of the question for most of his aerial raptures, given
their setting and the technology available at that time. Second, the number and
status of his witnesses make the accounts seem more credible, paradoxically,
even as his levitations become more extreme. Third, ­those who witness Joseph’s
flights are not only other monks and nuns, or illiterate rustics, but representa-
tives of the highest echelons of society.2 Fourth, with Joseph, levitation ceases
to be a cloistered monastic phenomenon, at least u
­ ntil he is moved to Fossom-
brone in 1653. His flights thus obliterate distinctions between high and low
 138 aloft

culture or official and popu­lar religion: shepherd and pope, milkmaid and nun,
peasant and prince, coachman and duke, page and ambassador. All sorts of wit-
nesses report the same astounding levitations, indoors and outdoors, in can-
dlelit spaces or in the bright light of the noonday Italian sun, over a span of
thirty-­five years. In many ways, the logical frustration felt by William Crookes
when dealing with spiritualist levitation in the late nineteenth ­century can also
arise ­here, no pun intended. “The supposition that ­there is a sort of mania or
delusion which suddenly attacks a w
­ hole room full of intelligent persons who
are quite sane elsewhere,” he said, “and that they all concur to the minutest par-
ticulars, in the details of the occurrences of which they suppose themselves to
be witnesses, seems to my mind more incredible than even the facts they
attest.”3
So if one dismisses all eyewitness accounts in this case as fabrications
or delusions, one is left with the hard task of explaining why such lies ­were ap-
parently told and believed or why such delusions took hold as they did within
Catholic circles or ­were convincing enough to elicit conversions from Protes-
tantism. One must still make sense of the Flying Friar as a phenomenon and also
make sense of the nature and purpose of such a phenomenon per se on vari­ous
levels: personal, social, cultural, po­liti­cal, metaphysical, theological, psychologi-
cal, or medical. And, fi­nally, one must also ask the social-­scientific functionalist
question, which Saint Teresa also asked—­albeit for personal rather than aca-
demic reasons—­what purpose does a miracle as seemingly useless as levitation
serve for any individual or any society?
At the very same time, one must make sense of the unease caused in Cath-
olic circles by Joseph, especially of the undeniable fact that the Inquisition
kept a close eye on him while his superiors tried to hide him from the public.
For the last three de­cades of his life—­and especially the last ten years of it—­
Joseph lived much like a prisoner, isolated, unable to join in the ritual life of his
monasteries, or even to eat with his brethren. Why? Moreover, he was repeat-
edly shuffled to vari­ous remote locations. Acute ambiguity surrounds him
and his ecstasies, not despite his reputation as a holy man but ­because of it.
Why? The canonization inquests and the hagiographies revel in describing his
aethrobatic feats, but at the same time they highlight or bemoan the painful
isolation imposed on him.4 The very Catholic baroque excess of Joseph of Cu-
pertino, then, seems to have been something as troubling as it was marvelous,
something to admire and be wary about, something to shout about and some-
thing to hide, si­mul­ta­neously.
 m a k i n g s e n s e o f t h e f ly i n g f r i a r 139

Why?
To delve effectively into the ambivalence of Joseph’s superiors, one must
focus on some of the most significant characteristics of his levitating ecstasies,
especially ­because of the abundance of extraordinary details provided by so
many eyewitnesses. God is in the details ­here, literally and figuratively.5 The spec-
ificity provided in so many of the narratives—so meticulous, so nearly micro-
scopic in focus and quasi-­scientific in their attention to minutiae, so unlike
previous accounts of levitation—­has much to do with the paradoxical won­der
of Joseph’s miraculousness and with the approach taken to it by the hierarchy of
the Catholic Church during the apogee of the so-­called Age of Reason, which
also happened to be the Age of Religious Wars and the Age of the Witchcraft
Craze.

Ecstatic Flight in Context

Levitation was but one in a long list of miracles attributed to Joseph, the vast
majority of which ­were also attributed to other saints, such as healing the sick,
controlling natu­ral events, reading the minds and consciences of ­others, pre-
dicting the ­future, emitting an indescribably pleasant odor, having visions of
Christ and the angels, and driving away demons, to name but some of the more
impressive ones frequently mentioned in hagiographies and in the pro­cessi for
beatification and canonization. Some other “common” miracles w
­ ere attributed
to him too, but less frequently, such as resurrecting farm animals or knowing
what was occurring elsewhere. Some bilocations ­were also attributed to him;
that is, he was seen as physically pre­sent in two distinct locations si­mul­ta­neously.
But what made Joseph truly unique—­and what ­shall be our sole focus ­here—­was
the miracle of levitation.
At the outset, to fully comprehend the phenomenon of levitation one must
address the issue of context. Levitation is contextual. Christian levitators never
begin levitating suddenly, out of the blue. They levitate only within a very spe-
cific religious context that involves sharing a specific communal view of real­ity
and following certain prescribed paths. This applies to holy levitators as well as
to ­those in league with the devil. And the same could be said to some extent
about levitators in other religions. The act of levitation is inseparable from be-
lief in levitation, personally and communally. So one must ask some basic ques-
tions. Where did Joseph first learn about levitation? And how did he learn to
levitate? Why ­wasn’t it “impossible” for him and for ­those around him? ­These
 140 aloft

questions address a significant analytical issue, that of context and of the com-
plex interrelationship of religious phenomena, especially t­ hose of the impossi-
ble sort, with time, place, culture, worldviews, beliefs, be­hav­ior, and other such
variables.
Joseph’s levitations are very Catholic, inconceivable outside of his baroque
Catholic milieu. His levitations ­don’t just “happen.” And the same is true of Saint
Teresa’s and ­those of other Catholic levitators. They are constructed out of
certain expectations they share with t­hose around them and the complex so-
cial pro­cesses in which they engage. And this sharing is essential, for levitation
does not spring solely out of Joseph’s expectations but also ­those of his culture
and religion. For his levitations to happen, they need to fit into a shared web of
meaning in which expectations flow in two directions constantly in a reciprocal
cycle, from the culture to the individual and from the individual back to the cul-
ture. Levitations need to make sense in both ways in this constant cycle, for
levitations—to be considered pos­si­ble—­must make sense for all involved in the
event (that is, the levitator as well as the community in which the levitator lives).
As has been observed, ­every culture’s sense of what is real is determined to a
large extent by its social practices and its institutions. In other words, what is
considered pos­si­ble or impossible is delineated, or “set up” by one’s culture.6
And the experiences of mystics are s­ haped by what is expected within their par­
tic­u­lar religious tradition.7 So, one must ask: What was it that Joseph might
have seen, heard, or read about levitation?
Joseph undoubtedly encountered accounts of levitation at an early age,
and that would not have been unusual, even for a poor boy. Levitation was a
rare miracle, but ­there ­were plenty of hagiographies that contained stories of
levitating saints, as well as oral and written legends. Which accounts or legends
crossed his path is anyone’s guess; we have no such information. So tracing Jo-
seph’s levitations to a specific source or discovering where he might have learned
the details of his ­future “craft”—if one might call it that—is not pos­si­ble. But
baroque Catholicism was abuzz with tales of the miraculous in 1603, the year
of Joseph’s birth, and that fascination with miracles only increased as his life
unfolded. Chances are he might have known something about the levitations of
Ignatius Loyola, Philip Neri, and Teresa of Avila, all canonized in 1622 with
­great fanfare when Joseph was nineteen years old. And he would prob­ably have
known of them before that date, for their beatifications, which received a ­great
deal of attention in Italy, took place during his formative years: Ignatius in 1609,
when Joseph was six years old; Teresa in 1614, when he was eleven; and Philip
 m a k i n g s e n s e o f t h e f ly i n g f r i a r 141

when he was twelve. Of ­these three saints, Teresa of Avila was the one best known
for her levitations and the only one to have written about them in detail.
­Whether or not Joseph ever read Teresa of Avila’s descriptions of her ec-
stasies and levitations or had any knowledge of them is unknown and prob­ably
unlikely. An Italian edition of one of Teresa’s hagiographies, written by the Je-
suit Francisco de Ribera and translated by Monsignor Giovanni Francesco Bor-
dini, had been published in Rome in 1599. This Vita provided a narrative of
Teresa’s life and work, including accounts of some of her levitations, and Joseph
could have conceivably run into it at some point in his youth. Given his poor
reading skills, however, he would prob­ably have only heard it read to him or sum-
marized by o
­ thers who ­were better educated. And the first Italian translation of
her autobiography, in which Teresa dwells on her levitations in detail, was not
published ­until 1636, when Joseph was already in his thirties.8 By then Joseph
had been levitating for several years, so it is highly unlikely that he was influ-
enced by Teresa’s Vida. Although one can never discount the possibility of some-
one having translated Teresa’s writings orally for Joseph, or at least bits and
pieces of her work, but that would be pure speculation. Nonetheless, even with-
out some “smoking gun” sort of evidence linking the two mystics—­such as an
explic­itly clear textual connection between the two of them—it is easy to see
that his levitating ecstasies share many of the same assumptions as hers. And
it is also pos­si­ble to observe that the similarities derive from a shared culture.
Mystical experiences could be as varied as the names given to them in
monastic culture, so classifying Joseph’s super­natural experiences can be trou-
blesome. Sometimes, even ­those who claimed to have ­these experiences had trou­
ble classifying them or sorting out the terminology, as was the case with Saint
Teresa and her ­handling of the terms unión, arrobamiento, elevamiento, vuelo de
espíritu, arrebatamiento, and éstasi.9 Ordered by her superiors to write about her
ecstasies and visions, Teresa had no choice but to employ terms with which she
was familiar and hope for the best. Joseph himself never engaged with termi-
nology the same way, and neither did ­those around him or his hagiographers,
all of whom employed the terms estasi (ecstasies) and ratti (raptures) somewhat
interchangeably, although sometimes estasi was clearly used in reference to the
trance alone while ratti was employed in reference to the levitations.10 They also
sometimes referred to the physical effects of ­these mystical experiences as moti
(movements, motions, gestures), distinguishing t­ hese from what­ever might have
been happening to him spiritually and mentally. Following the lead of Joseph’s
contemporaries, “ecstasy” and “rapture” ­will be used interchangeably ­here to
 142 aloft

refer to his mystical experiences, and since many of Joseph’s moti w

­ ere mani-
festations of trance-­like states, the En­glish term “trance” w
­ ill be used ­here to
refer to his physical state during his mystical experiences, even though the Ital-
ian noun trance is not employed in the original documents.
While terminology might have been less than well defined among monas-
tics, certain key assumptions w
­ ere considered unquestionable. First, the possi-
bility of attaining a powerfully intimate encounter with the divine was assumed
to be very real by Joseph and ­those around him, as was also the case with Teresa.
And such ecstasies and raptures—­which could vary in intensity—­were assumed
to involve both the mortal body and the immortal soul. As one of Joseph’s ha-
giographers put it, levitation “is the elevation of the body that follows the flight
of the soul to God.”11 Delving into the theological details of this assumption is
unnecessary, especially in the case of Joseph, whose ignorance of formal theol-
ogy was one of his most salient personal traits, even more so than Teresa, who
stressed her theological ignorance constantly. Catholic mystics tended to have
similar ecstasies ­because they shared certain assumptions about ecstasies that
­were widely accepted within Catholic monastic culture in the early modern era.
Certain ­things ­were expected to happen in ecstasy; understanding the how and
why of ­these phenomena was unnecessary.12 A commonsensical awareness of
ecstatic trances as facts seemed sufficient. The key issue was discerning ­whether
­those events w
­ ere caused by God or the devil.
Another common and widely shared assumption involved metaphysics,
even if the ecstatic person was ignorant of philosophy and knew nothing of its
constituent branches, including metaphysics, ontology, or epistemology. One of
the most basic unquestioned assumptions—­understood as a fact—­was that
­humans inhabited two realms si­mul­ta­neously, the material and the spiritual, as
we have already seen in the case of Saint Teresa. This fact was part and parcel
of monastic life and its mystical culture. Mystical ecstasies involved body, mind,
and soul ­because the ­human self was unquestioningly believed to be composed
of ­matter and spirit. As Bernino put it, ecstasies carry away “the mind and the
body, the inner and the outer man.”13 This binary understanding of real­ity also
applied to the location of the mystic, which meant that the outer man remained on
earth during ecstasies, while the inner man was suddenly transported to heaven.
As some of Joseph’s hagiographers put it, he used to be “more with his soul in
heaven than with his body on earth.”14 This constant shuttling between two
realms was understood by Joseph and his contemporaries in a pre-­Copernican,
pre-­Newtonian spatial sense, literally, with earth below and heaven above. Con-
 m a k i n g s e n s e o f t h e f ly i n g f r i a r 143

sequently, levitation was also understood and explained in t­hese terms, as a

lifting of the spiritualized body in the direction of heaven above, where the
mystic’s soul had been instantly transported.15 Teresa of Avila explained her
levitations in precisely this way.16
Joseph’s own understanding of his levitations matched Teresa’s, as one
might expect, but was much more emotional than rational and more deeply
rooted in his ecstatic trances than in theological or metaphysical distinctions.
In essence, Joseph had an inchoate perception of the inner/outer and heaven-­
above/earth-­below spatial dichotomies, which he seems to have felt deeply, and
not at all in a meta­phorical way. Although he never wrote much, he did compose
some rhymed hymns, and one of them gives us a clear glimpse of his thoroughly
existential and somewhat wrenching understanding of the inner/outer, up/down,
above/below dimensional dichotomies.

Giesù, Giesù, Giesù, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,

deh tirami la sù, oh, pull me up there,
la sù in paradiso, into paradise ­there above,
che là godrò il bel viso, where I’ll enjoy your beautiful face,
là ti posso più amare where I can love you more
e con angeli lodare. and with the angels praise you.
Giesù, Giesù, Giesù, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,
non vorrei star più quaggiù, I ­don’t want to stay ­here below,
vorria venir là sù.17 Up there I want to go.

The sense of displacement expressed in t­ hese lines is not only intensely spatial
but also qualitative, for paradise is “above” and infinitely superior to what­ever
is “­here below,” where Joseph feels exiled or imprisoned. The ecstatic upward
tug of levitation—­evoked in the plaintive “tirami la sù”—is not just some freak-
ish physical anomaly, then, but a redemptive act. This is a view of real­ity that is
passed on and driven into the consciousness of monastics. Such a view produces
a specific conception of what is “real” or “pos­si­ble.” It is the matrix in which
the experience of levitation is constructed.
Spatial and qualitative distinctions ­were essential in monastic mystical
culture, for they w
­ ere used to mea­sure the intensity of ecstasies on a scale from
low to high. The higher the intensity, the “higher” one’s soul was drawn “up” into
heaven. Cataleptic trance-­like states involving paralysis, aphasia, and insensi-
tivity to physical stimuli ­were the most common type of “high” ecstasies de-
scribed in medieval and early modern hagiographies. Consequently, levitation
 144 aloft

was taken to be a supremely intense kind of ecstatic rapture—­a leap into a rarely
reached apex of the ecstatic spectrum—in which the cataleptic symptoms of
mystical trances could be additionally accompanied by flight.

The Body and the Ecstatic Self

Joseph’s raptures came in vari­ous levels of intensity, but overall they involved
his body in the most extreme ecstatic states conceivable. ­Whether he remained
earthbound, as he sometimes did, or ­whether he became airborne, his body
would go into a total sensory shutdown resembling a catatonic state. And,
as one might expect, Joseph’s hagiographers provided detailed descriptions of
the sensory tests performed on his ecstatic body so they could offer proof of the
extreme cataleptic nature of his trances and make some sense of them theo-
logically and rationally.

During the ecstasies and raptures, one could do anything to his body ­because
­there was nothing of him ­there . . . ​and he was beyond himself in another
world. His eyes usually remained open, but deprived of sight; his ears did not
perceive any sound, not even the loudest, ­unless it came from his superior. . . . ​
All his senses ­were deprived of their proper functions then. ­People pricked
his feet with n
­ eedles, seared his hands with fire, poked his eyeballs with
their fin­gers, all in vain, ­because he was not ­really ­there and his body was
dead to the world . . . ​his arms, hands, feet and neck remained so rigid that
it would have been easier to break his bones than to move his limbs from the
positions into which the rapture had set them.18

In modern medical terms, trances of this sort might be diagnosed as aki-

netic catatonia due to four key symptoms of that condition: not responding to
other p
­ eople or one’s environment; not speaking; holding one’s body in an un-
usual position; and resisting ­people who try to adjust one’s body.19 Anachronis-
tic medical and psychiatric diagnoses aside, one of the oddest details embedded
in the lengthy quote above is the issue of Joseph’s total deafness being overcome
by his superior’s voice. This significant detail is reiterated often in Joseph’s in-
quest pro­cessi and in his hagiographies, and it was instrumental in the Inquisi-
tion’s approval of his ecstasies, for it served as proof of Joseph’s obedience and
humility. Asked once how he could hear his superior’s commands while totally
bereft of his sense of hearing in his ecstasies, Joseph gave an explanation that
further convinced the Inquisitors of the divine nature of his raptures: He never
 m a k i n g s e n s e o f t h e f ly i n g f r i a r 145

heard his superior, he said, but God always did, and at the very instant the su-
perior spoke, the ecstasy would be s­ topped by none other than God himself, who
was most certainly never, ever deaf.20 This quirky exception embedded in Jo-
seph’s ecstasies does not fit the profile of a genuinely physiological cataleptic
seizure, making it difficult to diagnose retroactively as pathological, in purely
medical terms.21
While some aspects of mystical ecstasy might resemble symptoms of a
natu­ral diagnosable illness, levitation does not since it is considered an abso-
lute impossibility by modern medical science. As far as modern medicine and
science are concerned, no ­human being in a cataleptic state has ever levitated.
Consequently, all talk about levitation in Joseph’s day and age stands in stark
relief, as a fact—­that is, as something believed to be as real as catalepsy but
attributable solely to super­natural rather than natu­ral c­ auses. Retroactive med-
ical diagnoses are totally irrelevant h
­ ere. Yet, inexplicably, that super­natural eti-
ology was inseparable from the very specific and extremely rare natu­ral physical
fact of levitation, which levitators and ­those around them had to make intelli-
gible, somehow. All such attempts at explaining levitation w
­ ere no dif­fer­ent from
the futile attempts made by mystics to explain their ineffable ecstasies: the in-
effability of it all was the ­thing itself, the mingling of natu­ral and super­natural,
begging for comprehensibility.
In Joseph’s case, as in Teresa’s, the physical force of a levitating ecstasy was
often described as overpowering and irresistible, as something beyond the ­human
self. Asked once about what propelled him off the ground, Joseph replied: “It was
­great, that force; it was a g­ reat force, a g­ reat force!”22 At other times, however, that
force was described as “a gentle, gentle t­ hing.”23 Like Teresa, who complained of
the physical and emotional painfulness of levitating ecstasies, Joseph spoke of
his levitations as an “illness” or “malady” he endured,24 adding, paradoxically,
that the ecstasies that accompanied them w
­ ere “as a taste of the true glory of
paradise.”25 But Joseph and Teresa differed as much as they resembled each
other. Like Teresa, Joseph is said to have pleaded with God for an end to his
levitations, but his pleas, unlike hers, ­were of no avail.26 And while Teresa’s levi-
tations ­were ­silent, Joseph always roared as he went airborne, emitting a loud
noise variously described in Italian as urlo, grido, or strillo, which could mean a
scream, shriek, shout, cry, yell, screech, howl, or whoop—­a very physical reflex
as irrepressible as the levitation itself. One of his attempts to explain ­these
noises employs an explosive meta­phor: “As gunpowder explodes when it is ig-
nited in firearms, making a loud bang in the surrounding air, so does the heart
 146 aloft

of the ecstatic shout out when it’s set aflame by the love of God.” Curiously,
Saint Teresa also used a very similar meta­phor.27 Sometimes the screaming
could be perceived as a miracle unto itself, something as super­natural and in-
credible as the levitation. Such was the case at Fossombrone one Pentecost
Sunday, for instance, when Joseph’s scream was loud enough to shake the walls
and make his fellow friars fear that an earthquake was occurring.28
Joseph’s levitations ­were so numerous and so frequent that they became
unquantifiable. Tallying them seemed too large a task, apparently, as suggested
by the fact that in the Assisi beatification inquest alone—­one of several con-
ducted in three dif­fer­ent dioceses and over a dozen locations—­there are 800
folios dedicated to his trances, ecstasies, raptures, and levitations.29 Referring
specifically to this rec­ord in Assisi, Gustavo Parisciani said they w
­ ere so frequent
that “attempting to count and cata­logue them would have been a pointless effort.”
To back up this observation, Parisciani then quotes the diary kept by Abbott
Arcangelo Rosmi, where he said: “The ecstasies ­were frequent, especially at
Mass. . . . ​Consequently, we ­didn’t feel pressed to keep track and number them
all.”30 Moreover, this issue of frequency is singled out in most narratives as one
of the main reasons for the extreme isolation imposed on Joseph. His constant
levitations w
­ ere too distracting and disruptive, a threat to the rigid rhythms
of communal life. And e­ very day was full of triggers that could launch Joseph
into ecstasy.

Predictable and Unpredictable Triggers

Joseph was always ready to explode, so to speak. A Jesuit who was granted per-
mission to speak with him said afterward: “He is very intensely united to God
and his heart is more disposed to this ­union than gunpowder is to ignition
by the tiniest spark.”31 His world was as full of triggers as of the inexhaustible
spiritual meaning he could find in it. This made him epistemologically and mys-
tically volatile, and all his raptures w
­ ere an explosive response to some mean-
ing encoded in his surroundings. Joseph was constantly reading or decoding
the world in a mystical and sacramental way, ­either investing it with meaning
or perceiving the meaning inherent in it.
Celebrating Mass was a constant trigger, day in day out, for all the obvi-
ous reasons, and feast days seemed to produce some of his most spectacular levi-
tations. Visual stimuli ­were constant triggers too. Sacred images, especially
icons of the Virgin Mary, crosses, and crucifixes could elicit levitations or become
the focal point of his ecstasies (figs. 24 and 25). Joseph had a very fertile and
Figure 24. Saint Joseph was constantly drawn to crosses and other sacred images,
which caused him to levitate.
Figure 25. Giambettino Cignaroli’s highly spiritualized depiction of Saint Joseph’s
attraction to images of the Virgin Mary blurs the line between the heavenly and earthly
dimensions.
 m a k i n g s e n s e o f t h e f ly i n g f r i a r 149

active symbolic imagination that imbued his world with a sacramental dimen-
sion. Random encounters with all sorts of ­things, animate as well as inanimate,
could turn into epiphanies and bring on ecstasies: a lamb could be a manifes-
tation of Jesus, the Agnus Dei or Jesus, the Good Shepherd; a candle could re-
ify the tongues of flame that descended on the twelve apostles at Pentecost.
Auditory triggers ­were less predictable, and ­these included sacred ­music, hymns,
Bible passages, prayers, or even bagpipes or flutes played by shepherds; certain
words or holy names; or the mere mention of one of God’s attributes, such as
His goodness or omnipotence.32 The outcome of conversing with Joseph was
always unpredictable, for one never knew which word or phrase might make
him levitate, and this led many around him to “refrain from conversation” even
though they wanted to speak with him.33
Nature itself could have the same potent effect on him, unexpectedly: flow-
ers, plants, animals, and clouds in the sky could all become pathways to ecstasy.
As one of his Franciscan superiors said: “­Every natu­ral ­thing served Joseph as a
stairway to the super­natural.”34 And Joseph’s mystical volatility could lead him
as easily to joy as to sorrow. Both emotions w
­ ere power­ful triggers. “On some
occasions,” says Agelli, “when the superior ordered him to go into the friary’s
garden, he would usually go into a rapture, e­ ither when considering the divine
wisdom b
­ ehind the creation of some plant, or at the song of some l­ittle bird.
In his cell, all he did was weep over the passion of Jesus Christ and fly quickly
­towards Heaven b
­ ecause of it.”35 No one could ever anticipate the effect their
words or any object in their surroundings might have on Joseph. Tellingly, all his
hagiographers approach Joseph’s mystical triggers as logical, thus reinforcing
the correctness of the epistemological matrix that was part and parcel of his
Baroque Catholic culture.
Joseph was also susceptible to an authority trigger, for mingling with
impor­tant figures almost always made him levitate. ­Whether he was taken to
meet with ­these elites or they had sought him out made no difference. Their
mere presence triggered flights that could have significant repercussions, as hap-
pened with Pope Urban VIII, Prince Casimir of Poland, Duke Johann Friedrich
of Braunschweig-­Lüneberg, the Admiral of Castille, and many o
­ thers, including
cardinals, bishops, and authority figures in his own order. The predictability of
Joseph’s levitations in the presence of elites counterbalanced the unpredictabil-
ity of his other frequent levitations. ­These ­were utilitarian ecstasies that had
more worldly purpose than o
­ thers and might seem too good to be true. This
pragmatic fact made his strict isolation something of a sore point among his
 150 aloft

brethren and superiors during the last ten years of his life, ­after he was removed
from Assisi in 1653 and kept in strict isolation. The question some might have
asked was this: Why should the church hide away someone with so much po­liti­
cal potential? But such a question neglected to take into consideration the vola-
tility of that potential, as we ­shall soon see.
Two of Joseph’s meetings with elites stand out for their obvious utility. The
first of ­these involved the most impor­tant foreign authority in Italy, Juan Al-
fonso Enríquez de Cabrera, the Spanish grandee with a long string of titles who
served as King Philip IV’s ambassador to the Papal States and as his viceroy in
Naples and Sicily.36 The value of impressing someone with so much clout is ob-
vious. Spain was on the wane at that time, but still a mighty world power, and
it occupied much of Italy. Courting f­ avor with Philip IV was necessary for e­ very
pope, especially at a time when the Thirty Years’ War was still being fought and
the Papal States ­were a key player in this religiously charged conflict that pitted
Catholics against Protestants. Moreover, Philip IV had his own peculiar religious
bent, which included a fascination with miracle-­working holy men and ­women,
so having Joseph fly over his representative was something of a spectacular gift
for King Philip made all the more valuable for being intangible. Having the gran-
dee’s wife faint at the sight of the flying Joseph—­and having her relate the ­whole
story to King Philip in person back at court in Madrid—­might be considered
something of a ribbon on that unusual gift.
An even more spectacular and purposeful levitation was the one that oc-
curred five years ­later, when Joseph was visited by Duke Johann Friedrich of
Braunschweig-­Lüneberg. In this case, Joseph was instrumental in convincing this
prominent twenty-­five-­year-­old Lutheran to convert to Catholicism. And this
conversion can easily lend itself to a functionalist analy­sis of the polemical use
of miracles in the Catholic Reformation.
How the duke was first drawn to Catholicism is uncertain, but it appears
that his tour of the leading courts of Eu­rope was not driven solely by po­liti­cal
concerns, for when he got to the Italian leg of his journey, he sought out Joseph,
whom he had heard about back home. And it was more than mere curiosity, it
seems, that brought him to Assisi hoping to meet the fabled Flying Friar, for he
had sought support for his request from the highest echelons of the Catholic
hierarchy and managed to convince Cardinal Francesco Rapaccioli—­who had
previously seen Joseph levitate37—to write a letter of introduction for him, which
he brought along to Assisi. But ­there was someone ­else at Rome who was made
aware of the duke’s wishes. Unbeknownst to Johann Friedrich, Pope Innocent
 m a k i n g s e n s e o f t h e f ly i n g f r i a r 151

X had sent a secret missive to the custodian of the friary, ordering him to allow
the duke to speak with Joseph “so that the prayers and persuasiveness of the
Servant of God Joseph might lead to the conversion of this Lutheran Prince
which, if it ­were to happen, would be very beneficial to religious affairs in that
region.”38
The tone of Pope Innocent’s letter to Joseph’s superior at Assisi suggests
that the pontiff had been led to believe that the Saxon duke was leaning t­ oward
conversion and that Joseph might be able to tip him in the right direction. That
letter gained Johann Friedrich and his retinue lodgings in the papal apartment
at Assisi and full access to Joseph. As previously described, the encounter be-
tween the duke and Joseph led not only to two of the most dramatic of Joseph’s
levitations and eucharistic miracles but also to Johann Friedrich’s conversion.
Joseph’s own glee over the effect he had on Johann Friedrich was hard to hide. “We
are overjoyed that the stag is wounded, and have high hopes for his conversion,”
he said to one of his brethren.39 Joseph and Pope Innocent ­were not disap-
pointed: shortly before his departure from Assisi, Johann Friedrich promised
to convert and vowed to return ­there as soon as pos­si­ble to be formally accepted
into the Catholic Church. As the duke planned for the formalities, ­great con-
sternation swept through Lutheran Germany and Scandinavia, but no one could
dissuade Johann Friedrich. Meanwhile, according to his hagiographers, Joseph
had to contend with death threats from Germany, as well as ferocious demonic
attacks from hell.40
Johann Friedrich’s conversion puts the polemical dimension of Catholic
miracles in high relief. Getting a prominent Lutheran to convert was quite a
coup for the Catholic Church, and the fact that his conversion was attributable
to the miracles he witnessed at Assisi sharpened the edge of the Catholic argu-
ment that its miracles confirmed its legitimacy as the one true church and proved
that Protestantism—­which had no miracles—­was therefore false. The statement
attributed to one of the duke’s Lutheran companions, “Cursed be the instant I
set foot in this country; at home my mind was tranquil, but now ­here I’m rat-
tled by the furies and scruples of conscience,”41 sums up the Catholic argument
perfectly and makes for a potentially effective parable, especially ­because that
par­tic­ul­ar companion is said to have converted to Catholicism two years ­later.42
Friedrich’s conversion had value beyond polemics. His conversion drove a
potentially lethal wedge into Lutheran hegemony in Germany and Scandinavia.
The duke’s bloodline could be traced back to Friedrich the Wise and all the other
Saxon princes who made pos­si­ble the survival and triumph of Lutheranism, so,
 152 aloft

consequently, his rejection of the Lutheran faith sent a power­ful symbolic sig-
nal to all Protestants. Additionally, his principality was a linchpin of the Prot-
estant po­liti­cal and military co­ali­tion in Northern Eu­rope, which had just
emerged painfully scarred from the Thirty Years’ War. Johann Friedrich’s con-
version also raised fears of a r­ ipple effect at the highest levels of the Protestant
world, for his s­ ister Sophie Amalie was queen of Denmark-­Norway, consort of
King Frederick III of Denmark, and that nation was one of the most power­ful
Lutheran states of all. Another defection at that high a level—­which would have
delighted Pope Innocent—­could have been disastrous for Lutheranism.
The greatest threat of such a conversion was posed by Johann Friedrich’s
younger ­brother, Ernst August, who expressed Catholic leanings loudly enough
to worry his entire ­family. ­Sister Sophie and her husband, King Frederick III,
­were so concerned, in fact, that they did their utmost to prevent Ernst August’s
conversion and to convince Johann Friedrich to return to the Lutheran fold.43
Ultimately, no one ­else in the ­family converted, including Ernst August, but the
threat seemed real enough for a while, especially since the wayward duke took
steps to re-­Catholicize his lands as much as pos­si­ble and even established a Ca-
puchin friary on his estates. According to his wife, Benedicta Henrietta of the
Palatinate, the duke kept portraits of Joseph and spoke of him constantly with
“tender devotion.”44 The Catholic fervor of this ducal f­amily remained a thorn
in the side of their Lutheran relatives for many years, but their Catholicism
would eventually link them to the Hapsburg dynasty through one of their
­daughters, Wilhelmina Amalia, who married Holy Roman Emperor Joseph I
in 1699.45
The pious, miracle-­believing Catholic duke may have been an embarrass-
ment to his relatives, but he was no foe of reason and science and lured the
­great polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz to work for him as counselor and li-
brarian, thus linking the ­whole ­family to one of the most illustrious names in
the Age of Reason. A
­ fter Johann Friedrich’s death in 1679, Leibniz would con-
tinue to serve the House of Braunschweig in vari­ous positions, including that
of director of the Ducal library at Wolfenbüttel, a job he enjoyed and that
prompted him to develop the modern science of cata­loging. Unfortunately,
Leibniz also had to function as the f­ amily’s genealogist, a task he detested and
deemed worse than the eternal punishment imposed on Sisyphus by Zeus. As
one might suspect, Leibniz the mathematical genius who devised calculus was
apparently uninterested in the story of his employer’s conversion or afraid to
speak or write about it. In his brief biography of Johann Friedrich, all that Leib-
 m a k i n g s e n s e o f t h e f ly i n g f r i a r 153

niz cares to say is that the duke became a Roman Catholic u

­ nder the guidance
of the “so-­called miracle-­worker ­Father Joseph” at Assisi and that he headed for
Loreto as soon as his rites of initiation had taken place.46

Patterns in the Narrative

Joseph’s levitations are unique for many reasons already mentioned, such as their
frequency, the number of eyewitness testimonies, the variety of locations and
circumstances in which they took place, the extreme heights and distances in-
volved, and myriad phenomena absent from previous levitation accounts. All
­things considered, however, one of the most remarkable characteristics of his
unique levitations—­arguably the most remarkable—is the consistency of the
eyewitness testimonies, all of which report the same array of astounding phe-
nomena despite the fact that ­these witnesses ­were from disparate locations and
dif­fer­ent points in time and despite the more puzzling fact that many of ­these
phenomena w
­ ere unpre­ce­dented. Despite the oddness of the details, ­there is a
seamlessness in Joseph’s story, a cohesiveness one might not expect to find in
narratives of super­natural events, especially t­ hose based on accounts from a wide
array of witnesses who could not have heard or read about such events in any
existing narratives. So assuming that the testimonies w
­ ere genuine—an assump-
tion based on convincing evidence—­the novelty of Joseph’s levitations and the
cohesiveness of the narrative are both puzzling, for one is left wondering
how it is that this unlikely pairing occurred and what it might mean or what it
could reveal.
Solving this puzzle to every­one’s satisfaction—as if it ­were in the realm
of mathe­matics, something akin to Fermat’s Last Theorem47—is as impossible
as proving that his levitations took place exactly as all the eyewitnesses asserted.
Such is the nature of most religious phenomena of consequence, especially t­ hose
that involve mystical phenomena. As Rudolf Otto wisely observed over a ­century
ago, “Mysticism is the stressing to a very high degree, indeed the overstressing
of the non-­rational or supra-­rational ele­ments in religion; and it is only intelli-
gible when so understood.”48
Nonetheless, analyzing the puzzle and coming to grips with its significance
helps to make sense of Joseph as a historical event and as a prime exemplar of
the history of the impossible. To attempt at least this much, we must examine
the details and patterns of his levitation accounts more closely, as conveyed by
his hagiographers.
 154 aloft

Isolation
One of the most unique characteristics of Joseph’s life is the anomalous isola-
tion imposed on him by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Normally in his
day and age, as in the M
­ iddle Ages, miracle-­working holy men and w
­ omen ­were
not shuffled out of view or kept ­under lock and key. Instead, their holiness and
their miracles—­which ostensibly proved God’s existence and confirmed the
power and authority of the church—­were on full display, publicly. Granted, many
of ­these holy men and w
­ omen ­were carefully scrutinized or even suspected of
deviancy, especially from the fifteenth ­century onward, but once their holiness
and their miracles had passed the church’s tests, ­these saintly exemplars ­were
not only allowed to interact with the world but often encouraged to do so, even
within a cloistered context.
Joseph was tested by the Inquisition and found innocent of deviancy. In
addition, his raptures ­were deemed to be genuine rather than feigned or of de-
monic origin, and his nonscholarly theology was declared orthodox. Yet his ho-
liness remained ambiguous and liminal while he was alive, more so than most
other saints. All saints in the Catholic tradition live in a liminal state. ­Those
who are holy are suspended continuously on a threshold: still on earth but par-
tially in heaven, still tempted to sin but also uncommonly able to resist.49 Jo-
seph spent most of his adult life in an extraordinarily intense liminal state, not
only ­because of the characteristics he shared with all saints-­in-­the-­making,
especially ­others prone to mystical raptures, but also ­because he was at once
revered and feared. His own threshold is difficult to describe due to his uniqueness,
but one way of identifying it is to say his status was liminal in vari­ous ways all
at once, suspended immovably, as he himself was in so many of his levitations.
In essence, his levitating raptures ­were themselves a liminal state, for he was
neither fully on earth or in heaven but somewhere in between, defying gravity,
but only momentarily. And that liminality was the very essence of his raptures,
which Joseph himself perceived, even if inchoately, as proven by what he said to
a cardinal who saw him in a trance and questioned him about it afterward. It
was “the greatness of heavenly t­ hings, and the miserable baseness of h
­ uman
­things,” said Joseph, “that had been the cause of his stupefaction.”50
Moreover, his miracles w
­ ere si­mul­ta­neously affirmative and disruptive:
they w
­ ere theophanies, irruptions of the divine that affirmed the genuine truth
of the Catholic Church and its teachings—­especially over and against Protes­
tants—­while at the same time possibly deemed far too excessive, too much of a
 m a k i n g s e n s e o f t h e f ly i n g f r i a r 155

good ­thing, too numinous and ominous all at once.51 Joseph’s trances, shrieks,
and flights could be frightening, even terrifying, yet also have a positive effect,
as one eyewitness said: “Joseph’s ecstasies could be frightful at first, especially
his shrieks, but they nonetheless comforted t­hose who watched him, evoking
contrition and devotion in them.”52 As is true of many encounters with the super­
natural, Joseph’s presence could be aptly described as too volatile, as too much
exposure to a mysterium tremendum and a mysterium fascinans—­that is, as too
much contact with events or forces that evoke dread and awe si­mul­ta­neously,53
or simply cause bewilderment,54 or result in terror,55 or even make someone
faint,56 or weep,57 or run away from him screaming.58 A brush with Joseph could
be devastating. In one instance, the witnesses to one of his levitations are de-
scribed as “overcome by sacred terror.”59
The reasons given for Joseph’s isolation by his superiors ­were purely prag-
matic rather than analytical. Concepts such as mysterium tremendum ­were not
on their minds. Moreover, they prob­ably wished to disclose as ­little as pos­si­ble
about their decision. At the beginning of his narrative, Agelli cites the disrup-
tive potential of Joseph’s ecstasies as the cause of his forced isolation. “Joseph
was an ecstatic from the time of his priestly ordination ­until his death,” says
Agelli, “and for that reason, for more than thirty-­five years his superiors would
not allow him to join his brethren at choir, or pro­cessions, or the refectory, so
his raptures and ecstasies ­wouldn’t disrupt ­those events.”60 ­Later on, however,
he suggests that Joseph’s isolation was a compassionate move and a recogni-
tion of his unique mystical gifts, designed to allow him and God to achieve
greater intimacy with one another: “Pope Urban VIII de­cided with his enlight-
ened judgment to remove such a g­ reat trea­sure from the public and hide him
in a remote spot,” he says, “to reserve him intact for God, who would want him
for Himself. And it would be up to God ­whether to display Joseph to ­others
through his secret and wonderful ways.”61 Bernino puts a poetic spin on Jo-
seph’s isolation, saying the Inquisition’s intention was not to have “such a g­ reat
trea­sure” live “like a prisoner in jail” but rather exist “like a reserved relic,” an
observation that confirms his liminal status as someone suspended between
life and death.62
The late Gustavo Parisciani, who has carefully examined nearly e­ very ex-
tant document related to Joseph, cites some reasons for his imprisonment that
never fully surface in the hagiographies. As he sees it, Joseph was as much a
lightning rod for intrigues, controversy, and criticism as for adulation, especially
when it came to the very touchy po­liti­cal maneuvering involved in deciding
 156 aloft

which po­liti­cal and ecclesiastical elites would be permitted to visit him and in
the equally touchy job of ­handling the fallout from certain visits. Given the com-
plexity of relations between the papacy and secular rulers in Italy and beyond,
as well as the equally complex and often rancorous machinations and intrigues
within high ecclesiastical circles, e­ very visit by a secular potentate or ecclesias-
tical prelate was a potential threat to what­ever fragile stability might exist in
Rome’s internal politics and external relations.
According to Parisciani, Joseph was accused of holding discrete minicon-
claves with cardinals—­that is, of meddling in the business of papal elections.
And he also apparently stirred up all sorts of jealousies and bickering among
the nobility who sought to see him, some of whom got the nod, while ­others
did not, much like members or would-be members of ­today’s glitterati who covet
admission into exclusive nightspots or social events. In addition, Parisciani
claims, Joseph himself was irked by the endless stream of elite visitors who stole
precious time from his life of prayer. Apparently, the pope and his inner circle
­were also well aware of the burden being placed on Joseph and its damaging
effect on his spiritual life. All t­ hings considered, then, dealing with the constant
requests from the prickly elites who clamored to see Joseph could have seemed
way too troublesome for ­those in charge of him, for too many reasons.63

Holy Idiot, Holy Fool

Another salient characteristic of Joseph is the way in which his ecstasies are
inseparable from his simplemindedness and the way in which he, Bocca Aperta,
the open-­mouthed “holy fool” from Copertino, transcends and trumps reason.
In many ways Joseph reifies the ancient Christian archetype of the holy fool
found in both the Orthodox and Catholic traditions, which can be traced back
directly to the apostle Paul and his boast that “we are fools for Christ’s sake”
(1 Corinthians 4:10) and before him to the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures
and also—­most significantly—to Jesus himself, who was the paradoxical arche-
type of unworldly and seemingly unreasonable self-­abnegation: the Word of God
made flesh who subjects himself willingly and meekly to poverty, harassment,
humiliation, extreme suffering, and death.64
More significantly, Joseph duplicates or mirrors the foolishness of two of
the greatest monastics in the Christian tradition: Saint Antony the ­Great of
Egypt (251–356), with whom he does not appear to have been familiar, and
Saint Francis of Assisi (1182–1226), his ultimate role model. Monasticism itself
 m a k i n g s e n s e o f t h e f ly i n g f r i a r 157

is deeply rooted in holy foolishness ­because of its rejection of worldly values,

which can make e­ very monk or nun seem insane, or even a raving lunatic. The
Cistercian luminary Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), who greatly ad-
mired Antony the ­Great, captured the essence of monastic foolishness brilliantly
in one of his letters:

For what e­ lse do worldlings think we are d

­ oing but playing about, when what
they desire most on earth, we flee, and what they flee, we desire? We are like
jesters and tumblers, who, with heads down and feet up, exhibit extraordi-
nary behaviour by standing or walking on their hands, and thus draw all
eyes to themselves. But ours is not the play of c­ hildren or of the theatre,
which excites lust and represents sordid acts in the effeminate and shame-
ful contortions of the actors. No, ours is a joyous game, decent, grave, and
admirable, delighting the gaze of the heavenly onlookers.65

The monastic virtue of humility, which is inextricably tied to holy fool-

ishness, was as much of a constant focus for Saint Bernard as it was for Joseph.
“Humiliatio est via ad humilitatem,” said Saint Bernard in that same letter:
humiliation is the way to humility. Joseph knew this, instinctively. And, as we
know from his encounter with the Inquisition at Naples, it was ultimately Jo-
seph’s humility, not his loquacity or his theological savvy, that convinced the
inquisitors of the genuineness of his holiness and orthodoxy. One might say
that it was Joseph’s foolishness, his all-­too-­obvious witlessness that disarmed
the Inquisition and saved his skin in Naples, and afterward, for the rest of his
life. Although he could not have been familiar with the work of Saint Thomas
Aquinas (1225–1274), Joseph would have agreed with this passage from his
Summa Theologica: “One who is strengthened by God professes himself to be
an utter fool by h
­ uman standards, ­because he despises what the wisdom of men
strives for.”66
Joseph’s simplemindedness and lack of education are highlighted in a bru-
tally harsh tone by many sources. This blistering description of him is typical:
“­Those who knew him would admit that he was an extremely s­ imple person and
barely knew how to read, that he w
­ asn’t a theologian, or had studied any other
subjects, and that he himself was an idiot of low abilities who could barely read
or write. Cardinal di Lauria, among ­others, says F
­ ather Joseph was ignorant, had
never studied, and could only understand the most basic Latin.”67
In the monastic tradition, distinguishing between “­idiots” and “fools”
has never been easy. In fact, “holy idiocy” and “holy foolishness” are often
 158 aloft

­interchangeable. In the Christian East, in Greek, the term idiōtēs was used for a
man with no special public function or skill. In the Christian West, in Latin, the
term idiota referred to illiterate rustics without education. Saint Antony the
­Great of Egypt, the archetypal monastic idiōtēs, whose hagiography was penned
by the ­great theologian Saint Athanasius of Alexandria (296–373), was an “un-
lettered” ascetic who spent his very long life as a hermit in the desert. Yet his
asceticism and his life of prayer allowed him to climb the mystical heights to
such an extent that he became an “astute and wise man” who could out argue
the cleverest phi­los­o­phers and heretics. Joseph may not have been aware of his
mirroring of this ancient narrative, in which divine wisdom is infused into the
mystical holy fool, but his hagiographers and many of ­those who offered testi-
monies to his canonization inquest would have certainly known of this key
paradigm. So it is no surprise that Joseph ends up resembling Saint Antony in
the inquest testimonies and the hagiographical narrative.68 For instance, a fel-
low friar testified that Joseph “was barely literate, but the way he solved theo-
logical prob­lems showed that he had an infused knowledge of God that was
lofty and deep.”69 Agelli echoed t­ hese sentiments: “­Father Joseph discoursed
on very difficult points of theology like a ­great theologian, and without prepa-
ration he superbly answered any doubts put to him concerning Holy Scripture
quickly and excellently in a way that showed clearly that his knowledge was
super­natural and infused, so that the most learned Father-­Master and Regent
Antonio di Ponte della Trave, admiring such a depth of understanding, fre-
quently said, ‘he knows more than I do.’ ”70
According to some testimonies, Joseph himself seems to have been a bit
uncomfortable with his status as idiot savant, most prob­ably b
­ ecause he pre-
ferred to emphasize his humility—as he did a­ fter his levitations—­but this never
­stopped him from answering questions about his encounters with the divine.
When Cardinal Lauria asked, “What might t­ hose in ecstasy see during their ec-
stasy?” Joseph replied, “They find themselves as if within a ­great gallery of
beautiful ­things in which hangs a highly polished mirror where they can see, all
at once, ­every type of hidden and yearned-­for mystery that it pleases God to
reveal to them in that g­ reat vision.”71 Often, Joseph would answer questions such
as this equivocally, mixing self-­effacement with vague poetic descriptions of his
lofty engagement with the divine. Once, at the end of a particularly intense grill-
ing by the archbishop of Avignon, Joseph begged him not to “take advantage of
him” with such questioning “­because he was ignorant and d
­ idn’t know how to
converse.”72
 m a k i n g s e n s e o f t h e f ly i n g f r i a r 159

Joseph’s foolishness is also often compared to that of his beloved role

model Saint Francis, arguably the most exemplary of medieval holy fools.73 Fran-
cis was a countercultural holy man who embraced absolute poverty and home-
lessness and behaved irrationally in vari­ous ways, displaying an absolute horror
of money, embracing lepers and beggars, stripping himself naked in the pres-
ence of the bishop of Assisi, wandering outdoors in the wilderness, constantly
flitting from town to town, courting and relishing humiliation and contempt.
In his biography of Saint Francis, G. K. Chesterton summed up his foolishness
poetically: “He had made a fool of himself . . . ​­there was not a rag of him left
that was not ridicu­lous. Every­body knew that at the best he had made a fool of
himself. It was a solid objective fact, like the stones in the road, that he had
made a fool of himself. He saw himself as an object, very small and distinct like
a fly walking on a clear windowpane; and it was unmistakably a fool.”74
Within the Franciscan order, Saint Francis came to be regarded as a mir-
ror image of Jesus Christ, not just b
­ ecause his be­hav­ior resembled that of Jesus
so closely but also b
­ ecause of the miraculous stigmata he received in a mystical
ecstasy that duplicated the wounds of the crucified Christ. Joseph did not re-
ceive that same mystical gift, but all of the hagiographies emphasize his love of
Christ and crucifixes, especially his obsession with the passion of Christ, his ex-
treme ecstasies during Holy Week, and his exuberance on Easter Sunday. That
Joseph was being viewed as another Saint Francis is undeniable. One such piece
of evidence—­a very telling one—is embedded in the story of the visit to Assisi
by the Spanish viceroy who, ­after meeting with Joseph. ran excitedly to tell his
wife, “I have seen and spoken with another Saint Francis.”75
Such an assessment of Joseph, which was an echo of widely held senti-
ments, could not be tolerated comfortably at Assisi, where Saint Francis had
reigned supreme for over four centuries as the holy man par excellence. ­There
was only room for one Saint Francis at Assisi. So it is highly likely that one of
the many reasons Pope Innocent X had for removing Joseph from Assisi was to
prevent him from competing with his role model or eclipsing him. Being a liv-
ing saint can be tricky, for sure.

Distinctive Traits of Joseph’s Levitations

Given how often eyewitnesses claimed to have seen Joseph flying or hovering in
ecstasy, it is not surprising that testimonies of his levitations contain a wealth of
details, some of which are difficult to find in accounts of previous or subsequent
 160 aloft

levitating saints. As the levitations themselves raise many questions, so do

­these details. And the details point beyond themselves, establishing a herme-
neutic of discernment—­that is, a way of making sense of the impossible.
Since many—if not most—of Joseph’s levitations occurred while he was
celebrating Mass, his moti, or movements in that setting, display some specific
peculiarities. One of the most extreme of ­these rare features was the frequency
of his raptures at the altar, which interrupted him continually and could
make Mass take between two to five hours to complete.76 “He celebrated Holy
Mass more frequently up in the air than on the ground,” said his hagiogra-
phers.77 Moreover, we are told that “when celebrating Mass . . . ​he was inces-
santly ecstatic” and that “the won­der of it all was that when he came back to
his senses, he followed the correct words and the ceremonies so punctiliously
that it seemed that an angel was dictating each syllable to him and guiding him
through the ritual” (fig. 26).78
So, t­ hese frequent raptures seem to share one characteristic: the suspen-
sion of time. Joseph is not distracted by the raptures or his trance-­like states at
Mass. He picks up where he left off without missing a beat, much like a film
that is paused in which the interrupted dialogue and action resume cleanly and
precisely as soon as the playback button is pressed. But this is not all that is
peculiar about his eucharistic raptures. ­These levitations had an assortment of
characteristics that are not usually found together in accounts of raptures out-
side of Mass: “The usual lifting of his body took place like this: As the moment
of consecration approached, he would rise on the tips of his toes and stay that
way u
­ ntil the consummation of the sacrifice. Then, extraordinary ­things hap-
pened: ­either he’d take leave of his senses or ­else he’d fly backwards two paces,
or he’d become unconscious or raise himself two palms into the air or ­else do
such t­ hings that one could not help but think that he was e­ ither wholly absorbed
in God or that God was delicately and totally interacting with him.”79
Only during Mass does Joseph exhibit so many dif­fer­ent sorts of moti in
succession: ascending and descending, hovering, flying, moving backward and
forward, rising to the ceiling, remaining inanimate and insentient on the ground
or dancing in the air, shrieking as he soars or remaining s­ ilent as he holds the
host in his hands, entranced; all or some of ­these are strung together within the
cele­bration of a single ritual. Tellingly, that ritual involved the miracle of tran-
substantiation, and Joseph mirrors the transcending of the natu­ral order that
takes place in that ritual. He, as a priest, is effecting a super­natural change in
the substance of the bread and wine and is si­mul­ta­neously affected by it, and
Figure 26. One of the many engravings and paintings that show Saint Joseph levitating in ecstasy
while celebrating Mass.
 162 aloft

his levitation serves to confirm the real­ity of that super­natural change. The di-
dactic and polemical value of Joseph’s eucharistic ecstasies—­which “proved” the
real presence of Christ in the bread and wine—­might have seemed heaven-­sent
to ­those clerics who dedicated their lives to enlightening the Catholic faithful
or to wrestling with Protestants.
As already mentioned, many of Joseph’s trances w
­ ere dif­fer­ent from t­ hose
just described. He also had seizures that left him bereft of his senses, stiff and
motionless. In account a­ fter account, Joseph’s trances are described as having
a freeze-­frame effect of sorts, trapping his body in what­ever position it happened
to be in at the onset of rapture and stopping time, as it w
­ ere, similar to what
would happen to his mind when the cele­bration of the Mass was interrupted by
a rapture. ­These accounts also describe a glowing effect and weeping, along with
a sense of shame or embarrassment in Joseph once the event is over. The fol-
lowing description is typical: “He was frequently seen suspended very still, with
his arms outstretched and his eyes upturned, e­ ither with his body almost in a
sitting position, or his feet in the act of walking, and ­there was no skill or force
that could move him from such a pose. . . . ​When this ended, his face was tinged
with a holy glow and his eyes ­were full of tears. He would then turn to bystand-
ers and, in order to cover up the divine activity, would ask them to p
­ ardon his
so-­called imperfections and his stupor.”80 The theatricality of ­these poses—­
which turn Joseph into a living statue—is all too obvious, but Joseph’s display
of embarrassment at the end of the raptures, which he dismisses as “drowsiness,
infirmities, or a stupor,” seems to suggest the exact opposite of an attention-­
seeking per­for­mance.81
Many eyewitness testimonies in the beatification inquests (pro­cessi) de-
scribe something even more dramatic about ­these freeze-­frame poses, for they
claim that it was not just Joseph’s body that seemed to stiffen completely but
also his clothing, as if he w
­ ere wrapped in some super­natural cocoon that pre-
vented his w
­ hole self from being affected by gravity or the drag and flow of the
surrounding air. As Cardinal Lorenzo di Lauria Brancati put it in his testimony,
despite all of the “sudden and eccentric” motion to which Joseph’s body was
subjected, “his clothes remained so composed that—­with the utmost admiration—
I judged it to be humanly impossible for this to be happening.”82 Bernino describes
the effects this super­natural cocoon could have on Joseph:

During his ecstasies and raptures, it was noticed that his clothes—be it his
priestly garb or his Franciscan habit—­always remained composed as he flew
 m a k i n g s e n s e o f t h e f ly i n g f r i a r 163

through the air or hit the ground, propelled by the force of his Spirit. It
seemed as if an invisible hand wrapped itself around him at t­hose moments
and adjusted his clothes according to what­ever his position was at any mo-
ment. So, when he was celebrating Mass, his vestments always covered his
legs and feet. Or, if he was in the act of talking to someone, his head remained
covered, or the cowl of his habit remained lowered around his neck. And
his Franciscan cord always hung down neatly. In sum, e­ very part of his garb
stayed exactly as it should have been, miraculously, despite the many vehement
movements of his body.83

­Here again we find a stress on the freezing of bodily motion at the instant the
rapture begins. But the cessation of motion applies only to Joseph’s body, not
to the ascents or descents of that body or its flights forward or backward, which
could be quite energetic or vehement (vehementi). So what is being described
­here is a multifaceted suspension of the laws of nature and the sudden irrup-
tion of a super­natural cocoon within nature, that “invisible hand” mentioned
by Bernino that envelops an inanimate Joseph and moves him about in the air
while keeping his body and his clothing totally motionless, with his head and
extremities in vari­ous dramatic poses as if he w
­ ere a statue or a motionless actor
in a tableau vivant.
Moreover, this same “invisible hand” can move Joseph vari­ous heights
or change his trajectories. He moves diagonally, not just straight up and down;
he can whirl about, dancing; he can gyrate with the speed of lightning; and
he can move forward and backward. This flying in reverse direction is another
rare levitation phenomenon that makes Joseph unique, and it seems to occur
frequently. It could happen with elite visitors, such as Duke Johann Friedrich,
at Mass, or it could happen in vari­ous other settings. For instance, when he was
venerating the veil of the Virgin Mary at Assisi, “He knelt in front of the pre-
cious relic but upon moving forward to kiss it, he jumped and flew backwards
for eight long paces, and then he reversed that same flight to kiss it, ­after
which once again as before, he flew back eight paces. Then he took to a new
flight over the ­table where the reliquary was resting and ­there, he went into
ecstasy with arms outstretched, with his two hands positioned directly on the
flames of two lighted torches.84 And it also happened when he was h
­ andling
another relic at Assisi, the habit of Saint Francis: “The Blessed Joseph, in the
act of folding the habit of Saint Francis, flew backwards more than three
paces and r­ ose so high that he flew over the heads of two deputies who w
­ ere
 164 aloft

­behind him, and then he fell on his knees in ecstasy on the pavement b
­ ehind
them.”85
Additionally, the invisible hand seems to influence what­ever objects
might be in Joseph’s flight path or near him. He could fly very close to candles
and torches without toppling them or hover directly over them and remain
unharmed,86 his flesh and garments impervious to the flames, as happened at
a convent in Naples where the nuns began to scream—­needlessly—­fearing he
would catch on fire.87 Or he could land on some surface and kneel t­ here with-
out displacing or disturbing what­ever items might be on it.88 Or he could
glide between objects and leave them undisturbed, as if they ­were not even
­there. This happened at Assisi, when he floated around an elaborate Easter
display above the main altar that contained many lamps, ornaments, and
wooden structures—on the way up and on the way down—­“without harming
himself or the display.”89
The height of his levitations varied. Outdoors, he could sometimes nearly
vanish from sight, and indoors the ceiling was his only limit. One time at Assisi
while praying before the altar of Saint Francis, Joseph flew up so fast that his
fellow friars lost sight of him momentarily, u
­ ntil they looked up at the ceiling
and saw him ­there.90 Never at a loss for poetic turns of phrase, Agelli had this
to say about Joseph’s encounters with ceilings: “More than once, Joseph was
seen raising the host and his w
­ hole person at the same time, carry­ing himself
so high that if his trajectory had not been blocked by the ceiling, he would have
been carried along with his consecrated Jesus into the presence of his Eternal
­Father at the sublime altar of heaven.”91
That same invisible hand that carried Joseph upward was also power­ful
enough to create a miracle within a miracle by dragging along anyone Joseph
touched. As Agelli put it: “His ­great ­union with God not only caused him to be
frequently rapt into the air, but as a new and unusual won­der he would also
carry ­others up along with him, to bring them to God.”92 We have vari­ous ac-
counts of ­these double levitations, and the most peculiar t­ hing about them is
that t­ hose lifted into the air by Joseph are not ecstatic, or even willing to go up
with him, but are forcibly taken by him, much like prey in the talons of a raptor.
Once, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception—­one of Joseph’s favorite days
of the year—he grabbed a fellow friar and took off with him in tow.93 Joseph
could also engage his unsuspecting levitation partners in dancing up in the air,
as he did in the previously mentioned case of the priest with whom he twirled
“round and round like David before the Ark.”94
 m a k i n g s e n s e o f t h e f ly i n g f r i a r 165

One of the best-­known accounts of a double levitation is that of Baldas-

sare Rossi, “who had fallen into such a furious madness that he treated and
abused every­one crazily.” Rossi was brought to Joseph for healing, tightly bound
to a chair with ropes. What followed ­after he was untied was a ­great surprise:
“Joseph placed his hand on his head and said: ‘Cavaliere Baldassare, d
­ on’t doubt
yourself. Commend yourself to God and to his Most Holy ­Mother.’ Having said
this, he then gripped his hair tightly with his hand, and screaming ‘oh,’ as usual,
he ­rose up in rapture, bringing the madman along with him, high off the ground.
­After staying afloat in the air for seven or eight minutes, and then returning to
the ground Joseph said, ‘cheer up, Cavaliere.’ The knight regained his sanity and
returned home praising God and his blessed liberator.”95
In this case, miracles are nestled within one another, much like Rus­sian
matryoshka dolls: a miracle within a miracle within a miracle—­that is, a levita-
tion that c­ auses another levitation and effects a cure (fig. 27).
Fi­nally, one must also puzzle over the screams with which he launched
into the air, identified with the Italian words urlo, grido, and strillo. This odd
reflex, one of most distinctive traits of Joseph’s raptures, is often described as
being very loud and audible from far away.96 As mentioned previously, Joseph
claimed that his shouts w
­ ere as uncontrollable as his levitations and compared
them to the reaction gunpowder always has to a flame or spark.97 No other levi-
tator in Christian history has howled or whooped this way, but then again, no
other levitator has displayed as many unique traits as Joseph. He is sui generis,
a rare species of saint, among the rarest of all, uniquely outrageous in his ec-
static excess.
Ironically, Joseph’s noisemaking is the least miraculous of his feats, since
screaming loudly is a natu­ral phenomenon. But his bellowing is so inseparable
from his flying as to seem super­natural, or at least superhuman, loud enough to
shake a ­whole building or to be mistaken for the rumbling of an earthquake.98
­Whether such trembling was r­ eally caused by his voice or not, the fact remains
that eyewitnesses testified that it was certainly perceived that way. W
­ hether one
likes it or not, such a perception reeks of the super­natural, even when attrib-
uted to overactive imaginations, bald-­faced lying, or the unlikely coincidence
that a real earthquake happened to occur at the same instance as his “very
strange and power­ful booming scream.”99 That seismic coincidence is so unlikely
that—if true—it, too, could be called miraculous.
Fittingly, Joseph’s distinctive hollering, which every­one around him came
to expect and which his hagiographers did not care to dwell on or analyze at
Figure 27. Placido Costanzi’s depiction of a miracle within a miracle shows Saint Joseph healing
the mentally ill nobleman Baldassarre Rossi by grabbing his hair and lifting him off the ground in
an ecstatic levitation, much like the angel who carried Habakkuk through the air from Judaea to
Babylon and back (fig. 5).
 m a k i n g s e n s e o f t h e f ly i n g f r i a r 167

length, calls attention to his unique oddness. His loud roaring also prompts one
to ponder the relation of that oddness to our understanding of past, pre­sent,
and ­future. When all is said and done, nonetheless, Paolo Agelli’s take on the
Flying Friar seems most apt: “The most renowned of Joseph’s miracles was his
own life itself.”100
But why did such a remarkable life sink into obscurity? This is one of the
weightiest questions raised by the case of Joseph of Cupertino ­because even
among the vast majority of Catholics he has been all but forgotten. He has van-
ished, his ghostly presence trapped in quirky footnotes or antique prayer cards.
How could this happen? Why is he not among the best-­known of all saints? Why
is he not considered one of the most amazing ­humans ever? Is it due to the
“impossible” ­factor? Something e­ lse? If so, what? Is he trivial, or ridicu­lous? If
so, why? His nearly total obscurity should be jarring, shocking, disturbing. But
it is not.
Aye, t­ here’s the rub, again.101
This page intentionally left blank
 pa r t t w o

­Here . . . ​and ­Here Too

Properly speaking, miracles are works done by God outside the order
usually observed in ­things.
—Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles III, 101.1
This page intentionally left blank
5. Transvection, Teleportation, and All That
A Brief History of Bilocation

­There are few miracles more amazing than the duplication of the body, which
not only oversteps the forces of nature, but also ­those of the imagination.

The poetic observation above, made by Domenico Bernino, was meant to en-
hance the impressiveness of Joseph of Cupertino’s miraculous feats, for Joseph
not only floated in midair; occasionally, he could also be in two places at the
same time.1 Hard as it is to imagine, however, Bernino’s remark is more appli-
cable to another Franciscan levitator—an exact con­temporary of Joseph—­who
made the flying friar seem like a mystical underachiever, too earthbound and
insufficiently amazing.
That other Franciscan who seemed to eclipse him was a Spanish nun,
María Fernández Coronel y Arana (1602–1665), abbess of the convent of the Im-
maculate Conception in Ágreda, who is better known by her monastic name,
María de Jesús de Ágreda, or simply as María de Ágreda. In the Amer­i­cas, where
she became a folk legend, she is also known as the Lady in Blue or La Dama
Azul (fig. 28).
Sor María (­Sister María in En­glish) made dealing with impossible claims
much more complicated. Three salient characteristics rarely combined within a
single individual lead her to stand head and shoulders above her contemporaries,
and perhaps above most other Catholic mystics, in the realm of the impossible
in both the natu­ral and the super­natural domains.
First, ­there is levitation. Sor María became an ecstatic levitating mystic
at the age of eigh­teen, but much like Teresa of Avila—­and unlike Joseph of

171
Figure 28. A highly stylized depiction of one of Sor María de Ágreda’s many bilocations to the New
World, where she carried out missionary work among the Jumano natives.
 t r a n s v e c t i o n , t e l e p o r tat i o n , a n d a ll t h at 173

Cupertino—­she succeeded in getting the levitations to cease a­ fter pleading

with God.
Second, her ecstasies also caused her to bilocate. Being in two places si­
mul­ta­neously is a rare mystical gift, most often l­imited in scope and frequency.
But the claims made for Sor María’s bilocations are among the most extreme in
Christian history, hands down, both in scope and frequency. While most other
bilocating Christian mystics normally only manage to appear at relatively nearby
locations a handful of times, Sor María ostensibly crossed the Atlantic Ocean
repeatedly. While strictly enclosed in her convent at Ágreda—­and consistently
vis­i­ble to her ­sisters ­there—­she boldly claimed to have evangelized the Jumano
natives in the northern reaches of New Spain, in the present-­day American states
of Texas and New Mexico. Moreover, she not only claimed to have done this
over 500 times, over the span of several years, but succeeded in convincing many
in her day (including examiners from the Spanish Inquisition) that this seem-
ingly impossible miracle had truly occurred.
Third, Sor María’s mysticism involved much more than visions, levitations,
bilocations, and missionary activity. She also claimed to receive ecstatic revela-
tions and engage in automatic writing that recorded the information revealed
to her. Empowered by God Himself and by Mary, the ­Mother of God, who pro-
vided her with privileged information, Sor María wrote a voluminous narrative
of the Blessed Virgin’s life, about a million words long, in which she not only
promoted the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception—­which was still disputed
in her day and would not be accepted by the Catholic Church u
­ ntil 1854—­but
also asserted Mary’s closeness to the Holy Trinity, emphasizing her role as co-­
redemptrix of the ­human race and co-­mediatrix, too, along with her son Jesus
Christ. In essence, this narrative was ostensibly an autobiography of the Virgin
Mary dictated to Sor María, who served as her scribe, in which the M
­ other of
God revealed many intimate details not found in the New Testament or any
other early Christian texts. As if this ­were not impressive enough, Sor María
wrote this biography twice, having been forced by one of her confessors to burn
the entire first draft, along with all her other writings. Discerning w
­ hether this
text was truly of super­natural divine origin proved difficult for some of her
contemporaries, including officials of the Inquisition and theologians at the
Sorbonne.
Moreover, t­ hose three extreme claims made by María and by ­those around
her gained her a fourth distinguishing accomplishment which was not in the
realm of the impossible but was nonetheless most unusual: she became very
 174 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

influential in worldly affairs as a close confidant and advisor of King Philip IV

of Spain. Even though she was a poor nun ­under a vow of poverty who lacked
noble titles and spent her entire adult life locked away in a remote convent, Sor
María managed to rise to unpre­ce­dented heights in the secular world. She and
the troubled Hapsburg king would end up writing over 300 letters to each other
over a twenty-­year stretch, most of which dealt with intimate details of the king’s
personal life and his affairs of state. Her influence at the royal court was surpris-
ingly substantial despite her physical absence from it, for King Philip continu-
ally relied on her advice and her prayers, not just for personal needs, especially
his chronic guilt and his m
­ ental and spiritual despair, but also for m
­ atters
involving domestic and foreign policy. And the speed with which their letters
­were ferried back and forth was astounding for that day and age, proof positive
of the significance the king assigned to this correspondence and to María’s
role at his court.
Though all four accomplishments deserve attention, her role as advisor
to King Philip IV does not ­really involve the realm of the miraculous, even
though it is linked to María’s reputation as a miracle-­worker. For a nun to
become a king’s advisor is rare, for sure, but it was hardly impossible or mi-
raculous in and of itself, especially in Spain, as proven by another Concep-
tionist nun, Luisa de Carrión.2 Similarly, María’s third super­natural claim,
though extreme, fails to meet all of the criteria for “impossibility” due to the
fact that visions and automatic writing cannot be observed—­unlike levita-
tion and bilocation—­and can be easily attributed to delusion or willful de-
ceit. Moreover, t­ here are plenty of examples in h
­ uman history of individuals
who have claimed similar sorts of revelations, and ­there is nothing very un-
usual about this phenomenon. Consequently, our focus h
­ ere ­will be on t­ hose
two feats that involve the super­natural and the seemingly impossible: María’s
levitations and bilocations, both of which rank as some of the most auda-
cious and offensive challenges offered to Protestantism in the early modern
age. Since her visionary ecstatic writing was viewed in Catholic circles as in-
separable from her levitations and bilocations, and therefore also as a chal-
lenge to Protestantism, it deserves some scrutiny, but only obliquely. María’s
polemical edge was as sharp as they came in the baroque age, and all aspects
of that edge need to be considered significant, including her “autobiogra-
phy” of the Virgin Mary. Ironically, although she never met a Protestant in
the flesh and most prob­ably never read a single page of Protestant theology,
every­t hing about Sor María—­absolutely every­thing, down to her bare feet—­was
 t r a n s v e c t i o n , t e l e p o r tat i o n , a n d a ll t h at 175

a resounding denial of the central theological and metaphysical assumptions

of Protestantism.
Yet, despite their polemical usefulness, t­ hese very same accomplishments
proved to be problematic, controversial, and divisive—­much more than ­those
of Joseph of Cupertino—­inspiring devotion among some Catholic authorities
but also giving rise to ambivalence and no small mea­sure of suspicion and fear
among ­others, creating a tangled skein of negative responses that ultimately
choked María’s canonization pro­cess. Moreover, in the case of Sor María, more
so than in most ­others of her era, one can also clearly discern the friction cre-
ated by extreme miracles such as bilocation and divine revelations, especially
the uneasy interplay between the miracle-­worker’s own perception of what has
occurred and the claims being made about ­these miracles by o
­ thers.
Mariá’s case, then, allows us to examine the troublesome roles played by
interpretation, embellishment, and exaggeration in the forging of narratives as
well as in the creation of doubt and suspicion. Conversely, her case also pro-
vides a clear glimpse of the ways in which the Catholic Church sought to main-
tain a delicate balance between popu­lar piety and official theology and between
the affirming and questioning of the seemingly impossible. The fundamental
questions raised by María’s miracles w
­ ere im­mense precisely ­because of their
seemingly outlandish otherworldliness. That excessiveness exposed the fragility
of her claims, along with her own vulnerability. Yet, at the very same time, her
miracles also reveal the eagerness with which impossible feats could be be-
lieved in and embellished, or even suggest the likelihood of pure fabrication.
María’s case is as tangled a Gordian knot as the history of the impossible can
confront, its braided strands woven out of the coincidence of opposites. In it,
one can find the convergence of faith and doubt, credulity and skepticism,
mystical fervor and sheer invention, self-­fashioning and self-­abasement, self-­
promotion and self-­censorship, adulation and suspicion, wonderment and fear,
truth and falsehood.
As extreme as it is and as messy as it is, the case of Sor María brings us
face-­to-­face with the ways in which impossible claims ­were made and tested in
baroque Catholicism. And among her impossible claims, none was more diffi-
cult for the church to ­handle than her bilocations. Since this phenomenon is so
complex, so rare, and so central to Sor María’s engagement with the impossible,
it needs to be set in context before that engagement of hers can be analyzed. To
do this properly, the phenomenon itself and its history within the Catholic tra-
dition need to be examined.
 176 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

Parsing an Impossible Phenomenon

Bilocation is a mystical phenomenon that defies the known laws of physics, in
which a person’s body seems to be pre­sent in two distinct locations si­mul­ta­
neously. In cases in which more than two locations are involved, the phenome-
non is referred to as multilocation.3 Bilocation and multilocation are not to be
confused with other mystical phenomena that involve a sudden shift in loca-
tion in which ­there is no duplication of the person. Such nonduplicating in-
stances of relocation can be referred to by vari­ous terms, the most common of
which is “transvection.” T
­ hese mystical relocations can happen at varying speeds
and traverse distances of vari­ous lengths. Many transvections are a dynamic form
of levitation in which a­ ctual flight is the means of conveyance and in which time
elapses. In some, however, the shift in location is instantaneous, and the person
simply dematerializes in one spot and suddenly materializes in the other, much
like teleportation in the science fiction universe of Star Trek: “Beam me up,
Scotty,” and all that, except with the involvement of God—or the devil—­rather
than a mechanical transporter.4
The concepts of mystical relocation, bilocation, multilocation, and trans-
vection have a very long history and a global reach and can be found in folklore
and folk magic, shamanistic religions, and many now-­extinct ancient religions,
as well as in Hinduism, Buddhism, early Greek philosophy, Judaism, Chris­tian­ity,
and Islam. In modern times, they have also appeared in Spiritualism, Theoso-
phy, and New Age spirituality, as well as in parapsychology. Late nineteenth-­and
early twentieth-­century Spiritualism, especially, gave rise to the pseudoscientific
field of parapsychology and to plenty of lit­er­at­ ure on the phenomena claimed
by Spiritualism, many of which had their parallels in the world’s religions.5 Bi-
location was one of ­these phenomena, but out of this lit­er­a­ture, only one book
dedicated solely to bilocation was ever published.6 In the late twentieth and early
twenty-­first c­ entury, bilocation and mystical relocation became a subject of in-
terest in research on mind-­matter interaction, a field of study which seeks a fuller
integration of religion and empirical science. In this field, bilocation tends to
be considered a fact rather than an illusion or delusion.7
In Chris­tian­ity, bilocation has been much more common than transvec-
tion, but its frequency has waxed and waned over time, and its cause has been
attributed to two opposing agencies: the divine and the demonic. As was the
case with levitation and other Catholic mystical phenomena, Protestant Chris­
tian­ity rejected the belief that God caused bilocation and transvection but
 t r a n s v e c t i o n , t e l e p o r tat i o n , a n d a ll t h at 177

continued to believe that the devil could certainly effect it. For Protestants, bi-
locations and transvections could indeed occur, but if they did, they ­were exclu-
sively the work of the devil or mere illusions caused by him.
Although a phenomenon vaguely similar to bilocation has been observed
at the atomic and subatomic levels in quantum mechanics—­a phenomenon
commonly referred to as the indeterminacy princi­ple or the Heisenberg uncer-
tainty princi­ple8—­classical or Newtonian mechanics posits that it is physically
impossible for a ­human body completely surrounded by its space and location
to be pre­sent in another place at the same time. Consequently, in this scientific
worldview logic requires that all reports of bilocations be considered ­either im-
possible or outside the known laws of nature or, in a metaphysical or religious
sense, as super­natural. For anyone who does not regard the existence of super­
natural forces or beings as pos­si­ble, therefore, e­ very bilocation claim needs to
be regarded as an apparent or seeming bilocation. In fact, the phenomenon it-
self is so inconceivable—­much more so than levitation—­that even for believ-
ers in the super­natural, a leap of faith is required. As one of Joseph of Cupertino’s
hagiographers put it: “­There are few miracles more amazing than the duplica-
tion of the body, which not only oversteps the forces of nature, but also ­those
of the imagination.”9
Unlike levitation or stigmata, which seem to lack any purpose beyond
displaying a divine and super­natural agency as well as the holiness of the levi-
tator, bilocation is a miracle that most often serves some practical purpose.
Moreover, in cases in which no overtly obvious pragmatic usefulness seems ob-
servable, bilocation can have specific purposes assigned to it.

Another Ancient Global Phenomenon

Bilocation is a universal phenomenon in the history of the world’s religions.
Mentioning a few examples should suffice to make this fact as obvious as it de-
serves to be. In Buddhism, it is believed the Bud­dha himself could be pre­sent
at two distinct locations si­mul­ta­neously. Bilocation is one of the siddhis of Hin-
duism and Buddhism—­that is, one of the paranormal, super­natural, or magical
powers attainable by mystics. And in comparison to some of ­these siddhis, Chris-
tian bilocation seems very lame, even insignificant. In an early Buddhist Yoga
text, it is listed as one of the six powers accessible to advanced monks, and it is
described as “body-­power (kāyavasa), or the power to self-­multiply, vanish, fly
through walls, even touch the sun or moon.”10
 178 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

In ancient Greece, we have the following account of bilocation by third-­

century phi­los­o­pher Pythagoras: “Almost unan­i­mous is the report that on one
and the same day he was pre­sent at both Metapontum in Italy and Taurome-
nium in Sicily, in each places conversing with friends, though the places are sepa-
rated by many miles, both at sea and land, demanding a journey of g­ reat many
days.”11
In Jewish folklore and rabbinic lit­er­a­ture, kefitzat haderech, the shortening
of the way, or “path jumping,” is the ability to travel with unnatural speed, to
be in one place and then suddenly appear in another.12 The term is originally
found in Midrashim to explain certain mystical interpretations of travel in the
Hebrew Bible, such as Eliezer’s seemingly instantaneous journey to faraway
Nahor, where he finds Isaac’s wife-­to-be Rebecca.13 In East Eu­ro­pean Jewish
folktales, especially ­those associated with the Hasidic movement, kefitzat
haderech was utilized by vari­ous revered holy men. Although this phenomenon
should be classified as transvection or teleportation rather than bilocation, it
does involve bodily displacement.
In Islam, bodily displacement is known as Tayy al-­Ard, a concept for “tra-
versing the earth without moving,” “folding up of the earth,” or “covering long
distances in the twinkling of an eye.” This is a concept of transvection or bi-
location familiar to the Shī‘īs and Sufis, but each of ­those traditions has its
own interpretation of it. Its roots can be found in the following verses of the
Qur­an: “Solomon said to his own men: ‘Ye Chiefs! which of you can bring me
the throne of Queen of Sheba before she and her envoys come to me in submis-
sion? Said an Ifrit, of the Jinns: ‘I w
­ ill bring it to thee before thou rise from thy
council: indeed, I have full strength for the purpose, and may be trusted.’ Said
one who had knowledge of the Book: ‘I w
­ ill bring it to thee within the twin-
kling of an eye!’ Then when Solomon saw it placed firmly before him, he said:
‘This is by the grace of my Lord!’ ”14 Some prominent figures in Islam ­were
known for their bilocations, such as the twelfth-­century Persian mystic Abusaeid
Abolkheir or the thirteenth-­century Sufi poet commonly known as Rumi, and
medieval Islamic texts contain many accounts of bilocating individuals.15
But one need not look solely to the ancient or medieval past to find bi-
location accounts in religions other than Chris­tian­ity or their links to the pre­
sent. Leaping centuries ahead to 1965, when Paul Twitchell (1909–1971)
founded the religious movement of Eckankar, we find him claiming that his in-
spiration came from “his own bilocation experiences and t­hose of previous
saints in vari­ous religions.”16
 t r a n s v e c t i o n , t e l e p o r tat i o n , a n d a ll t h at 179

When it comes to the history of Chris­tian­ity, not much has been written
on instances of bilocation, despite the abundance of such accounts in the lives
of the saints. Within the Christian tradition itself, the strangeness of the phe-
nomenon is so intense that bilocation has never attracted significant attention
philosophically, theologically, or historically. Given the seemingly impossible na-
ture of the phenomenon, which is ostensibly a shocking violation of the laws of
physics, as well as of all notions of the integrity of the ­human self, it has tended
to create confusion and disagreements among phi­los­o­phers and theologians as
well as among the faithful at the popu­lar level. And this confusion has some-
times created prob­lems for ­those who have claimed any sort of physical mysti-
cal relocation.
The chief assumption governing Christian bilocation is that since God is
omnipotent, his super­natural power can achieve illogical and baffling miracles
with the location of m
­ atter, the chief example of which is the Eucharist, in which
the body of Christ is believed to be pre­sent si­mul­ta­neously in heaven and in
­every consecrated host and chalice on earth. However, while the eucharistic the-
ology of the Catholic tradition has always stressed the real, substantial pres-
ence of Christ in the Eucharist, ultimately explained in Aristotelian terms as
“transubstantiation,” it has never sought to explain exactly how the flesh and
blood of Christ replace the substance of the bread and wine. This point remains
a mystery beyond ­human reason. The same may be said about bilocation, in a
way, with an even greater degree of uncertainty involved. While t­ here is agree-
ment on the possibility of a person being in two places si­mul­ta­neously, ­there
has never been agreement on what happens during a bilocation that is equal in
clarity to the doctrine of transubstantiation, much less on how it happens, ex-
actly. ­Until the M
­ iddle Ages, ­there was very ­little discussion of the issue of bi-
locating h
­ uman beings, but as one might expect, scholastic theologians took up
this question with differing mea­sures of enthusiasm and hairsplitting. Without
delving too deeply into details and terminology, one might say that scholastic
opinion divided roughly—­and not completely—­into two camps.
In one school of thought, the Dominican thinker Thomas Aquinas (1225–
1274) and other scholastics who favored Aristotle argued that location means
that a body is “completely surrounded by its place,” so to admit a second location
si­mul­ta­neously is to claim that the body is both surrounded and not surrounded—­a
logical contradiction. Moreover, as Aquinas put it, due to the ­union of body
and soul, the ­human soul can only act upon ­matter through the body to which
it is substantially united. Therefore, the h
­ uman soul cannot be pre­sent in a
 180 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

place in which its body is not pre­sent, and this means that if some person is in
Rome, he cannot at the same time be elsewhere.17 With their usual penchant
for distinctions, this school of thought explained the real presence of Christ
in the Eucharist by speaking of two kinds of presence: commensurate and non-
commensurate. What this difference might entail in the case of bilocation is not
as complicated as it seems: Aquinas and o
­ thers who made this distinction
solved the logical difficulties raised by bilocations by proposing that all biloca-
tions are only apparent bilocations; that is, the person in the second location is
pre­sent ­there miraculously, in a nonphysical way. Bilocation accounts found in
hagiographies are to be believed, they argued, but must be explained as “phantas-
mal replications” or “aerial materializations” of the bilocator’s self. In the seven-
teenth ­century, the chief proponent of this distinction was the Jesuit theologian
Silvanus Maurus (1619–1687).
An opposing school of thought that included the Franciscan thinker John
Duns Scotus (1226–1398) and other nominalists who stressed the absolute om-
nipotence of God rejected the logical necessity of avoiding contradictions re-
garding miracles, maintaining instead that true bilocation is pos­si­ble indeed
and must be believed in, just like the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist. This
argument, of course, rests on an understanding of God’s power as absolute, lim-
itless, and beyond ­human logic and on an understanding of location as abso-
lute and in­de­pen­dent of external place. In the early modern era, the chief
proponents of this view ­were the Jesuit theologians Robert Bellarmine (1542–
1621) and Francisco Suárez (1548–1617).18
Such differences of opinion reflect the fluidity of the subject of biloca-
tion at the dawn of the modern age and a conceptual instability that perme-
ated theology as well as popu­lar belief. In addition to the scholastic debates just
mentioned, ­there was also plenty of speculation on what to believe concerning
bilocations. And the questions raised by the phenomenon seemed innumerable.
If the person could be in two places at once, could that person be active in both
places? Was it the bilocator’s soul that went to the second location, leaving the
body soulless, or was the soul still somehow in both locations? Was ecstasy a
necessary precondition for bilocation, and if so, how did the ecstatic self inter-
act with its other self and ­those around that other? If the body is physically
pre­sent in one place and represented in the other place in the form of a vision,
as Aquinas and ­others proposed, did this take place through the instrumental-
ity of angels or through an intellectual, imaginative, or sensible vision caused
by God in the witnesses? And if the person in the second location was not a
 t r a n s v e c t i o n , t e l e p o r tat i o n , a n d a ll t h at 181

vision of some sort but a physical body, how did the bilocator r­ eally get t­ here?
Did it happen instantaneously? Was it through transvection or some other sort
of flight? And if so, w
­ ere angels involved? Was it through teleportation? Or was
the bilocator’s body suddenly given superhuman agility to transport itself back
and forth instantly or very quickly? And if so, did angels take on the appear-
ance of the bilocator and stand in as a substitute in the first location so he or
she would not be missed? If not, then what, exactly, w
­ ere p
­ eople seeing in the
first location? Questions abounded, but definitive answers w
­ ere few. And all ­these
unanswered questions could crop up whenever bilocation claims ­were made, as
­shall be seen very clearly in the case of Sor María de Ágreda.
Nonetheless, such questions and differences of opinion aside, late medieval
and early modern Catholics could agree on one fundamental assumption: that
­every bilocation was ­either the work of God or of the devil. Divine bilocations
­were genuinely super­natural and true manifestations of the bilocator’s person.
In contrast, demons could indeed effect transvections but not bilocations. They
could move bodies, for sure, but they could never duplicate the person. Conse-
quently, demonic bilocations—as opposed to t­hose of divine origin—­were al-
ways illusions, mere trickery on the part of the devil, a created being, a fallen
angel whose preternatural powers could alter ­human perceptions.19 Discerning
the difference between the divine and the demonic was not always easy but was
deemed absolutely necessary.

Early Christian Bilocations

The phenomenon of bilocation cannot be found explic­itly in the Bible, but ­there
are a few passages that deal with mystical relocation and with ­human bodies
that defy the laws of nature. In the Hebrew Bible, the only passage that alludes to
a super­natural relocation is rather vague: “I do not know where the spirit of
the Lord may carry you off when I leave you,” says Obadiah to the prophet Eli-
jah.20 In the New Testament, the body of the resurrected Jesus defies physical
barriers and suddenly appears in locked rooms or instantly “vanishes from sight”
­after joining two disciples on the road to Emmaus and conversing with them.21
Among the apostles, Philip is “snatched away” suddenly ­after he baptizes an
Ethiopian eunuch and instantly reappears in a dif­fer­ent location. And ­after be-
ing whisked away, the man he has just baptized “saw him no more.”22 So, strictly
speaking, this mystical relocation is not bilocation but an instantaneous trans-
vection or teleportation. All that can be said with certainty about ­these passages
 182 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

is that they reflect belief in the power of God to do as he wishes with the h
­ uman
body, regardless of the laws of nature, which is the chief unquestioned assump-
tion in all bilocation accounts.
According to an ancient tradition in Spain, the very first bilocation in the
church’s history supposedly took place in the year 40, when the Virgin Mary—­
who was in Jerusalem at the time—­suddenly appeared in Zaragoza to comfort
the apostle James the Greater, who had prayed for help while preaching in Spain.
This legend was inseparable from the veneration offered to Our Lady of the Pillar
in Zaragoza, which in the late ­Middle Ages became associated with a wooden
image of the Virgin Mary at the Cathedral-­Basilica of Nuestra Señora del Pilar, an
im­mensely significant pilgrimage site (fig.29). The origin of this legend cannot
be dated precisely but seems to be from early medieval times.
This bilocation story, which claimed to be the oldest in Chris­tian­ity, was
im­mensely popu­lar in Spain and obviously had a ­great impact on Sor María de
Ágreda, who lived only fifty-­five miles from Zaragoza. Her detailed account of
this event in her massive Mystical City of God tells of the Virgin Mary being fer-
ried to Zaragoza from Jerusalem by angels, so it is not ­really a bilocation, strictly
speaking, but rather a transvection. In her account, the Virgin brings an image
of herself crafted by angels, which they mount on a “jasper or marble” pillar they
crafted and brought with them, and then instructs the apostle James to build a
church in which this image ­will be venerated. According to Sor María, it is the
Virgin Mary who creates a shrine for herself in Zaragoza, the very same shrine
that was still being visited by throngs of María’s contemporaries.23 In addition,
Sor María tells of a prior visit by the Virgin to the apostle James in Granada—­
also a transvection rather than a bilocation—­where she and her squadron of
angels rescue James from being murdered by an angry mob of Jews who are
­under demonic influence.24
In truth, despite the claims made since medieval times, this Spanish
legend is not of ancient origin, and we ­really have no bilocation accounts from
the first c­ entury. And the same is true of the next twelve centuries, for the
most part.25 Much like the miraculous “gifts” of the stigmata and levitation,
this miracle seems to emerge gradually in the M
­ iddle Ages. However, since bi-
location accounts in late antiquity and the early M
­ iddle Ages have been insuf-
ficiently researched, this pattern could be more of an illusion than a real­ity. A
relatively rare early account, perhaps among the earliest, comes from the sixth
­century, and it tells of a bilocation that supposedly took place in the fourth
­century. It involves Saint Ambrose falling into a trance or a deep sleep at the
Figure 29. An engraving of the bilocation of the Virgin Mary from Jerusalem to Spain. This legend
made a deep impression on Sor María de Ágreda, and she incorporated it into her Mystical City of God.
 184 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

altar for three hours during Sunday Mass, in Milan, between the first and second
readings of the liturgy, and his being seen at the funeral of Saint Martin at
Tours, nearly 600 miles away, at exactly the same time. In this case, as in most
­others u
­ ntil the late M
­ iddle Ages, the author makes no attempt to focus on the
testimony of eyewitnesses. Mentioning or describing the event is assumed to
be sufficient proof.26

Medieval Bilocations
Throughout the remainder of late antiquity and the early ­Middle Ages, accounts
such as this are scarce, In the thirteenth ­century, however, bilocation suddenly
becomes a more prominent marker of holiness in hagiographies. Not surpris-
ingly, Saint Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) leads the way, just as he does with
stigmatization. His bilocating begins late in his life, very dramatically, when
Francis—­who was in Assisi—­suddenly appeared at a chapter meeting of his or-
der at Arles, about 500 miles away, while Anthony of Padua was preaching. Ac-
cording to some of the early hagiographers, this bilocation also involved
levitation, for Francis appeared “uplifted in the air, his hands outstretched ­after
the manner of a cross, blessing the Brethren,” an event immortalized by the art-
ists Giotto and Fra Angelico, both of whom depict Francis floating above the
ground (fig. 30).27 Tellingly, this bilocation was compared to that of Ambrose in
the fourth ­century, revealing that this ancient miracle was indeed a point of ref-
erence many centuries l­ater and a significant influence in the development of a
medieval bilocation tradition. As Saint Bonaventure’s Life of Francis put it: “We
must verily believe that the almighty power of God, which vouchsafed unto the
holy Bishop Ambrose to be pre­sent at the burial of the glorious Martin . . . ​did
also make His servant Francis to appear.”28
Saint Anthony of Padua (1195–1231), one of the most prominent of early
Franciscan saints, whose sermon at the chapter meeting of Arles was interrupted
when Saint Francis miraculously appeared, also began to bilocate around the
same time, and one such event also involved interrupted preaching. A fourteenth-­
century account relates how while preaching one Holy Thursday at a church in
Limoges he suddenly remembered his promise to read one lesson during canoni-
cal hours at his friary, about sixteen miles away. Immediately, Anthony s­ topped
preaching and remained s­ ilent for a long time at the pulpit. At the very same
instant, he appeared in the choir at his friary and read the scheduled lesson.
Then, as soon as he had fulfilled that duty, he came back to his senses at the
pulpit in Limoges and finished his sermon. Tellingly, again, this bilocation is
 t r a n s v e c t i o n , t e l e p o r tat i o n , a n d a ll t h at 185

Figure 30. Giotto was one of the first artists ever to depict a bilocation, which in this fresco shows
Saint Francis visiting Arles while he was still in Assisi.

compared to that of Saint Ambrose at the funeral of Saint Martin, but no men-
tion is made of Saint Francis’s sudden appearance at Arles.29
Throughout the ­fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, bilocation accounts
begin to increase. Some of ­these accounts surely provided inspiration to Sor
María, especially ­those that involved Franciscans, especially Spanish ones. One
such fellow Franciscan was Pedro Regalado (1390–1456), whose renown as a
bilocator has endured for so long in Spanish culture that civic associations in
his hometown of Valladolid proposed that the Vatican name him the patron
saint of the internet due to his ability to transcend his physical space.30 In jest,
one Spanish newspaper even suggested that his name should henceforth be
spelled S@n Pedro Reg@l@do (fig. 31).
Figure 31. This baroque depiction of a bilocation by Saint Peter Regalado interprets the miracle as
effected by angels, one of vari­ous interpretations of this mystery, which was also voiced by Sor
María de Ágreda.
 t r a n s v e c t i o n , t e l e p o r tat i o n , a n d a ll t h at 187

Sixteenth-­Century Bilocations
In the sixteenth ­century, bilocation begins to appear fairly frequently in
­hagiographies, which could now be printed and circulated much more widely
than in the M
­ iddle Ages. An unknown number of such accounts also circu-
lated orally but never made it into print, so what we can find in hagiographies
might merely be the tip of the iceberg. Among ­those saints whose bilocations
became well known we find a good number of Spaniards and Italians, some
of whom also levitated. Among t­ hese, we find the Italian saint Francesco di
Paola (1416–1507), yet another Franciscan; Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier,
both Spanish Basques and Jesuits; and Teresa of Avila, a Spanish Carmelite
nun.
Francesco di Paola was best known for his prayerfulness, humility, and sim-
plicity, so accounts of his bilocations fit his profile. One such account tells of
him of being seen working in the friary’s kitchen and serving as an acolyte at
Mass si­mul­ta­neously. Another relates how he was seen praying ecstatically in
the chapel and, at the same time, talking to p
­ eople on the street, just outside
the friary. And, according to the rec­ord, t­ hese events w
­ ere seen by witnesses who
ran back and forth between the two Francescos.31 Bilocations such as t­ hese,
which w
­ ere close enough in distance for the saint to be seen at both locations
by the same group of witnesses, are exceedingly rare.
Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556), founder of the Jesuits and a Spanish Basque,
was known for his many mystical gifts, including levitation, luminescence, and
bilocation. One bilocation account tells of the ever-­pragmatic Loyola showing
up in Cologne, roughly 870 miles from Rome, to order Leonard Kessel, rector
of the Jesuit community, to stay ­there in Cologne instead of returning to Rome,
as he was planning (fig. 32).32 Another account that seems to have been inter-
preted as a short-­distance transvection in Rome has him appearing suddenly in
a sick man’s room and healing him, even though the win­dows and doors w
­ ere
all locked. To top off this miracle, his luminescence also lit up the ­whole room
(see fig. 3).33
Another Spanish Basque and Jesuit bilocator who prob­ably had a deeper
influence on Sor María was Francis Xavier (1506–1552), the most celebrated
and venerated missionary of early modern times. Xavier was an indefatigable
pioneer of missionary ventures into Asia and as well known for his miracles as
for the thousands of conversions he claimed to have made in India, the East
Indies, and Japan. His bilocations ­were so frequent and amazing that some
 188 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

Figure 32. Engraving from an illustrated hagiography of Saint Ignatius Loyola depicting his
bilocation from Rome to Cologne, during which he ordered ­Father Leonard Kessel not to leave
that German city.

critics might be tempted to say they ­were almost banal. Among the most fa-
mous of ­these bilocations is the one in which he rescued some sailors from
certain death during a violent storm by suddenly appearing in their launch
while never leaving the ship he was on and then pi­loting ­those terrified sailors
back aboard, where he had remained vis­ib
­ le during this miraculous rescue.
 t r a n s v e c t i o n , t e l e p o r tat i o n , a n d a ll t h at 189

Ever pragmatic, like his superior, mentor, and fellow Basque Ignatius Loyola,
Xavier managed not only to save some lives through this bilocation but also to
convert two Muslims who ­were on the imperiled launch.34 This miracle is not
mentioned in Xavier’s letters or any early hagiographies, however, and first ap-
pears in 1596, in Orazio Torsellino’s hagiography.35 The same is true of other
miracles too. This has led some critics to argue that Xavier’s case proves that
miracle accounts could be exaggerated or in­ven­ted ex post facto as a means of
ensuring someone’s canonization.36
Sor María could have also drawn inspiration from Teresa of Avila, whose
texts she certainly read and whose bilocations she might have heard about. Te-
resa’s own texts do not say much about bilocation, nor do her early hagiogra-
phies, but her canonization inquests do contain some bilocation accounts. While
María could not have read ­these manuscripts, it is pos­si­ble that—­given Teresa’s
­great renown—­some of the stories found in them could have become part of
the oral culture shared by monks and nuns in Spain. Three such accounts give
us a glimpse of Teresa the bilocator. Ana de San Agustín, a Carmelite nun at
Malagón, testified that she was awakened one night by Teresa, who ordered her
to go to the chapel and relight the sanctuary light near the tabernacle, which
must always be lit but had gone out. When Ana entered the chapel, she was sur-
prised to see that Teresa was already t­ here, waiting for her, but as soon as she
had relit the lamp and turned around, Teresa had vanished. And at that moment
she realized that Teresa was at Ávila, about 145 miles away. As she saw it, Teresa
had done this to inspire her to be a more vigilant sacristan.37 ­Father Enrique
Enriquez, a Jesuit, related a bilocation story involving a confrere, Gaspar de
Salazar, who had known Teresa intimately. Salazar, he said, once told him how
Teresa suddenly appeared in his locked room to comfort and advise him, even
though she was “many leagues away.” When Salazar had the chance sometime
­later to ask Teresa in person about this visit, she said “with ­humble modesty”
that God had indeed sent her to help him.38 Sor Ana de Jesús Lobera, another
Carmelite nun, testified that she knew of many occasions when Teresa had bi-
located to offer spiritual advice and comfort to ­those in need. She related the
story of how Teresa—­who was in Segovia, about ninety-­five miles away—­visited
a nun on her deathbed in Salamanca. Soon ­after Teresa’s visit, said Ana de
Jesús, the ailing nun died joyfully, her face all aglow with a “heavenly and
super­natural light.” When the nuns who had been with Teresa in Segovia that
day ­were asked if Teresa had ­really been ­there, they confirmed it, adding that at
 190 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

the exact time Teresa was comforting the d

­ ying Isabel in Salamanca, she was in
a cataleptic ecstasy in Segovia, looking “as if she ­were dead.”39
Yet another sixteenth-­century mystic who could have impressed María was
Philip Neri (1515–1595), founder of the Congregation of the Oratory. On
March 12, 1622, three weeks before María’s twentieth birthday, when she was
in the thick of her levitating and bilocating ecstasies, Loyola, Xavier, Neri, and
Teresa—­all bilocators—­were canonized on the same day. Spanish cele­brations
of this qua­dru­ple canonization ­were of epic proportions and generated a large
number of texts related to t­ hese saints and their miracles, some or many of
which could have reached Ágreda. María might also have read or heard about
the bilocations of Catherine dei Ricci (1522–1590), a Dominican nun in Prato,
near Florence, who struck up a correspondence with Philip Neri and visited him
in Rome, about 185 miles away, without ever leaving her convent. A stigmatic
who underwent the agony of Christ’s Passion ­every week, beginning at noon on
Thursday and ending at four ­o’clock on Friday, Catherine reportedly had frequent
conversations with Neri during her visits. Neri would attest to this, along with
five other witnesses, and he, too, was reported to have visited her at least once
without ever leaving Rome.40

Seventeenth-­Century Bilocations
By the time Sor María was born in 1605, bilocation had become a certain pos-
sibility for Catholic mystics. Consequently, bilocators ­were popping up all over
the map, figuratively and literally. But, given that bilocations ­were much easier
to fake or “invent” than levitations or stigmata and harder to disprove, too, test-
ing the veracity of such events was challenging for the church. And as the win-
nowing of the wheat and the chaff went on, María had many accounts of
bilocation to hear or read about, and to be inspired by, as did all her contempo-
raries, especially ­those in monastic life. Her ­century had many bilocators, in-
cluding some who w
­ ere deemed frauds, such as Luisa de Carrión and Francisco
de la Fuente, but also many who w
­ ere not, as w
­ ill be detailed in chapter 8. María,
therefore, was not an isolated phenomenon but very much a part of a religio-
cultural world in which bilocation had become not only something pos­si­ble but
expected of ­those who ­were exceptionally holy.41 This was especially true of
Italy and Spain and its colonies, where bilocation seemed to thrive. What made
María unique was not her bilocations in and of themselves but the extremes to
 t r a n s v e c t i o n , t e l e p o r tat i o n , a n d a ll t h at 191

which she took the bilocating paradigm, which tested the limits of belief and
credulity, as well as of reason. Comparing her to some of her con­temporary levi-
tators should help to place her claims in context and to bring her uniqueness
into high relief.
María de Ágreda and the aforementioned Luisa de Carrión w
­ ere not the
only nuns who claimed to have engaged in missionary work in distant lands
through miraculous bilocations. Although we s­ hall never know for sure how
many nuns made such claims by mere word of mouth, which have been irre-
trievably lost, we do have evidence of several whose claims ­were preserved in
manuscript and in print. In many of ­these seventeenth-­ and eighteenth-­century
accounts, however, it is not always clear that the visits to distant lands w
­ ere bi-
locations, strictly speaking, or transvections, or some wholly spiritual visionary
experience. In fact, the medieval concept of bilocation becomes somewhat un-
stable in the seventeenth ­century, especially in Spanish colonies, turning into a
phenomenon that could be called mystical displacement, or mystical journeying,
in which the protagonists leave their home locations—­usually a cloister—­and
rapidly or suddenly find themselves pre­sent elsewhere.42 Descriptions of the dis-
placement can vary. Some accounts involve transvection of some sort, some
speak of teleportation, and ­others describe purely spiritual journeys. Some men-
tion physical displacement, but sometimes the event seems to resemble the
extrasensory phenomenon of remote viewing, which involves the psychic “see-
ing” other locations near and far.43 Moreover, establishing that the mystic is
vis­i­ble in both locations si­mul­ta­neously—­especially the place of origin—­becomes
less common in many of ­these baroque accounts. Sometimes no effort at all is
made to mention witnesses. But in all cases, regardless of the fuzziness with
which the visits are explained, all ­those involved claimed to have been “pre­sent”
elsewhere in some miraculous way.
One such nun was Ana María de San José (1581–1632), a Discalced Fran-
ciscan from Salamanca who claimed to have visited pagans in the Indies and
other lands many times. Ordered by her confessor Juanentín del Niño to write
an autobiography, Ana María did so, and soon a­ fter her death he published it,
adding copious hagiographic flourishes, hoping to kick-­start her beatification
inquest.44 In it, she speaks of visiting other lands “in spirit” or “in her heart”45
­because of her anguish over the number of souls headed for damnation and
the lack of missionary priests available for the task of converting them, much like
María de Ágreda would do.46 Juana de Jesús María (1564–1650), a Carmelite
Figure 33. Saint Joseph bilocates from Assisi to his m
­ other’s deathbed at Copertino.
 t r a n s v e c t i o n , t e l e p o r tat i o n , a n d a ll t h at 193

tertiary from Burgos, claimed to have made numerous visits to distant lands,
including Turkey, Algeria, Brazil, and the Philippines, as reported by her hagiog-
rapher Francisco de Ameyugo. And she also claimed to have sometimes visited
North Amer­i­ca, where Indians shot arrows at her as she flew above them.47
In addition, she insisted that Luisa de Carrión accompanied her on some of
­these visits, a clear indication that oral accounts of bilocations or transvec-
tions to distant lands w
­ ere definitely in circulation. Nonetheless, t­ hese claims
ultimately struck the Inquisition the wrong way, for in 1679 it banned her bi-
ography.48 Isabel de Jesús (1630–1677), a nun from Miedes de Aragón, a mere
sixty miles from Ágreda, claimed to have visited Japan and the Indies. Some
claims stretched beyond the mission field to the battlefield. Martina de los
Angeles claimed to have killed the Lutheran Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus
“with her own hand” in 1632 at the ­Battle of Lützen,49 and Antonia Jacinta
de Navarra claimed to have battled the Turks physically, alongside Christian
warriors.50
In Italy, Joseph of Cupertino (1603–1663) was an exact con­temporary of
Sor María, and it is tempting to won­der what might have tran­spired if the two
had ever met. Both w
­ ere bilocators, so such counterfactual speculation is not
wholly idle. Both w
­ ere ecstatic Franciscan mystics showered with mystical “gifts”
from above, and both took ­those gifts to extremes: Joseph with levitation, María
with bilocation. But Joseph’s recorded bilocations in his hagiographies w
­ ere few
in number and much more ­limited in scope than María’s, confined as they w
­ ere
to two deathbed visits. The first of ­these was a visit to a former neighbor in
Copertino, Ottavio Piccino, “an old decrepit man” who had made Joseph prom-
ise that he would comfort him at the hour of his death. Although he was in Rome
when Ottavio’s death approached, Joseph knew the time had come, and he sud-
denly turned up at Ottavio’s bedside as promised, surprising every­one in town
before vanis­hing as soon as Ottavio died. His second bilocation served the same
purpose for his ­mother, to whom he had promised the same kind of aid. Al-
though he was in Assisi at the time, he appeared in Copertino instantly, bathed
in a bright light, immediately ­after hearing his ­mother’s plea for help. At that
same time, his brethren in Assisi saw him weeping, and when asked about the
reason for his tears, he replied, “My poor m
­ other has just died” (fig. 33).51
­Whether or not María de Ágreda ever heard of Joseph m
­ atters ­little. Both shared
in the same assumptions about the seemingly impossible, and both redefined
the impossible in their own way, as part of a common mentality within Catholi-
cism and their Franciscan order.
 194 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

New World Colonial Bilocations

Due to the colonizing and missionizing efforts of Spain, this common Catho-
lic mentality shared by María de Ágreda and Joseph of Cupertino had be-
come global by the seventeenth c­ entury. No one reified this global reach and
this common mentality more intensely than Martín de Porres (1579–1639), a
Dominican lay ­brother in Lima, Peru. An unlikely prospect for clerical life or
sainthood at birth, Martín was the natu­ral son of a Spanish colonist and a
freed African slave who was a curandera, or natu­ral healer. Consequently, due
to the social and racial prejudices of his age he was denied a formal educa-
tion as well as the opportunity of becoming a priest or of rising within his
order above lay status.52 Against all odds, however, this ­humble biracial ser-
vant who served as cook, custodian, barber, and nurse for his friary gained
fame in Lima and beyond as a miracle-­worker, a g­ reat healer, and a holy man
with many mystical gifts, including luminescence, levitation, and bilocation.
According to accounts from many witnesses, his levitations ­were frequent,
and his bilocations w
­ ere extreme enough to range over four continents, with
visits to other locations in South Amer­i­ca, North Amer­ic­ a (Mexico), Africa
(the Barbary Coast), Asia (the Philippine Islands, China, and Japan), and
Eu­rope (France). T
­ hese accounts would be among the first to involve trans-
oceanic distances as well as a biracial bilocator. The accounts from Japan and
North Africa also involved repeated visits—­just like María’s missionary jour-
neys. But in Martín’s case, he not only served as a missionary but also offered
care and solace to Christian missionaries and to captives taken hostage by
Muslims.53 In addition to t­hese extraordinary miracles, Martín was said to
have the power to communicate with animals and to convince them to alter
their be­hav­ior for the sake of harmony.54 Despite such remarkable miracles,
as well as a life of heroic virtue, Martín would not be canonized ­until 1962 by
Pope John XXIII, over three centuries ­after his death.
Martín also befriended another local saint and Dominican tertiary, Isa-
bel Flores de Oliva (1586–1616), who he sometimes counseled and aided and
whose canonization trajectory was the opposite of his in terms of speed. Known
in Lima by her religious name of Rose and a­ fter her canonization as Saint Rose
of Lima, she was an extreme ascetic and ecstatic mystic. Although she is not
known for bilocating, she claimed to have received the gift of the stigmata and
holds the distinction of being the first American-­born person to be canonized.55
She was eventually given the title of Patroness of the Indies, Amer­i­ca, and the
 t r a n s v e c t i o n , t e l e p o r tat i o n , a n d a ll t h at 195

Philippines, and was beatified in 1668 and canonized in 1671, a mere fifty-­five
years ­after her death.
The transmission of culture, piety, and mentalities from the Old World to
the New was intensely reified in Rose of Lima, who patterned her life a­ fter that
of Saint Catherine of Siena (1347–1380), with whom she was intimately famil-
iar. All one must do to see the resemblance between ­these two female saints is
to read Raymond of Capua’s Life of Saint Catherine, which Rose of Lima sought
to mimic and surpass. Likewise, although ­there is no easily identifiable moment
for the ac­cep­tance of bilocation or transvection as normative, it is relatively easy
to spot the emergence of a bilocating mentality among New World nuns, who
amplified mystical relocation with unequaled intensity, making the Eu­ro­pean
bilocators seem like underachievers in comparison.
Again, as in the case of Old World bilocators, we have no way of knowing
how many oral accounts of bilocations, which are no longer accessible, might
have circulated. But we do have enough written accounts to suggest that biloca-
tion not only ceased to be impossible in the monastic mentality of the New World
between 1550 and 1750 but became somewhat commonplace, especially among
nuns. And María de Ágreda, it could be argued, might have played a significant
role in this paradigm shift, especially in the New World, where her Mystical City
of God and the hagiography of Jiménez Samaniego usually appended to it be-
came im­mensely popu­lar.56 Identifying American bilocating nuns is still a work
in pro­gress, but in the past few de­cades, an impressive list has been compiled.57
Among the most significant of ­these are at least thirteen who deserve close at-
tention, all of whom identified very intensely with the paradigm of a mystically
relocated female missionary. Since all ­these colonial New World nuns stretched
the bound­aries of the pos­si­ble in ways that their Eu­ro­pean counter­parts seldom
did, if ever, they brought the phenomenon of Catholic bilocation into a distinct
phase of development and deserve more attention than this brief chapter on
the history of bilocation. For the sake of comparison, brief summaries of their
cases have been included in appendix 1.
In sum, the claims of ­these thirteen levitators from the Spanish colo-
nies shared common traits, including two salient ones: first, that of being
involved in missionary work through mystical relocation; and, second, that of
transcending the walls of their cloisters or communities in extreme ways, in-
cluding engaging in ­battles with pirates. ­Whether the feats they claimed ­were
deemed impossible or not seemed to m
­ atter ­little to them, their hagiogra-
phers, or their devotees at the time when ­those claims ­were made. And, given
 196 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

that some of ­these nuns and their hagiographers w

­ ere contemporaries of
­Enlightenment skeptics and atheists in the Old World as well as in the New,
­those claims reflect the endurance of certain beliefs and mentalities. Back in
the Old World, meanwhile, mystical relocations continued in the face of in-
creasing doubt and even of ridicule and hostility. They continued at a slower
pace, for sure, but refused to stop. A brief review of this most recent part of
the history of bilocation should help place the phenomenon and its interpre-
tation in a fuller context.

Bilocations in a Skeptical World

­After María of Agreda’s death in 1665, bilocations continued to be reported in
Catholic Eu­rope, especially in Italy, which began to overtake and surpass Spain
in the number of impossible feats attributed to saints. Quantifying this phe-
nomenon is difficult, if not impossible, for t­ here is no way of knowing how many
oral accounts circulated or how many of ­these simply dis­appeared with the pas-
sage of time. All we can count is the number of bilocation accounts that made
it to print, and of ­these some of the most prominent, as before, w
­ ere ­those con-
nected to the exceptional men and ­women put up for canonization.
In the nineteenth ­century, as secularism gained increasing supremacy in
Western cultures, bilocation seemed to become increasingly rare among Catho-
lic saints, or perhaps less well publicized, as the genre of hagiography dimin-
ished in prominence among Catholic publishers. A rare exception during this
time was John Bosco (1815–1888), priest, educator, preacher, writer, social ac-
tivist, and founder of the Salesian order, which dedicates itself to helping the
poor, disadvantaged, and the ill in many countries throughout the world. Don
Bosco—as he was known—­took on the many dire prob­lems created by rapid
urbanization and industrialization in the northern Italian city of Turin. Don
Bosco’s bilocations, reported from vari­ous places, tended to be as pragmatic as
­those of his many pre­de­ces­sors. The difference between him and them is the
setting and the circumstances, which are fully modern, with acrid climate-­
changing smoke and aggressive skepticism flooding the air he supposedly mi-
raculously traversed.58 He was canonized in 1934.
The twentieth c­ entury, too, had relatively few well-­known bilocators, al-
though researchers in the field of parapsychology seemed to have had l­ittle trou­
ble finding many who lived in obscurity.59 One amazing Catholic bilocator who
 t r a n s v e c t i o n , t e l e p o r tat i o n , a n d a ll t h at 197

has escaped notice outside France is Yvonne Beauvais (1901–1951), an Augus-

tinian nun and superior general also known as Yvonne-­Aimée de Malestroit. This
remarkable mystic who exhibited many super­natural gifts, including bilocation,
was also intensely engaged in practical m
­ atters such as the creation and super-
vision of a medical clinic and was even awarded the French Croix de Guerre
and Légion d’Honneur medals in 1945—­that second one by General Charles
de Gaulle himself 60—­for the clandestine assistance she offered French re­sis­tance
fighters and Allied soldiers during World War II, which sometimes involved dis-
guising airmen as nuns. Her bilocations, which number over 200 and stretch
over a span of twenty-­five years, are among the most meticulously charted of all
time and include locations within France and other countries in Eu­rope, Asia,
Africa, and North and South Amer­ic­ a.61
­Mother Yvonne-­Aimée might not have attracted much attention with her
seemingly baroque miracles, but the twentieth ­century did have one bilocator
who set back the clock and shattered complacency ­toward the miraculous with
a vengeance, so to speak. Pio of Pietrelcina (1887–1968), better known as Pa-
dre Pio, a Capuchin friar from southern Italy, continuously exhibited all of the
major miraculous phenomena associated with mystical ecstasy—­including stig-
mata, levitation, bilocation, and clairvoyance—­through two world wars and
into the Cold War and the space age.62 Although he lived ­under a cloud of sus-
picion like so many of his bilocating pre­de­ces­sors,63 he eventually prevailed and
was canonized in 2002 by Pope John Paul II, who was one of his devotees.64
That Polish pontiff had not only visited Padre Pio in 1947—­long before he be-
came pope—to have his confession heard by him, but had also credited him
with miraculously curing a friend’s cancer in 1962. Padre Pio was controversial
in his day and continues to be as much of a target for vituperation in the secu-
lar sphere as he is a magnet for veneration among some of the faithful. Padre
Pio was a throwback to the M
­ iddle Ages and the baroque age: an affront to the
secular values and mentality of his day, a ray of light to traditionalist Catholics,
and something of an embarrassment to Catholics who prefer to think of them-
selves as modern and progressive.
In many ways, Padre Pio mirrors María de Ágreda, not just b
­ ecause of his
mystical gifts but also ­because of the controversial nature of ­those seemingly
impossible phenomena attributed to both of them. Although María’s era and
culture approached the super­natural and the impossible in ways that differed
from ­those of the twentieth or twenty-­first ­century, she nonetheless proved
 198 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

troublesome. And the trou­ble she caused—­which is inseparable from her life
story—­allows one to delve into some of the most fundamental questions sur-
rounding the interpretation of the history of the impossible, in her day as well
as in our own.
Having set the context for Sor María, let us move on to her impossible
feats.
6. María de Ágreda, Avatar of the Impossible

Having been enraptured in ecstasy by the Lord, without knowing exactly how,
it seemed to her that she was suddenly in some other part of the world, with a
much dif­fer­ent climate, among ­people she recognized as Indians from previous
abstract visions. . . . ​And as soon as her rapture came to an end, she found
herself in the same spot where she had been when it began.
—José Jiménez Samaniego

Born in 1602 in Ágreda, a frontier village in the northeastern corner of Old Cas-
tile near the border of Aragón, Sor María was destined never to leave her iso-
lated hometown or the convent she joined at the age of fifteen. Save for her
alleged bilocations, she never ventured very far at all, spending her entire life in
the same quarter of Ágreda, in two dwellings. The first of ­these was the h
­ ouse in
which she had been born and reared, which her m
­ other turned into a nunnery
and where she resided u
­ ntil 1633. The second was a new and larger convent
nearby, on the edge of town, expressly built to accommodate more nuns. She
would die in that second cloister in May 1665 in an aura of sanctity, seemingly
a prime candidate for a speedy canonization. Her hagiographer, quoted above,
was certain of it.1 And although many o
­ thers agreed back then, it has yet to
happen, more than three centuries ­later.
The Coronel ­family claimed hidalgo status—­the lowest rung of nobility—­
but ­were prob­ably of partial Jewish ancestry, and they w
­ ere far from wealthy or
socially prominent.2 Of the eleven c­ hildren born in that h
­ ouse­hold, only four
would survive: two boys, Francisco and José, and two girls, María and Jéronima.
Much of what we know about María’s childhood comes from two sources. The
first is an autobiography she began writing but never completed, which contains

199
 200 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

Figure 34. Sor María de Ágreda is depicted in this engraving as the Virgin Mary’s scribe.

abundant details about her ­family, childhood, and adolescence.3 The second
is the hagiography written by José Jiménez Samaniego, bishop of Plasencia, her
Franciscan superior and ­great admirer, who worked diligently for her canoniza-
tion. As hagiographer, he is far from an impartial source, given his chief aim, but
much of what he includes in his Life of Sor María, first published in Barcelona
in 1687, can also be found in the testimonies collected for her canonization
 m a r í a d e á g r e d a , avata r o f t h e i m p o s s i b l e 201

inquests and can thus be regarded as a fairly accurate account of major features
of her character and of events of her life. In addition, since his hagiography was
included as an appendix in many editions of her most significant text, The
Mystical City of God, his interpretation of basic facts—­including miracles—­
became so definitive and so foundational in the creation of Sor María’s per-
sona that it needs to be taken into consideration as a portrait or mirror image
of Sor María the “legend.”
Jiménez Samaniego stressed the heightened spiritual atmosphere of
María’s ­house­hold, as did María herself, in her unfinished autobiography. Accord-
ing to both accounts, Francisco Coronel and Catalina Arana w
­ ere very devout
parents, wholly given over to ascetical extremes. Her f­ather, Francisco, awoke be-
fore dawn to pray and spent at least three or four hours a day praying, carry­ing
a heavy cross around and sometimes laying on it as if crucified, and engaging
in vari­ous forms of self-­mortification. María described him as a man who hated
leisure and as someone “naturally intense and choleric, but able to restrain his
passions so excellently that what remained of them was just exactly what he
needed for his valiant efforts to be virtuous, to rid himself of his imperfections,
and to never be angry.”4 Not to be outdone, her ­mother, Catalina, also spent sev-
eral hours a day praying, contemplating a ­human skull, focusing on Christ’s
crucifixion—­just like her husband—­whipping herself, and rehearsing her own
death. María described her as “blessed with the qualities of a strong w
­ oman, as
described by Solomon,” as “magnanimous, big hearted, always very energetic,”5
and as driven by a “manly vigor.”6 Moreover, María’s parents encouraged imita-
tion. “For from the age of nine or ten,” María would l­ater say, “they made their
­children pray in constant devotions and had us engage in ­mental prayer, for
which they withdrew into their bedrooms and indicated for me to do the same
in another room.”7 María needed no prodding. She was precociously spiritual
but something of a worry for her parents due to her frequent illnesses and pro-
nounced mystical tendencies. She prayed ceaselessly, more than her parents, and
often heard voices, saw visions, entered trance-­like states, and talked to invisi-
ble beings.
At the mere age of four, María was granted permission to receive the sac-
rament of confirmation, which was administered by none other than Diego de
Yepes, bishop of Tarazona and hagiographer of Saint Teresa of Avila, who, ­after
conversing with the young girl, had recognized her as spiritually gifted and pre-
cociously mature. According to Jiménez Samaniego, young María was “enlight-
ened by divine illuminations” and “captivated by the goodness and the infinite
 202 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

beauty of God, and sweetly absorbed in His Sacred love.”8 According to María, she
began to experience the presence and illumination of God as soon as she began
to think.9 At the age of six, however, María began to experience a dark night of the
soul. “I wept and grew sad. . . . ​I was left alone, surrounded by gloom, bereaved;
and the hardest ­thing of all was to lack very soft sweetness of the Lord’s gifts.”10
Stripped of her encounters with the divine—­a painful experience normally re-
served for advanced adult mystics—­María became moody, irritable, and overly
scrupulous about her sins. Yet, despite the darkness that enveloped her, María’s
prayer life became so intense that her parents turned one of the rooms in the
Coronel ­house into her private oratory, where she spent hours and hours by
herself. At the tender age of eight, she took a vow of celibacy.11 As she approached
puberty, María’s health declined sharply, and at one point, when she was thir-
teen, fearing that death was imminent, she received the sacrament of extreme
unction, and arrangements ­were made for her funeral and burial.
Much to every­one’s surprise, however, María made an astonishing recov-
ery, both physical and spiritual, and as her health returned and her dark night
faded, she regained her intimacy with the divine and super­natural. At this time,
she also began to display a penchant for ecstatic writing of a highly imagina-
tive sort, penning a travelogue of a flight she had made around the earth and
into the heavens during a mystical vision. The earthly part of this account in-
cluded descriptions of strange undiscovered lands and fantastic beings such as
­those represented in some early modern maps and texts, including headless, one-­
eyed, and dog-­headed men, as well as the obligatory cannibals so feared by Eu­
ro­pean explorers. The heavenly portion of the account shows that she was
familiar with classical and Christian cosmology.12
When María was fifteen, her entire ­family left “the world” to become mo-
nastics ­after her ­mother had a vision in which God ordered her to become a
nun. Her ­father, then in his fifties, and her two young ­brothers joined the Fran-
ciscan order and moved to Burgos. Then María, her m
­ other, and her only s­ ister
turned their h
­ ouse into a Discalced Franciscan nunnery belonging to the Order
of the Immaculate Conception, and they w
­ ere soon joined by three nuns from
Burgos.13 During her first years in this small cloister, María embraced a life of
prayer and self-­mortification with zeal and was given her own cell and allowed
more privacy than the other nuns.14
Though still in her teens and a mere novice, María quickly achieved the
high mystical states of “recollection” and “the prayer of quiet,” during which she
would “forget every­thing terrestrial” and feel “annihilated” by her “Divine Spouse.”15
Whenever she was not absorbed in prayer, she would read “spiritual books,” per-
 m a r í a d e á g r e d a , avata r o f t h e i m p o s s i b l e 203

form tasks in the convent, as demanded by her superior—­who happened to be

her ­mother—­and engage in “acts of charity.”16 Constantly, she also mortified her
body, and this penitential asceticism was not just rigorous but extreme. In addi-
tion to fasting constantly and observing a vegan diet,17 María wore a hair shirt
­under her habit, along with a girdle studded with spiked rings and a heavy abra-
sive vest of chain mail. To top off her self-­punishment, she also wrapped her body
in chains and fetters, scourged herself daily, and wore a crucifix riddled with
­needles that she could press into her breast when she prayed. Nighttime brought
no relief. In addition to sleeping for only a few hours, she did so without a mat-
tress or pillow, on a hard wooden pallet which “resembled a torture rack.”18 Much
like many other mystics, María’s ecstasies ­were inextricably interwoven with hor-
rific suffering. Illnesses plagued her constantly, along with the pain, wounds, and
weakness caused by her austerities. She was also constantly assailed by angry
demons who tormented her spiritually, mentally, and physically. Hell-­bent on en-
hancing the pain caused by her self-­torments and ailments, t­hese demons also
“tortured her constantly with dreadful words and imaginary visions, and smoth-
ered her with tribulations,” tempting her to despair and making her think that
“she was on the wrong path, on the way to perdition.”19 ­Every night, she said, she
felt as if the demons w
­ ere about to snuff out her life.20
The full perplexing marvel of Sor María was not yet in full bloom, how-
ever. Far from it. As astounding as her ecstasies, her austerities, her illnesses,
and her encounters with demons might seem, they ­were only part of a much
more complex engagement with the super­natural and the impossible. The bare
facts of the rest of her life could seem humdrum in contrast, especially since
she never left home. When she was only twenty-­five, María was named abbess
of her convent—­after receiving a papal dispensation due to her young age—­
and she would serve in this post for the rest of her life, save for a three-­year
sabbatical between 1652 and 1655. But such a summary falls woefully short of
conveying the full mea­sure of María’s life, her achievements, and her uniqueness.
Much more was already happening in her life before she became an abbess,
and even more would happen ­after she reluctantly but obediently assumed
that role.

Sor María, Ecstatic Levitator

Sor María’s austerities ­were accompanied by raptures. In 1620, at the age of eigh­
teen, she began to experience frequent and prolonged ecstasies, at first in her
isolated cell and soon afterward in the presence of her fellow nuns. It did not
 204 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

take long for her arrobamientos to take place in view of the other nuns, despite
her many efforts to conceal and resist them.21 Many of ­these raptures would
occur immediately a­ fter she partook of the Eucharist, which she did daily. While
rapt in ecstasy, María became cataleptic, much like Joseph of Cupertino, to-
tally oblivious to her own body and her surroundings.22 She also began to levi-
tate during ­these raptures and to attract attention in her convent and beyond
its walls.
María’s levitations, which began when she was only eigh­teen years old, ­were
described by Samaniego as follows: “Her body was elevated a short distance
above the ground; its natu­ral heaviness so diminished, that it seemed weight-
less and could be blown around with just one puff of breath, as if it ­were merely
a leaf from a tree or a light feather.” Such raptures could last between two and
three hours, he added, and turn her face radiant. And much like Joseph of Cuper-
tino, her ecstatic levitations could be triggered instantly by certain stimuli: com-
munion, spiritual texts, sacred m
­ usic, the mere mention of any of God’s attributes.
During ­these levitating raptures, “her external composure was so modest and
so devout, she seemed like a Seraphim incarnate.”23
The convent’s s­ isters watched in amazement at first and “experimented”
with María’s body when it was aloft—­especially by testing her weightless-
ness—to confirm the raptures ­were genuine and of divine origin. To allay all
suspicions of demonic influence, they called in the provincial of their order,
who determined a­ fter testing her obedience that he could find “no evidence
whatsoever “of demonic involvement.”24 ­After his visit, María’s levitations be-
came “more frequent and more marvelous.”25 Sometimes, other phenomena
­were witnessed during her levitating raptures. Once, for instance, “a resplen-
dent globe of light descended from above, extremely clear and beautiful, and
it hovered for a long time, and it was seen by every­one, and taken to be a
heavenly prodigy.”26
Before long, word of ­these levitations spread beyond the convent of the
Immaculate Conception and beyond Ágreda too. As Samaniego observed, “It is
not at all easy for any such admirable and noteworthy ­thing to remain contained
in any community; news of it ­will inevitably leak out.”27 Consequently, between
1620 and 1623, many curious visitors streamed through María’s convent, e­ ager
to see the ecstatic levitating nun with their own eyes. Many of them, however,
including all the nuns, did more than simply gawk. As happened with Joseph of
Cupertino, María’s levitating body was constantly poked and prodded, uncer-
emoniously. “Her body remained so deprived of sensation,” said Samaniego,
 m a r í a d e á g r e d a , avata r o f t h e i m p o s s i b l e 205

“that it seemed dead, and no amount of maltreatment or torment could be felt

by it.”28
Shockingly, Sor María the levitating nun had become a spectacle without
being aware of it at all, due to the cataleptic state caused by her raptures. Throngs
of curious onlookers, clerical, monastic, and lay, flowed through Ágreda to view
María through the convent’s comulgatorio, the win­dow through which the clois-
tered nuns received communion from the hands of a priest. All this took place
without María’s permission or, even worse, without her knowledge of it. Sa-
maniego speaks disapprovingly of the “imprudent and dangerous disorder” of
this spectacle. Anyone who wished to see María was allowed to do so, regardless
of their status. The nuns would move María’s cataleptic, levitating body close to
the comulgatorio—as it floated in the air—­remove the veil from her face so its
miraculous glow could be seen, and then allow viewers to take their turn at peer-
ing through that opening or even blowing on María and “moving her body with
a single puff of their breath,”29 as if she ­were a feather or some other wispy
plaything.
For three years, this carnivalesque display of super­natural power drew visi-
tors to the Convent of the Immaculate Conception, day in and day out, with
the encouragement of ecclesiastical authorities and not a single word of cen-
sure, according to the accounts that have survived. Worse yet, María’s Francis-
can superiors ordered the nuns at the convent and all visitors to never reveal to
her that she was being displayed and manhandled in such a disrespectful way.
According to her own account and ­those of ­some eyewitnesses, when María
fi­nally learned that this was happening, she was horrified. The moment of truth
arrived in early 1623, quite by chance, when a mentally unstable beggar she greeted
at the convent door—­a “loco,” or madman, who had previously taken part in a
viewing at the comulgatorio—­inadvertently blurted out the awful secret. In shock,
María quickly confirmed the veracity of the beggar’s account, only to discover,
much to her horror and dismay, that no one at the convent, not even her ­mother
and ­sister, wanted to bring an end to the spectacle. In a letter written years
­later, she would say: “If secular justice had found me guilty of some g­ reat crime
and paraded me on a donkey to shame me in public, it would not have grieved me
as much as knowing that I was observed having ­those ecstasies and levitations
of mine.”30
Her immediate response was one of sheer desperation, and her commu-
nity’s reaction to it was far from gracious. First, María found a lock with which
she could prevent the comulgatorio shutters from being opened. But she was
 206 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

ordered to turn in the key to the lock, and her vow of obedience forced her to
do so. Then, since her daily levitations ­were prompted by communion, she sought
a way of avoiding that sacrament, although she loathed d
­ oing so, and devised a
way of breaking the fast required before communion by ingesting a medicinal
syrup shortly before Mass, claiming her illnesses made this necessary. Repri-
manded for d
­ oing this, she s­ topped ­doing it and begged her abbess for permis-
sion to take communion in private. Her request was granted, but the abbess and
some of the nuns found a way of thwarting María’s wishes by removing a panel
from the choir door and carry­ing her from her cell—in ecstasy—to the comul-
gatorio, where she would be put on display to anyone who wished to see her
levitating, without her being aware of it. Shuttling her weightless body to and
fro was very easy, say the sources, for she was “as light as a feather.” Once the
public viewing by “every­one who wanted to see her” had taken place, she would
then be returned to her cell, and the panel on the door would be replaced to
keep her from suspecting that anything was amiss.31
María’s abhorrence of her public levitations stemmed from several inter-
connected ­factors, and all of ­these—­which ­were also in play for Teresa of Avila
and Joseph of Cupertino—­had to do with fear of the perceptions that levitation
might elicit. As we have seen before, levitating was as inherently dangerous as
it was wondrous, principally for three reasons. First, a marvel such as levitation
could make ­people venerate the levitator and hold her in high esteem, a phe-
nomenon fraught with danger, for it naturally casts doubt on any such person’s
humility. Genuine saints are supposed to eschew adulation and avoid any be­
hav­ior that could make them susceptible to the sin of pride. Second, the issue
of pos­si­ble demonic influence was also at play since the devil was believed
capable of causing levitations. Third, levitators ran the risk of being perceived
as frauds or tricksters, and raised questions about their purported holiness. The
answers to ­those questions, in turn, determined their reputation and identity.
María the would-be saint and bride of Christ was therefore as fearful as she was
ashamed and mortified. “The Lord willed it that she would find out” about her
public levitations, said Samaniego, “so she could suffer the martyrdom of finding
herself helpless in the face of such an awful assault on her humility and modesty.”
As he saw it, María was devastated not only b
­ ecause of “her fear of the danger”
involved in her public levitations but also ­because of “the horror of all that pub-
licity” generated by her levitations, which basically made her an easy target for the
Inquisition.32
 m a r í a d e á g r e d a , avata r o f t h e i m p o s s i b l e 207

Seeking help from her abbess, her confessor, or her other superiors proved
useless, for all of them wished to keep her on display. Seeking help from God
proved fruitless too. Despite constant pleas to God “from the core of her soul,”
in which she implored for her ecstatic levitations to cease, the miracle contin-
ued taking place regularly.33 Reconciling her intense disgust over being turned
into a spectacle with her desire to fulfill her vow of obedience, which forced her
to take communion daily, seemed impossible to María. Driven to despair, she
contemplated pretending that she had lost the power of speech, or even that
she had gone mad, but her conscience—­and perhaps also her common sense—­
prevented her from attempting any such brazen deceit.34 Meanwhile, as this
drama unfolded and her ecstasies and levitations continued, her illnesses wors-
ened, and her demonic attacks intensified.
Then, as the absolute limits of María’s endurance w
­ ere being tested, help
came unexpectedly when two notable visitors arrived in Ágreda: Antonio de Vil-
lalacre, who had just ended his term as Franciscan provincial—­and who was
complicit in the staging and promoting of María’s spectacle—­accompanied by
his ­brother, Juan de Villalacre, who had just assumed that same post. Knowing
that ­Father Juan now had authority over her convent as provincial, María rushed
to speak to him. Weeping uncontrollably, she related what was happening to her
and begged for help, stressing the “dangerous and unseemly nature” of the role
she had been forced to play. F
­ ather Juan responded by ordering her to pray di-
rectly to God for the cessation of her ecstasies and all the external ­favors (exte-
rioridades) that accompanied them. Although she had already asked God for this
repeatedly, to no avail, she obeyed the provincial immediately. This time, “armed
with faith and obedience,” she “threw herself at God’s feet,” praying with all the
fervor she could muster, and God fi­nally granted what she sought. Instantly, all
her ecstasies and exterioridades ceased, much to her delight.35 And they would
never again occur. No more levitating for Sor María, ever. Praying as an act of
obedience to a superior’s ­orders had apparently made all the difference.
Predictably, María’s fellow nuns reacted to this abrupt change with dis-
may, anger, and suspicion. “They abandoned sound judgement and loosened
their tongues,” said Samaniego. It seemed wrong to them that God would
suddenly put an end to such a ­great marvel. Now that the levitations had
ceased, some said they should never have occurred, and every­one tried to pin-
point the cause of their disappearance. Surely, some thought, this must prove
that the levitations w
­ ere diabolical. ­Others said María must have committed
 208 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

some hidden sins for which she was now being punished or that it was all due
to inconstancy or weakness on her part, simply attributable to the fact that
she was a ­woman.36
Much like Teresa of Avila, and totally unlike Joseph of Cupertino, Sor
María made her ecstatic levitations cease through prayer, the very act that had
caused them in the first place. What María’s contemporaries made of this im-
possible feat and its sudden and seemingly premature truncation differed from
what was made of ­those two other cases. The circumstances ­were as dif­fer­ent as
the personalities involved. María had begun levitating and ceased ­doing so very
early in life, between the ages of eigh­teen and twenty-­one. Teresa had started
and ­stopped levitating in early ­middle age and then became involved in the re-
form of her religious order and the establishment of seventeen new convents,
among other ­things. Joseph had begun young and never, ever ceased levitating
but ended up living like a prisoner in remote friaries, hidden from view.
As we have already seen, levitation was paradoxical: it had an unearthly
glow, an aura of ambivalence and ambiguity surrounding it as well as one of
won­der, fascination, and fear; it was both necessary and unnecessary, an awe-
some gift and an awful burden, something to publicize and hide all at once. It
was a definitive affront to Protestants but also a puzzling and irksome quirk. In
the case of Sor María, however, unlike t­ hose of Teresa and Joseph, this quirk was
only part of a much larger and more perplexing cluster of impossible feats. When
María’s levitations ceased, much grander impossible feats became manifest,
and they w
­ ere so colossal that they turned the levitations into a mere footnote
often overlooked in succeeding centuries.

Sor María, the Bilocating “Lady in Blue”

One of María’s impossible feats was linked to the levitations but ultimately
eclipsed them in significance. While in ecstasy in Ágreda, as her cataleptic,
levitating body was being gawked at, or blown about like a leaf, or being shut-
tled to and from the comulgatorio, Sor María claimed to be elsewhere at the
same time, thousands of miles away, across the Atlantic Ocean, working as a
missionary among North American Indians. But this was not all. The Indians
themselves and Spanish Franciscan missionaries in New Mexico would l­ater
corroborate her incredible claim and give rise to the legend of the Lady in
Blue, a reference to the blue cloak that was part of María’s Conceptionist Fran-
ciscan habit.
 m a r í a d e á g r e d a , avata r o f t h e i m p o s s i b l e 209

Bilocation accounts pose an inevitable challenge to ­those who investigate

them, insofar as they always require the matching up of eyewitness testimonies
from two dif­fer­ent locations: one set from the original and permanent spot
where the person remains—­usually in ecstasy—­and the other from the distant
and temporary spot where that person suddenly appears and eventually dis­
appears. Proving that any bilocation has taken place is always awfully difficult,
if not impossible. In fact, to be convinced that any bilocation has taken place
requires a leap of faith, even for ­those who offer their eyewitness testimony, for
the ­simple reason that no witnesses to any such miracle can ever see what is
­going on beyond their own location at the original point where the levitator is
supposedly vis­i­ble. In an era without instant communications, the time lag in
the reporting and matching of accounts could be considerable, so constructing
a single narrative out of any bilocation could take years, as was the case h
­ ere
with María de Ágreda. Several con­temporary accounts of her miraculous biloca-
tions exist, and they overlap and intertwine over a period that spans three de­
cades. ­These accounts provide a tangled yet congruent pair of narratives: one
generated in Spain, the other in the New World.

Sources of the Legend

The first account was purely oral, and it came from María herself, who spoke to
her confessors about ­these experiences, as well as to her ­sisters in the convent.
This account surfaced between 1620 and 1623, as t­ hese events w
­ ere ostensibly
unfolding, and no written rec­ord of it is known to exist. Naturally, as with any
such ostensible miracle, tales of María’s adventures in the New World began to
circulate rapidly by word of mouth, especially in Franciscan circles. How the tale
was told, exactly, and how its details could have morphed as it passed from per-
son to person is something hidden from view. But we do know that tales of a
Spanish nun who visited New World natives did eventually reach Mexico, where
the Franciscans w
­ ere very active in mission work. Then, as one would expect,
Franciscan superiors in Mexico began an investigation since the mission field
involved in t­ hese tales—­present-­day Texas and New Mexico—­was ­under their
supervision. Written accounts began to surface soon thereafter, and ­these would
link María’s own narrative with that of the natives and missionaries in the
New World.
This first written account never made it into print and did not play much
of a role in the development of the Lady in Blue legend. It consists of two brief
 210 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

paragraphs at the end of a chronicle of the Spanish exploration and coloniza-

tion of New Mexico, which was penned in the late 1620s in the colonial capital
of Mexico by Gerónimo Zárate Salmerón, a Franciscan missionary. Although
sketchy, this account tells of a local narrative circulating by word of mouth in the
New Mexico Territory about numerous visits paid to native tribes by a Spanish
nun. Although the nun is not named in the narrative itself, the subtitle that
precedes it makes her identity explicit: “Account of the Holy ­Mother María de
Jesús, abbess of the convent of Santa Clara de Ágreda.” Without a doubt, then, by
1628, when this manuscript was written, Franciscans in Mexico ­were already
crediting Sor María with missionary activity in the New World.37
In 1630, seven years a­ fter María’s levitations and bilocations had ceased,
a second account of her visits to Amer­i­ca was written and quickly appeared in
print. Its author was Alonso de Benavides, a Franciscan friar who had spent five
years as a missionary in New Mexico. This account, which does not identify
María as the missionary nun, was very brief, merely one chapter in a long de-
tailed report on the “temporal and spiritual trea­sures” of the New Mexico mis-
sions written for King Philip IV, which has come to be known simply as the 1630
Memorial of Alonso Benavides.38 As sparse in details about the identity of the
nun as it was replete with extravagant claims about her feats, this seminal text
would become the foundation of the Lady in Blue legend and a focal point of
reference for all subsequent accounts of María’s bilocations.
Benavides would also play a major role in two more accounts. In 1631,
­after returning to Spain, Benavides met with María at her convent in Ágreda,
along with two other Franciscans, Andrés de la Torre, her confessor, and Sebastián
Marcilla, head of the Burgos Province. ­After this meeting, Benavides would write
a letter to the missionaries in New Mexico about María’s bilocations and also
attach a letter ostensibly penned by María herself—­that he forced her to write
­under her vow of obedience—in which she confirmed that she had indeed evan-
gelized the Jumano Indians. This text, which would not be published ­until a
­century ­later, is the third account and the first to contain direct testimony from
María.39 In her ­later brushes with the Inquisition, this document would play a
large role.
Due to the stir made in Catholic circles by tales of María’s extreme bi-
locations and to the Franciscan order’s desire to promote the success of their
missions, Benavides penned yet another report in 1634, this one addressed to
Pope Urban VIII, in which he included details not found in his previous two
accounts.40 The original text of this fourth account, known as Benavides’s 1634
 m a r í a d e á g r e d a , avata r o f t h e i m p o s s i b l e 211

Memorial, appears to have never been published and thus has had a greater im-
pact on modern scholars that gained access to it than on ­those responsible for
creating the Lady in Blue legend.41 The chief purpose of the second Memorial,
much like the ­earlier one, was not so much to call attention to the Lady in Blue
as to highlight the super­natural prowess of the Franciscan order and to posi-
tion it favorably for royal patronage. Benavides also had ecclesiastical ambitions
of his own that cannot be overlooked. Naturally, the caution or skepticism with
which t­ hese texts have been approached can vary.42
The fifth account to be written came from María herself, who penned it
in 1650, ­after she had been questioned by the Inquisition for the second time
in her life. This remarkable text, addressed to ­Father Pedro Manero, the supe-
rior general of the Franciscan order in Spain, seeks to correct or even deny many
of the details found in ­earlier accounts, including some that she had e­ arlier de-
clared to be accurate. Her brush with the Inquisition ­behind her, her close rela-
tionship with King Philip IV unbroken, the mature María was no longer afraid
to safeguard her orthodoxy and her reputation by contradicting Benavides, his
sources of information, or the legends spawned by his reports. “They are accu-
rate about some ­things,” she says about Benavides’s accounts, “but other ­things
have been added and exaggerated.” Carefully muffling her grievances and refusing
to lay blame directly on any single individual, María nonetheless confesses that
much had gone awry in the telling and retelling of her story back in 1629–1634.
­These distortions, she observes, “stemmed from the fact that the information
was gathered from nuns and friars” and that b
­ ecause the story was transmitted
through so many friars and nuns, “it was unavoidable that the truth of it would
be adulterated, especially on a subject where imprudent religious enthusiasts
feel one is d
­ oing something ­grand by adding on more, but what gets added on
is usually illegitimate, dangerous, harmful, and offensive to the truly pious. I have
been unlucky ­because they have raised up many testimonies about me, saying
more than has r­ eally occurred and happened to me; throughout my life it has
caused anguish and suffering.”43
Keenly aware of the danger involved in denying the veracity of some de-
tails that she had verified twenty years before by affixing her signature to Bena-
vides’s 1631 letter and by confirming his report in a letter of her own, the
middle-­aged María tried to distance herself as much as pos­si­ble—­and as humbly
and deferentially as pos­si­ble—­from the young and “inexperienced” María, who
had been too easily cowed by her male superiors into approving their half-­truths,
fables, and exaggerations.44 “The truth,” she says, “is that I went along with the
Figure 35. Antonio de Castro’s depiction of María de Ágreda preaching to American natives,
frontispiece from the 1730 Mexican edition of Benavides’s correspondence with the Franciscan
missionaries.
 m a r í a d e á g r e d a , avata r o f t h e i m p o s s i b l e 213

reports passively, not actively, and that I was horribly pained by what was writ-
ten up.” And that truth, she argues, absolves her of any wrongdoing. “I was
trembling, beside myself with anxiety, and never realized what I was signing; I
did not even pay attention to it. The truth is that I left every­thing in the hands
of ­those highly responsible f­ athers, entrusting the success of my affairs to them
more than to myself, for they ­were prelates and scholars.”45 This impor­tant
document would never be published and has only survived in a handful of
manuscript copies. Consequently, its impact on the legend of María’s bilocations
was not as significant as it should have been.
The sixth and definitive account appeared in 1670, five years ­after María’s
death, in the twelfth chapter of the hagiography written by José Jiménez Sa-
maniego. Longer than any of the previous accounts on which it relied, this one
consolidated the merging of María’s identity with the Lady in Blue legend and
also lent an authoritative seamlessness to the narrative of her miraculous mis-
sionary feats. The hagiographer’s achievement can be attributed in part to his
skill as a writer; in part to his main goal, which was to promote María’s canon-
ization; in part to the close personal relationship he had with María, which pro-
vided him with privileged information; and in part to the access he had to
multiple other accounts in the beatification and canonization inquests that took
place shortly a­ fter her death—­documents that few other ­people could access.
­Whether he also had access to Inquisition documents is uncertain. The seam-
less narrative of the hagiography is tidier than the accounts that preceded it
and naturally takes for granted the miraculous nature of all the improbable
events involved, including some that María herself exposed as fictive or in-
correct in her report to F
­ ather Manero. Moreover, since this hagiography was
appended to many editions of María’s im­mensely popu­lar text The Mystical City
of God, it gained the widest readership, eclipsed all other accounts, and be-
came definitive.

Conflating Narratives from Two Continents

One of the most distinct features of the Lady in Blue legend is how long it took
for events in a remote corner of Spain to be linked with events in an even more
remote corner of Spain’s New World empire. Another distinct feature is how a
single master narrative was eventually crafted out of dif­fer­ent and sometimes
conflicting accounts. That narrative is a blending of stories, some of which do
not agree and all of which tell of an astounding miracle that could never be
 214 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

conclusively proven. To trace the unfolding of the Lady in Blue legend, one can-
not assume the accuracy or veracity of all available accounts. As with any mira-
cle, even ­those that do not involve conflicting accounts, all the serious historian
can do is to bracket the question of ­whether the miracle “­really” occurred as the
accounts state and to focus instead on how ­those involved became convinced
that a miracle had indeed taken place or how a miracle was simply in­ven­ted
or inflated.
Coming up with a master narrative in María’s day and age was far from
quick or easy for t­hose involved in this ostensible miracle, given the distance
between Ágreda and New Mexico, the remoteness of the missionary outpost she
claimed to have visited, and the extreme nature of the miracle involved. And
that master narrative would end up having several kinks in it, some of which
­were substantial. Tracing the construction of that narrative is not easy ­either,
but it is certainly pos­si­ble, especially if one pays close attention to the chrono-
logical sequence of the events in question and the assumptions that guided the
authors of that narrative. This pro­cess, then, involves the interweaving of sto-
ries and events in both Spain and Amer­ic­ a, and it is perhaps best laid out in
the pre­sent tense to give a greater sense of immediacy. Naturally, the narrative
itself assumes that the testimony and chronology provided by all the individu-
als involved in this miracle story are accurate and that events unfolded exactly
as the testimony states. But historians cannot overlook kinks in that narrative—­
obvious or subtle—­that suggest alternative possibilities.
According to María, the bilocations begin in 1620, as a component of her
“external ­favors” (exterioridades)—­that is, ­those cataleptic trances that caused
her to levitate. As ­these bilocations begin, she speaks to her confessors about her
visits to Amer­i­ca and her missionary work with Indians. The specificity of
her accounts is startling. She can describe the landscape and climate as well as
the p
­ eople she encounters, and she can pinpoint the location as New Mexico.
­Later in life, in her 1650 report to F
­ ather Manero, María would explain her fas-
cination with mission work and with that region, specifically. It all began with
her ecstasies, she says. “At this time and in this state of mind,” she reveals, “the
Lord would let me know occasionally that he wanted me to work on behalf of
his creatures and for the welfare of their souls.” While in ecstasy, she claims, God
would often show her all the souls in the world who ­were ignorant of Him and
headed for damnation, and her reaction was intense: “My heart would break
when I saw that God’s abundant redemption did not fall on more than just a very
few,” she says, “and seeing this caused me ­bitter and unbearable pain.” As her
 m a r í a d e á g r e d a , avata r o f t h e i m p o s s i b l e 215

grief intensified with ­every such vision of specific ­peoples around the globe, the
Lord then let her know that among all the pagans and infidels He had shown
to her, “the ones ­toward whom His compassion was then most inclined, ­were
the New Mexicans and the inhabitants of other remote kingdoms in that part
of the world.”46
According to María, her engagement with the New Mexican tribes expands
gradually. First, she begins to have visions in which she observes the New Mexi-
cans and their environment passively. Then her desire to teach them the Catho-
lic faith grows as her visions become increasingly more vivid: “­Those kingdoms
­were shown to me in detail,” her account says, “with the features and properties
of that part of the world, the appearance of the men and ­women . . . ​and other
circumstances.” Before long, she claims, she finds herself sliding into a more ac-
tive role with the New Mexicans: “It seemed to me I addressed them and
begged them to go seek ministers of the Gospel to teach them the catechism
and baptize them, and I came to know them too.” But when it came to under-
standing or remembering how all of this became pos­si­ble during her ecstasies
at the age of nineteen or twenty, the middle-­aged María claims to be stumped:
“The way this happened is something I do not feel I can explain nor do I re-
member clearly.”47 While María attributes her knowledge of the ­people of New
Mexico to divine revelation, one should not overlook the fact that her own Fran-
ciscan order was engaged in mission work in that remote frontier of the Span-
ish Empire and that it is highly likely that she had heard about ­those missions
and the natives who ­were being Christianized. In addition, one cannot overlook
the fact that other members of her order ­were at that very same time gaining
fame throughout Spain as bilocating miracle-­workers and that some of the bi-
locations attributed to them involved mission activity in the New World.
One of ­these bilocators was a Franciscan nun, previously mentioned, Sor
Luisa de la Ascensión (1565–1636), also known as Luisa de Carrión b
­ ecause of
the location of her convent.48 Sor Luisa not only gained fame for her extreme
fasting, ecstasies, visions, prophecies, and healings but also for her numerous
bilocations. Visited by King Philip III in 1613, she maintained a close relation-
ship with him and was said to have bilocated to Madrid in 1621 to assist him
at the time of his death. She was also said to have bilocated to Japan, where she
offered comfort to Juan de Santa Marta, a Franciscan missionary, at the time of
his martyrdom in 1615; to Rome, where she supposedly smashed a vial full of
poison intended for Pope Gregory XV (1621–1623); to Assisi, where she vener-
ated the corpse of Saint Francis; and, most notably, to New Mexico, where she
 216 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

catechized the Jumano Indians. In 1633, Luisa was accused of fraud and pacts
with the devil and denounced to the Inquisition.49 ­After an intense investiga-
tion within Luisa’s convent, the Inquisition moved her in 1635 to an Augustin-
ian convent in Valladolid, about 100 kilo­meters away, before any decision had
been reached in her case, and she died ­there as a virtual prisoner sixteen months
­after her arrival. Eventually, the Inquisition would declare in 1648 that none of
the accusations ­were true, and her corpse would be returned to her convent in
Carrión. Although she had been pronounced innocent, her long brush with the
Inquisition proved to be too much of a stain on her character, and the once
famous and revered nun slipped into obscurity.50
The other bilocator was a Franciscan friar, Francisco de la Fuente, who
ended up being condemned by the Inquisition in 1632 for falsely claiming he
had bilocated to the New World to evangelize some natives.51 This friar was
found guilty of fraud and of making a pact with the devil, and was sentenced to
serve as a galley slave for four years and—­should he survive that potentially
lethal stint as a rower—to remain permanently exiled from the Inquisition
districts of the Toledo and Logroño tribunals. A mere twenty-­five years old at
the time of his sentencing—­five years younger than María—he was one of over
four dozen individuals ritually condemned at an auto de fé staged in Madrid’s
Plaza Mayor in 1632, at which six unrepentant Judaizers and one heretic w
­ ere
executed.52 Unfortunately, ­after this event he dis­appeared from the historical
rec­ord.
Meanwhile—­according to other accounts that would surface several years
­later—­around the same time that María says she began to travel to New Mexico
mystically, the Franciscan friars at the remote mission of San Antonio de Isleta
in New Mexico, near Albuquerque, begin to get visits from Jumano Indians who
beg for baptism for all their ­people, hundreds of miles away. Unable to spare
any missionaries to send on a long trek to the land of the Jumanos, in present-­
day Texas, the Franciscans turn down their request.53 ­Whether or not ­these two
series of events occurred si­mul­ta­neously is impossible to prove, due to the fact
that ­there are no original rec­ords that confirm the visits of the Jumano natives
to the San Antonio mission. But ­there is no denying that this conjunction of
events became an integral part of the master narrative.
Meanwhile, back in Ágreda, María continues to talk to her confessors,
­Fathers Juan de Torrecilla and Sebastián Marcilla, about her visits with primi-
tive tribes in a faraway land. She also speaks about this marvel with her fellow
nuns, and tales of her visits to Amer­i­ca begin to circulate in Spain. In 1622,
 m a r í a d e á g r e d a , avata r o f t h e i m p o s s i b l e 217

two years into the saga of her ecstasies, the minister-­general of the Franciscans,
­Father Bernardino de la Sena, meets with María to learn the details of her bi-
locations. Satisfied that the miracle is genuine and of divine origin, he approves
of it but refrains from publicizing it in print, therefore keeping the story out of
public view. According to testimony María ­will provide many years ­later, her con-
stant bilocations continue to occur u
­ ntil 1623, along with her ecstatic levita-
tions,54 but other accounts ­will ­later claim that she kept visiting New Mexico
for several years, although perhaps with less frequency. Benavides ­will clearly
state that in 1629 “the same nun” was still visiting the Jumanos,55 and else-
where he says she was still visiting New Mexico in 1631.56 Jiménez Samaniego
­will write of visits as late as 1625, for certain, and perhaps even l­ater.57 María
herself ­will say in 1631, in the statement Benavides ordered her to write to the
missionaries, that she was still visiting the Jumanos,58 but two de­cades ­later she
­will deny this was true and blame the exaggeration on Benavides. This discrep-
ancy is one of the more obvious kinks in the master narrative.
Throughout the early 1620s, according to Benavides, the Jumanos com-
ing regularly to that area of the San Antonio mission to trade buffalo hides keep
making the same request ­every time they show up, but ­Father Esteban de Perea,
the superior of the mission (padre custodio or custos), repeatedly turns down their
requests. In late 1625, two years a­ fter María’s ecstasies ceased, the San Antonio
mission receives a new custos sent from Spain, ­Father Alonso de Benavides,
along with twelve additional friars. Benavides w
­ ill claim that he learned imme-
diately of the Jumanos and their request for baptism and that he would listen
to their pleas e­ very time they showed up. But he, just like his pre­de­ces­sor, dis-
appointed the Indians. “For lack of friars, we did not send anyone to preach to
them,” Benavides would say in 1634, “nor did they tell us who had advised them
to do this, nor did we ask them, convinced that they ­were just like many other
Indian nations who ­were also asking for baptism.”59
In 1626, not long ­after the arrival of Benavides at the San Antonio mis-
sion, back at Ágreda, one of María’s confessors, Sebastián Marcilla, sends a let-
ter to the archbishop of Mexico, Francisco de Manso y Zúñiga, containing an
account of María’s bilocations and of her miraculous missionary efforts in the
New World, which she, of course, has told him about. Marcilla mentions place-­
names as well as certain tribes, including the Jumanos, hoping t­ hese details
­will catch Archbishop Manso’s eye. Marcilla also begs Archbishop Manso to
send Franciscan missionaries to the Jumanos to investigate María’s claims:
“An effort should be made,” he says, “to ascertain w
­ hether or not t­here is any
 218 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

knowledge of our holy faith in them, and in what manner our Lord has mani-
fested it.”60 It is at this point in time, and through this letter, that Mariá’s claims
are first revealed in the New World, or so it seems. ­Whether or not ­these events
occurred in the chronological order laid out in surviving rec­ords is impossible
to prove or deny, as in the case of the earliest visits of the Jumanos to the San
Antonio mission.
Two years l­ater, in late 1628, Archbishop Manso fi­nally gets around to
conveying this information about María to his Franciscan missionaries in
New Mexico, and he does so by sending a fresh contingent of missionaries
to New Mexico, who arrive at San Antonio de Isleta in July 1629, led by F
­ ather
Esteban de Perea, the previous custos of the mission. Perea hands Benavides a
letter from the archbishop that commands him to investigate María’s claims
about what has been occurring in the land of the Jumanos “with the exactness,
faith, and devotion that the case demands.”61 So, nearly a de­cade a­ fter María’s
visits to New Mexico became known in Spain and nearly three years ­after her
identity as a missionary to the Jumanos was revealed to Archbishop Manso in
Mexico, the bilocations are fi­nally about to be officially examined at the Ameri-
can spot where they have ostensibly occurred.
Benavides is shocked. Years ­later he would say: “When the news reached
New Mexico in 1629, we ­were totally ignorant of what was being reported, nor
had we ever heard of ­Mother María de Jesús. But we eventually realized that
the g­ reat care and solicitude with which the Jumano Indians came to us ­every
summer pleading for friars to go and baptize them must have been something
set in motion in Heaven.”62 Since some Jumanos happen to be on one of their
regular trading jaunts, encamped ­there at the mission at exactly the same time
as Archbishop Manso’s letter arrives, Benavides asks them for details about the
nameless ­woman who supposedly visits them but of whose existence he is to-
tally unaware. Since Benavides’s account is the only rec­ord we have of the ex-
change between the Jumanos and the Franciscans, it is impossible to know
­whether or not he and the other missionaries posed leading questions or made
suggestions that influenced their responses.63 In fact, due to the absence of any
other eyewitness testimony of this exchange, ­there is ­really no way of knowing
how much of the legend of María’s bilocations was revealed to the Jumanos ­there
and then and no way of denying the possibility that the Franciscans grafted the
claims made by María onto their New Mexican setting and onto the Jumanos
themselves. At pre­sent, due to the absence of documentation, ­there is no way to
 m a r í a d e á g r e d a , avata r o f t h e i m p o s s i b l e 219

convincingly verify this account of the “discovery” of the visiting missionary

­woman’s identity.
One detail mentioned by Benavides strongly suggests that the Franciscans
­were e­ ager to prove that María’s claims w
­ ere true and that a bit of projecting
and suggesting did take place. Asked to describe the ­woman’s appearance, all
the Jumanos can do is to comment on her clothing, and the details they provide,
especially about her blue cloak, suggests to the friars that she might indeed be a
nun. That suggestion leads one of them to bring out an image of the aforemen-
tioned Franciscan nun Luisa de Carrión, whose reputation as a miracle-­worker
and bilocator was still untainted by any questioning from the Inquisition.
When this image is shown to the Jumanos, they exclaim that the ­woman who
visits them dresses in exactly the same way—­a gray habit with a blue cloak—­
but is much prettier and younger.64 When asked why they have never revealed
­these details before, the Jumanos simply say: “­Because you d
­ idn’t ask us before,
and we assumed that she was around ­here too.”65
Benavides sends two missionaries to the Jumano lands immediately, ac-
cording to his own account, along with the visiting natives, who w
­ ere about to
return home anyway. W
­ hether he was amazed, intrigued, or perhaps a bit pinched
by guilt for not granting the previous requests of the Jumanos is something he
keeps to himself. And much of what happens next is unclear due to significant
differences in the accounts of Benavides, Jiménez Samaniego, and María de
Ágreda. Benavides says that when t­ hese two investigators, F
­ athers Juan de Sa-
las and Diego Lopez, fi­nally reach their destination, they are greeted by a pro­
cession of Jumanos carry­ing a flower-­bedecked cross—­something they claim was
suggested by the young missionary in the blue cloak—­and are then regaled with
stories about how frequent her visits ­were, how she taught them in their own
tongue, and how she reprimanded them for not being able to convince the Fran-
ciscans to baptize them.66 However, since María stridently denied in 1650 that
she paid any visits to the Jumanos ­after 1623, her insertion into this account
is highly questionable.
According to Benavides, the Jumanos also venerate crosses and images of
Jesus with g­ reat fervor, “as if they had been Christians for a very long time” and
also impress ­Fathers Juan and Diego with their detailed knowledge of the Cath-
olic faith bequeathed to them by their blue-­cloaked missionary.67 Much to their
surprise, natives from neighboring tribes begin to arrive, begging for baptism,
claiming to have been visited by the same w
­ oman.68 ­After a few days, according
 220 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

to Jiménez Samaniego, the Jumanos and their neighbors fi­nally receive their
long-­awaited baptism. Benavides, however, makes no mention of any baptisms
taking place. All he says is that F
­ athers Juan and Diego return to San Antonio
de Isleta, convinced that the Jumanos have been properly instructed in the Cath-
olic faith, and that they give a full report to Benavides, replete with details
about María’s wondrous feats.69 At this point, then, the Spanish and the New
World narratives merge. As Benavides puts it: “Thus we ­were persuaded that this
nun was the ­Mother María de Jesús mentioned in the Archbishop’s letter, the
very one miraculously turned into an apostle by God.”70
Having been relieved of his post at San Antonio de Isleta, Benavides re-
turns to Mexico in late 1629, where he is ordered to write a report on the New
Mexico missions for his Franciscan superiors, King Philip IV, and the Council of
the Indies. As previously mentioned, this Memorial, published in Madrid in
1630, contains one chapter on the miraculous conversion of the Jumanos. Bena-
vides sails back to Spain and delivers his report to the minister-­general of the
Franciscans, F
­ ather Bernardino de la Sena, and to King Philip. He then travels to
remote Ágreda to interview Sor María in person in 1631, ­under ­orders from his
superior F
­ ather Sena to determine the accuracy of her descriptions of New Mex-
ico and the veracity of her account. At that meeting, María confirms that she is
indeed the nun with the blue cloak who visited the Jumanos, and Benavides es-
tablishes her bilocations as a certain “fact” then and ­there. “She convinced me
totally,” he says, “by describing to me ­things in New Mexico just as I saw them
myself, along with other details. . . . ​She left me with no doubts whatsoever.”71
In his 1634 Memorial, however, Benavides would add a twist to his narra-
tive by bringing in testimony from F
­ ather Juan de Santander, commissary gen-
eral of the Indies. According to Benavides, ­Father Juan became convinced that
the missionary nun was not María de Ágreda but Luisa de Carrión. E
­ ager to
prove his hunch, ­Father Juan traveled to Carrión and met with Luisa’s confes-
sor, Domingo de Aspe—­“a friar of ­great merit and zeal”—­who showed him a
book he was writing about Luisa in which one chapter “described how . . . ​­Mother
Luisa had been miraculously carried to the conversions in New Mexico.” F
­ ather
Juan also told Benavides that F
­ ather Domingo “showed him the a­ ctual passage
from the book but ­didn’t allow him to copy it.”72 So, according to Domingo de
Aspe and Juan de Santander, ­there ­were ­really two Ladies in Blue, María and
Luisa, converting Indians in separate regions of New Mexico. Somehow, this
twist in the narrative, a mere paragraph in the 1634 Memorial, failed to become
part of the Lady in Blue legend.
 m a r í a d e á g r e d a , avata r o f t h e i m p o s s i b l e 221

Given the circumstances in which the Lady in Blue legend emerged, and
given the evidence available, it is certainly pos­si­ble that much of the legend was
fabricated by over­eager Franciscan missionaries who ­were intent on proving the
veracity of María’s claims, and perhaps also t­ hose of Luisa de Carrión. And it
is also likely that both of ­these Conceptionist Franciscan nuns had heard sto-
ries about the Franciscan missions in New Mexico and ­were inspired to insert
themselves into that setting mystically and imaginatively, as the hapless friar
Francisco de la Fuente had tried to do before he was hauled in by the Inquisition.
Moreover, since Luisa de Carrión was older than María de Ágreda and Francisco
de la Fuente, and tales of her bilocations to the New World ­were circulating in
Spain at the time that María’s bilocating and levitating ecstasies began, one
should not discount the possibility that Luisa begat María, and perhaps also
Francisco de la Fuente.
Moreover, since Benavides published at least 400 copies of his 1630 Me-
morial in Spain before he traveled to Ágreda to meet with María in 1631 and
that text doubtlessly circulated among Franciscans, it is indeed pos­si­ble that
María might have read it before meeting with Benavides. This text might have
provided her with many of the details with which she managed to convince
Benavides that she had indeed visited the Jumanos and was therefore the Lady
in Blue.73
No one should ever discount any such possibilities, especially b
­ ecause
Luisa and María ­were Franciscans, and proving their miraculous bilocations
added luster to their order and to their missions. One must won­der, ­after all,
­whether Benavides and his missionaries would have shown equal enthusiasm
for identifying a bilocating nun who happened to be a Carmelite, a Dominican,
or an Ursuline. At the same time, nonetheless, one must also won­der about the
how and why of it all; that is, one must ask why something as impossible as
bilocation was thought to be pos­si­ble, at least in some cases, and how anyone
could ever seek to prove it or believe it.
But in the case of Sor María, suspending one’s disbelief was often neces-
sary, for bilocation was only one of her incredibly impossible achievements.
 7. The Trou­ble with María

Since the regions she visited ­were so barbarous that the ­people have no language
and can only grunt, how could she preach to them and teach them?
How could she and they understand one another?
—Inquisitor Antonio González del Moral

The “fact” established by Benavides—­that María was the nun who would come
to be known in New Mexico lore as “the Lady in Blue”—­solved a mystery but
also gave rise to the troublesome questions that surrounded all miracle-­workers
in baroque Spain, where the possibility of fraud or demonic activity was always
suspected and needed to be disproved. The magnitude of María’s claims was
im­mense and unparalleled. Certainly, a miracle involving over 500 bilocations,
each traversing over 5,000 miles, gave church authorities cause for concern. Bi-
location accounts ­were part and parcel of the Catholic imagination, as well as
of hagiographic traditions, but they w
­ ere relatively rare and infrequent in com-
parison to other sorts of miracles. María’s bilocating feats dwarfed t­ hose of any
other saint, including the founder of her own order, Francis of Assisi. Naturally,
then, her claims raised suspicions that needed to be disproved and questions
such as the one in the epigraph above.1 Since such issues could only be handled
by the Inquisition, it was therefore inevitable that this tribunal would get in-
volved. In 1635, therefore, inquisitors came to Ágreda to probe into María’s bi-
locations and to interrogate her in person, carry­ing out a fact-­finding inquest
rather than a proceso, or formal trial.2 Ascertaining ­whether María’s bilocations
­really occurred or ­whether they w
­ ere of diabolical origin was a difficult task that
many inquisitors ­were well equipped to ­handle, for such inquests followed a well-­
mapped and familiar routine.3 As inquisitors saw it, the devil was in the details,

222
 the trouble with maría 223

literally, and so was deceit, and this required them to examine all miracle claims
meticulously. In María’s case, the possibility of demonic agency could be dis-
missed by probing her own understanding of what had occurred and by testing
her humility and submission to authority. The possibility of fraud was harder
to ­handle. Due to its innate anchoring on eyewitness testimony and the inquisi-
tor’s absolute reliance on the trustworthiness of ­those eyewitnesses, bilocation
was as tough to prove as to disprove. All the inquisitors could do was to assess
María’s character, compare her testimony with ­those of eyewitnesses at both
spots involved, and reckon the credibility of the miracle being claimed.

Sor María ­under Scrutiny

María’s first encounter with the Inquisition was brief, somewhat cordial, and
inconclusive. It was carried out by the Logroño tribunal, at the request of the
Suprema, or Supreme tribunal in Madrid. This was not a local inquest, then,
but one generated at the highest echelons of the Inquisition. The Suprema or-
dered the Logroño inquisitors to investigate vari­ous items in the life of “the nun
at Ágreda, who is called María de Jesús.” First, they w
­ ere to determine w
­ hether
“she has ecstasies in public, and w
­ hether she gives ­people crosses and rosary
beads, and what divine graces she assigns to ­these items.” On the surface, at least,
this request was not as odd as it might seem. The issue of crosses and beads
being distributed by nuns who had a reputation for holiness could lead inquisi-
tors to discover greater sins and evils than mere vanity. Second, they ­were to
inquire into claims that she was “taken away to the very remote kingdoms of
the Indies to convert and catechize the Indians ­there so they could convert and
receive baptism.” This issue was the most impor­tant of all, as the Suprema
pointed out, since the Inquisition had recently pro­cessed and condemned a cer-
tain Francisco de la Fuente, a Franciscan friar who had made similar claims
and fooled many into believing him, including “the same provincial minister
who is now so strongly defending and backing all ­those aforementioned claims
of the aforementioned María de Jesús.” The greatest concern of ­those at the Su-
prema was that “the nun at Ágreda” might have fallen prey to “the same deceit
and illusion of the devil” as Francisco de la Fuente and the Franciscan superior
in charge of both. In addition, the Suprema requested all of the Logroño tribu-
nal’s files on the case of Francisco de la Fuente and instructed the tribunal to
collect all the documents they could lay their hands on that had been written
by María or had anything to do with her “so they could be examined.”4
 224 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

Although most of the Inquisition rec­ords for María’s encounters with the
Inquisition have been lost, letters sent to the Suprema about her case have
survived—­including some from the first inquest of 1635—­all of which allow
us to peer into the inner workings of the first inquest obliquely.5 In 1635, state-
ments w
­ ere collected from four individuals, including one who was bound to
treat her ­gently: her confessor Andrés de la Torre, who also happened to be an
examiner (calificador) for the Inquisition. The issue of her very public ecstasies
and levitations was deemed unoffensive, especially since they had ceased in
1623. As far as the bilocations w
­ ere concerned, however, the Logroño inquisi-
tors skirted the issue by deeming themselves unable to pass judgment: “We have
no examiners h
­ ere who are qualified to h
­ andle this,” they observed.6 Tellingly,
they also felt it necessary to suggest that María could have been influenced by
Francisco de la Fuente, who had made similar claims about being carried to the
Indies by angels only to end up condemned by the Inquisition. It was Francisco,
they charged, who was personally responsible for convincing the director of
María’s province to believe her bilocations ­were genuine.7 Having shifted con-
siderable blame to a known fraud and unable or unwilling to pass judgment
on the veracity of María’s bilocations, the inquisitors de­cided not to charge her
with any wrongdoing or diabolical engagement. Their report was duly archived
so it could remain available if needed in the ­future. For all practical purposes,
then, María was cleared, but only temporarily, and her case remained open in­def­
initely. And the specter of such lingering suspicions would haunt her for the
next fifteen years.
Her fears ­were not unreasonable. The Inquisition had a very long mem-
ory. One might say that it had an indelible memory in its archives that extended
in­def­initely into both the past and the f­ uture. For instance, in December 1648
the Suprema in Madrid requested that the Logroño tribunal send it all of the
files of María’s 1635 inquest, along with all of the files for the 1632 proceso of
Francisco de la Fuente, the Franciscan friar condemned as a fraud in 1632
for claiming the same kind of missionary bilocations to the New World. This
1648 letter specifies that the request is for the reexamination of claims made
about María by Friar Francisco to two prominent Franciscans who w
­ ere now
deceased, one of whom was the provincial minister who oversaw both María
and Francisco. The claims in question could be highly damaging for María, for
according to this letter, Francisco had told the provincial that she had accom-
panied him on some of his missionary visits to New Mexico, along with Saint
Inés, and that on one occasion María had brought along some consecrated
 the trouble with maría 225

hosts so he could give communion to the Indians he had converted and bap-
tized. In addition, the letter mentions a notebook that Francisco de la Fuente
had shown to his superior that supposedly contained “other t­hings concerning
the life of María de Jesús.”8
That letter was a prelude to the reopening of María’s case in 1649. This
time, the immediate cause for suspicion came from her involvement in the po­
liti­cal arena rather than her mysticism or bilocations. Ever since 1643, María
had become a close confidant of King Philip IV, with whom she corresponded
regularly. That relationship granted her a certain degree of immunity—­certainly
more than she had in 1635—­but it also inevitably made her vulnerable to fall-
out from the constant intrigues that plagued the royal court. An unsuccessful
conspiracy against King Philip IV hatched in 1648 by the Duke of Hijar was
the dramatic event that drew the Inquisition’s attention to her anew. Although
she was not part of this conspiracy, which involved plans to wrest the kingdom
of Aragón from Philip IV and crown the Duke of Hijar as its king, she had made
the ­mistake of replying to a letter from the duke.9 The fact that the plot failed
and the guilty parties w
­ ere duly punished made no difference. The mere fact
that María had corresponded with the leading figure of this failed coup made
many at court suspicious of her, especially ­because of her close relationship with
King Philip.
So in September 1649, the Supreme tribunal of the Inquisition ordered
that María’s 1635 case be reopened. The main objective of this inquest was to
determine if she had played any role in the Duke of Hijar’s plot, but as always
happened with the Inquisition, all fresh allegations of misconduct immediately
dragged up what­ever dirt had been collected before. Consequently, it was inevi-
table that her ecstasies and bilocations would be included in this investigation
too, especially since her case had never been formally closed.
Preparations for this reopening of her case began in January 1649, when
some calificadores collected vari­ous testimonies. Her confessor Andrés de la
Torre was once again involved in presenting evidence and analyzing María’s life
and writings, but this did not deter the calificadores from requesting that all
previous documents pertaining to María be dug out of the archives, along with
what­ever texts she had written. ­Eager to display their objectivity and impartial-
ity, t­ hese examiners insisted that María be interrogated in person again, espe-
cially b
­ ecause her case contained “many improbable t­hings” (muchas cosas
inverosímiles). Skepticism about her miraculous claims r­ ose to the surface among
the examiners. According to one report, “They found it very hard to convince
 226 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

themselves that it was God’s d

­ oing and not a passive or active illusion, or both
together, along with some credulity on the part of ­those who have governed
her.”10
Once the inquisitors had all the necessary documents and texts in their
hands, they commissioned three new calificadores to submit their opinions.
Their reports bristled with suspicion and hostility. One of them, Lucas Guadín,
a Jesuit, found plenty of reason for concern. Even though he abstained from
openly declaring her “­either a good or evil spirit,” he nonetheless thought ­there
was reason to suspect “that her path was not safe, and her spirit was evil.” Her
raptures and ecstasies w
­ ere prob­ably not genuine or holy, he argued. He also
condemned the terminology used by María in a litany she had written to the
Virgin Mary. Even worse, he deemed her a victim of demonic delusions. Refusing
to lay all the blame on her, Guadín wagged his fin­ger at the Franciscan order,
too, for coddling María and encouraging such error to flourish. In his opinion, it
would be best for the Inquisition to assign a non-­Franciscan confessor to María and
to appoint non-­Franciscan calificadores to her case. In closing, he suggested that
all the attention-­seeking nuns involved in promoting María’s highly question-
able miracles needed reprimanding and silencing, coldly remarking that their
confessors needed “to humiliate them” and “bury deeply all the mystical f­avors
they mention in confession” and make them realize that “they should live con-
vinced that no one in the world is ever ­going to recall their existence.”11
The other two examiners, Alonso de Herrera and Tomás de Herrera, w
­ ere
only slightly less caustic in expressing their dis­plea­sure with María. Tomás de
Herrera thought that her visions ­were attributable to the effect of demonic
delusions on her overheated imagination, something that was very common with
all w
­ omen, “especially ­those seeking to be highly esteemed.” Alonso de Herrera
agreed, adding that the devil had prob­ably blocked her senses with his delusions
and that she had allowed ­those diabolical hallucinations and her deep desire
to work as a missionary to fool her into believing that she had visited the
Jumanos.12
Taking t­hese three reports to heart, the inquisitor general ordered the
Logroño tribunal to send “one of the most learned, intelligent, and satisfactory”
examiners to Ágreda to pay María a surprise visit and grill her as intensely
as pos­si­ble. The man chosen for this job, Antonio González del Moral, a Trini-
tarian priest, and his notary Juan Rubio arrived at Ágreda on January 18, 1650,
armed with a long list of eighty questions, some of which had numerous
subsections.13 María, now an abbess and well known in the highest circles of
 the trouble with maría 227

Spanish society, was not totally unprepared to respond to an inquisitorial bar-

rage, but being ill and bedridden—as was often the case with her—­and having
just been bled with leeches, she was in no shape to endure the torturous grilling
imposed on her by ­these unexpected visitors, which dragged on for ten days in
­bitter midwinter cold for several hours each morning and then several more each
after­noon, save for one Sunday off. As an additional ordeal, the febrile María
was required to kneel constantly during ­every session, with nary a momentary
respite. Two months ­later, in a letter to King Philip IV, she would say: “When
­those visitors arrived, I found myself so alone and so bereft of advice . . . ​sub-
jected to constant questioning . . . ​at a time when I had no confessor or priest
who knew ‘my inner self’ ­because ­those who had known me and counseled me
­were now dead.”14
Although this inquest had been triggered by the botched coup led by the
Duke of Hijar, very few of the questions on the examiner’s list had anything
to do with her role in that affair. Instead, María was questioned extensively on
the nature of her ecstasies, visions, and revelations and on her bilocations to
the New World. The fact that María was on intimate terms with King Philip
might have made her examiner a bit more cautious, for sure, but it did not
seem to have tempered his inquisitorial enthusiasm all that much. F
­ ather
Antonio González del Moral was relentless in his probing of María on all sorts
of sensitive points, both ­great and small, day in and day out. The questions all
aimed, in one way or another, to test María’s mettle, as well as her orthodoxy,
obedience, and humility, and to ascertain w
­ hether any diabolical influence
was involved.
Although the original transcript of this inquest has unfortunately van-
ished, it is pos­si­ble to reconstruct it in some detail through two summaries.
The first of ­these comes directly from María’s hand: the report she sent to ­Father
Pedro Manero immediately a­ fter the inquest in 1650, which gives a detailed ac-
count of the questions she was asked, as well as of her responses to them. The
second is an extract of the original transcript published by Eduardo Royo in
1914, which, in turn, was summarized extensively in 1979 by José Pérez Vil-
lanueva.15 María’s report to Manero and Royo’s extract match up so well that
one can confidently rely on both for a reconstruction of what tran­spired during
­those very tense, very cold ten days.
­Father Antonio was most interested in hearing María explain how the bi-
locations began and what she experienced. In addition, he wanted her to inter-
pret what had happened and how she thought it could be pos­si­ble to be in two
 228 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

places si­mul­ta­neously. Was she pre­sent physically in both locations? If not, then
how could her dual presence be explained? He also spent a good deal of time
quizzing María on the nature of the raptures and mystical experiences that ­were
an integral component of her bilocations. Other questions w
­ ere less theologi-
cally volatile and merely addressed practical issues. One, the thirty-­seventh, gives
a good sense of Spanish prejudices about American Indians as well as of the
sorts of details on which she was grilled: “Since the regions she visited w
­ ere so
barbarous that the p
­ eople have no language and can only grunt, how could she
preach to them and teach them? How could she and they understand one an-
other?”16 What did she teach them? Did she use a pulpit? How much time did
she spend with them each day? Could she describe their way of life, their food,
or their weapons? “Did she get wet when it rained on the way to t­hose other
kingdoms or when she was t­ here, and, if so, did she return to the convent was
her habit still wet?”17 And so on. Then ­Father Antonio quizzed her at length on
some of the more extravagant details of Benavides’s two Memorials and on her
own verification of ­those details back in 1631. Had she been flown to New Mex-
ico by angels or by Saint Francis of Assisi? Had she continued to visit New
Mexico a­ fter her ecstasies ceased in 1623? Had she taken rosaries and crosses
from Spain or personal objects and given them away to the Jumanos or brought
back objects from the New World? Had she been killed by Indians who w
­ ere
enemies of the Jumanos? Had she died t­ here more than once? Had she ac-
companied the Jumanos to the San Antonio mission and remained invisible
to the friars?
Her answers to all ­these questions w
­ ere guarded and very carefully phrased.
Outlandish claims, such as her martyrdom at the hands of the Indians or her
being borne aloft to the Indies by the archangel Michael and Saint Francis, ­were
bluntly dismissed as false or as misunderstandings or exaggerations of ­things
she might have said. Theological and metaphysical questions ­were all dodged
with ­great skill and equal mea­sures of deference and humility. She was unable
to explain how any of this happened, she said. All she knew is that she felt it
happen and that it felt very real. “In the way He thought best, The Lord gave
me reason to believe,” she explained, “that some souls w
­ ere, in fact, converting
and would convert.” In addition, t­hese bilocations had taken place too many
years ago, she insisted, when she was still too young and inexperienced. “Draw-
ing on the better understanding of ­things I have now that I am older,” she ex-
plained to F
­ ather Manero, as she prob­ably also did to ­Father Antonio, the
Inquisition’s calificador, “it seems to me that ­either it was all the work of my
 the trouble with maría 229

imagination or that God showed me ­those ­things by means of abstract images

of the kingdoms and what was g­ oing on t­ here, or perhaps that they w
­ ere shown
to me t­ here. Neither then, nor now was I, or am I capable of knowing the way
it happened.”18
María then turned to the Bible for proof that her inability to explain her
experience was to be expected. “­Whether or not I r­eally and truly went in my
body is something about which I cannot be certain,” she confessed, just as had
happened to Saint Paul the Apostle.19 “What I can assure you beyond any doubt,”
she continued, “is that the case did in fact happen, and that as far as I know it
had nothing to do with the devil or wrong desires. This I w
­ ill affirm once, twice,
or many times.”20
Then, with all the proper reverence and caution she could muster, María
offered two hypotheses about her bilocations, refusing to commit herself to one
or the other, emphasizing her own doubts about each. The first was that she
had bilocated bodily, as some thought; the second was that an angel had as-
sumed her likeness in New Mexico while she was in ecstasy in Ágreda. In sup-
port of bodily bilocation, she argued that she definitely saw every­thing in New
Mexico clearly, learned the names of ­people and places, and experienced the
weather in a sensory manner. She also saw the Jumanos eating their primitive
food, lighting their torches at night, bowing in gratitude when she taught them
the catechism, and accepting the rosaries she brought to them. Nonetheless,
­these sensory experiences could be deceiving. “I have always questioned the
idea that it happened to me in my body,” she admitted, “and for that reason, in
the statements I have made, I express doubts and distrust.” Pivoting to an alter-
native hypothesis, María also had this to say: “The way in which I am most
inclined to believe this happened and that seems most credible to me was, or is,
that an angel, taking on my looks, appeared ­there and preached and taught them
the catechism, while h
­ ere the Lord showed me what was g­ oing on t­here as an
answer to my prayers. For the Indians seeing me t­here was true, according to
­Father Benavides, and that is the reason I feel it was an angel who looked like
me.” With the right kind of self-­deprecatory bravado, she went on to admit that
she sometimes doubted the real­ity of her bilocations altogether. “Still, when all
is said and done, I must ask myself why the Most High would have chosen an
instrument as base and low as myself. When I take a look at myself, I feel it
must have been only in my mind, that, yes, all this is imaginary.”21 To suggest
such an intense level of doubt was perilous, however, since it would make liars
out of Benavides and her superiors and make her complicit in their fraud. So
 230 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

María pivoted again, reemphasizing points she had already made. “My consid-
ered opinion of this ­whole case is that it ­really happened,” she affirmed, “but
the way and the ‘how’ are not easily known since it happened so many years
ago: since the Indians said that they had seen me, e­ ither myself or some angel
who looked like me did go ­there.”22
­Father Antonio, the examiner, had many other questions about specific
details. One of the most significant involved the frequency of her bilocations.
Had she r­ eally visited the Jumanos 500 times? Her answer once again dodged
the issue of explaining how it happened while at the same time affirming the
real­ity of it all: “I have already said that I do not know w
­ hether I r­ eally went or
some angel for me,” she carefully noted. “But if the number five hundred is taken
to represent all the times I became aware of ­those kingdoms, in one way or an-
other, or all the times I prayed for or wanted their conversion, in that sense it is
true, and the number would be even more than five hundred.”23 This internal-
ization of the bilocations, which focused on her “becoming aware” of them “in
one way or another,” allowed her to lend sufficient fuzziness to ­these events while
si­mul­ta­neously establishing their real­ity. When all was said and done, the 500
visits ­were “true” in a very specific mystical sense, and María was leaving it up
to ­Father Antonio to call into question the veracity of all her mystical trances,
something he r­ eally could not do without stepping over the line into heresy him-
self. Consequently, ­Father Antonio found it necessary to ask questions about
her mystical experiences. Two questions w
­ ere potential trapdoors. First, “Had
she ever seen God clearly and distinctly, and, if so, on what times and occa-
sions?”24 Of course not, she replied. H
­ uman eyes are incapable of any such
­thing. God can only be perceived spiritually and intellectually in an ineffable
way through an “intuitive vision.”25 Second, had she made physical contact with
angels or been carried aloft by them? Of course not, she said again. Angels are
spirits. “I have never seen them do anything other than stand at a distance, se-
rious, severe, and pure,” she huffed, respectfully.26
Having dealt with the issue of the bilocations, which brought out discrep-
ancies between the accounts of Benavides and María, the interrogation moved
on to the 1631 document and letter in which María made no mention of any
disagreement with Benavides. The main question was why she had agreed to
confirm t­ hings which w
­ ere not true? This was perhaps the trickiest of all ques-
tions, for answering it involved confessing deceitfulness while at the same
time deflecting some of the blame to Benavides and her superiors with a proper
balance of humility, re­spect, and contrition. What she had to say involved a
 the trouble with maría 231

masterful blending of self-­criticism, self-­praise of her obedience, and transfer-

ence of the ultimate responsibility to o
­ thers. Her final statement in the re-
port to Manero encapsulates what she said in response to F
­ ather Antonio, her
examiner: “That the truth was adulterated, the facts embroidered or changed,
is nothing to marvel at, for the grave ­fathers who gathered the information
and prepared the statement had not been my confessors when the case hap-
pened, and ­Father Fray Francisco Andrés had only recently come. Being timid,
I said ­little. They got their information from p
­ eople who knew nothing more
than a few words they had heard h
­ ere and ­there, so it was impossible to purify
the truth; they could only adulterate it.” As for her complicity in promoting
falsehoods, María excused herself adroitly by insisting that she was cowed into
­doing so and that she was too flummoxed at the time to pay attention to all the
details that she was confirming with her signature. “I signed without thinking
about or paying attention to what I was ­doing,” she said. “I have already said
what was in­ven­ted. All ­those names, t­ hose ­things that happened to Indians and
friars, and all the rest . . . ​is not true. About how this happened, I have already
said what I think.”27
Two other issues still needed to be covered by ­Father Antonio, and ­these
took up less time than the issue of the bilocations. One was the event that had
precipitated this inquest: the role María might have played in the conspiracy of
the Duke of Hijar. Determining María’s innocence on this issue took relatively
­little time. Her friendship with Philip IV and the king’s own testimony eclipsed
what­ever suspicions had been spawned by her correspondence with the treason-
ous duke. The remaining issue was a bit trickier: her biography of the Virgin
Mary, which she had burned ­after being commanded to do so by a priest who
was temporarily substituting for her trusted confessor Andrés de la Torre.
As if claiming hundreds of bilocations across a wide ocean and advising
the king through a constant exchange of letters ­were not audacious enough, Sor
María also dared to claim an intimate relationship with the Virgin Mary and to
assume the mantle of a heavenly scribe, not much dif­fer­ent from that of the
four evangelists. Her History of the Virgin Mary, which she claimed the ­Mother
of God had revealed to her, was a very detailed biography many times longer
than the four canonical Gospels combined. This text proclaimed that the Vir-
gin Mary had been immaculately conceived, a hotly contested theological prop-
osition that would not be declared dogma ­until the nineteenth ­century. It also
proclaimed the Virgin Mary to be co-­redemptrix and co-­mediatrix of the ­human
race—­along with her son Jesus—­and, in addition, portrayed her as the head of
 232 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

the infant church during the interval between the resurrection of Jesus and the
time of her own death. Such a text could not help but be controversial and be
included in F
­ ather Antonio’s questionnaire.
María had claimed all along, ever since she had begun to write this text
in 1637, that her confessors and superiors had encouraged her to do it. But
the text did not please every­one who read it, and she knew it could cause trou­
ble for her. In 1645, while her beloved confessor Andrés de la Torre was away,
a temporary confessor was so scandalized by this text that he ordered María
to burn her original autograph copy. Unbeknownst to that confessor and most
other ­people, however, a copy had been sent to King Philip e­ arlier, and it sur-
vived in his hands, hidden from view. Ordered by her superiors to write the
book again, María had taken on the task obediently, but as soon as her name
was linked to the Duke of Hijar conspiracy, she burned what she had recently
produced in a panic. Once again, however, she was ordered to start for a third
time, and when ­Father Antonio arrived in January of 1650, she had some
pages she immediately handed over to him. The examiner found nothing to
criticize or condemn in that text but did question her about adjectives and
honorific terms such as “immaculate and most perfect mirror of divinity” and
“complement of the ineffable and most holy Trinity” that she had used in writ-
ing about the Virgin Mary, not just in the biography but in a litany she had
penned some years before. María’s answers ­were an impressive display of her
command of Catholic theology, her erudition, and her familiarity with the Bi-
ble and the church f­ athers.28 Satisfied that her Marian adjectives w
­ ere correct
and that the Virgin Mary’s biography was the result of direct divine inspira-
tion, ­Father Antonio confirmed its orthodoxy. What he did not know—­and
María never revealed to him—­was the fact that the king had a complete ver-
sion of this im­mense text.
As the inquest wound down and she finished answering the final question,
María was asked if she had anything ­else to say or declare. In response, María
launched into the issue of her “weak and fragile” memory and all her “illnesses
and ailments,” which had made it difficult for her “to be examined and to be
questioned and re-­questioned over many dif­fer­ent days about t­ hings that hap-
pened so many years ago.”29 Then she immediately began to express her high
regard for the Inquisition, which she claimed to “re­spect and venerate as a
­daughter of the Church.” To prove this point, and to make sure that F
­ ather An-
tonio could perceive the full mea­sure of her orthodoxy and her submission to
the Inquisition, she begged for the chance to declare her adherence to “the faith
 the trouble with maría 233

that the Holy Tribunal defends so steadfastly.” Granted her request, María pro-
ceeded to recite a detailed and expanded version of the Nicene Creed that filled
several folios and must have caused some serious cramping in the hands of no-
tary Juan Rubio.30 Doubling down on the issue of her fidelity to the Inquisition
and her admiration of it, María kept the notary Juan Rubio very busy filling
more folios with proclamations of her eagerness to submit herself to the church’s
guidance in all t­ hings. “Prostrated in the presence of the Holy Tribunal of the
faith and at the feet of all the señores Inquisidores,” she declared, “I thank you
humbly for examining me and for educating and enlightening my ignorance, for
no other earthly creature is in greater need of correction and advice than me.”
Tugging at the heartstrings of ­Father Antonio and his notary Juan Rubio and
reinforcing her submissiveness to them, she then ended her profession of faith
by emphasizing again that her gratefulness for the inquest was made all the more
profound by the fact that she felt very much alone and without guidance—­given
that her confessors had all passed away—­and that she now had no one to “gov-
ern” her who r­ eally knew her inner self.31
All in all, the inquest was a ­great victory for María, for instead of being
reprimanded or having her case left open—as had happened in 1635—­she had
now managed to overwhelm her inquisitors, both of whom not only called her
“a trea­sure,” declaring their admiration for her and their satisfaction with her
answers and her conduct, but also actually requested that she give them crosses
and other personal articles that they could take back to Logroño. F
­ ather Antonio’s
final assessment was as splendid as anyone could have hoped, including María
herself and King Philip IV, and it contradicted every­thing suspected by her
three initial calificadores Lucas Guadín, Alonso de Herrera, and Tomás de Her-
rera back in 1649, when they had urged the Inquisition to probe deeply into her
case due to the high likelihood that she was deluded and u
­ nder demonic influ-
ence: “I have recognized g­ reat virtue and ­great intelligence in her,” said F
­ ather
Antonio, “and in her knowledge of Sacred Scripture, which has been acquired
more through prayer and constant interior engagement with God than through
formal studies.” In addition, ­Father Antonio also reprimanded Benavides and
­those responsible for the Carta of 1631 for “adding much and inventing much
too much” and for forcing María to confirm their exaggerations and affix her
signature to their report ­under her vow of obedience. She could not be blamed
for her “indiscreet obedience” to her superiors, continued the calificador, ­because
she had been just a very young girl at the time. “She is a good Catholic and a
faithful Christian, well-­versed in our sacred faith” concluded ­Father Antonio,
 234 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

“and she is f­ree from any fictional inventions or demonic delusions.”32 Shortly
­after this report reached the inquisitor general, he approved it.
María had not only survived her brush with the Inquisition but prevailed,
at least for now. Her bilocations had been approved as genuine. Questions about
how they took place, exactly, ­were left unanswered, but their real­ity and divine
origin ­were confirmed. She had indeed achieved the seemingly impossible, at
least in the eyes of ­those who could easily have branded her a fraud or a demo-
niac: she not only had become a genuine holy bilocator but had managed to
earn praise for it, unlike her two contemporaries and fellow Franciscans Luisa
de Carrión and Francisco de la Fuente. A few weeks ­after her ordeal, she wrote
to King Philip: “The Inquisition came . . . ​and they examined me concerning
events from my early years . . . ​and they have proceeded with ­great piety and dis-
cretion. . . . ​I have come away exceedingly fond of the Holy Tribunal and the
purity of their proceedings; I only worry about my answers, for I ­don’t know if
they ­were correct, due to my solitude and to not being able to get some advice.”33
A week l­ater, King Philip replied: “I am most grateful for the secret with which
you have entrusted me, and feel sorry for the hardships God gives you, but the
truth never fails, and all t­hese dark clouds are only ­there to allow the light of
your virtue to shine more clearly.” Then he let María know that he was in touch
with her superior general, ­Father Manero, and that he had already informed him
of the visit paid to her by the Inquisition and was very pleased with her.34 Know-
ing that she had the support of not only the crown but also the Franciscan or-
der was something María needed badly at this time.
She had just gained ac­cep­tance for her bilocations, but ­doing the same
for her other impossible feat—­serving as the Virgin Mary’s scribe—­would not
be so easy. Her massive manuscript of The Mystical City of God, which she had
been ordered to burn, could easily become a greater prob­lem than her biloca-
tions. In that same letter to the king just cited, she closed by saying: “The In-
quisitors said nothing about my history of the Queen of Heaven.” Then, referring
to a copy of that text secretly owned by the king, she said with some relief: “They
must not know about it.” Her final lines bristle with anxiety about her Mystical
City: “­Until this storm calms down, it’s best for it to remain hidden. May God’s
­will be done in all ­things, and may He guard me and ­favor Your Highness.”35
But how was it that King Philip IV came to have that copy of María’s book,
and why should he have chosen to keep it hidden? To fully appreciate the sig-
nificance of Sor María’s boldness and her escape from condemnation despite
all her impossible claims, one must consider how t­ hose claims affected King
 the trouble with maría 235

Philip IV, the highest authority in María’s Spain, and how he drew the line be-
tween the pos­si­ble and the impossible.

The King’s Spiritual Advisor

Sor María’s account of her bilocations to New Spain did more than attract the
Inquisition’s attention: it also captured King Philip IV’s imagination. The mon-
arch was in dire straits when he first heard of Sor María.36 His personal life was
a disaster: he was an insatiable adulterer who eventually fathered at least thirty
illegitimate ­children and had sired two heirs to the throne who had died in child-
hood. Philip was haunted by his sins. His reign was an even worse mess than
his personal life. Constantly at war—­this was the period of the Thirty Years’
War—he had seen Spain go bankrupt several times, despite the constant flow
of gold and silver from Amer­i­ca.37 Controlled by his chief advisor and mentor,
the Count-­Duke of Olivares, Philip was ambivalent t­oward his failures yet felt
incapable of assuming charge.38 To make m
­ atters worse, Catalonia and Portu-
gal had both rebelled against his rule in 1640, and soon enough dissidents in
Andalusia, Aragon, and Naples would attempt to follow the same path.39
Philip IV would be enthralled by Sor María in a profound way, and he es-
tablished a most unusual relationship with her. In 1643, on his way to the front
against the French and the Catalans, still reeling from the recent resignation of
his prime minister and alter ego the Count-­Duke of Olivares, Philip IV made a
detour and went to see Sor María in person. From that moment ­until their
deaths—­which occurred only four months apart—­the king and the nun would
engage in constant contact, writing 300 letters to each other. In essence, Sor
María became a nonsacramental confessor. Though she could not absolve him
of his many sins, she became a therapist of sorts, a compassionate listener, a
wise yet powerless and totally unthreatening advisor. He poured out his heart
and soul to her; she counseled him and assured him of her constant prayers. He
would leave a wide blank right margin in his letters. She would fill in that mar-
gin with her response and send the letter back to him. Over and over.
As Philip neared death, he inserted into his ­will the following instructions
about the book into which all the letters ­were bound: “Since I maintained a
long-­term correspondence with M
­ other Sor María de Ágreda, finding in her
venerable letters im­mense consolation and perhaps discovering through them
­things unattainable by ­human intelligence . . . ​I entrust as much as pos­si­
ble to my successor the protection and conservation of the said book wherever
 236 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

it may be, for it is full of sacred doctrine, love, wisdom, advice, and celestial
documents.”40
No one has ever considered it an exaggeration to say that Sor María had the
best connections pos­si­ble. Her relationship with the king not only assured that
the Inquisition would approach her with g­ reat caution but also gave her the
utmost clout. Ultimately, she could hound the king into pressuring Pope Alexander
VII to issue a decree defending the Immaculate Conception in 1661. Ultimately, she
could act with the utmost daring in the spiritual realm and claim that she was the
conduit for special revelations from the Virgin Mary, especially concerning that
much-­contested issue of the Immaculate Conception. Her biography of the Virgin
Mary—­ostensibly a revelation from on high—­could easily have been interpreted
as a fifth Gospel and the ultimate affront to Catholic orthodoxy. Some at that
time might have thought it impossible for it not to be resoundingly condemned
and consigned to oblivion. But it never was. And how that was pos­si­ble needs some
explaining.

Sor María, Ecstatic Scribe, Fifth Evangelist

As if claiming hundreds of transcontinental and transoceanic bilocations and
writing hundreds of letters to the king was not audacious enough, Sor María
dared to claim an intimate relationship with the ­Mother of God. Even more
audacious, she dared to assume the mantle of a heavenly scribe like the four
evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and to write a history of salvation—­a
fifth Gospel of sorts—­massively longer than the four canonical Gospels com-
bined (over 710,000 words versus 64,427). This text, which María called The
History and Life of the Virgin Mary—­and some Franciscans came to call a “sec-
ond Bible”41—­was published five years a­ fter her death, in 1670, and given an
elaborate baroque title, the short version of which is

The Mystical City of God, Miracle of his Omnipotence, and Mystery of his Grace,
Divine History and Life of the Virgin M
­ other of God, Our Queen and Mistress,
the Most Holy, Restorer of Eve’s Fault and Mediatrix of Grace, Revealed in ­these
Latter Centuries by the Same Lady to her Servant, Sor María de Jesús, Abbess of
the Convent of the Immaculate Conception in the Town of Ágreda.42

This multivolume behemoth of a text eclipsed all other biographies of the Virgin
Mary, a type of devotional lit­er­a­ture that was very popu­lar at the time.43 It gained
instant notoriety, eliciting mixed responses ranging from praise and devotion
 the trouble with maría 237

to puzzlement and condemnation. Translated into Latin and ­every major Eu­ro­
pean vernacular language, it would eventually run into over a hundred editions
but prove as troublesome to church authorities as María’s bilocations—­and even
more controversial.44
The premise of this book, which could justifiably be called The Gospel
of the Virgin Mary, is that the M
­ other of God has chosen to reveal to the world
through María de Ágreda many t­hings that w
­ ere intentionally left out of the
New Testament, thus granting her a unique status alongside the four evange-
lists, especially the apostle John, the author of the gospel that bears his name
as well as of the Book of Revelation that promises the arrival of the Heavenly
Jerusalem45 at the end of history (fig. 36). Sor María’s book is an all-­out assault
on Protestant theology, ontology, metaphysics, epistemology, and hermeneutics
and could easily horrify all Lutheran, Reformed, or Radical divines or drive them
mad with rage. In it, she declares that God sent six angels to guide her, followed
by eight ­others, who purified her and led her into His presence, and that she
then beheld the Blessed Virgin, as she is described in the Book of Revelation,46
and was able to glimpse the broad sweep of the Virgin’s life, from conception to
her assumption into heaven.
This massive biography covers the lives of the Virgin’s parents, Joachim
and Anne; the conception and birth of the Virgin; her childhood; her betrothal
to Joseph; the birth of Jesus; the childhood of Jesus and his ministry, passion,
death, and resurrection; the birth of the Christian church and the first fifty or
sixty years of its history, in which the Virgin Mary plays a leading role; and, fi­
nally, the Virgin’s death and her triumphal reception in heaven. The book abounds
in details large and small, many of which cannot be found anywhere in Chris-
tian lit­er­a­ture, such as the exact number of angels who escorted the Virgin Mary
during ­every major event in her life, the transcript of the sentence pronounced
by Pontius Pilate at the trial of Jesus,47 and the text of a letter written by Saint
Peter to the Virgin Mary.48 The Mystical City is more than a mere narrative: it
also includes copious lessons and exhortations ostensibly provided by the Vir-
gin Mary herself through her faithful scribe, María de Ágreda. Obviously, Sor
María was not at all respectful of the Protestant princi­ple of sola scriptura. Lit-
erally and figuratively, she embodied its denial.
While María’s book does not contradict the four Gospels and in fact em-
ploys them as the basic framework of much of her narrative, she does claim that
the Virgin Mary has revealed many details not contained in them. Many of ­these
concern the life of Jesus and the apostles, but the vast majority concern the Virgin
Figure 36. Sor María de Ágreda is paired up with Saint John the Evangelist, who
was also traditionally believed to be the author of the Book of Revelation in the
New Testament, in which the arrival of the New Jerusalem is prophesied. This
image seeks to establish the Virgin Mary’s status as co-­redemptrix of humanity
and Sor María’s status as a fifth evangelist.
 the trouble with maría 239

Mary herself, and the main thrust of the narrative is the proclamation of the
Virgin’s intense and indispensable role in salvation history. In brief, the revela-
tions contained in the 2,800 pages of The Mystical City could be summed up in
one proposition: “The Virgin Mary is coredeemer of the ­human race.” Simply
put: “No Mary, no salvation.”
Sor María’s text is a historical narrative, but its context is theological, and
its intent and horizon are quasi-­apocalyptic: the title itself, The Mystical City of
God, is an allusion to the New Jerusalem that descends from the new heavens
to the new earth in the Book of Revelation 21:1–3, “God’s dwelling place with
­people.” The New Jerusalem, then, is a meta­phor for the body of the Virgin
Mary—­
a divinized h
­uman body that gave birth to the redeeming God
incarnate—­which makes her co-­redemptrix of all humanity or, as the title of
the book proclaims, the very “mystical” city of God herself, in whom God dwells
in his fullness.
Moreover, the reason given by God and the Virgin to Sor María for sud-
denly revealing truths about the distant past 1,600 years a­ fter Jesus Christ
walked the earth is also apocalyptical in dimension. María’s world, God declares,
is worse off than it was when He became incarnate in the Virgin Mary’s womb:
it is a world on the brink of annihilation and sorely in need of redemption. “For
now, this is the hour and the opportune time to let men know the just cause of
my anger,” says God to Sor María, “and they are now justly charged and con-
vinced of their guilt . . . ​now that the world has reached this wretched ­century . . . ​
when eternal night approaches for the wicked.”49
Significantly, the remedy that God proposes to María is not turning to
Christ or paying closer attention to the Gospels—as Protestants would expect
to hear—­but turning to the Virgin Mary and relying more intensely than ever
on her intercession. Quoting God the ­Father directly, Sor María writes: “I want
to make known to mortals how much her intercession is worth, who brought
them redemption from their sins by giving mortal life in her womb to the im-
mortal God.”50 This is an aggressive Mariology, defiantly anti-­Protestant even if
not consciously so. It is an exaltation of the Virgin Mary that reflects her place
in popu­lar and monastic Catholic piety and also enhances it, providing a theo-
logical matrix for that enhancement. And it is a Mariology that springs from
within, so to speak, from the very depths of female monastic spirituality and
mysticism, rather than from the battlefield of scholarly male-­dominated cleri-
cal polemics. This Mariology is theologically sophisticated, in its own way, but
as Teresa of Avila might have put it, it is definitely not the work of letrados,
 240 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

learned men, although some critics would ­later contest the book’s authorship,
arguing that its ­handling of biblical texts and scholastic theology is far too dex-
terous for any w
­ oman.51 Its wellspring is mystical rather than scholastic, and
its conduit is a nun from the boondocks with no formal education. It ­matters
­little—or not at all—­that she has never met a Protestant, much less debated
with one. Her message is thoroughly Catholic and, ­whether she knows it or not,
devastatingly anti-­Protestant.
Sor María’s message is at once historical and ahistorical. A post-­Renaissance
­woman who has obviously received a good education beyond the confines of
any school—­although she was once described as a “­simple rustic” by a dismis-
sive priest—­María shows ample acquaintance with the Bible, some apocryphal
texts and some of the ­fathers, some scholastic theology, and a fair amount of
early church history, and she is painfully aware of how essential it is for her rev-
elations to be set in a historical perspective. Nonetheless, she does so by denying
one of the central tenets of the Re­nais­sance and the Protestant Reformation: the
privileging of the New Testament and the Apostolic Age. That was a special time,
she admits, but so is her own day and age. Revelation is not l­imited to the Bible
or the early church. God speaks to her, and Sor María quotes him:

I did not reveal ­these mysteries in the primitive Church ­because they are so
magnificent, that the faithful would have been lost in scrutinizing and ad-
miring them at a time when it was more necessary to establish firmly the
law of grace and of the Gospel. Although all such mysteries and the Gospel
are in perfect harmony with each other, h
­ uman ignorance might have re-
coiled at their magnitude and suffered doubt, when faith in the incarnation
and redemption and the precepts of the new law of the Gospel ­were still in
their infancy. . . . ​If the world was then not yet capable of fully obeying the
law of grace and fully assenting to faith in the Son, so much less was it pre-
pared to be introduced into the mysteries of His ­Mother and to faith in
her. And now the need for ­these mysteries is so much greater, that I am com-
pelled to reveal them.52

Lest anyone doubt Sor María’s role in conveying previously hidden mys-
teries about the Virgin Mary’s role in redemption, God adds: “I do not intend
that your descriptions and declarations of the life of the Blessed Virgin ­shall
be mere opinions or contemplations, but certain truth. . . . ​Thus speaks the
Lord, God Almighty!” And what is revealed by God and the Virgin Mary to
María is astounding. Relatively ­little of the narrative of María’s text—­which
 the trouble with maría 241

begins before the birth of the Virgin Mary and extends past her life on
earth—­can be found in the New Testament. The amount of detail provided
by María is overwhelming but perhaps a clear reflection of how much nonbib-
lical tradition and legends from apocryphal texts could be fused with biblical
accounts and lively, imaginative piety in a convent. Throughout the entire
text, the Virgin Mary is the main focus, naturally, and the main thrust of the
narrative is to highlight the crucial role she played as co-­redemptrix with her
son, the God-­man Jesus.
María claimed she began to receive the inspiration for her History and
Life of the Virgin Mary in 1627, shortly before she was elected abbess. But she
did not begin writing u
­ ntil 1637 and did so somewhat reluctantly, she said, in
obedience to the command of her confessor Francisco Andrés de la Torre and
other superiors. “I dragged my feet and resisted obeying every­one for many years;
not daring to undertake a task that was so far above my powers.”53 As soon as
she began writing, all self-­doubt seemed to vanish. In the first twenty days, we
are told, she wrote enough text to fill 326 printed pages. This writing spree was
inseparable from her mystical ecstasies, which began to intensify as revelations
poured forth from heaven. “I felt a change within me and a highly spiritualized
state of being,” she explained. “A new light was given to my understanding, which
communicated and infused into it a knowledge of all t­hings in God. . . . ​This
knowledge is a light that illumines: holy, sweet, pure, subtle, penetrating, splen-
did, steady, and clear, causing love of good and hatred of evil.”54 Publication was
not the immediate objective. This was a risky venture in Spain, a land where
the Inquisition kept a close eye on anyone who might be in league with the devil
or bent on “inventing the sacred,” as the Holy Office preferred to call the nasty
business of fraudulent mysticism. María’s very careful insertion of the statement
about the “love of the good and hatred of evil” infused by her visions was a shield
against any such suspicions about her and perhaps also against apprehensions
of her own. As she would confess much l­ater, she was often assailed by doubts,
which she attributed to demons. “­There ­isn’t a single word I wrote down that
the Devil ­didn’t contradict with his relentless and obstinate temptations,” she
said, adding, “His most common trick was to tell me that I ­imagined every­thing
I wrote or merely in­ven­ted it, naturally; at other times he would say that what
I wrote was false and simply crafted to deceive ­others. His hatred for this book
was so ­great that in order to obliterate it, that dragon stooped to saying that it
was nothing more than my meditations, at best, or a mere side effect of my or-
dinary prayers.”55
 242 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

María’s initial burst of ecstatic writing slowed down in the following

months, but she kept writing in fits and starts over the next six years, whenever
she could, ­under the direction of her confessor Francisco Andrés de la Torre. All
along, she claimed to be assailed by demons who filled her with self-­doubt and
shaken by fellow nuns and some priests who urged her to stop. By 1643, when
she began her relationship with King Philip IV, Sor María had finished the work.
It was unlike anything ever written by any Christian since the first c­ entury, ­either
male or female, and in the very tight monastic circles in which it was read it
caused as much consternation as excitement. Fortunately for María, King Philip
was among ­those who ­were enthralled by the text, which was copied and sent to
him in three installments between October 1643 and July 1646. Unfortunately,
not every­one agreed with the king. Sometime in late 1646, while ­Father de la
Torre was away attending a meeting in Toledo, María was assigned a temporary
confessor who thought nuns should never be allowed to write and ordered her
to burn every­thing she had written. Ever the obedient nun, and ever worried
about the trou­ble this book could cause for her and her convent, María inciner-
ated the ­whole manuscript, along with other writings of hers. When ­Father de
la Torre returned, he was angered by what had happened, reprimanded María,
and ordered her to begin writing the ­whole text again from scratch.56 María
obeyed, as always, but F
­ ather de la Torre died in March 1647, before she could
make much headway. No longer ­under his direction and feeling bereft, María
paused her writing. Then, fearful of what might ensue when her alleged involve-
ment in the conspiracy of the Duke of Hijar brought her ­under the Inquisition’s
watchful eye again in 1649, she burned what­ever she had written.57
Of course, María knew that a copy of her text had been sent to King Philip
and that it survived. That copy would remain in the king’s hands u
­ ntil his death
as a well-­kept secret out of every­one’s reach, including Sor María’s. And know-
ing how fond the king was of María and of her History of the Virgin Mary—­
which he claimed to have read many times—­those rare few who knew of its
existence never dared to ask for its destruction while Philip was alive. Late in
her life, however, María apparently asked her hagiographer José Jiménez Sa-
maniego to swear that he would get rid of it, if pos­si­ble. In 1682, seventeen
years a­ fter María’s and King Philip’s passing, fearing that keeping the manuscript
hidden from the Inquisition would hurt María’s chances of being canonized, he
kept his promise and burned all of it, save for the title page.58
For ten years ­after this traumatic event, Sor María pressed on, living her
life as if she had never written an earthshaking sacred text, balancing her
 the trouble with maría 243

ecstatic trances with her duties as abbess, and enduring that brief second en-
counter with the Inquisition in 1650, which placed a stamp of approval on her
impossible miracles. A
­ fter a well-­deserved but all too brief sabbatical leave from
her duties as abbess, during which she sought to deepen her mystical life, she
was reelected to the post in 1655 and assigned a new confessor, Andrés de Fuen-
mayor, who immediately ordered her to rewrite her History of the Virgin Mary.
So the obedient Sor María began writing this book for a third time and
wrote feverishly for the next five years, in part from memory—­simply rewriting
what she had burned—­and in part from her constant encounters with the Vir-
gin Mary, which, according to her, had not only continued but actually intensi-
fied. On May 6, 1660, she finished writing it. And she managed to do this while
struggling with her frail health, writing other texts, advising the king, and ­running
her convent of the Purísima Concepción as efficiently as ever. To ensure that
every­one knew why she had dared to write this text, to reiterate her obedience
and abject submission to the church, and to proclaim its heavenly origins, she
had this to say in its final paragraph:

I have written this Divine History u

­ nder obedience to the prelates and con-
fessors who govern my soul, assuring myself by this means that it is God’s
­will that I should write it and obey his Most Blessed M
­ other who for many
years has ordered me to do so. And though every­thing written has been sub-
mitted to my confessors’ censorship and judgement, though ­there is not a
single word that they have not seen and discussed with me, even so I now
submit it again to their better judgement, and above all, to the correction
of the Holy Roman Church to whose censorship and teachings I declare
myself subject as her d
­ aughter . . . ​­because I want to live and die obedient
to it.59

Yet ­after proclaiming such profound humility and submission to the

church, María penned a missive to her ­sisters in which she boasted of having a
vision in which she received ultimate approval for her impossible book from
God Himself. In this vision María found herself raised to the highest level any
­human can ever hope to reach, facing the royal throne of the divine Trinity,
where she beheld God the ­Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as well as the Virgin
Mary, who sat at the right hand of the Son, all surrounded by angels. Then she
saw the F
­ ather pull out from his chest an “im­mensely beautiful” closed book
that he handed over to the Son, to whom He said, “This book is mine and every­
thing it contains pleases me and has my approval.” Then, ­after showing ­great
 244 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

appreciation for it, the Son and the Holy Spirit passed the book on to the Vir-
gin Mary, who received it with “incomparable gladness and plea­sure.” As all this
was unfolding, María was overwhelmed by the dazzling beauty of the book and
wondered what its contents might be. Aware of María’s curiosity, the Virgin Mary
then asked her: “Do you want to know what book this is which you have just
seen?” The Virgin then opened the book and showed it to María, and she was
able to see that it was none other than the history of the Virgin’s life that she,
María, had penned. “You most certainly w
­ ill not have to worry anymore,” the
Virgin said to María, reassuringly.60 Once again, as she had done continually
throughout her multivolume History, María abased and exalted herself si­mul­ta­
neously, expressing a paradoxical mix of fear, humility, submission, confidence,
and well-­camouflaged pride, for one final time.
During the final five years of Sor María’s life, this second complete manu-
script version of her massive History of the Virgin Mary began to make the rounds
within learned theological circles, especially among Franciscans. As her health
deteriorated and death approached, Sor María had no inkling of what would
become of this remarkable yet potentially alarming text. For all she knew, right
up to the moment of death, she could have been commanded to burn the man-
uscript again for a third time. And although she was certain that King Philip
would jealously guard his copy of the first version, she also knew that he, like
her, did not have long to live and that once dead, the fate of his belongings would
become uncertain.
On March 3, 1665, María received a letter from King Philip. Her failing
health prevented her from replying ­until the 27th of March. This would be the
last exchange between them. Nearly two months l­ater, on May 24, Sor María
would die, a­ fter predicting her own death and preparing for it rigorously and
perfectly. Her w
­ hole life had been dedicated to perfection and sinlessness—­that
goal so fiercely deemed impossible by Protestants—­and according to eyewit-
nesses, her death was as perfect as one might expect from someone who was
headed straight for heaven. The fact that her corpse would resist decomposi-
tion and remain intact for centuries would be interpreted as confirmation of
that judgment. Less than four months l­ater, on September 17, King Philip would
die at the palace complex of the Escorial, in the same austere bedchamber in
which his grand­father had died, adjacent to the main altar of the royal basilica.
He would be entombed beneath that bedchamber and altar, along with his imme-
diate ancestors, in that remote hideaway where he had spent long hours ruing
 the trouble with maría 245

his sins, fretting over his kingdom’s steep decline, and begging for Sor María’s
prayers and advice.

Reception of “The Mystical City of God”

In 1668, three years a­ fter the deaths of María and King Philip IV, King Charles
II—­Philip’s severely handicapped son—­took a significant step in the promotion
of María’s canonization by asking two prominent theologians to review The Mys-
tical City. One of them, Bishop Diego de Silva, said he “marveled at its excel-
lence,” confessing, “I began as a critic, but I finished as an admirer.” The second
examiner, Andrés Mendo, a Jesuit, was equally enthusiastic: “Sor Mariá’s writ-
ing,” he said, “enlightens the mind with a knowledge of the most sublime truths
and inflames the heart with divine love.”61 Their opinions helped launch the
publication of the book in 1670, a mere five years a­ fter María’s death. This first
edition included the biography of María written by José Jiménez Samaniego,
along with all the requisite ecclesiastical permissions and lavish praise from sev-
eral theologians, including ­Fathers Silva and Mendo. The pro­cess of canonizing
María began in earnest in 1673, when Pope Clement X declared her “venerable”
and called for the creation of a commission to ­handle her case.
María’s canonization seemed assured to her devotees, especially ­because
her corpse—­like t­ hose of many saints, including Teresa of Avila—­refused to de-
compose.62 But her Mystical City, which had to be taken into account for her
canonization, proved to be a polarizing text, evincing praise and veneration from
some readers and vitriolic opposition from o
­ thers.63 Objections to its publica-
tion w
­ ere numerous, not just b
­ ecause of its central claim of being a special rev-
elation from the Virgin Mary herself, but also b
­ ecause of specific issues in the
text itself, including the one found most offensive by many theologians—­
especially Dominicans—­who w
­ ere opposed to accepting the Immaculate Con-
ception as sound doctrine. T
­ hese “Maculists,” as opponents of the doctrine ­were
known (as opposed to the “Immaculists” who promoted it), wasted no time de-
nouncing María to the Inquisition.
In 1672, about the same time that her canonization pro­cess was launched,
the inquisitor general in Spain ordered that all copies of The Mystical City be
removed from circulation to reexamine its contents, due to ­these denunciations
and the fact that some early editions had been published without the requisite
permissions. At the same time, Maculist opponents of the book denounced it
 246 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

to the Roman Inquisition as well, setting yet another investigation in motion

outside of Spain.64 The end result of this Roman inquiry was a huge setback
for María’s cause: in June 1681 Pope Innocent XI condemned The Mystical City
and placed it on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. The response from Spain was
predictable. Thanks largely to the efforts of María’s hagiographer Samaniego,
who defended the text’s orthodoxy, and to the pressure put on Pope Innocent
by King Charles II of Spain, the book was removed from the Index a few months
­later. But the damage inflicted on María’s reputation was difficult to ignore, es-
pecially b
­ ecause a version of the Index printed in Venice continued to include
her book u
­ ntil 1713, when the lapse fi­nally caught Rome’s attention, and the
publisher was forced to retract its inclusion.65
Meanwhile, ­after 1681 the Supreme Council of the Inquisition in Spain
and the Roman Inquisition continued to receive denunciations about The
Mystical City’s content and pleas to stop its circulation on the grounds that t­ here
­were “impediments” to consider. ­These impediments fell into two categories.
The first ­were reparos, or questions about specific doctrinal issues in the text;
the second w
­ ere fundamentos, or objections to its claim of being a revelation
written by a ­woman who was divinely appointed for the task. Unsurprisingly,
most of the fundamentos ­were issued by Dominicans who objected to the doc-
trine of the Immaculate Conception. Nonetheless, in late December 1685 the
Inquisition decreed that The Mystical City was ­free of error and could be circu-
lated and read as a “private revelation,” the contents of which no faithful Cath-
olic was obligated to believe.66 As the Supreme Council put it, “The work is
judged to be worthy of being read, as are ­others of a similar quality and ­those
that treat the private revelations of men of exceeding virtue.” And when it came
to the author herself, the Inquisition ruled that María was “incapable of active
or passive deceit, due to the worthiness of her many virtues.” In addition, how-
ever, the Inquisition decreed that only the first edition of 1670 was acceptable
since all ­others lacked the proper permissions.67
Having been removed from the Roman Index and approved by the Inqui-
sition, publication of new editions of The Mystical City intensified, along with
translations, but the text continued to be closely examined by clerics in Spain
and elsewhere, as well as by several prominent theological faculties. The French
translation gave rise to a heated discussion at the Sorbonne in Paris, which
led to a vote on its orthodoxy. In 1696, a majority of ­those who examined it
(102 out of 152), voted to condemn it. This condemnation stressed the fol-
lowing points: that it gave too much weight to the revelations ostensibly re-
 the trouble with maría 247

ceived by its author;68 that many of its revelations ­were new and contrary to
what the apostles of Jesus would have supported; that it upheld the “adoration”
of the Virgin Mary, which should only be given to God, rather than the “ven-
eration” that is proper for h
­ uman saints; that it referred all of the Virgin Mary’s
virtues and graces to her Immaculate Conception; that it attributed too much
power and control over the church to her; that it overstressed her role as co-­
redemptrix, ­Mother of Mercy, and mediatrix of grace; that it gave a too graphic
and “indecent” description of the sexual intercourse between the Virgin Mary’s
parents; and that it contained too many other imaginary and scandalous de-
tails.69 “This book does not lead to edification,” complained the Sorbonne
theologians opposed to it, linking it to heretics old and new: “It leads instead
to the destruction of Christian piety; it resurrects the errors of Arius, Nesto-
rius, Pelagius, Vigilantius, Photius, Baius, Jansen, and the Predestinarians; and
its author is impudent, sacrilegious, blasphemous, idolatrous, a Pelagian, a Qui-
etist, and a Lutheran.”70
In contrast, and in response to such charges, several universities approved
the text, including t­hose of Salamanca, Alcalá, and Oviedo in Spain; Louvain
in the Spanish Netherlands; Coimbra in Portugal; and Toulouse in France. One
of the closing statements in its defense by the Louvain faculty in 1715 echoes
the previous approvals by other universities and sums up its position by simply
emphasizing the heroic virtues of Sor María rather than her theology: “Fi­nally,
this text cannot be attributed to the devil b
­ ecause from start to finish it breathes
nothing but humility, patience, love, and the suffering of hardships.”71
Despite the weight carried by all its supporters, the text’s opponents could
not be silenced, however, and it continued to elicit condemnations, especially
­because of its claims about new private revelations and its strident confirmation
of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which was attributed to the
controversial medieval Franciscan theologian John Duns Scotus rather than to
María herself.72 Some critics even argued that María could not be the sole au-
thor of the text due to its theological sophistication. No ­woman could ever
­handle complex subjects so expertly, they argued. It was simply impossible.73 Con-
sequently, The Mystical City was denounced in innumerable ways, perhaps most
aptly abridged into a single paragraph by a modern biographer of Sor María:
“False, erroneous; presumptuous; scandalous; containing ­matter contrary to the
Church’s teaching; fostering heterodoxy; in part downright heretical . . . ​deroga-
tory to the Church’s authority; betraying anachronisms in religious thought; tell-
ing of revelations contradicting t­hose of other mystics; and also revelations
 248 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

that are demonstrably improbable; smelling of legendary nonsense; disfigured

by passages offensive to chaste persons.”74 By the end of the seventeenth ­century,
bickering over Sor María’s texts had created two opposing camps within the
Catholic Church, each equally tenacious in its support or condemnation but also
equally unable to achieve total victory. And this fracturing had a negative effect
not only on the status of the text—­despite its many editions and translations—­
but also on the cause of María’s canonization.75
The Sorbonne’s condemnation might have been deemed excessive by some,
but ­there is no denying that The Mystical City worried some clerics and theolo-
gians in Spain and the rest of the Catholic world as well. Four years before the
Sorbonne’s condemnation, as part of the procedures for the cause of María’s
canonization, Pope Innocent XII had already ordered a review of the condemna-
tion issued in 1681 by his pre­de­ces­sor Pope Innocent XI. Then, in 1729, ­those in
charge of María’s canonization erred on the side of caution by requesting yet
another review of The Mystical City, hoping a new positive verdict would clear the
path for her cause definitively. Their plan backfired, however. Pope Benedict XIII
approved a new commission to examine the book but died in 1730 before he
could appoint its members. His successor, Clement XII, named six cardinals and
three theologians to carry out the review, but ­these men never completed their
task before Clement’s death in 1740, and all their voluminous paperwork was
passed on to his successor, Benedict XIV, who extended the review.76
Meanwhile, the ­bitter squabble between supporters and opponents of
María and her text intensified, and the ceaseless printing of pro-­María (Agre-
dista) and anti-­María (Antiagredista) texts only served to place The Mystical City
in a poor light. What is arguably the most ardent and influential of all Anti-
agredista texts appeared in 1744. “On Private Revelations, Visions and Appari-
tions,” written by German theologian Eusebius Amort, eviscerated María’s claims
of private revelations and stirred up a torrent of responses from Agredistas.77
In return, Amort continued firing away at them,78 and they kept firing back ad
nauseam.79 Consequently, as Benedict XIV’s review crawled forward, new issues
intensified the controversy, including the question of ­whether or not María was
the sole author of The Mystical City. This question was raised by critics who
found it totally impossible for an uneducated nun, or any ­woman whatsoever,
to engage in sophisticated theological arguments in f­avor of the Immaculate
Conception. The text, they charged, surely must have been authored—at least
in part—by some male theologian familiar with scholastic theology and the work
of John Duns Scotus.80
 the trouble with maría 249

In 1757, the outcome of Benedict XIV’s lengthy review pro­cess was a dis-
appointment to Agredistas. Even though it decreed that María was indeed the
author of this text and ­others attributed to her, it failed to ­settle the issue of its
orthodoxy conclusively. Even worse, shortly before he died in 1758, Benedict
XIV wrote a confidential “Judicium,” or judgment, which was to be passed on to
his successors. In this document, Pope Benedict advised ­future pontiffs to with-
hold approval or disapproval of The Mystical City and to keep closed the cause
of María’s canonization. In 1773, Pope Clement XIV—­a Franciscan and staunch
supporter of the Immaculate Conception—­made one more attempt to dispel
all suspicion about María and her book by appointing yet another commission
to examine the text, but its members could not agree on a verdict. Consequently,
Clement XIV chose to reiterate the advice given by his pre­de­ces­sor Benedict
XIV, ordering that total silence be observed on the issue of María’s Mystical City
and that her canonization pro­cess be halted in­def­initely. Ironically, several wit-
nesses reported that Clement XIV was visited and comforted at his deathbed
in Rome on September 22, 1744, by Alphonsus Liguori, founder of the Redemp-
torist order, who on that day also happened to be in ecstasy at the episcopal
palace of Sant’Agata de’Goti, in Campania, about 120 miles to the south, in the
presence of several other witnesses. In other words, the d
­ ying pope who con-
signed Sor María’s canonization to limbo was supposedly visited by a bilocat-
ing saint who would be canonized relatively quickly, a mere ninety-­five years
­later.81
Unwilling to abandon their cause, María’s devotees challenged this papal
decision. King Charles III of Spain and the Franciscan order pressured Rome to
keep the canonization pro­cess alive and to separate it from the seemingly endless
bickering over The Mystical City, but Pope Clement’s successor, Pius VI, refused
to cave in to their demands. In 1778, the Spanish ambassador to Rome reported
that Pope Pius found such a suggestion illogical, for the “two branches”—that
is, the text and its author—­were “indivisible” and “in and of themselves should
be seen as essentially connected.”82
Skepticism about María’s impossible claims was inevitable, even among
­people of faith, due to their enormity, and this is why skeptics of vari­ous stripes
had irritated María’s Catholic devotees ever since she had first faced the Inqui-
sition in 1635. But by 1778, ­those devotees had plenty of reason for viewing
Pope Pius VI as an ally rather than an e­ nemy. His skepticism was tame com-
pared to that of all sorts of irreligious materialists who considered María’s claims
outrageously impossible. Such skeptics could do much more than simply poke
 250 ­here  . . .  and ­here t o

fun at the simple-­minded credulity of Agredistas; they could also denounce

their beliefs offensive, or even dangerous. One such skeptic who had once em-
braced a clerical ­career—­Giacomo de Casanova—­gives us a good glimpse into this
new world.
When the Venetian Inquisition hauled in the infamous womanizer Casa-
nova in 1755 for his offenses against religion and common decency, the jailers
handed him a copy of the first volume of Sor María’s Mystical City, hoping it
would help him see the error of his ways. Although he was a former seminarian,
Casanova had never heard of this book or its author, but he was curious enough
to read some of it. ­After escaping from prison, he would say that it gave him
nightmares and that all he could find in it was “every­thing that could be cre-
ated by the extravagant and overheated imagination of an extremely devout
Spanish virgin who was given to melancholy, trapped in a convent, and guided
by ignorant and flattering confessors.” Even worse, he added: “She tried to cloak
all of her chimerical and monstrous visions with respectability by calling them
‘revelations.’ ”83
Oddly enough, a few years ­later the coach in which Casanova was riding
on his way to Madrid unexpectedly made a rest stop in Ágreda.84 But this un-
planned visit to María’s hometown did not change his opinion about her or The
Mystical City. Instead, he sneered at the coincidence of finding himself ­there:
“The Spanish w
­ oman’s book is just perfect for driving any man insane, especially
if he is given this poison while he is imprisoned in solitary confinement, with
nothing e­ lse to do,” he said.85 “Far from increasing or exciting in my mind a fervor
or a zeal for religion, the work tempted me to regard as nonsense every­thing that
pertains to mysticism, and to dogma too.”86
Casanova and many of his contemporaries now weighed all impossible
claims on a dif­fer­ent scale, for faith itself was ­under siege, along with the belief
system that made that faith pos­si­ble. Yet attempts to restart the cause for María’s
canonization continued for many generations beyond Casanova’s. And re­sis­tance
to them within the Catholic Church continued to be driven by the same internal
skepticism as before, only now more intense and painfully aware of the possibility
of ridicule as Western culture became less and less receptive to religion. Unsur-
prisingly, all subsequent attempts to resurrect the cause for María failed, even
­after 1854 when Pope Pius IX proclaimed the Immaculate Conception to be
dogma that all Catholics should believe. Much to the dismay of María’s devotees,
the next pope, Leo XIII, continued to insist that no pronouncements should be
 the trouble with maría 251

made about María and her Mystical City, and as pleas for a reopening of her
case intensified, he doggedly renewed that ban in 1887.
In the twentieth ­century, despite continued papal opposition to María’s
canonization, devotion to her continued to increase worldwide.87 In 1912, the
publication of George Blatter’s En­glish translation of The Mystical City sparked
a revitalization of interest in María’s cause among Catholics in the United States.
By 1954, on the one hundredth anniversary of the proclamation of the Immac-
ulate Conception, some dedicated American Agredistas began to push aggres-
sively for a reopening of her case. T
­ hese efforts received a boost in 1992, when
medieval theologian John Duns Scotus—­who had always been linked to María
and her Mystical City—­was beatified by Pope John Paul II. Emboldened by this
turn of events, Agredistas in the United States and Spain, especially, redoubled
their efforts to move forward her canonization and the recognition of her
Mystical City as thoroughly orthodox.
­These efforts have yet to succeed. The cardinal in charge of canonizations,
Joseph Ratzinger, who would go on to assume the papacy as Benedict XVI, is-
sued an ambiguous ruling in 1999 requiring further review of the case. Since
canonizations can move at a glacial pace—­especially if they involve anyone who
might spark controversy—­not much has happened since, despite many renewed
efforts by Agredistas.88 The review never seems to end.
But Sor María’s twenty-­first-­century devotees refuse to consider it impos-
sible for her not to be canonized. A
­ fter all, as they see it, Sor María knew how to
astonish the world all too well and how to overcome impossibility better than
anyone ­else in her day.
This page intentionally left blank
 pa r t t h r e e

Malevolent

Angels can perform prodigies, they cannot perform miracles.

—Saint Thomas Aquinas,
Quaestiones Disputatae de Potentia Dei
This page intentionally left blank
 8. Tricksters of the Impossible

A nun who meddles in politics cannot be a saint.

—King Philip II of Spain

Too much of a good t­ hing, as every­one knows, can be bad. Especially too much
of the miraculous, for when the impossible becomes constantly pos­si­ble, the
boundary between the sacred and the mundane can easily blur, divine splendor
can dwindle, and the awesome can become banal, or even trivial. Worse yet, when
belief in the possibility of the impossible reaches fever pitch, posing as a miracle-­
worker can become easier and may be a tempting option for attention seekers
and tricksters. And discerning the difference between the natu­ral and the super­
natural or between genuine and fraudulent miracle claims can become im­
mensely difficult, if not impossible, for the clerical elites in charge of ensuring
the purity of the faith, as well as for the laity, including crowned monarchs. In-
evitably, given the dev­il’s reputation as the ultimate trickster—­the fact that he
was “a liar and the ­father of lies,”1 ever ­eager to cause trou­ble—he, too, could
more easily wheedle his way into the picture.
Such was the dilemma faced by early modern Catholicism when miracles
became a highly valued feature of Catholic identity as well as a polemical weapon
to wield against Protestants and skeptics of all stripes. It was a vexing conun-
drum, and a painful one, for it required doubting, and doubt always rubs faith
raw. Sorting the genuinely divine from the fraudulent or demonic was an ordeal
that also required intellectual, emotional, psychological, and spiritual fortitude
on the part of all involved in the pro­cess. Teresa of Avila, Joseph of Cupertino,
and María de Ágreda w
­ ere liminal avatars of the impossible, suspended between
the divine and demonic, their sanctity revered and questioned si­mul­ta­neously,

255
 256 malevolent

perfectly poised to play the role of tricksters acting as agents of the devil, the
ultimate trickster.2 All three bore the brunt of doubt and survived their ordeal.
But many other liminal “living saints” who claimed similar impossible feats did
not survive intense scrutiny. We w
­ ill never know how many, exactly, since so many
of the Inquisition’s rec­ords have been lost, but it is undeniable that in the sur-
viving rec­ords, t­ hose found guilty of fraud or diabolical mischief do outnumber
­those who ­were not. Consequently, to fully understand the context in which be-
lief in impossible feats was forged, one must also consider cases of ostensibly
holy individuals whose impossible feats failed to be recognized as genuinely
divine; that is, one must take into account cases in which doubt and reason
trumped faith. Cases of failure, therefore, can shed light on the larger questions
that lurked b
­ ehind belief in impossible miracles, and they can also help reveal
how the bound­aries of belief ­were drawn in a contentious age. Additionally, fail-
ures add texture and depth to both narrative and analy­sis, allowing us to pay
attention to structural issues, such as negotiations of status, relations between
elites and subalterns, issues of liminality, questions of gender, and even meta-
physical questions involving social and po­liti­cal issues, such as where the line
is to be drawn between the world of the senses and that of the spirit, who gets
to draw that line, and what difference it might make for them to draw it one
way rather than another.
Three spectacular and extremely well-­documented cases of failure lend
themselves nicely to the task at hand. One might even say that they do so splen-
didly, for ­these three individuals had all achieved status before they fell from
grace as charismatic living saints equal to that of Teresa of Avila, Joseph of Cu-
pertino, and María of Ágreda. In fact, one could argue that in some re­spects the
meteoric rise of their reputation as miracle-­workers was more impressive than
that of Teresa, Joseph, and María. Moreover, their dramatic exposure as trick-
sters by the Inquisition makes the success of ­those three other mystics seem
even more remarkable.
Our three failed saints are all Iberian nuns who came to be known by the
location of their convents and ended up being imprisoned by the Inquisition
in convents other than their own. Each of their cases represents a dif­fer­ent type
of disgrace. All three reportedly levitated and bilocated; two claimed to survive
without eating at all; and one claimed to have bleeding stigmata on her head,
hands, feet, and torso. The first, Magdalena de la Cruz, “the Nun of Córdoba”
(1487–1560), eventually confessed to being in league with the devil and ascribed
her unnatural charisma to him. The second, María de la Visitación, “the Nun of
 tricksters of the impossible 257

Lisbon,” who was born in 1551 and died sometime a­ fter 1603, eventually con-
fessed to being a total fraud who cleverly tricked every­one into thinking her
miracles ­were real. The third, Luisa de la Ascensión, “the Nun of Carrión” (1565–
1636), was eventually declared innocent of fraud by the Inquisition twelve years
­after her death but nonetheless ended up forever disgraced and consigned to
oblivion through her humiliation.
Before delving into ­these three cases, several points need to be made clear.
First, although the Inquisition examined ­those suspected of fraud with a strict
either/or dichotomy in mind (­either a fraud or a genuinely holy person; e­ ither a
feigned miracle or a genuine one), inquisitors w
­ ere very much aware that dis-
cerning the difference was often extremely difficult and that many shades of gray
stood between black and white. Consequently, before any denunciations ­were
made and then during the entire investigation, ­until sentence was pronounced,
every­one involved was mired in ambiguity. As William Christian has observed,
“Much religious excitement occurs precisely during the ambiguous period . . . ​in
the margins of the known and the approved, around persons whose works, visions,
or organ­izations are not yet validated, at places that are in doubt.”3 Second, in-
quisitors often had to take the issues of sincerity and illusion into consideration,
which is why the issue of motivation was a key point. Had the suspects sincerely
believed in their claims, even if they ­were deluded, or had they willfully misled
­others in order to gain saintly status for themselves? ­Here, again, Christian’s
observations seem very perceptive, for the ambiguity created by the accusations
and the investigation could often lead to mere conjectures or “possibilities”
rather than proof. Third, inquisitors always needed to determine causality: If
the miracles in question ­were not feigned, ­were they of divine origin or demonic
origin? Was the suspect mentally ill or not? ­Here, too, ­were many shades of gray
with which to contend. Fi­nally, inquisitors needed to determine ­whether the
accusations leveled against anyone w
­ ere legitimate or motivated by spite, envy,
or some other kind of vindictiveness. So, quite often, investigations into spiri-
tual fraud w
­ ere communal events that involved entire convents and monaster-
ies. Simply put: ­every fraudulence case was complex and required ­great patience
and sensitivity on the part of the investigators and the accused.
One more issue that needs to be addressed at the outset is that of gender,
especially since our three stellar frauds are w
­ omen. Given that “learned” opinion
warned that w
­ omen w
­ ere much less stable than men, spiritually and mentally,
the number of ­women investigated as frauds tended to be higher than that of
men. Unfortunately, we do not have precise statistics on this disparity. In her
 258 malevolent

work with sixteen feigned holiness cases from Venetian Inquisition rec­ords, Anne
Schutte discovered certain gender patterns. First, ­women accused of feigned ho-
liness tended to be nonelites who fit into a “distinct sociocultural group”: un-
married, illiterate or poorly educated, and generally unfamiliar with books. The
men, in contrast, tended to be clerics, overwhelmingly: two friars, three secular
priests, and a friar-­turned-­bishop. Only one of the men in her sample was a lay-
man. Second, at all stages of the investigations, she says, and at all times, the
Inquisition “treated men and w
­ omen differently,” usually assigning greater guilt
to the men and imposing harsher sentences on them (since they w
­ ere ostensi-
bly stronger and smarter), even in cases in which a female suspect had influ-
enced a male being prosecuted along with her.4 ­Whether ­these patterns reflect
the totality of all feigned holiness cases in Venice or in Spain or anywhere ­else
remains to be seen. Much more statistical research is needed.

Iberia, Land of Enchanted Beings

No one has yet to come up with a cogent explanation for it, but impossible mir-
acles ­were not evenly distributed in the early modern Catholic world. Despite
its many manifestations of deep fervor, Catholicism in Northern, Central, and
Eastern Eu­rope lagged far ­behind Catholicism in Southern Eu­rope with regard
to the miracle claims being examined ­here. France had its fair share of such
claims in the early modern era, especially as the chaos created by the Wars of
Religion receded in memory and the 1600s became le ­grand siècle for mystical
theology,5 but the presence of Calvinists in its midst and vari­ous lingering ec-
clesiastic instabilities made France pale in comparison to monolithically Cath-
olic Italy and Iberia when it came to miracle claims. Italy certainly had its share
of miracle-­workers and of the burden of sifting out the frauds, well into the eigh­
teenth ­century,6 but of ­these two miracle-­claiming hot spots on the map, Iberia
was the hottest, so to speak, and Spain was downright incandescent, undisput-
edly boiling over. And, due to its infamously vigilant Inquisition, Spain was also
superbly equipped to hunt down anyone suspected of fraud or diabolical influ-
ence and to leave b
­ ehind for posterity copious rec­ords of its entanglements with
such vexing folk.
This is not to say that credulity was more prevalent in Spain than any-
where ­else. Not at all. Inquisition rec­ords prove that ­there ­were plenty of skep-
tics.7 But ­there is no denying the evidence for an intense desire for encounters
with the super­natural in early modern Spain. And that abundance of evidence
 tricksters of the impossible 259

is due to the Inquisition and its record-­keeping, which have allowed us to know
more about all aspects of piety in Spain than in other places that ­were less ef-
ficient in their control of religious misbehavior, error, and deception. We also
have plenty of other evidence that Spain was awash in religiosity, brimming over
with miracle seekers and miracle claims in which the lines between the natu­ral
and super­natural and the pos­si­ble and impossible ­were constantly crossed.
As early as 1600 some Spaniards, such as Martín González de Cellorigo,
realized something odd was afoot. “It seems,” he said, “as if one had wished to
reduce ­these kingdoms to a republic of enchanted beings, living outside the natu­ral
order of ­things.”8 Don Martín was not referring to monks and nuns, specifically,
but to the wider culture in which he lived, in which the super­natural claims of
monks and nuns ran riot and in which an intense interest in the super­natural
affected Spanish religiosity as a ­whole, across class lines and regional bound­
aries. This proliferation of mystics and miracle-­workers—­and of miracle-­seeking
Spaniards—­was openly acknowledged by the clergy, some of whom wrote guides
for monastic confessors on how best to approach all miracle claims. Books such
as A Treatise on the Examination of True and False Revelations and Raptures by
­Father Geronimo Planes, a Discalced Franciscan, tackled the increase in mira-
cle claims and frauds head-on, blaming it on the devil, urging readers not to
lose faith in God’s power to achieve the impossible simply ­because of an over-
abundance of fraudsters.9
Awareness of this peculiar baroque quirk ran deep in Spanish culture long
­after it had vanished and eventually caused no small mea­sure of embarrassment
among some nineteenth-­century intellectuals who ­were e­ ager to banish it from
view. Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, that testy Spanish historian previously quoted
in the first few pages of this book, had much more to say about early modern
Spain’s fascination with the miraculous than what has already been mentioned.
This is how he dismissed that era’s overabundance of miracle claims and spiri-
tual fraudsters with utter disdain: “Throughout the seventeenth c­ entury, t­ here
­were a ­great number of cases of false devotion; but if ­you’ve seen one, ­you’ve
seen them all. T
­ here ­isn’t even any variety in the details. . . . ​It would be vain
and useless verbosity to pay much attention to cases of this sort . . . ​all of which
correspond to the reigns of Felipe III and Felipe IV, in which the flood of frauds
was im­mense . . . ​but in such cases, dogma was never an issue.”10
In the twentieth and twenty-­first centuries, fortunately, many Hispanists
have chosen to highlight precisely what Menéndez Pelayo wanted to bury deeply,
interpreting it in vari­ous ways.
 260 malevolent

José Antonio Maravall has summed up the essence of Spain’s baroque re-
ligiosity with a Weberian spin, portraying it as the exact reverse of the Protes-
tant “disenchantment” of the world. The early modern age was “most certainly
a time of faith . . . ​frequently veering into superstitious be­hav­ior.”11 Stephen Hal-
iczer has approached this phenomenon from a gender perspective, pointing out
that Spanish society was intensely affected “by an upsurge of feminine religious
enthusiasm without parallel since medieval times” and that this enthusiasm
focused on mystical phenomena and miracles.12 Patrocinio García Barriúso, a
Franciscan priest and historian, has described early modern Spanish religiosity
as far too credulous for its own good, “easily inclined to admire and acclaim as
holy and as miraculously gifted all t­ hose who presented themselves as ­bearers of
new divine messages . . . ​and dazzling and astonishing miracles.”13 Teófanes
Egido López has taken a functionalist approach, depicting early modern Spain
as a society gripped “by an enthusiasm for the marvelous” and “deeply in need
of the super­natural.”14 Social and cultural historian José Luis Sánchez Lora, an-
other functionalist, has suggested that Spain’s hunger for miracles was driven
by a despair shared by elites and common folk in the face of inept rulers, plagues,
famines, constant warfare, rebellions, and rising skepticism.15 The imprecision
of ­these assessments does not necessarily make them any less perceptive. A sub-
ject as amorphous as religiosity eludes exactness. And t­ here is no denying that
functionalist claims about a hunger for the miraculous do ring true, especially
in the face of undeniable decline and disasters.
Given this widely acknowledged propensity of Spanish Catholics to ac-
cept the miraculous as commonplace, one of the most difficult tasks faced by
the clergy in Spain was that of dealing with excess fervor not only among the
laity but also among some of the most intensely devout members of their own
class—­that is, among monks and nuns who claimed to have tapped into the
super­natural realm and gained the ability to achieve the impossible. But belief
in miracles created a space for imposture as much as it did for hope in the im-
possible. By the end of the sixteenth c­ entury, on the cusp of the slippery slope
to decline, Spain was already full of ersatz saints and miracle-­workers who served
a much-­needed function. One cleric described the fraudsters he observed with
as much contempt as the elite sycophants they attracted: “Ordinarily they pre-
tend to be spiritual and say that they are swept up in ecstasies and mortal rap-
tures and claim to have the spirit of prophecy; and they love to become rich
­because of the virtue they completely lack, receiving ­great gifts and hefty dona-
tions from nobles and devotees. Oh, how many of ­these frauds I know who make
 tricksters of the impossible 261

the rounds from palace to palace and fool the lords and ladies into thinking
that their mere presence sanctifies their homes and redeems their guilt.”16 Not
all clerics dispensed scorn so evenhandedly, however. Some, such as Gaspar Na-
varro, preferred to assign all the blame for clueless credulity strictly to “vulgar
and barbarous ­people, and idiotic common folk lacking in discernment and in-
capable of reasoning.”17
The number of potential spiritual frauds was so high that it led the Span-
ish Inquisition to investigate feigned sanctity as an especially dangerous cate-
gory of religious deviancy. Vari­ous terms ­were employed by the Inquisition for
this type of wrongdoing: the crime itself was called “feigning” (fingir), “fooling”
or “deceiving” (embaucar), and “imposture” (impostura); the offenders themselves
­were called “tricksters” (embaucadores or embaucadoras) or “deluded” (ilusos or
ilusas); and the phenomenon as a ­whole came to be known as “inventing the
sacred” (haciendo invención del sagrado).18 Naturally, given the Inquisition’s deep-­
seated loathing of the devil and his wiles, its ­handling of such misfits often in-
volved wrestling with two tricksters si­mul­ta­neously: one ­human and the other
demonic.
Discerning the difference between a genuine saint who engaged with the
sacred, such as Teresa of Avila, and an impostor who “in­ven­ted” the sacred—as
the inquisitors put it—­was seldom easy, for the very pro­cess of discernment
involved scrutinizing some of the most distinctive teachings of the Catholic
Church, especially t­ hose that distinguished it from Protestantism, such as the
value of asceticism and prayer, the possibility of mystical encounters with the
divine, the accessibility of the miraculous, and the permeability of the bound­
aries between the spiritual and the material, as well as the demonic and the di-
vine. Consequently, ­every case of suspected fraudulence or demonic activity
perched all inquisitors on the edge of a slippery slope.
By the mid-­seventeenth c­ entury, the criteria for discerning who was “in-
venting” the sacred ­were well established.19 More often than not, ­those who
ended up u
­ nder investigation w
­ ere found guilty, but it is well known that many
who ­were ­later canonized as saints passed through the same ordeal, including
Teresa of Avila, Ignatius Loyola, and Joseph of Cupertino. Maintaining certain
standards was deemed necessary, not just as a question of authority or as a con-
cern with charismatic claims outside the church hierarchy but also as a pastoral
issue. T
­ hose accused of feigned sanctity w
­ ere examined for signs of delusion,
excessive pride, m
­ ental illness, or demonic influence. They w
­ ere also screened
to prevent the spread of false teachings and social disorder. Questioning the
 262 malevolent

authenticity of popu­lar holy men and women, however, was sometimes the same
as questioning belief itself.
It could be argued that the relative obscurity of most Inquisition cases of
feigned sanctity does not ­matter much, or even that such cases ­were not a side-
show at all but rather the main event, at street level, as far as religious elites
­were concerned. In the end, they prove that questions of discerning the differ-
ence between genuine and false, or spiritual and material—­what Andrew Keitt
calls “boundary issues”20—­were of im­mense concern for Catholics and at the
heart of their religious life. It could also be argued that questions of this sort
­were also of im­mense concern for Protestants and Western culture as a w
­ hole,
for a complex set of dialectical relationships ­were engendered by them, pitting
believers against one another and fueling the rise of skepticism. When all is said
and done, as s­ hall be seen in chapter 9, when it came to belief in “impossible”
feats, Catholics and Protestants ­were closer to each other than it might seem at
first glance due to their shared belief in the power of demonic forces. Moreover,
as Keitt has also argued, the seventeenth c­ entury was a period of “profound con-
ceptual turmoil and epistemological uncertainty,” in which “rationalism was
employed as often to shore up belief in the miraculous as to challenge it.”21
And amid all this turmoil and uncertainty, few individuals challenged be-
lief more intensely than living saints suspected of fraud, for many of the most
astounding miracle claims came from men and w
­ omen who w
­ ere revered as
saints in their own lifetimes. A common occurrence throughout Christian his-
tory, such cases began to intensify in the early modern period, especially in the
wake of the Protestant Reformation.22 ­After 1563, when the Council of Trent
sealed its reforming dictates, the pro­cess of identifying and canonizing saints
­after their death underwent a gradual and uneven tightening in the Catholic
Church. Eventually, the pro­cess of canonization was carefully codified and reg-
ulated, and new standards of proof for sanctity w
­ ere established,23 and in 1588,
the task of pro­cessing all sainthood cases was placed in the hands of the newly
created Congregation of Sacred Rites and Ceremonies in Rome. Nonetheless,
as the new pro­cess for identifying saints was being set in place, rules for moni-
toring the veneration of holy men and w
­ omen who ­were still alive remained
somewhat unclear. In 1634, as a response to the fact that so many living saints
­were being venerated and sought out for miracles in the Catholic world, espe-
cially in Spain and Italy, Pope Urban VIII—­the very same pontiff over whose
head Joseph of Cupertino flew—­ordered local church authorities to stamp out
any such devotion. In other words, no living h
­ uman being was to be venerated,
 tricksters of the impossible 263

even if he or she was considered an astounding miracle-­worker.24 This new pol-

icy was to be strictly enforced and is one of the major reasons that Joseph of
Cupertino kept being shuffled to ever more remote and inaccessible locations
as his fame increased.
In Spain, the veneration of living saints began to intensify and to acquire
peculiar characteristics in the sixteenth c­ entury, and the three “failed” miracle-­
working nuns about to be examined ­here ­were all engendered by this phenom-
enon as well as representatives of it. Among the many holy men and ­women of
this sort that emerged in Golden Age Spain, none s­ haped the cult of the living
saint more intensely than the mystic Sor Juana de la Cruz (1481–1534), abbess
at the third-­order Franciscan convent of Santa María de la Cruz, in Cubas de la
Sagra, not far from Madrid, who seems to have been a role model for María de
Ágreda.25 An ascetic, visionary, and frequent ecstatic who claimed to have under­
gone a mystical marriage to Christ, Sor Juana gained renown as a preacher through
whom Christ spoke while she was enraptured. Having won the admiration and
support of Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, the most power­ful church-
man in Spain, as well as of the young King Charles V, who attended some of her
“sermons,”26 Juana became one of the most admired religious figures of her
day. More significantly, as far as the cult of living saints is concerned, Sor Juana
acquired a reputation as an extraordinary miracle-­worker, especially as a healer
and a rescuer of souls from purgatory, and as a distributor of blessed and indul-
genced rosary beads (cuentas benditas), rosaries, crosses, medals, and other objects
that she claimed had been taken to heaven and returned to earth. T
­ hese w
­ ere
prized in the same way as relics and believed to convey divine blessings.27 Oc-
currences of this phenomenon soon began to multiply in Spain and to be expected
of extraordinarily holy ­women mystics.28
While Juana was still alive, as could sometimes happen before the Coun-
cil of Trent extinguished such local expressions of popu­lar piety, her beatifica-
tion pro­cess was begun in 1515 by the archbishop of Toledo, Bernardo de
Sandoval y Rojas, and from 1519 to1521, an official diocesan inquest (proceso)
into her virtues and miracles was carried out in anticipation of her eventual
canonization.29 In 1530, four years before her death, she was officially given the
title of “Venerable,” which validated her cult and placed her on the first rung of
the ladder to canonization. During this time, one narrative of Juana’s life was
written, along with a rec­ord of her devotions and visions at her convent,30 plus
two hagiographical accounts of her extraordinary virtues and miracles, all pub-
lished while she was still alive. The first of ­these, written by ­Father Antonio Daza,
 264 malevolent

was reedited and republished twice,31 and the first version was turned into a
trilogy of plays by the ­great dramatist Tirso de Molina.32 A second hagiography
was written by Pedro Navarro, who was ordered to do so by the vicar-­general of
the Franciscan order.33 Both of ­these texts unabashedly referred to her as “Santa
Juana” and spurred the expansion of her cult. Veneration of Sor Juana spread
far and wide in Spain and its New World colonies, as well as elsewhere in Eu­
rope.34 In addition to becoming a revered saintly figure among the faithful,
elites as well as commoners, Juana also became a role model for many other
Spanish nuns, including all three of the notorious frauds who are featured in
this chapter. Tellingly, F
­ ather Antonio Daza, the author of Juana’s first protoha-
giography, would become confessor to one of ­these three nuns, Luisa de Carrión,
and write an account of her life which would end up being suppressed by the
Inquisition.
The fate of Juana’s canonization—­which seemed so certain while she was
alive—is perhaps indicative of the negative effect that some of her fraudulent
imitators had on her reputation. Despite the fact that Juana was already Vener-
able at the time of her death in 1534 and that many of Spain’s clerical and secu-
lar elites flocked to the tomb at her convent in which her incorruptible corpse
was buried, her canonization pro­cess stalled due to a convergence of f­ actors, such
as the loss of some of the documents, the somewhat chaotic pro­gress of the
Council of Trent (1545–1563), and the reor­ga­ni­za­tion of the canonization sys-
tem set in place by it. Three other attempts to get her case back on track in
1664, 1702, and 1980 have stalled too, and the only positive result thus far has
been the reaffirmation of her “heroic virtue” and her status as Venerable by Pope
Francis in 2015.

Magdalena de la Cruz,“the Nun of Córdoba”: Diabolical Abbess

Magdalena de la Cruz was born in the Andalusian village of Aguilar de la Frontera
in 1487, to a poor ­family of ­humble lineage. In 1504, at the age of seventeen, ­after
a childhood reportedly full of super­natural encounters, she entered the Francis-
can cloister of Santa Isabel de los Ángeles in Córdoba, one of the few convents
in her region that did not require the dowry her parents could not provide.
Eventually, she would serve as its abbess from 1533 to 1542. From the very start,
she earned a reputation in her convent as an extreme ascetic and living saint,
principally b
­ ecause of her frequent mystical ecstasies and the externalidades
that accompanied them, especially her trances, visions, prophecies, levitations,
 tricksters of the impossible 265

bilocations, and stigmata, as well as her gift of healing and her inedia—­that is,
her apparent ability to survive without consuming any food whatsoever other
than the consecrated host she received at communion.35
For nearly forty years, the authenticity of Sor Magdalena’s super­natural
gifts went largely unquestioned, and she attracted admirers at the highest levels
of society, such as Francisco de los Ángeles Quiñones, the superior general of
the Franciscan order, who visited her more than once; Francisco de Osuna, the
mystic whose texts had a profound influence on Teresa of Avila; and Alonso
Manrique, archbishop of Seville and inquisitor general, who called her “his most
precious ­daughter.”36 Even the Spanish royal f­amily became fervent devotees.
In 1527, when Empress Isabella was about to give birth to the f­ uture king Philip II,
some of Sor Magdalena’s garments ­were taken to Valladolid, over 300 miles to
the north, so the royal infant could be wrapped in them and thus shielded from
the dev­il’s wrath.37 According to some accounts, Magdalena was also asked to
bless the infant prince’s layette, a request that was apparently very much in vogue
among the other ladies at court. Likewise, before embarking on a military cam-
paign against the Ottoman Turks at Tunis in 1535, Emperor Charles V sent his
­battle standard to Córdoba to be blessed by Magdalena.38
As one would expect, Magdalena’s fame attracted many visitors, wealthy
patrons, and donations to the convent of Santa Isabel. Her super­natural feats
turned heads, made her a celebrity, put her convent on the map, and gave it finan-
cial security, allowing for major physical renovations.39 Luis Zapata de Chaves,
a court gossiper who had served as a page to Empress Isabella and the young
Prince Philip II, attributed Sor Magdalena’s fame to her miracles and described
her rise to prominence as follows: “She sparked astonishment and admiration
among her fellow nuns first, then among her neighbors in Córdoba, then, ­later,
in all of Spain, and even in Rome and the ­whole world. She went without food
or drink for days on end; slept on a rough mat on the floor; could tell what was
­going on in other places; wore a hairshirt constantly; could be seen levitating a
foot above the ground while praying; and could be whisked away to other loca-
tions ­every now and then, and say where she had gone and who had requested
her presence.” According to Zapata, Magdalena had even bilocated to the ­Battle
of Pavia on February 24, 1525, and on that same day revealed to every­one at
her convent that King Francis I of France had been defeated and taken prisoner
by Emperor Charles V.40
Magdalena had turned herself into a living saint and a “walking, living
relic,” as one scholar has put it.41 This self-­fashioning began early in her life,
 266 malevolent

before she became a nun, and stories told ­later about her precocious holiness
amplified its effect. One such story told of a demon expelled from a possessed
man’s body that refused to come near her ­because, as the demon himself put
it, “She has been a saint since she was in her m
­ other’s womb.”42 Another story
related how she began to have visions at the age of four.43 Yet another told of
how, at the age of five, she tried to imitate Christ’s crucifixion by nailing herself
to a wall.44
Magdalena’s self-­fashioning was assiduously methodical, and something
she pursued with uncommon zeal, mostly by taking all the be­hav­iors associated
with holiness to extremes. Magdalena did not simply fast. She refused to eat
altogether, claiming that all the nourishment she needed came from the Eucha-
rist. She did not simply wear a hair shirt or sleep on the floor. She mortified her
body in even more severe ways. She not only levitated and bilocated but also
received the stigmata, one of the rarest of mystical gifts.45 Her trances ­were fre-
quent, deep, and prolonged, and even when stabbed in her feet and limbs with
long ­needles, she would never flinch.46 Her miraculous cures w
­ ere numerous,
and her prophesies seemed astonishingly accurate.47 She claimed to f­ ree many
souls from purgatory not only through her intercessory prayers but also by taking
on the suffering of ­those entrusted to her, which sometimes involved voyaging
to purgatory itself and returning from it with her body so superheated that it
could instantly turn ­water coming in contact with it to steam.48 In addition,
the anguished moans of the suffering souls in purgatory could often be heard
emanating from her cell.49 She received visits, visions, and messages from Jesus
Christ, the Virgin Mary, Saint Jerome, Saint Francis, Saint Dominic, and other
saints and angels.50 And, as was becoming increasingly common in her day,51
Magdalena, the living saint, distributed pieces of herself—­hair, skin, and blood-­
stained cloths—as well as myriad items that had come in contact with her body
or had been blessed by her,52 including the skin that peeled off her feet when-
ever she dunked them in ­water ­after one of her visits to purgatory.53
Not every­one was favorably impressed by Sor Magdalena, however. Two
­future saints cast doubt on her ecstasies, visions, and miracles and warned ­others
not to venerate her. Juan de Ávila refused to get carried away by the wave of
adulation created by Magdalena, “which was sweeping the world.” He also pre-
dicted that she would come to a bad end and was denied access to her when he
visited Córdoba.54 Ignatius Loyola, too, viewed her with suspicion. Once, when
regaled with accounts of her mystical gifts by a young Jesuit novice who had
recently met with her and called her “one of the holiest and most prudent w
­ omen
 tricksters of the impossible 267

in the world,” Ignatius reproved the novice for jumping to such conclusions
about “any such w
­ oman” and for mea­sur­ing sanctity by “any such t­ hings” as her
alleged ecstasies and miracles.55
Ultimately, it was not the opinions of such prominent skeptics that brought
Magdalena ­under closer scrutiny but rather her own claims and her be­hav­ior,
plus her hubris, which began to alarm her ­sisters. Having been elected abbess
three times, in 1533, 1536, and 1539, Magdalena became increasingly authori-
tarian and vindictive. She not only seemed to delight in humiliating t­ hose nuns
at her convent who came from privileged or noble families but also segregated
the “good” nuns who had bright auras from the “bad” ones who had dark auras.56
Then, from the circle of ­these “good” nuns she created a clique of acolytes—­“reared
in her cell”—­who w
­ ere constantly at her side to do her bidding and ­were in
charge of keeping skeptics such as Juan de Ávila away from the convent.57 Even
worse, she issued threats to anyone who dared to challenge or question her
sanctity, telling them that God would punish them in the hereafter as well as in
the ­here and now.58 And to reinforce ­these threats, she would attribute the
deaths of all who doubted her miracles to the disrespect they had shown to her,
claiming that the suffering souls of ­those dead skeptics came to visit her at
night to repent of their insolence.59 She also insisted that the nuns confess
their sins to her, and although she had no sacramental power to absolve them,
she warned them that if they disobeyed this command, they would never be for-
given by God.60 At the same time, in contrast, she ­stopped ­going to confession,
claiming that her own sinlessness made her participation in that sacrament
superfluous.61
Aiming to remain abbess as another election approached in 1542, Mag-
dalena brought her miraculous mystical claims to new heights, telling the nuns
that she had become pregnant through the agency of the Holy Spirit, just as
the Virgin Mary had, and that this miracle had taken place on the feast of the
Annunciation. According to some accounts, the pregnancy seemed real ­because
her abdomen swelled visibly during the next nine months, ­until Christmas day,
when she claimed to have given birth to none other than Jesus himself. This was
no mere vision of the infant Jesus, she boasted, but a flesh-­and-­blood divine
baby boy. In other words, this was a second incarnation of Jesus, as astonish-
ingly miraculous as his first, for Magdalena also affirmed that she had been
granted the gift of perpetual virginity by Christ himself when she was a young
girl.62 Unlike the first incarnation of the second person of the Holy Trinity, however,
this one did not last long. ­After giving birth, breastfeeding him, and wrapping
 268 malevolent

him up in her hair, Magdalena said, the baby Jesus suddenly vanished, caus-
ing her locks to turn from black to blonde.63 Afterward, strands of this blonde
hair became highly prized relics that ­were given to a select number of Magda-
lena’s devotees.64 And if anyone doubted that this had ­really happened, Magda-
lena offered to show them her nipples, which she claimed w
­ ere as heavi­ly
chapped as ­those of any ­mother who had recently given birth.65 No rec­ord ex-
ists of anyone daring to ask for this proof.
Given the extremity of this claim and that of her survival without food
for many years, as well as her severe authoritarian bent, Magdalena approached
the next abbatial election of 1542 in a weakened position. Friction had been
building among the convent’s nuns, especially between ­those Magdalena favored
and t­ hose she constantly reprimanded and marginalized, and this election only
served to heighten tensions. Meanwhile, Magdalena soon found herself ­under
intense scrutiny from above by Franciscan superiors to whom her disgruntled
nuns had complained. ­Those superiors first homed in on one of her more
extreme claims, that of inedia. Consequently, she was forced to prove that she
actually could survive without eating, as she claimed to have done for over a
de­cade. To do this, her superiors locked her in a cell with some friars posted
near it as around-­the-­clock sentries to ensure that the only sustenance she re-
ceived was one communion wafer per day. This test failed, for Magdalena man-
aged to escape through a win­dow. Although this evasion could easily have been
taken as an admission of fraud on her part, Magdalena turned the ­tables on the
skeptics by claiming that the escape was miraculous and that the test she was
undergoing was no longer necessary ­because the Virgin Mary had given her per-
mission in a vision to stop her extreme fasting altogether.
While she convinced some of the genuineness of her sanctity through this
ruse, Magdalena failed to win the support of most of her nuns and was not
reelected as abbess in 1542. From that point forward, her fall from grace was
swift, and it did not take long for Magdalena, the living saint, to find herself in
deep trou­ble. In 1543, not long ­after losing the election, some strange and alarm-
ing phenomena began to arouse more suspicion. First, a pair of nuns who kept
watch over her at night claimed they had seen some large black goats surround-
ing her bed, which Magdalena identified as souls from purgatory who ­were seek-
ing her assistance. On another occasion, a nun saw a shadowy figure standing
near Magdalena’s bed, ran out of the room screaming, and immediately described
what she had just seen to all the other nuns.66 Magdalena claimed that this visi-
tor was an angel, but the nuns at Santa Isabel w
­ ere not fooled. They knew bet-
 tricksters of the impossible 269

ter: That visitor had to be a demon, as they saw it, ­because good angels ­were
never dark. So, they immediately reported this incident to their Franciscan su-
periors, as they ­were expected to do, and Magdalena was quickly locked away.
Before a full investigation could begin, however, Magdalena fell critically
ill. As her condition worsened and her doctor advised her to prepare for death
and confess her sins, all hell broke loose, literally and figuratively, when Magda-
lena made a horrifying confession: She was not a saint, she revealed, but a bra-
zen fraud, and many of her so-­called miracles ­were mere trickery, made pos­si­ble
by her own devious ingenuity and the help of some accomplices in the convent.
Even worse, some of her miracles—­especially her levitations, bilocations, and
prophecies—­had been the work of the devil, specifically of two demons to whom
she had given her soul when she was about twelve years old: one named Balban,
the other named Patonio. When Magdalena’s confessor asked about ­these de-
mons, they took total control of Magdalena and spoke directly to him, insisting
that they would never leave her body b
­ ecause their pact meant she was theirs to
keep and drag down to hell. One of the demons revealed that he was always at
her side; the other said he was in charge of spreading news about her miracles
and making p
­ eople believe she was a saint and that whenever she was whisked
away to another location, as she often was, he took her place at the convent, in
her image and likeness, so no one could tell she was absent.67
Eventually, Magdalena fi­nally admitted in her own voice that all of the
demons’ statements ­were indeed true, including the revelation that ­every day
for the past forty years she had engaged in “carnal delights” with one of ­those
demons. Magdalena was then forced to confess all ­these sins publicly to her fel-
low nuns and to beg their forgiveness, but when she was asked to sign a docu-
ment that detailed her wrongdoing, she started to shake violently. Deeming her
possessed, the priest overseeing this event exorcized her successfully, and her
fellow nuns got to listen to the heated exchange between him and Magdalena’s
demon, during which, at one point, the demon spoke in “the Chaldean tongue”
(Aramaic), as demons are wont to do.68 Freed from her demons, Magdalena
signed this document but still had much more to endure, including another pub-
lic confession of guilt in the presence of the Franciscan provincial and three
other witnesses, followed by lengthy questioning by the Inquisition. All the nuns
in the convent, too, ­were interrogated.
The tale told by Magdalena and her demons, as summarized in the final
sentence pronounced by the Inquisition, reveals an intricate braiding of deception
and preternatural activity carefully aimed at creating a false aura of sanctity.
 270 malevolent

Tellingly, Magdalena’s demons revealed that it was her burning desire to be re-
garded as a saint that had made it easy for them to lure her into making a pact
with them. As the Inquisition’s sentence put it: “Her demon told her to do
what­ever he asked and in return he promised to make every­one think she was a
saint . . . ​and the demon assured her she would not need to worry about their
pact being discovered.”69 Such was the allure of saintliness for Magdalena, and
such was her awareness of the benefits which a reputation as a saint and a pact
with the devil could provide.
Magdalena’s confession is proof positive that she and ­those around her
­were well aware of the seemingly impossible feats that could be ascribed to
demons as well as of ­those which could easily be faked, such as her stigmata,
which she admitted ­were self-­inflicted wounds,70 or her visions and visits to pur-
gatory, which w
­ ere totally fabricated,71 or her inedia, which required the help of
accomplices who procured food for her secretly, out of view.72 Moreover, the very
fact that she could find collaborators is the best proof we have of how feigned
sanctity could become a communal effort within a convent and of how relatively
easy it could be for deception to remain undetected or unreported for a long
time, especially when the fraud is the work of a shrewd abbess with a coterie of
zealous acolytes. Ultimately, it was Magdalena’s overreach, her “vainglory” and
vindictiveness as abbess,73 and her promotion of ever more outrageous claims,
such as her inedia and her birthing anew of Jesus, that caused her carefully
crafted saintly persona to turn suddenly into its demonic opposite.74
It makes ­little difference w
­ hether it was the demons speaking or Magda-
lena, or perhaps even the Inquisitors superimposing a demonic template on her
deception. The testimony summed up in the Inquisition’s sentence makes it clear
that Magdalena’s self-­fashioning involved a deep familiarity with the patterns
of sanctity found in medieval hagiographies and an equally deep acquaintance
with medieval demonology. And one should not reject the possibility that Mag-
dalena’s confession might have been her last ­great fraud, an expertly performed
attempt to shift blame from herself to the devil so she could seem less culpable
and more deserving of mercy.
Ultimately, ­after examining many witnesses and weighing the potentially
negative effects that a harsh sentence might have on the reputation of the Fran-
ciscan order, the Inquisition was merciful indeed. At an auto de fé in the Cathe-
dral of Córdoba on the May 3, 1546, the public reading of her crimes and her
sentence took ten hours to complete, from six in the morning ­until four in the
after­noon, followed by a Mass and a sermon.75 With her mouth gagged, a rope
 tricksters of the impossible 271

tied around her neck, and a burning candle in her hand, Magdalena was forced
to stand on a scaffold through this ordeal, elevated for all to see, dressed in her
Franciscan habit but without her veil. Admitting that they could have sentenced
her to death for “having offended God our Lord so greatly and abominably” but
reminding the assembled throng that God “never desires the death of sinners,
but rather their conversion and their chance to survive and save their souls,”
the Inquisitors condemned Magdalena to perpetual seclusion in the convent of
Santa Clara, at Andujar, where she would always have the lowliest pos­si­ble sta-
tus, perform the most unpleasant tasks, and have no contact whatsoever with
the outside world.76 For the next fourteen years, u
­ ntil her death in 1560, she
reportedly lived a life of constant penance in total obscurity. The nun who had
once been revered as a living saint totally vanished from view, but not from mem-
ory. Her sudden fall from grace, her appalling imposture, and her lurid dalliance
with the devil would become legendary and haunt all discourse on mystical
claims and demonic deception for generations to come, in Spain and beyond.77
“May God remove such horrors from the spirits and memories of all ­people,”
said one observer, perhaps too keenly aware of how impossible it would be for
that to happen.78

María de la Visitación,“the Nun of Lisbon”: Total Fraud

Portugal, too, produced the case of a living saint who exhibited all the signs of
holiness and high ecstasies, including the impossible feat of levitation, but was
eventually unmasked as a fraud. In this case, the feigned sanctity rested mainly
on the “gift” of the stigmata.79
María Lobo de Meneses was born in 1551, to a noble Portuguese f­amily
that moved in the highest circles.80 Her ­father, Francisco Lobo, served as am-
bassador for King John III at the court of Emperor Charles V; her m
­ other, Blanca
de Meneses, was also of noble lineage. Orphaned while still a young girl, she
entered the Dominican convent of La Anunciada in Lisbon as a novice in 1562,
at the age of eleven. Five years l­ater she took her final vows and became a full-­
fledged member of this large nunnery, which h
­ oused many noble w
­ omen.81
Deeply influenced by the Dominican mystic Catherine of Siena (1347–1380),
who had herself experienced a mystical marriage with Jesus Christ,82 Sor María
claimed that she, too, had become Christ’s bride and began to refer to him as
her husband (el Esposo).83 María combined her bridal mysticism with an intense
focus on the suffering Christ and went as far as to keep a life-­sized cross on her
 272 malevolent

bed, which she called “my wife” (mi Esposa). She slept with it ­every night and
often stretched herself upon it as she prayed.84 Sometimes she would enter a
cataleptic state, levitate, and glow while praying.85 She also began to have vi-
sions in which she was visited by Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, as well as by
Mary Magdalene, Saint Dominic, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and Saint Catherine
of Siena.86
In 1575 her ecstasies, visions, and levitations began to intensify and become
more frequent. During one of ­these raptures, she claimed, Jesus had removed the
crown of thorns from his head and placed it on hers, causing her to bleed pro-
fusely. The wounds caused by the crown, which remained vis­i­ble thereafter and
caused her ­great pain ­every Friday, ­were only the first step in the gradual trans-
formation of her body into a living, bleeding, pain-­riddled image of the suffer-
ing Christ.87 In 1578, on Wednesday of Holy Week, she claimed she saw a
vision of the crucified Christ hovering in the air in the convent’s chapel, and as
she levitated off the ground to meet up with him in midair, a bright-­red ray of
light shot out of the wound on Christ’s chest and pierced her heart, leaving a
vermilion gash on her own torso, which would bleed ­every Friday thereafter.88
Fi­nally, in 1584, shortly ­after her election as prioress of her convent, the trans-
formation of María’s body was made complete in two separate ecstasies. In
March, on the feast of the ­great Dominican theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas,
shortly before dawn, in the privacy of her cell, Christ crucified appeared again,
and this time five bright flaming rays shot out from his wounds—­one from
each hand and foot, plus one from his side—­piercing the corresponding spots
on María’s body “with ­great force” and causing wounds to appear.89 In Septem-
ber, on the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, dark nubs that looked like rusty
nails (clavos) began to form on the wounds on her hands and feet, and shortly
afterward, ruby red circles appeared around t­ hese clavos, surrounding them like
“gorgeous roses.”90
María was now fully stigmatized. Unlike Saint Francis, whose stigmatization
took place in a single event in the presence of eyewitnesses, María’s stigmatiza-
tion not only occurred in four distinct phases over a period of nine years but had
also taken place privately each of ­these times, without any eyewitnesses. More-
over, unlike her role model, Catherine of Siena, whose stigmata ­were invisible,91
María’s wounds w
­ ere not only highly vis­i­ble and a constant focus of attention
but also painful and bled regularly, like clockwork, on specific days, at specific
times, with unique distinguishing features.92 The wound on her side bled only on
Fridays and when touched with a cloth would produce an imprint of five small
 tricksters of the impossible 273

bloody stains in the shape of a cross.93 ­These cloths ­were produced ­every
Friday and distributed as miracle-­working relics throughout the Catholic world,
not only in Eu­rope but even in the Amer­i­cas and Japan.94 The wounds on her
hands and feet ­were so painful, she claimed, that she could not tolerate having
them touched by anyone, especially on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and—­worst of
all—on Fridays.95 ­Those on her hands ­were constantly in view, while ­those on
her feet w
­ ere rarely seen.96
As significant as María’s visions, miraculous healings, and levitations
­were—­and many eyewitnesses claimed they saw her hovering “two palms” or half
a foot above the floor numerous times97—it was her stigmata that attracted the
most attention and made her well known as a living saint throughout the Catholic
world. Much of the credit for María’s fame can be attributed to one of her con-
fessors, the mystical writer Luis de Granada (1505–1588), a Dominican friar whose
devotional books w
­ ere im­mensely popu­lar.98 Beginning in 1584, a­ fter her final
stigmatization event, Fray Luis wrote to several authorities in the Catholic
Church, including Carlo Borromeo, archbishop of Milan, and Juan de Ribera,
bishop of Valencia, praising Sor María and describing her as “another Saint
Catherine of Siena.”99 He also published a short hagiographic text and wrote a
much longer hagiography,100 which remained unpublished for a very long time,
in which he portrays her as a living saint and as the embodiment of the divine
character of the Catholic Church, as well as living proof that God continues to
perform miracles through it.101 Reports of Sor María’s miracles even made their
way into the newsletters of the power­ful German banking ­family the Fuggers,
in which the argument was made that her stigmata had to be genuinely super­
natural ­because they ­were “far above the possibilities and artfulness of h
­ uman
nature.”102 By 1588, four years ­after receiving her final stigmatization, Sor María
the living saint had come to be so well known throughout the Catholic world
that a constant stream of curious visitors kept flowing in and out of the con-
vent of the Anunciada, all of them ­eager to ogle the Nun of Lisbon—as María
came to be known—­and her miraculous stigmata or to seek her intercession
for some miraculous cure.
As her fame increased, so did the number of skeptical or hostile accusa-
tions made against María and her “phantasmagorical ­castle of heavenly char­
isms.”103 However, the ­great number of prominent ecclesiastics who believed in
her made it difficult for t­hese accusations to be taken seriously, especially
­because none of her detractors could back up their accusations with conclusive
proof of deceit on her part.
 274 malevolent

Nonetheless, one group of power­ful detractors within the convent, led

by the ­sisters and ­daughters of the Count of Linares, caught the ear of their
Dominican superiors and of the Inquisition. E
­ ager to silence all skeptics and
confident that an investigation would serve that purpose, the Inquisition
commissioned two prominent Dominicans to scrutinize t­ hese allegations of
fraud: Fray Luis de Granada—­who had known María since she had entered the
convent at the age of eleven—­and Fray Gaspar d’Aveiro. T
­ hese two friars arrived
at the convent on November 1, 1587, and a­ fter spending one hour washing her
hands with soap and w
­ ater—­haltingly, as she begged them to stop, wailing in
pain, crying out, “O wounds of Our Lord Jesus Christ”—­they determined that
the stigmata had to be genuine, since their efforts to wash them off had failed.104
Two and a half weeks ­later, Sixto Fabri de Luca, the master general of the Do-
minican order, closely inspected María’s wounds again and declared her stigmata
as well as her visions and ecstasies to be of divine origin. Yet, despite his own
ringing endorsement of María, Fabri ordered a third investigation to be con-
ducted by Luis de Granada, María’s longtime acquaintance and confessor, Fray
Juan de las Cuevas, confessor to Cardinal Archduke Albert, and Fray Gaspar
d’Aveiro, confessor to all the nuns at the Anunciada convent.
This third investigation took place over the span of three days—­
November 25–27—­and involved all the nuns at La Anunciada, each of whom
­were enjoined to relate what­ever they knew about María and her miracles. Nat-
urally, t­hose who had denounced María as a fraud renewed their accusations.
But, as it turned out, ­these skeptics w
­ ere a small minority, and their damning
complaints against María w
­ ere eclipsed by the praise heaped upon her by most
of the other nuns. The three investigators also examined each and ­every one of
María’s wounds with g­ reat care ­under bright candlelight. According to their re-
port, María allowed them to poke and prod her stigmata “like a lamb . . . ​with
­great meekness,” despite her constant expressions of pain and discomfort. And
while her feet w
­ ere being examined, they reported, she went into two ecstatic
trances, the second of which “made her ­whole body shudder and left her trans-
fixed for a long time.”105 The examination of her chest wound, which was car-
ried out on a Friday when it normally bled, left the investigators “in awe and
grateful to God” that they had been allowed to see “such an evident miracle and
such a sacred testimony of the passion and wounds of our Redeemer.” All in all,
they concluded, María’s wounds w
­ ere a miracle of “super­natural origin and be-
yond the ability of all ­human artifice.” The chief lesson to be learned from their
report, they concluded, was that the miracles made pos­si­ble by the Catholic faith
 tricksters of the impossible 275

testify to its genuinely divine character and that Sor María’s miracles had been
ordained by God “to awaken t­ hose who are asleep during t­ hese times when mal-
ice reigns supreme.”106
María had prevailed once again. ­After receiving this report, Master Gen-
eral Sixto Fabri declared all the accusations against María to be false. She was
no fraud, ­after all, but a genuinely holy stigmatic and worthy of admiration.
Shortly ­after this pronouncement was made, María was reelected prioress of La
Anunciada, apparently well on her way to heaven, ultimately, and to a privileged
place of honor in the Catholic Church. But Fabri had made one decision that
undermined the results of the past three investigations: he refused to punish or
expel ­those nuns who had “falsely” accused María of fraud.107 With her enemies
still surrounding her, María had no real chance of avoiding conflict. Complaints
kept flowing, many of which had more to do with her lack of humility and her
poor leadership than with feigned miracles. Ultimately, however, it was not com-
plaints of this sort—or even claims that she had been secretly observed painting
on her stigmata—­that would lead to María’s undoing but issues of nationalism,
politics, and secular authority.
María happened to live during a highly volatile time in Portugal’s history,
and as a member of a prominent noble f­ amily—­and as a living saint and source
of im­mense national pride—­she was inevitably drawn into the po­liti­cal arena.
The main issue at stake was Portugal’s sovereignty, which became highly unsta-
ble when the childless King Sebastian died in b
­ attle in 1578, and the throne
passed to his ­uncle Henry, a celibate cardinal who died in 1580 without a le-
gitimate heir. Much to the dismay of many in Portugal, the succession crisis that
ensued led to the annexation of their kingdom by King Philip II of Spain. Philip
had legitimate dynastic claims since his m
­ other was Empress Isabella, ­daughter
of King Manuel I of Portugal, but other claimants to the throne who champi-
oned Portugal’s in­de­pen­dence ­were a constant threat to Philip.
Even though some elites in Portugal suspected that María favored in­de­
pen­dence from Spain, she had managed to stay away from politics throughout
the succession crisis and King Philip’s seizure of the throne. She had very cor-
dial relations with King Philip and his viceroy—­who consulted her often—­and
Philip was so captivated by her claims that he asked her to bless the Spanish
Armada that set sail from Lisbon in May of 1588 for the invasion and conquest
of ­England.108 If the Spanish Armada blessed by María had been successful
rather than a humiliating disaster, she might have escaped further scrutiny, at
least for a few years. But the Armada’s annihilation was doubly harmful for her.
 276 malevolent

First, it raised new questions about her holiness and miracle-­working

powers since her blessing of the armada had obviously failed. Then, by giving the
Portuguese some hope for their own cause—­including the possibility of a success-
ful En­glish invasion led by the contender Antonio—­that colossal defeat pulled
María into the realm of conspiracies, willingly and unwillingly. Rumors circulated
that she had said a­ fter the Armada’s failure that “the Kingdom of Portugal does
not belong to Philip II, but to the Braganza ­family” (to which the contender An-
tonio belonged). Even worse, she had also predicted that “if the king of Spain
does not restore the throne that he unjustly usurped, then God w
­ ill punish him
severely.” Moreover, Sor María reportedly dared to speak of herself as the living
incarnation of Portugal and of her wounds as symbols of Portugal’s repression
by Spain.109 To make m
­ atters worse, knowing what her sentiments w
­ ere, some
Portuguese nationalists brazenly invoked her name in support of their rebellious
cause without her knowledge.110 Some also gave credence to the rumor that María’s
main intention all along had been to f­ree Portugal from Spain’s yoke. As one con­
temporary put it in November 1588, it was certain that all her miracles “­were
faked and designed to f­ avor the party of don Antonio.”111
As soon as word of María’s po­liti­cal advocacy reached Philip II, her repu-
tation as a saint ceased to ­matter. According to one account, Philip curtly ob-
served: “A nun who meddles in politics and stirs up the ­people cannot be a true
saint.”112 On August 9, 1588, her close friend Cardinal-­Archduke Albert, King
Philip’s nephew and viceroy in Lisbon, following instructions from Philip him-
self, ordered the Inquisition to investigate Sor María and her alleged miracles.113
­After collecting fifteen folios full of accusations against María and interrogat-
ing fifty-­nine witnesses—­a pro­cess that took two months—­the inquisitors ­were
now ready to interrogate María herself, who had been stripped of her position
as prioress. At first she claimed the high ground, maintaining her innocence,
repeating all of the same accounts she had previously given concerning her
miraculous ecstasies.114 But this team of inquisitors, which included the arch-
bishop of Lisbon, the bishop-­elect of Braga, one Jesuit priest, one Augustinian
canon, and one Dominican friar, dared to be much less deferential and lenient
than previous investigators and much less sensitive about the pain she claimed
to feel when her wounds w
­ ere examined.
Having listened to her denials—­somewhat impatiently, one must assume—
they scrubbed her hands with a rough cloth, ­water, and black soap. As María
wailed, feigning pain, the stigmata slowly began to fade. Within a half hour, her
stigmata had totally vanished, leaving the w
­ ater bowl full of paint residue and
 tricksters of the impossible 277

her pearly white hands perfectly clean and wound-­free. They w

­ ere not real wounds
­after all, as many believed, but expertly executed miniaturist paintings of wounds
that had fooled far too many experts.
Ordered to confess, a shaken María begged to be left alone for a day to col-
lect her thoughts. The next morning, a­ fter spending the night ­under the watchful
gaze of four nuns, María made a dramatic confession. Falling to her knees,
groveling at the feet of the inquisitors, she expressed remorse, begged for mercy,
and admitted that ­every aspect of her vaunted sanctity had been a lie, down to
the smallest details. All of her prolonged ecstasies and trances had been faked;
the stigmata on her head ­were small self-­inflicted wounds; the stigmata on her
hands, feet, and chest had been painted on; the cross-­shaped bloodstains she
produced ­were carefully crafted using blood from self-­inflicted wounds; her levi-
tations had been accomplished with the aid of thick-­soled footgear known
as chapines and wooden poles hidden from view ­under her habit; and her halos
and luminescence had all been produced through the manipulation of lamps
and mirrors. And so on. Not a single miracle had been genuine, even ­those heal-
ings that had supposedly occurred through her agency, which she now attributed
to the faith of ­those who believed in her.115 In addition, she also confessed that
she had feigned her pain during previous inspections of her wounds, knowing that
this ruse would prevent the examiners from scouring them vigorously enough
to take off the paint, and that she never thought anyone would ever dare to give
her a scrubbing such as the one that revealed her duplicity.116
Unlike Magdalena de la Cruz, who had immediately blamed the devil for
her duplicity as soon as her fraudulence was discovered, Sor María insisted that
she alone deserved blame. When pressed to ferret out the devil, she repeatedly
held firm: nothing she had done whatsoever was demonically induced or the
result of some pact with the devil. All she would admit was that she had excelled
as an actress and illusionist and that her sole aim had been to gain admiration
as a saint and mystic, for purely selfish reasons.117
On November 7, 1588, the Inquisition passed sentence on María, declar-
ing her guilty of “trickery and deceit” through her own “artifice and invention.”118
Consigning her to “perpetual incarceration” at a convent outside Lisbon, the
inquisitors ordered her to spend the rest of her life continually ­doing penance,
shut off from contact with the outside world. In addition, they decreed that all
physical objects and pseudo-­sacramentalia related to her w
­ ere to be destroyed—­
images, books, manuscripts, crosses, beads, cloths, and any such items—to make it
seem “as if they had never existed.”119 Given the seriousness of her offenses, this
 278 malevolent

was a relatively benign sentence, which the inquisitors said was based on the lack
of demonic involvement in her deceit as well as her own expressions of re-
morse, which ­were considered genuine. Po­liti­cal motives might have also influ-
enced the Inquisition’s leniency.120
A public announcement of María’s sentence was delayed u
­ ntil December 8,
when it was read out to a g­ reat throng assembled at Lisbon’s cathedral and, over
the next few days, throughout all other churches in Lisbon, one by one. Before
long, news of María’s shocking unmasking had spread throughout Eu­rope and
Iberia’s overseas colonies. The magnitude of this scandal was too ­great to keep
contained, especially ­because of the individuals involved. King Philip II re-
mained ­silent, but his viceroy in Lisbon, Cardinal-­Archduke Albert, had to ad-
mit his role in creating the scandal to Pope Sixtus V in a full report. Some other
leading figures involved paid a heavy price for being so easily duped. The Papal
Nuncio Bongiovanni was immediately recalled to Rome and replaced, and Sixto
Fabri, superior general of the Dominican order, who had repeatedly vouched
for María’s sanctity, was quickly removed from his post.121 Fray Luis de Granada,
who had not only admired her for a long time but also written a hagiography
in which he praised her virtues and miracles as equal to t­hose of canonized
saints, was hit the hardest. A mystic himself, also revered as a living saint by
many, the eighty-­eight-­year-­old Fray Luis, in failing health, hurried to address
the scandal in two texts.122
In the first of ­these, afterward published as a pamphlet, Fray Luis at-
tempted to explain how so many prominent and learned men could have been
so easily fooled. As he saw it, Sor María’s virtuous life—­her prayer life, her de-
votion to the sacraments, her outward humility and charity—­made him and
many ­others assume that her miracle claims ­were true. At bottom, he argued, it
was still a mystery how she could be virtuous in some re­spects but not o
­ thers.
Her deceitfulness and the scandal caused by it ­were hard lessons from which all
believers had something to learn,123 including Sor María herself, who seemed
to have fully repented. In the final analy­sis, then, her duplicity was a test of
faith.124
In the second treatise, which was much longer, Fray Luis wrestled with
his own dismay and the potential damage María’s duplicity and his own
blindness to it could cause to the Catholic faithful. This text, “A Sermon on
Scandals Caused by Public Disgraces,” was much more than an admission of
his own shortcomings or an attempt to refurbish his own reputation.125 It
was also an anguished plea for calm, a sharp-­edged polemical weapon, and a
 tricksters of the impossible 279

mystically inclined theological meditation. A fall from grace such as Sor María’s
was very dangerous for the faithful, for it made “good ­people weep, bad ­people
laugh, and weak ­people faint.” Even worse, in the long run it had the potential
to “scandalize nearly every­one, and make them lose faith in the virtue of
good ­people.”126 But losing one’s faith over such an incident would be a ­great
­mistake, he argued, ­because the ­human propensity for sin affects every­one
equally, and frauds such as María have a way of sorting out “­those who truly
love God from t­hose who do not.”127 Ultimately, then, a key lesson to be
learned in this case was that God does not allow frauds to go undetected and
that the Inquisition was a perfect instrument guided by His hand. As Fray
Luis put it: “The truth is, that if this affair is prudently examined, we w
­ ill find
in it the marvel of the Holy Office, which is run by virtuous and righ­teous
men who have no re­spect for this world; but consider it their principal re-
sponsibility to confront deceivers, scoffers, and hypocrites, and wolves dressed
in sheep’s clothing, all of whom they punish. And this punishment should not
give rise to fear among good p
­ eople, but rather joy and confidence, seeing
that they have a good shepherd who defends them from the wolves and keeps
them safe.”128
Fray Luis died shortly ­after writing ­these two texts, and some would at-
tribute his death to the pain María’s betrayal had caused him. But while Fray
Luis spent his last days on earth drawing positive lessons from this scandal, one
Protestant polemicist turned the scandal into a potent weapon with which
to attack the Catholic Church and highlight its demonic nature. Cipriano de
Valera (1531–1602), a former Hieronymite monk from southern Spain who had
turned Protestant and fled to Geneva—­and was subsequently burned in effigy
at an auto de fé in Seville in 1559—­collected vari­ous published texts that praised
María’s holiness and used them as ammunition to take aim against Catholic
corruption, duplicity, and hy­poc­risy. In 1594, a few years a­ fter news of María’s
fraud had become well known throughout Eu­rope, Valera published a brief trea-
tise in Spanish aimed at convincing his fellow countrymen that they should
turn away from their horribly idolatrous Catholic faith.
The title of his brief treatise—­like so many of that age—­was a concise
summary of his argument: “The swarm of false miracles and demonic illusions
with which María de la Visitación, prioress of the convent of the Anunciada in
Lisbon, fooled many ­people; and how she was exposed and condemned in the
year 1588.”129 Valera’s main argument was ­simple enough and very much in keep-
ing with Protestant anti-­Catholic polemic: María was no fraud at all but rather
 280 malevolent

in league with the devil, for it was Satan himself who caused all of the miracles
claimed by the Catholic Church.130
So, ironically, in a case in which blatant fraud had been exposed and in
which the Catholic Church had declared the impossible feats claimed by a miracle-­
worker to be mere trickery, stripped of all super­natural or preternatural agency,
Valera, the Protestant who had translated Calvin’s Institutes into Spanish and
revised the 1602 translation of the Bible by Casiodoro de la Reina, argued that
such miracles ­were pos­si­ble indeed and that the devil had used his powers to
make the impossible happen.131 Simply put, since it was impossible for genuine
miracles to occur, all observable miracles, such as t­ hose claimed by María, had
to be the work of the dev­il.132
­After being sent to a convent in Abrantes, Sor María spent the remainder
of her life d
­ oing penance in obscurity, apparently impressing her new s­ isters with
her conduct and gradually having the rigors of that penance lightened, always
at the request of the prioress and her fellow nuns. The last glimpse we have of
María is from March 1603, when a new inquisitor general lifted the remaining
penances that had been imposed on her in 1588. A
­ fter this date she vanishes
from view, ­dying in obscurity but never erased from memory.

Luisa de la Ascensión,“the Nun of Carrión”:

Extreme Ascetic Bilocator
Another mystic whose impossible feats earned her a reputation as a living saint
was Sor Luisa de la Ascensión (1565–1636), a Franciscan nun who has already
been mentioned in connection with Sor María de Ágreda. Much like the Nun
of Lisbon, Sor Luisa came to be known simply as the Nun of Carrión due to the
location of her convent of Saint Clare, which was in northern Castile, in the
town of Carrión de los Condes.133 The Nun of Lisbon and the Nun of Carrión
shared many traits in common, and the fame won by both was as extreme as
their falls from grace ­were dramatic. Both ­were famously effective miracle-­workers
and healers. Sor Luisa, however, outshone Magdalena de la Cruz when it came
to the intensity of her mystical charisms. Unlike Magdalena, Luisa was not vis-
ibly stigmatized, but the bilocations she supposedly achieved ­were among the
most extreme ever reported, and her inedia—­her ability to survive without
eating—­was as extreme as that of María de la Visitación, the diabolical abbess
of Córdoba. Curiously, as in the case of María de la Visitación, it was the claim
 tricksters of the impossible 281

of inedia that eventually brought ruin to the Nun of Carrión, not any of her other
claims, even t­ hose of multiple far-­flung bilocations.
Sor Luisa and María de Ágreda both belonged to the same branch of the
Franciscan Conceptionist Poor Clares,134 befriended Kings of Spain (Philip III
and Philip IV), and w
­ ere enthusiastic promoters of the doctrine of the Immacu-
late Conception of the Virgin Mary.135 Both ­were authors, although Sor Luisa’s
writings ­were l­imited to mystical love poetry.136 Both levitated, too, and gained
fame for their ecstasies, visions, prophecies, and their numerous bilocations.
­After receiving a visit from King Philip III in 1613, Luisa remained in touch
with him, and in return he showered her convent and the town of Carrión with
­favors. In addition to supposedly bilocating to Philip’s deathbed in Madrid in
1621, she also ostensibly bilocated to Japan in 1615 to comfort a martyr; to
Rome to save Pope Gregory XV from poisoning; to Assisi to venerate Saint Fran-
cis at his tomb; to a battlefield in Flanders to cheer Catholic soldiers fighting
Protestants; to the ­Battle of White Mountain near Prague to encourage Catho-
lic troops to a pivotal victory over Protestants;137 and, most amazingly, to New
Mexico many times, where she served as a missionary to the Jumano Indians.
Some reports would even pair her up with María de Ágreda, as co-­missionaries,138
and initially, the Franciscans in New Mexico assumed that the so-­called Lady
in Blue mentioned by the Jumanos must have been Sor Luisa, rather than Sor
María.139 Due to her fame, it is highly likely that Luisa inspired María of Ágreda,
who was thirty-­seven years younger and undoubtedly familiar with her miracu-
lous exploits, especially her bilocations.140
Luisa Colmenares Cabezón was born in 1565 in Madrid, which had re-
cently been designated as the capital city of Spain by King Philip II. Her par-
ents ­were Juan Colmenares and Jerónima Cabezón, both courtiers in the ser­vice
of the crown. Her maternal grand­father, Félix Antonio de Cabezón, was a prom-
inent composer and organist who had served as chamber musician for Em-
peror Charles V and ­later became chapel musician for King Philip II. Intensely
pious from an early age, Luisa was sent to live with a widowed aunt in Carrión
in 1582, at the age of seventeen. Gradually attracted by the contemplative life
of the nuns at the Franciscan convent of Santa Clara, which she visited often,
Luisa joined that community in 1584, taking the religious name of Luisa de la
Ascensión.
At the convent of Santa Clara, Luisa quickly impressed every­one with her
intense devotion and austerities. From the very start, Luisa displayed a penchant
 282 malevolent

for eating as ­little as pos­si­ble and ­doing so on the floor rather than at a ­table.
Sometime around 1595, she s­ topped eating altogether—or seemed to—­except
for the communion wafer offered to her daily at Mass,141 as well as morsels of
heavenly food provided to her by angels.142 In addition to fasting, Luisa
scourged herself bloody ­every day, wore tight iron rings around her neck, along
with prickly hair shirts and metal breastplates studded with sharp barbs, and
slept for only a few hours each night on a wooden plank on the floor. Sometimes
she would prostrate herself on the floor at doorways and ask the other nuns to
step on her as they entered or left the room. In addition, she spent many hours
in her cell at night stretched out on the floor, on a life-­size cross, praying, and
carry­ing that fifty-­pound cross around, too, dragging it up and down the stairs
on her bare knees. She also claimed that she was constantly attacked by de-
mons who pummeled her with iron bars and chains, knocked out her teeth, and
ripped out her fingernails and toenails.143 Witnesses who would ­later testify to
the Inquisition said that demons had thrown her down the stairs, knocked her
off her choir seat, tossed her from one room to another, and bitten off pieces of
her flesh. Apparently, the nuns at Santa Clara came to view her as a very useful
decoy for deflecting demonic assaults on ­others, especially at the moment of
death, when she would often be placed ­under the deathbeds of fellow nuns so
that she would be assaulted by demons instead of the nun who was d
­ ying.144 As
one might expect, Sor Luisa became something of an expert demonologist as a
result of ­these encounters and also a successful exorcist.145
As could often happen with ascetic nuns, Luisa also began to experience
prolonged cataleptic ecstasies and raptures, during which she was impervious
to pain, even when pricked with pins or singed by flames. Her ecstasies could
occur anywhere and leave her frozen in strange awkward poses. Her levitations
­were slight, but, as in the case of other levitators, her body seemed to become
weightless and could be blown about easily. Sometimes, she was seen levitating
along with her life-­size cross, giving viewers the impression that she was actu-
ally nailed to it, as if crucified.146 Cataleptic raptures also occurred in chapel
­every day ­after she took communion, and ­these could be witnessed by outside
visitors, some of whom traveled from faraway locations just to view her in ec-
stasy through the comulgatorio win­dow.147 Luisa also claimed to have received
invisible stigmata when she was only four or five years old that caused her in-
tense pain ­every Thursday and Friday, as well as other constant pains that ri-
valed t­ hose of many martyrs.148
 tricksters of the impossible 283

Luisa’s reputation as a miracle-­working mystic and living saint grew grad-

ually, first within the convent and, eventually, beyond its walls. By 1604, her
saintliness was so well established that it led to the publication of a brief pro-
tohagiography and to the circulation of a legend that Luisa’s sainthood had been
predicted before birth to her parents and that she had received a special bless-
ing in her ­mother’s womb.149 By this point, she was also well known for having
established a popu­lar confraternity, the Defenders of the Most Pure Concep-
tion of the Virgin, which was dedicated to promoting the doctrine of the Im-
maculate Conception. King Philip III himself was among the first to join, along
with the rest of the royal f­ amily and many other nobles and significant figures.
By 1621, this confraternity would have over 80,000 members throughout Spain
and its empire, with Luisa as its undisputed leader.150
The most impressive proof of Luisa’s widespread reputation as a living
saint, by far, could be found scattered throughout the Catholic world in innu-
merable small objects connected to her—­sacramentalia—­which ­were highly
sought ­after and fervently collected as divine talismans: small crosses, rosary
beads, medals and cards imprinted with her image, cloth patches, and other trin-
kets that she had supposedly touched and blessed and which she claimed had
been taken up to heaven by angels and brought back to earth loaded with di-
vine graces.151 Some of the crosses had her name inscribed on them, and some
of the images depicted Sor Luisa trampling on a large reptilian beast resembling
a serpent or dragon, an allusion to similar images of the Immaculate Concep-
tion.152 All sorts of wondrous feats and miracles would be attributed to Luisa
through such objects, and through her intercession, including innumerable heal-
ing cures, some resurrections from the dead, and the release of countless souls
from purgatory.153
Luisa generated many of ­these talismans herself and was ­behind their dis-
tribution, ostensibly as an act of obedience to her confessors, who had ordered
her to do this.154 According to her, the divine graces conferred by her crosses
and beads ­were a gift that came directly from God, assured by promises made
to her while she was enraptured.155 ­These sacred objects ­were in high demand.
A priest at the parish church of San Miguel in Madrid boasted of a shrine he
had filled with Luisa’s crosses, rosary beads, medals, images, and cloths. And a
duke claimed to have 2,000 crosses he had obtained from Luisa herself. Obvi-
ously, ­these sacramentalia had acquired a value similar to that of relics, or iden-
tical to them, for their ostensibly heavenly provenance imbued them with the
 284 malevolent

power to convey indulgences and divine ­favors—­some very specific—as outlined

in the printed texts that sometimes accompanied them. One such text, collected
and filed away by the Inquisition, made the following claims about rosary beads
ostensibly blessed in heaven at Sor Luisa’s request:

Be advised that Our Lord has granted ­these beads all the indulgences and
graces that ­every Supreme Pontiff since Saint Peter has granted to all
religious ­orders, and to churches in Rome, Jerusalem, and Santiago in
Galicia. . . .
—­They have the same power as an image of the Agnus Dei.
—­They have power over all dangers posed by ­water and fire.
—­They have power over all storms on land and sea.
—­They have power over all plagues and all illnesses.
—­They have power over all demons. . . .

Apparently, whoever composed this text knew that some Luisan objects being
peddled ­were not genuine, for the final line of the text reads as follows: “None
of the original ones of ­these ­will ever be lost ­because their owner, or some other
person ­will always find them. Why this is so is a g­ reat mystery that ­will be re-
vealed a­ fter her death.”156
In 1609, at the age of forty-­four, as her fame kept increasing, Luisa was
elected abbess of her convent, a post she would hold ­until 1617, and it seemed
she was on her way to rivaling or eclipsing the feats of many previous saints,
including Saint Teresa of Avila. King Philip III held her in high esteem, as did
Pope Gregory XV and many other luminaries of church and state. Pilgrims
flocked to the convent of Santa Clara from all corners of Iberia and from other
lands as well. Then, suddenly, in 1611, as a bolt out of the blue, six nuns at Santa
Clara denounced her as a fraud to the inquisitor general, Bernardo Sandoval de
Rojas (­uncle of the Duke of Lerma, King Philip III’s most power­ful minister).
Their charge was very specific and ­limited solely to her claim that all she ever
consumed ­were the consecrated hosts she received in communion, the heavenly
morsels provided by angels, and an occasional sip of ­water. ­These six nuns ac-
cused their abbess Luisa of eating in secret and swore they could prove it.157
The convent of Santa Clara immediately became a vortex of recriminations:
most of the nuns came to Luisa’s defense and pleaded with their Franciscan
superiors to punish the six “liars” who had denounced Luisa as a fraud.
Fearing the worst sort of implosion within the convent and anticipating
nothing but disaster for the Franciscan order if the Inquisition ­were to get in-
 tricksters of the impossible 285

volved, the provincial general of the Spanish Franciscans acted quickly, placing
­Father Antonio Daza, the confessor of the Santa Clara nuns, in charge of an
immediate investigation in the hope of keeping the Inquisition at bay. ­Father
Daza was far from impartial, however. He not only venerated Sor Luisa but had
also begun to write a history of her life in anticipation of her eventual canon-
ization. Not surprisingly, F
­ ather Daza ruled a­ fter a brief inquest that the accu-
sations w
­ ere false, driven by jealousy and anger. Power­ful relatives of some
of the six nuns reacted to this exoneration by contacting the Inquisition, but
that tribunal declared in October 1611 that it had no jurisdiction over this
case and that all accusations against Luisa should be handled by a tribunal of
the Franciscan order.158
The Inquisition had been kept out of the unpleasant mess at Santa Clara
for the time being, but keeping it away would prove impossible. Accusations of
fraudulence, once made, almost always left a cloud of suspicion over the accused,
and that was certainly true in the case of Sor Luisa. Even though she had been
found innocent, and even though her popularity as a living saint kept increas-
ing, rumors of her deceit continued to circulate in the world beyond the con-
vent, intermixed with her eagerly collected beads and crosses. In 1614, hoping
to squelch all talk of fraud once and for all, ­Father Antonio de Trejo, vicar-­general
of the Spanish Franciscans, took it upon himself to question Sor Luisa. Asked
to tell the truth, on pain of excommunication, Luisa denied any wrongdoing
and affirmed that “in the previous twenty years . . . ​her stomach could not ac-
cept any food whatsoever,” adding that on ­those rare occasions when she had
tried to eat, she could never consume any amount of food larger than a single
hazelnut.159 The vicar-­general pronounced Sor Luisa innocent once again and
condemned all rumors of fraud as false and libelous, and this verdict seemed to
dispel the clouds of suspicion that enveloped her. Or so it seemed for the next
two de­cades.
Eclipsed by Luisa’s ever-­increasing reputation as a saint, the accusations
dis­appeared from view. In 1623, her saintliness more highly regarded than ever,
Luisa even received a special visit from Charles, Prince of Wales, son of the En­
glish king James I, who had come to Spain to negotiate his proposed marriage
to Infanta Maria Ana, the ­daughter of King Philip III. Luisa’s pull was so irre-
sistible that the Protestant heir to the throne of ­England had felt compelled to
go out of his way to meet her.160 Many other elites came to see her too. A
­ fter all,
she was a living saint. But in 1633, as her halo kept growing ever brighter, un-
stoppably, the Inquisition unexpectedly announced that it would investigate new
 286 malevolent

and old accusations made against her. As it turned out, unseen by the public’s
eye, the Inquisition had been collecting denunciations against Luisa for many
years, slowly building up a very detailed case against her, which added up to
162 folios.161
The thoroughness and slowness with which the Inquisition approached
this case would become legendary. A
­ fter months and months of interminably
sustained questioning of Luisa and many ­others—as their investigation inten­
sified—­the Inquisition de­cided to remove her from Santa Clara and the Fran-
ciscans and to seclude her at the Augustinian convent of the Incarnation in
Valladolid. On March 28, 1635, the transfer of Luisa took place. Local authorities
and ­people from all walks of life bid a lengthy farewell, kissing her feet, express-
ing their dismay. The ­whole town was up in arms, “resolutely committed to not
losing such a gem, swearing they would risk their lives, honor, property, wives, and
­children” to prevent her from being taken away. A
­ fter recovering from a rapture—­
her final one in Carrión—­Sor Luisa quietly cajoled the crowd into accepting
her fate. Then, in the late after­noon, as Sor Luisa was taken out of town by
carriage, a mob poured out into the streets, wailing and weeping, mobbing her
coach, straining to touch it, aching for a final glimpse of their holy nun as she
departed. Popu­lar piety had collided with official religion, and the result was a
resounding rejection at the local level of the Inquisition’s decision. As King
Philip IV’s corregidor reported: “It is astounding that even though it was an-
nounced that Sor Luisa was being taken away by order of the Inquisition, instead
of r­unning away from her and abandoning their devotion, the ­people actually
became more fervent, creating such a mad rush to revere and proclaim her a saint
that her coach crushed many ­people, without anyone being hurt, and the same
­people said that they had never heard so much applause.”162
While Luisa was secluded at the Valladolid convent, the Inquisition pur-
sued its investigation vigorously, questioning and requestioning Luisa repeat-
edly from May to August 1635 and reviewing statements found in vari­ous
documents, especially a biography of Luisa written by her confessor F
­ ather Do-
mingo de Aspe, to which Luisa herself had contributed orally. F
­ ather Aspe’s bi-
ography, which was riddled with exaggerations and which Luisa claimed to have
never read but nonetheless approved with her signature, as an act of obedience
to F
­ ather Aspe, was the source of many of the worst suspicions the inquisitors
had about her.163 So Luisa was now meticulously examined on the meaning of
many passages and words in t­ hese documents and asked to comment upon or
to affirm or deny the veracity of hundreds of issues.164 Not content solely with
examining her, the inquisitors also continued to question o
­ thers and to search
 tricksters of the impossible 287

for additional information, even ­after they ­were done with Luisa.165 They for-
bid every­one from speaking about her as long as her trial lasted, demanding
that the thousands of crosses, beads, and relics of Luisa that w
­ ere in circula-
tion be surrendered to church authorities or the Inquisition, ­under penalty of
excommunication.
Nonetheless, to ban conversation on any subject is one ­thing; to stop it is
quite another. Many devotees kept writing and talking to each other about Lu-
isa, including King Philip IV, who exchanged letters about the pro­gress of the
Inquisition’s case against the Nun of Carrión with her fellow Franciscan biloca-
tor Sor María de Ágreda, even as late as 1646. Given the similarities between
their profiles, Sor María the bilocator had a keen interest in Luisa, worried about
her fate, and ­gently nudged her friend and confidant King Philip IV to steer the
Inquisition in a favorable direction. The king, in response, assured the Nun of
Ágreda that he was badgering the inquisitor general “to speed up every­thing and
pay close attention to this ­matter,” for he, too, desired “what was most con­ve­
nient and just” for the Nun of Carrión, whose case was still in limbo ten years
­after her death.166
By all accounts, Luisa endured her quiet penitential life gracefully at the
convent in Valladolid, cut off from the world, living among strangers who w
­ ere
initially suspicious of her. The bishop of Valladolid, a devotee of Luisa, expected
her to be cleared of all charges and to be eventually canonized, so with that end
in mind, he requested frequent reports on Luisa’s be­hav­ior from her fellow nuns.
According to ­these texts, which the nuns ­later ratified in person before the in-
quisitors, Luisa was an exemplary nun who never once complained about her
situation or spoke about the accusations that had brought her ­there.167 The
bishop also tried to keep track of miracles attributed to her during this period,
but according to the rec­ord he kept, they dwindled to a mere handful.168 Her
exile from Santa Clara lasted less than two years. At dawn on October 28, 1636,
Luisa died of quartan fever (malaria) and was immediately buried ­there, at the
Augustinian convent in Valladolid. Meanwhile, the Inquisition continued its in-
vestigation as if she ­were still alive, and the nuns who had initially denounced
her kept insisting that Luisa was a fraud. Their distinguished relatives, too, con-
tinued to vilify Luisa and the convent of Santa Clara.169 In November of 1637,
in fact, Inquisitor Francisco Antonio Diaz de Cabrera recommended that Luisa
be found guilty of all the charges leveled against her and that her corpse be re-
moved from hallowed ground and burned publicly, “as punishment for her and
as an example for all ­others.”170 Not every­one in the tribunal agreed, however,
so the case dragged on.
 288 malevolent

In 1640, as the Inquisition continued its slow, plodding investigations, it

received a letter containing a stunning confession from Inés Manrique, the chief
ringleader of the accusing nuns, in which she admitted that all of her accusa-
tions had been false, driven by envy and resentment.171 As soon as this confes-
sion arrived, the inquisitors interrogated the surviving nuns again, creating
a new vortex of accusations, counteraccusations, confessions, and recrimina-
tions.172 Faced with this new evidence, the Inquisition chose to reconsider all
of its previous deliberations, assigning Fray Pedro de Balbás the difficult task
of drafting a review, which he completed in 1643.173 Moving at a snail’s pace,
the Inquisition fi­nally issued a definitive sentence on May 23, 1648, declaring
Luisa innocent of any fraudulence or wrongdoing and, at the very same time,
ordering “in totum” the annihilation of all objects connected to her, including
beads, crosses, images, relics, and such, as well as all books and other texts on
her life and miracles and anything e­ lse linked to her, including the two biogra-
phies written by ­Father Antonio Daza and ­Father Domingo de Aspe. In addi-
tion, it prohibited any further mention of her, ever, as well as the publication of
any texts about her. In essence, Luisa had been absolved but relegated to obliv-
ion and denied any veneration as a saint. Naturally, this ambivalent ruling irked
Luisa’s devotees who had never lost hope in her eventual canonization. One such
disgruntled defender of her holiness wrote to the president of the Supreme
Council of the Inquisition: “With this sentence, you have left the said Sor Lu-
isa with a worse reputation than she already had while she was being impris-
oned and pro­cessed. . . . ​This sentence brands her as a fraud and a schemer . . . ​
and the notary who informed me of it said the sentence was only slightly less
awful than ordering Luisa to be burned in effigy.”174 Such complaints fell on deaf
ears, however. On October 12, 1648, ­after five months of sifting through all sorts
of appeals, the Inquisition let it be known that it stood firmly ­behind its previ-
ous sentence: ­every physical object connected to Sor Luisa and ­every word writ-
ten about her had to vanish from the earth, forever.175 All in all, it had taken
the Inquisition fifteen years to reach a final verdict on the Nun of Carrión, dur-
ing twelve of which she was already dead and buried. In 1550, as a small token
of mercy, the Inquisition fi­nally allowed Sor Luisa’s corpse to be moved from
Valladolid to the convent of Santa Clara in Carrión, u
­ nder strict o
­ rders forbid-
ding any veneration of it whatsoever.
In an impossible situation, ambivalence, caution, restraint, and some mea­
sure of doubt had trumped faith.
9. Protestants, Dev­iltry, and the Impossible

One Eve­ning when we ­were in the Chamber where Margaret Rule

then lay, in her late Affliction, we observed her to be, by an Invisible Force,
lifted up from the Bed whereon she lay . . . ​while yet neither her Feet,
nor any other part of her Body rested ­either on the Bed, or any other support,
but ­were also by the same force, lifted up from all that was ­under her,
and all this for a considerable while . . . ​and it was as much as
several of us could do, with all our strength, to pull her down.

When it came to impossible feats in the early modern era, the devil was always
involved in some way, as in the Protestant exorcism described above, which took
place in 1693 in Puritan Boston.1 The devil was omnipresent then, not only
­because Catholics and Protestants constantly demonized one another but also
­because both camps believed it pos­si­ble for Satan and his minions to manipu-
late the laws of nature and achieve the seemingly impossible.2 Curiously, Cath-
olics and Protestants shared what historian Stuart Clark calls “the principal aim
of demonological enquiry,” which was precisely “establishing what was super­
natural and what was not.”3
More specifically, the basic princi­ple of late medieval and early modern
demonology shared by Catholics and Protestants was the assumption that demons
­were incapable of altering the laws of nature. Only God could do that, ­these two
Christian rivals agreed. But since demons ­were spiritual beings, incredibly an-
cient and clever, they ­were endowed with capabilities that surpassed t­hose of
any ­human, such as vastly superior intelligence, strength, and speed and an inti-
mate knowledge of the workings of nature. Consequently, demons could per-
form feats that seemed super­natural but ­were, in fact, not truly super­natural

289
 290 malevolent

since they simply involved the manipulation of entirely natu­ral means, much
like the feats effected by proficient twenty-­first-­century scientists or engineers.
This distinction was subtle yet significant: it meant that the amazing feats per-
formed by demons on earth ­were not “super­natural,” that is, above or beyond
the natu­ral, but rather “preternatural,” or simply besides the natu­ral yet still
within it (L. praeter), “suspended between the mundane and the miraculous,” as
a historian of science has aptly put it.4 Catholics and Protestants agreed that
the astounding, seemingly impossible feats of demons ­were not ­really miracles,
although they could often be indistinguishable from the real t­ hing. So, curiously,
while they rejected the possibility of divine miracles, Protestants continued to
believe that the devil could perform “impossible” feats that might easily be mis-
taken for miracles wrought by God.
­These criteria, seemingly unquestionable, led early modern demonologists—­
Protestant as well as Catholic—to intensely scrutinize all claims of impossible
feats, hoping to discern w
­ hether they ­were divine or demonic in origin. It was a
messy enterprise, however, due to a lack of consensus on how much demons could
ultimately achieve and due also to the disturbing fact that they could create illu-
sions that could easily fool anyone. To make discernment even more difficult, ex-
perts believed that one could also have nondemonic illusions or encounter totally
natu­ral events that could easily be mistakenly attributed to demons. Catholic and
Protestant demonologists alike puzzled over such conundrums, not in some ab-
stract theological realm but in full engagement with real-­world concerns and
events that tested the mettle of all Christians, elite or not, learned or unschooled.5
And, of course, Catholics and Protestants eagerly turned their often contrary as-
sessments into polemical ammunition to fire against each other, making the the-
ory and practice of discerning the demonic “contested, in flux, and essential.”6
Polemics and issues of causation aside, the surprising fact is that Protes-
tants and Catholics could agree that seemingly impossible feats, such as levita-
tion and bilocation, w
­ ere indeed pos­si­ble and did, in fact, occur. This point of
agreement between Catholics and Protestants is one of the oddest wrinkles in
early modern history, and one of the most significant too, ­because it reveals a
continuity—­a shared mentality—­that rubs awkwardly against all the other dis-
continuities and core disagreements between ­these two competing branches of
Western Chris­tian­ity. Even more significant, this agreement also runs against
the grain of the era’s increasing skepticism and of the new worldview created
by the rise of rationalism and modern empirical science.
Oddly, then, although Protestants denied the possibility of divinely or-
dained super­natural miracles such as levitation and bilocation, they continued
 p r o t e s ta n t s , d e v i lt ry , a n d t h e i m p o s s i b l e 291

to believe that such seemingly impossible feats w

­ ere indeed pos­si­ble and w
­ ere
in fact the work of the devil and his preternatural powers, ­either through his
mastery of the laws of nature or through his craftiness, which allowed him to
easily fool ­humans, much like an extremely clever illusionist. What the Calvinist
Cipriano de Valera had to say about the Nun of Lisbon’s miracles also applied
to all Catholic miracles: “They have no foundation in the Word of God, but
rather in dreams, false miracles . . . ​and in illusions of the devil, who feigns be-
ing Christ’s equal.”7 Catholic miracles ­were “true indeed,” he added, “but only of
the sort that are worked by Satan in order to fool ­humans.”8 Valera summed up
the paradox in Protestant thinking succinctly: Catholic miracles ­were si­mul­ta­
neously “false” insofar as they ­were performed by the devil rather than God, but
they w
­ ere also very “real,” insofar as they actually took place, e­ ither through
very convincing illusions or through the bending of the laws of nature.
Demonizing one’s enemies or placing them in league with Satan was noth-
ing new. Neither was the inclination to entwine the natu­ral, preternatural, and
super­natural. That braiding was one of the chief characteristics of the transi-
tion to modernity, which was no clean, straight, steep ascent to empiricism and
pure reason. Demonizing could be meta­phorical at times, certainly, but even in
such instances, the imagery employed reified deeply held beliefs that affirmed
the real­ity of the devil and of his preternatural powers. Valera’s argument was
not new but merely an echo of beliefs passed on to him by the ­great Protestant
leaders of the previous generation, most of whom, surprisingly, ­adopted medieval
Catholic demonology virtually unchanged and wielded it as a weapon against
the Catholic Church, along with the equally lethal weapon of the “cessation-­of-­
miracles” argument. Briefly examining the beliefs of Martin Luther (1484–1546)
and John Calvin (1509–1564), the most influential leaders of the two major
Protestant traditions—­the Lutheran and the Reformed—­should provide a reveal-
ing glimpse of the core beliefs guiding Protestant metaphysical assumptions and
attitudes ­toward the dev­il’s role in seemingly impossible feats that trumped the
laws of nature.

The Devil, Martin Luther, and John Calvin

Luther’s devil had distinctly biblical features, some of which ­were sometimes
transmuted by the spin he put on them, as he did in his commentary on Paul’s
letter to the Galatians, where his exegesis turns the devil into a monstrous ab-
solutist monarch who is totally in charge of a fallen world: “It cannot be denied
that . . . ​the devil lives and surely rules the world. And his power is such, that we
 292 malevolent

are all his subjects, not just in terms of our bodies and our all t­ hings, and the
bread we eat. So, all of us who are flesh are ­under his rulership, and he can in-
jure ­children through his witches, or blind them and steal them and take their
place, as I heard happened in Saxony where he drained all the milk from the
breasts of five w
­ omen.”9
Despite his core princi­ple of scripture alone, Martin Luther—­like many
of his contemporaries—­ascribed many functions to the devil which are not
explic­itly found in the Bible.10 Luther’s devil was a Tausendkünstler, a prolific
and very creative artist capable of thousands of tricks, each a masterpiece of
evil.11 This devil was an odd amalgam of German folklore, monastic tradi-
tions, and Christian beliefs, and Luther himself made no attempt to sort out
­these dif­fer­ent strands when speaking about him. For instance, Luther once
claimed the devil had kept him awake at night by throwing nuts at the ceil-
ing.12 “It is not a unique, unheard-of ­thing for the devil to bang around and
haunt ­houses,” he affirmed. “In our monastery in Wittenberg I heard him for
sure. . . . ​The devil came and knocked three times in the storage chamber as if
dragging a bushel away.”13 Similarly, the devil could cause quarrels between
­people or fool them into seeing or hearing the most preposterous t­hings.14
He could trick hunters into thinking he was a hare or show up as almost any
animal15—­especially an ape.16 Once, Luther told of a man who was attacked
by the devil in the form of a goat. The man wrestled with the beast, ripped off
its horns, and watched it dis­appear.17 On another occasion, Luther found a
dog in his bed at the Wartburg castle and flung it out the win­dow, convinced
that it was a demon.18
Luther’s devil could be much more than a mere prankster. He also caused
sickness, ­either directly or through witches. Luther once complained, “I believe
that my illnesses a­ ren’t natu­ral but are sheer sorcery.”19 Yet another time, Luther
argued that all illnesses came from Satan.20 Sometimes, the devil manipulated the
weather too: “­There are many demons in the forests, w
­ ater, swamps, and de-
serted places. . . . ​­Others are in dense clouds and cause storms, lightning, thun-
der, and hail and poison the air.”21 Luther’s folksy devil did worse t­ hings, too, as
a fiend who haunted the landscape. “Many regions are inhabited by dev­ils,” he
said, “and Prus­sia is full of them.” Luther also claimed that a certain lake near
Eisleben was “the abode of captive demons” who could cause storms.22 Luther’s
devil could also drown experienced swimmers, and he once advised his congre-
gation never to swim alone and to always bathe at home rather than in any
stream, pond, lake, or river.23
 p r o t e s ta n t s , d e v i lt ry , a n d t h e i m p o s s i b l e 293

At times, Luther came close to sounding like a Manichean or a Cathar,

though he never espoused outright dualism. He summed it all up by saying: “Our
Lord God sends no misfortune or evil into the world other than through the
devil, from whom come all sorrow, misery, and sickness.”24 Despite the fact that
all evils, including temptation, came indirectly from God through the devil, Lu-
ther argued that all evil itself was attributable to Satan. Once, when someone
asked Luther w
­ hether the dev­il’s power was commanded by God, Luther quickly
replied: “Oh, no! The power he uses is not commanded. No way, no! But our
Lord God ­doesn’t stop him. . . . ​It’s as if a g­ reat lord saw someone lighting a blaze
and did nothing to prevent it, but merely looked through his fin­gers. This is what
God does with the dev­il.”25 And, naturally, this nearly f­ ree rein of the devil over
humankind included the miracles performed by him that the Catholic Church
claimed to be of divine origin. Convinced as he was that the Catholic Church
was “the seat of the Antichrist,” Luther attributed all its miracle-­working to the
devil. And all that diabolical mischief was on the same spectrum of evildoing
as witchcraft, magic, and other occult practices, which ­were as real to him as
the dev­il.26
Luther’s devil was no mere theological concept. He was a very real fiend
who had to be warded off, preferably with as much crudeness as pos­si­ble ­because
Luther was convinced that the Evil One should be attacked with his own weap-
ons. Consequently, he fought his very medieval Catholic devil with his own quirky
methods, often saying the most outrageous ­things and boasting about them af-
terward. “The devil seeks me out when I am at home in bed,” he said, “and I
always have one or two dev­ils waiting to pounce on me. They are smart dev­ils.
If they c­ an’t overwhelm my heart, they grab my head and plague me t­ here, and
when that proves useless, I show them my ass, for that’s where they belong.27
Taunts such as “Lick my ass” and “Eat my shit” ­were hurled at the devil by Lu-
ther with abandon.28 Flatulence topped all this scatology, much like frosting on
some cake from hell. Once, ­after farting loudly, he said: “Take this, dev­il! ­Here
is a crozier for you; go to Rome and give it to your idol! [the Pope].”29
Pious Christians who are offended by scatological crudeness have had
some trou­ble accepting this kind of talk, but the truth is that Luther’s scato-
logical humor cannot be easily isolated or ignored. It is deeply woven into his
diabology and therefore also into his soteriology and eschatology. Sometimes,
theological issues and farts are intertwined. “Almost ­every night when I wake
up the devil is t­here, itching to argue with me,” he boasted, pointing out that
the arguing often involved his central doctrine of salvation by faith alone. “I
 294 malevolent

have come to this conclusion,” he added. “When the argument that the Chris-
tian is without the law and above the law ­doesn’t help, I chase him away with a
fart.”30 And whenever his conscience was troubled by par­tic­u­lar sins, he would
say: “Hey, devil, I just shit in my pants too; have you added that to your list of
sins yet?”31 Luther elaborated on this approach of his: “To­night when I woke
up the devil came, wanting to argue with me, objecting and throwing it up to
me that I was a sinner. So, I said to him: Tell me something new, dev­il! I already
know that very well; as always, I have committed many real and true sins . . . ​
but all ­these sins are no longer mine, instead ­they’ve been taken by Christ. . . . ​
If this i­ sn’t enough for you, devil, I just happened to shit and piss: wipe your
mouth with that and take a big bite!”32
Luther’s be­hav­ior ­toward the devil was much more than a carnivalesque
gesture or coarse buffoonery.33 It was the ultimate proof of the validity of his
doctrine of salvation by faith alone and of the challenge he had issued to the
Catholic Church and to the devil who held sway over it. By showing contempt
for the devil on the dev­il’s own terms, Luther hoped ­others could see that he
had no fear of damnation and that he was claiming leadership in a cosmic strug­
gle, along with Christ, his savior.34 And that strug­gle included wrestling with
Luther’s devil as well as arguing that the miracles claimed by the Catholic Church
and all his other enemies ­were truly the dev­il’s work.35
John Calvin, the second-­generation French Reformer who became the lead-
ing voice of the Reformed Protestant tradition and who influenced Valera most
intensely, did not have as much to say as Luther did about his personal encoun-
ters with the devil or about the specific effects of diabolical power, but he none-
theless promoted the same argument against Catholic miracles as his Saxon
pre­de­ces­sor.36 Comparing Catholic priests to Egyptian magicians, Calvin attrib-
uted all con­temporary miracles to “sheer delusions of Satan.”37 Convinced of the
omnipotence of God, as well as of His providential direction of e­ very event on
earth, Calvin insisted that genuinely divine miracles had always been scarce and
that on the rare occasions when God had chosen to alter the laws of nature—as
recorded in the Bible—­He had done so with only one end in mind: “So that we
may know that what he r­eally confers is exclusively determined by his ­will.”38
Such a mentality was passed on to the vari­ous sorts of Reformed Protestants who
followed Calvin’s lead, including Valera.39
Catholics argued that Protestantism could be proven wrong through its
lack of miracles, and Calvin answered this charge by reinterpreting the role
played by miracles in the Christian religion and by denying that ­there was any
 p r o t e s ta n t s , d e v i lt ry , a n d t h e i m p o s s i b l e 295

real substance to Catholic claims.40 The only purpose of genuine miracles was
to strengthen the authority of God’s messengers, said Calvin, not to make them
the focus of attention or to alter the laws of nature or the fabric of material
real­ity.41 Consequently, he argued that it was wrong for Catholics to demand
miracles from Protestants ­because they ­were not forging some new gospel or
conveying some new revelation but w
­ ere instead “retaining that very Gospel
whose truth all the miracles that Jesus Christ and his disciples ever wrought
serve to confirm.”42 Insisting that miracles had totally ceased to occur by the
end of the Apostolic Age, sometime around the year 100, Calvin declared invalid
all of the miracle claims made by the Catholic Church beyond that date. ­Those
“miracles,” he argued, are not at all genuine but rather diabolical in origin: “We
may also fitly remember that Satan has his miracles, which, though they are
deceitful tricks rather than true powers, are such a sort as to mislead the simple-­
minded and untutored. . . . ​Idolatry has been nourished by wonderful miracles,
yet ­these are not sufficient to sanction the superstition e­ ither of magicians or
idolaters.”43
Calvin, then, would not attribute any postapostolic miracles to God
and, consequently, could only grant them to the devil. The gift of miracles was
restricted to the first c­ entury of Christian history, he argued, and its only pur-
pose was to spread the truth of the Gospel among the heathen of antiquity.44
The miracles claimed by Catholics ­were therefore utterly false and demonic,
and all they accomplished was to lead humanity away from the true worship
of God.45
Calvin’s denial of postbiblical miracles was the capstone of his polemic
against Catholic claims about seemingly impossible phenomena, including levi-
tation and bilocation. True religion, as he saw it—­and as his followers would
too—­should never seek to change the laws of nature or the way the material
world functions but rather to accept the world as it is: as eternally subject to
God’s ­will and as always incapable of transmitting any spiritual power in and
of itself through any h
­ uman being, dead or alive. Calvin’s influence spread far
and wide in his own day and for generations ­after his death. And one can hear
an echo of his voice in his con­temporary the En­glishman John Bale, who saw
the devil at work as much in Catholic ritual as in all the dark arts. The Catholic
Eucharist, he said, “serveth all witches in their witchery, all sorcerers, charmers,
enchanters, dreamers, soothsayers, necromancers, conjurers, cross diggers, devil-­
raisers, miracle-­doers, dog-­leeches, and bawds; for without a mass they cannot
well work their feats.”46
 296 malevolent

But how and why did the devil come to play such a significant role in early
modern Eu­ro­pean mentalities? And why was it that despite all their profound
theological differences, Protestants and Catholics shared an extremely similar
set of beliefs concerning the absolute real­ity of preternatural diabolical feats?
And why was Protestant diabology so closely dependent on medieval Catholic
diabology? Why is such continuity embedded amid so many discontinuities?
Many of the pieces of this puzzle can be found in the late ­Middle Ages, and
some can be found much further back in time, too, even before the birth of
Chris­tian­ity. The devil is very old, a­ fter all, and that makes a hell of a difference.
As a Spanish proverb has it, “Más sabe el diablo por viejo que por diablo.” Loosely
translated into plain En­glish, “It’s not the fact that he’s the devil that makes the
devil so smart; it’s simply the fact that he’s so old.”

Religion, Superstition, Magic, and the Devil

All t­hings diabolical in early modern Eu­rope ­were inseparably connected to a
belief system in which pre-­Christian and Christian ele­ments w
­ ere thoroughly
mixed and thus linked to an extrabiblical matrix. This was especially true in
the case of miracles, the diabolical, and the many be­hav­iors that could be deemed
“magic” and “superstition.” A murky haze hung over the devil, especially, cloud-
ing all beliefs and rites associated with him, and this can be attributed to two
­factors. First, since the Christian devil was an amalgam of ancient Jewish, Near
Eastern, and Eu­ro­pean folklore and since much of the demonological lore was
extrabiblical, clear definitions did not begin to emerge ­until the fifteenth ­century.
And even then ­there was much disagreement on the part of experts. Second,
much the same could be said about all of popu­lar piety, many ele­ments of which
­were also an alloy of Christian and pre-­Christian ele­ments, into which the devil
was inextricably woven. By the sixteenth c­ entury, elites such as Erasmus of Rot-
terdam and Guillaume Briçonnet ­were inveighing against this intermingling,
calling for a return to a “pure” Chris­tian­ity stripped bare of all traces of super-
stition and heathenism. The Protestant goal of restoring the Church to ancient
pristine forms through scripture alone flowed naturally from this late medieval
Reformist thrust: ad fontes (returning to the original sources of the faith) and
sola scriptura (adhering strictly to the Bible alone) ­were but two sides of the same
coin. All Reformers committed to this goal faced a daunting challenge, for many
of ­these rites and beliefs that came to be associated with the devil—­and to be
rejected by the Church as magic and superstition—­were deeply embedded in
 p r o t e s ta n t s , d e v i lt ry , a n d t h e i m p o s s i b l e 297

Eu­ro­pean culture and most often concerned mundane vicissitudes of life (health,
fertility, love, finances) rather than spiritual issues. Discerning the difference
between what was truly divine or neutral or demonic or between religion and
certain ancient problem-­solving strategies deemed magical or superstitious was
never ­simple and required some hermeneutic, that is, some set of guidelines for
interpreting phenomena according to specific preconceived assumptions. The
same was true when it came to determining where the line should be drawn be-
tween magic and religion, or magic and superstition, or religion and superstition.
To further complicate ­matters, sorcery and witchcraft ­were also added to the
mix in the fifteenth ­century and linked to the devil, adding yet more distinctions
to make and more areas of aberrant piety to eradicate. By the dawn of the six-
teenth ­century, the devil came to be linked to three very murky categories of
deviancy: magic, superstition, and witchcraft. Yet the exact meaning of ­these
concepts and terms remained a contentious issue into the eve of the Reformation
era, even as campaigns ­were mounted to combat magic, superstition, witchcraft,
and the devil. And, not surprisingly, with the advent of the Protestant Reforma-
tion disagreements became even more intense and numerous.
In the sixteenth ­century, binary oppositions such as magic/religion, super-
stition/religion, and demonic/heavenly gained intensity, and their meaning
grew ever more unstable and divisive. Ironically, though they could not agree on
how to combat the devil, magic, and superstition, Catholics and Protestants alike
agreed that such combat was always necessary. So it came to pass that as Cath-
olics launched campaigns against the devil, magic, superstition, and witchcraft,
Protestants waged a similar war but at the very same time railed constantly
against much of Catholic ritual and piety as demonic, magical, and supersti-
tious. Though the primary sources themselves sometimes blur distinctions when
dealing with practices condemned by both Catholics and Protestants—­making
it difficult for us to deal with them in isolation from one another—­they can
nonetheless be subdivided into four categories, in each of which the devil played
some part.
The first and most nebulous deviant category is that of superstition. It is
an ancient Latin term, which pagan Romans employed in reference to any be-
liefs or practices which falsely and foolishly placed faith in super­natural ­causes.
Ever since the early days of the Christian religion, pagan rites and beliefs that
­were condemned as superstitions ­were linked to the devil. Saint Augustine, the
most revered and oft cited of the Latin Church ­fathers, bequeathed this think-
ing to the West. In the fifth c­ entury, Pope Leo I would affirm it, proposing that
 298 malevolent

the devil gained control of humanity through superstitions.47 Adopting such a

teaching meant, in practical terms, that w
­ hether one was aware of it or not, all
rites and observances not sanctioned by the Church put one in league with the
devil—or worse, ­were de facto acts of demonic veneration. In the thirteenth
­century, Thomas Aquinas would define superstition as “a vice contrary to reli-
gion by excess, not b
­ ecause it offers more to the divine worship than true reli-
gion, but ­because it offers divine worship ­either to beings who should not be
worshiped, or to God in an improper way.”48
The second category, closely related to superstition, was that of magic, or
of the occult, or of the hidden arts. For Augustine, who died in 430 as the Van-
dals w
­ ere ravaging the Roman Empire, magic was all about incantations, signs,
divinations, auguries, amulets, cures, and “consultations and arrangements about
signs and leagues with dev­ils.” It was all demonically induced delusion and “for-
nication of the soul.”49 For Pope Leo I, merely one generation ­after Augustine,
the practice of magic was the ultimate outcome of superstition and of commerce
with demons. In the seventh c­ entury, Isidore of Seville would further codify
magic, providing medieval theologians with a long, detailed list of the vari­ous
types of illicit practices “supported by demons.”50 This conception of magic as
an inherently demonic and pragmatic attempt to effect changes on the world
or to gain knowledge of its workings or foreknowledge of f­uture events would
become Church doctrine and guide its policies ­toward Eu­ro­pean folk beliefs in
the ­Middle Ages.
By the thirteenth ­century, the Church’s duty to combat magic as some-
thing dangerous was widely recognized by elite authorities. Thomas Aquinas
summed it up as follows: “Man has not been entrusted with power over the de-
mons, to employ them to whatsoever purpose he w
­ ill; on the contrary, it is ap-
pointed that he should wage war against the demons. Hence in no way is it
lawful for man to make use of the demons’ help by compacts e­ ither tacit or
express.”51
­Under this rubric of magic fell a long list of practices, many of them in-
separable from folk customs or even from folk medicine. In the late ­Middle Ages,
the gap between theology and popu­lar piety widened in the minds of learned
elites, leading many to think that a g­ reat deal of popu­lar piety was in the hands
of the devil. By the sixteenth ­century, Erasmus would be complaining that all
pilgrimages and the veneration of relics ­were not much dif­fer­ent from the mag-
ical arts. And the Protestant Reformers would take one step beyond Erasmus
and dismiss nearly all Catholic ritual as dev­ilish magic.
 p r o t e s ta n t s , d e v i lt ry , a n d t h e i m p o s s i b l e 299

The third category, narrower than superstition and magic, was that of sor-
cery or witchcraft. Although the ultimate definition of witchcraft was not fully
developed ­until the fifteenth c­ entury, it had ancient antecedents, older than
Chris­tian­ity itself. In essence, what ended up being known as witchcraft was an
amalgam of three disparate traditions: first, the ancient, pre-­Christian practice
of malevolent magic, maleficium (literally, “evilmaking” or “evildoing”), which the
Romans had turned into a punishable crime; second, vari­ous Eu­ro­pean folk tra-
ditions; and third, learned Christian views on the demonic origins of all un-
sanctioned rites. This amalgam proved to be a lethal mix for anyone suspected
of the crime of maleficium from the fifteenth to the eigh­teenth ­century, for the
Age of Dev­ils was, above all, the age of witches and of their persecution. Catho-
lics and Protestants persecuted maleficium with equal ferocity. Estimates for the
number of men, w
­ omen, and c­ hildren prosecuted as witches for the crime of
maleficium during this period range from between 100,000 and 200,000. Few
scholars doubt the existence of sorcerers or of the practice of maleficium—­that
is, of the attempted manipulation of natu­ral, preternatural, and super­natural
forces by sorcerers who sought to inflict harm on ­others. What is still a ­matter
of much debate is ­whether ­those accused and convicted of witchcraft engaged
in the very specific diabolical acts that the vari­ous churches of the Reforma-
tion era came to link with maleficium, a question we ­shall explore ­later in this
chapter.
The fourth category, which was distinct from superstition, magic, and
witchcraft but not altogether divorced from them—­was the narrowest of all: di-
rect personal encounters with the devil. This level of deviance was the ultimate
pos­si­ble outcome of all three demonically centered activities, and it involved
two distinct sets of phenomena. The first set had to do with all apparitions of
the devil and of the exchanges between demons and h
­ umans, which led to all
sorts of abominable consequences, such as the signing of pacts with the devil.
Most such engagements led to charges of witchcraft, but the pact alone was a
heinous enough crime. Catholics and Protestants alike waged war on t­ hese en-
counters and all diabolical pacts.
The second set of phenomena concerned demonic possessions, or cases
of h
­ uman beings whose bodies had been completely taken over by demons, and
also with obsession, or cases of individuals whose minds and ­wills underwent
severe and very focused temptations by demons. Possession was an ancient phe-
nomenon, and a biblical one too, for the Gospel narratives are full of accounts
of demon-­possessed ­people who ­were freed of this affliction by Jesus and his
 300 malevolent

apostles. Catholics and Lutherans believed in possession but had radically dif­
fer­ent approaches to dealing with it; the Reformed w
­ ere divided on its possibil-
ity and on the ways of ­handling it.
In addition to confronting ­these four categories of diabolically inclined
misbehavior—­superstition, magic, witchcraft, and direct encounters with the
devil—­church elites also had to contend with two “sciences” that had an aura
of respectability and enjoyed the support of power­ful patrons: astrology and al-
chemy.52 Churchmen of all denominations ­were prone to tie both of ­these sci-
ences to the devil, too, but found it hard to prove that connection. Some
prac­ti­tion­ers of astrology and alchemy w
­ ere also physicians who dabbled in the
other occult and magical arts. One of ­these polymaths, Heinrich Cornelius
Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486–1535), author of Three Books of Occult Philoso-
phy, was a complex thinker who prospered and eluded persecution in his own
day but would prob­ably have fallen victim to the war against the devil if he had
lived a generation or two l­ater.53 In this nebulous borderland between ancient
sciences and the occult arts lie not just the furthest reaches of the devil as
­imagined by any inquisition or church court but also the lowly origins of modern
empirical science.
Established authorities—­both Catholic and Protestant—­dealt with each
of ­these four demonically linked aberrant be­hav­iors in vari­ous ways, according
to time and place, but tolerance was never an option. The contours of persecu-
tion ­were determined by the perceived aberrances themselves, as well as by lo-
cal circumstances, so let us examine each of the four categories of deviance, one
by one.

Superstition
For Catholics, any rite or practice unsanctioned by the church that aimed at
gaining super­natural ­favors could be deemed superstitious. Protestant churches
followed this guideline too but added many of the rites of the Catholic Church
to their list of superstitions. The two confessions shared a narrower understand-
ing of superstition firmly ­limited by two distinguishing traits: passivity and
ignorance. This most s­ imple realm of superstition, more mundane than any other,
consisted of all attitudes, be­hav­iors, and devotions that ­were passively and ig-
norantly accepted and unquestioningly engaged in. This kind of superstition
required no special knowledge or training, other than that provided by mere ex-
posure to one’s culture.
 p r o t e s ta n t s , d e v i lt ry , a n d t h e i m p o s s i b l e 301

Among Catholics, the campaign against this kind of mundane supersti-

tion had begun in the late M
­ iddle Ages, but it was conducted at a learned level,
by elite reformists, rather than at the parish level. Intellectuals such as Jean
Gerson (1363–1429), chancellor of the University of Paris, could decry the
many superstitions that existed in his day but lacked the means to put an end to
them. “­There are many t­hings introduced ­under the appearance of religion
among ­simple Christians,” he said, “which it would have been more holy to
have omitted.”54 He thus brought the critique of superstition inside the church,
so to speak, calling attention to offenses within it. ­Others, in par­tic­u­lar Eras-
mus of Rotterdam, Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, and Guillaume Briçonnet, fol-
lowed suit, further developing this internal scrutiny along humanist lines and
pushing for an ad fontes ­house­cleaning that would bring the church back to its
pristine first-­century state.55
All Protestants agreed that the Roman Catholic Church was thoroughly
corrupted by superstition from top to bottom, and much of their war on super-
stition consisted of their rejection of Catholic piety. Luther retained much more
medieval folk religion than any other major Reformers—­especially when it came
to all t­ hings diabolical—­but nonetheless rejected much of Catholic ritual as use-
less works righ­teousness, especially ­those rites, for example, that gave the im-
pression of guaranteeing a predictable outcome: pilgrimages, the blessing of
objects, the use of holy ­water, the veneration of saints and their relics, and the
wearing of holy medals. In the Reformed camp, superstition was a much greater
concern than the delusion of works righ­teousness, and the attack on Catholic
piety was more severe. As Reformed Protestants saw it, the central miracle of
the Catholic faith—­transubstantiation—­was no more than “hocus-­pocus,” lit-
erally, the mumbled “hoc est corpus meum” of eucharistic consecration trans-
formed into a magical incantation ­every bit as mystifying as “abracadabra.”56
In response to Protestantism, the Catholic Church reaffirmed the absolute le-
gitimacy of its rituals and, at the very same time, initiated a campaign to fight
superstition on two fronts: internally, in regard to valid rituals, and externally,
in regard to practices it deemed un-­Christian. Relying on scholastic theology,
the Catholic Church took a more methodical approach to the issue of supersti-
tion, subdividing it into four dif­fer­ent types: the improper worship of the true
God, idolatry, divination, and vain observances, which include magic and the occult
arts. Concerning the one area of Catholic piety where reformists had detected
the most intense superstition, the directives of Trent w
­ ere clear but not very
specific: “In the invocation of saints, the veneration of relics, and the sacred
 302 malevolent

use of images,” ordered the council, “­every superstition s­ hall be removed.”57 In a

similar vein, but with more detailed instructions, Trent demanded that all of
the superstitious abuses that surrounded the Mass be eliminated.58 ­These re-
forms w
­ ere quickly implemented in some places, such as Spain, and more grad-
ually in ­others, such as Germany. By the early 1600s, much of what had offended
purists such as Erasmus was still in place, but the more blatant superstitions
surrounding Catholic worship had in many places been greatly reduced.

Magic
Beyond the “vain observances” and mundane superstitions that Catholics tried
to eliminate and beyond the Protestant attack on Catholic “idolatry” and “su-
perstition,” reformers of both traditions aimed to eradicate a worse sort of com-
merce with the devil, that of the magical arts. Unlike superstition, magic was
not mired in ignorance or passivity: it required some skill, knowledge, and ex-
pertise, and it concerned rites other than ­those sanctioned by the Catholic
Church. At this level, the devil became much more actively involved, even if no
evildoing was involved, and no explicit pacts ­were made with him, and no one
was aware of his presence and participation. Though the line between magic
and witchcraft could be blurry at times, distinctions w
­ ere nonetheless made by
experts, and a certain range of practices that did not necessarily involve explicit
pacts with demons or inflicting harm on ­others came to be identified as magic.
This magic tended to fall into two categories: divination and the manufacture
and use of special substances.
Divination was the attempt to discern what is hidden, especially in the
­future, and it was practiced in a vast number of ways through specialists of vari­
ous sorts, many of whom claimed special super­natural gifts. T
­ hese dif­fer­ent
paths to hidden knowledge ­were of ancient origin and derived from the assump-
tion that all of nature was encoded with secrets and that ­these secrets could be
accessed with the right skill or super­natural gift. And ­there ­were as many kinds
of divination as t­ here ­were substances and objects to plumb for secrets. T
­ hese
sundry ways of accessing what was hidden from view w
­ ere classified by the
learned according to the means through which the knowledge was sought, with
the Greek suffix manteía (prophecy or determining the ­will of the gods)—­
“mancy” in English—­appended to the root word. Even a partial list can seem
too long in our day and age, despite the continued presence of some of ­these
arts in our midst:
 p r o t e s ta n t s , d e v i lt ry , a n d t h e i m p o s s i b l e 303

aeromancy, by means of the air and winds

chiromancy, or palmistry, by the lines of the hand
capnomancy, by the ascent or motion of smoke
catroptomancy, by mirrors
alomancy, by salt
cartomancy, by playing cards
anthropomancy, by inspection of ­human viscera
belomancy, by the shuffling of arrows
geomancy, by points, lines, or figures traced on the ground
hydromancy, by ­water
necromancy, by the evocation of the dead
oneiromancy, by the interpretation of dreams
pyromancy, by fire59

Catholics and Protestants condemned all such practices as diabolical and

tried to wipe them out. Yet the illicit divining survived, as court rec­ords prove. The
desire to interpret nature as a messenger was so strong, and the strug­gle against
it so complex, that sometimes the oddest twists in divination could be deemed
orthodox and completely f­ ree of demonic ties. This was also true among Prot-
estants, especially German Lutherans, who developed a penchant for reading
unusual natu­ral events as divine messages and turned wonder-­decoding into
one of their most distinctive traits. T
­ hese “won­ders” (Wunder) that conveyed di-
vine messages ­were as numerous and varied as all freakish events: astronomical
anomalies, strange lights in the sky, cloud formations, unusual weather, earth-
quakes, beached w
­ hales, deformed animals, and shockingly abnormal h
­ uman
births. Such aberrant Wunder never predicted the ­future but did convey warnings
about worse t­ hings to come, and most often they also revealed that something
was awfully wrong with the moral order of the locale where they occurred.
Wonder-­decoding fell into a category of its own among Protestants, as distinct
from that of active magic and of belief in miracles.60
Nothing points as convincingly to this distinction as another misdeed at-
tacked along with active divination: the manufacture and use of potions, elix-
irs, philters, and other magical substances. This was an ancient practice that
had continued to evolve in Christian Eu­rope alongside advances in medicine
and science.61 Concoctions prepared by experts ­were as innumerable as ­human
needs in a world where empirical science had not yet fully developed. ­These con-
fections stretched on an ethical spectrum from good to evil. Many of ­these
substances w
­ ere remedies for illness prepared by healers who had learned their
 304 malevolent

craft from some elder and would pass it on to apprentices. This kind of phar­
ma­ceu­ti­cal practice could be found at vari­ous levels, from the illiterate village
wise w
­ oman to learned scholars who practiced what they called natu­ral magic.62
All such work was considered good, or “white,” magic.63 Then ­there ­were con-
coctions not intended for healing but rather for producing certain effects: to
make someone fall in love or out of love; to ensnare, enchant, and entrance;
and to induce altered states of mind. Among t­ hese, love philters w
­ ere most com-
mon. T
­ hese potions ­were not necessarily considered injurious, though ­those on
the receiving end might not have always agreed. At the other extreme of the
spectrum w
­ ere malevolent substances, the sole purpose of which was to inflict
harm or suffering, even death. T
­ hese ­were regarded as maleficium, or literally,
“evildoing,” and w
­ ere feared and outlawed. Belief in the effectiveness of ­these
substances ran deep at all levels of society, and we have plenty of evidence that
such substances ­were concocted and used.
That was not all. Early modern Eu­ro­pe­ans also relied on unsanctioned
non-­Christian rituals to effect good, indifferent, or malevolent changes in the
world around them. Incantations, hexes, and spells ­were verbal magic, which
could be put to all sorts of uses, both good and evil. They could be spoken, sung,
or written. A vast array of practices fell into this category, from spells cast in
elaborate arcane rituals to incantations written on parchment and worn as an
amulet around the neck. And then ­there ­were objects transformed by spells into
talismans, which ­were believed to have some magical agency, usually to ward off
evil. But harm could also be caused through hexed objects. The most common
form of maleficium, which required no expertise, was that of the evil eye, and
the most ubiquitous talismans ­were ­those that ostensibly deflected it. Chris­tian­
ity had never fully extinguished this ancient belief that simply involved looking
at someone and wishing them harm or misfortune, usually out of envy, spite, or
resentment.
All ­these beliefs and practices existed in a nebulous gray area throughout
the ­Middle Ages, up ­until the fifteenth ­century. White magic, though formally
condemned as diabolical, was not always easily identifiable and thus thrived in
the face of illness and disease. The natu­ral magic of the learned could blend
with herbal therapies, alchemy, and medicine, and some forms of it would even-
tually evolve into empirical science. Both neutral and black magic ­were outlawed
and persecuted in many places but survived through apathy, secrecy, and dis-
simulation and sometimes through the complicity of clerics who could easily
be deemed as superstitious as their flocks. By the late fifteenth c­ entury, how-
 p r o t e s ta n t s , d e v i lt ry , a n d t h e i m p o s s i b l e 305

ever, as the church became much less tolerant of such practices, all magic would
turn pitch black and explic­itly demonic in its eyes, and all who performed it
would be regarded as diabolical sorcerers who had to be hunted down and ex-
terminated. And as this ­great change was taking place, along came the Protes-
tant Reformation and, in its wake, the age of the ­great witch hunts.64

Sorcery
Witchcraft, also known as sorcery, was related to magic, but in the late ­Middle
Ages it acquired a distinct character. Though both magic and sorcery aimed
to produce effects beyond natu­ral ­human powers, and though both w
­ ere offi-
cially believed to do so through the agency of the devil, what came to be
known as sorcery, or witchcraft, was identified as a distinct form of malefi-
cium, or evilmaking, that required very intimate relations with the devil. The
per­for­mance of maleficium itself had been condemned since time immemo-
rial, long before it acquired the characteristics ascribed to it in the late medi-
eval period. And the punishment had always been extreme. The key biblical
text that guided all medieval and early modern thinking on how best to deal
with sorcery was Exodus 22:18, which read in Latin: “Maleficos non patieris
vivere.” Most Protestant translations of this passage tended to agree, even
­after the original Hebrew was consulted: “­Those who practice sorcery should
not be allowed to live.” But Luther’s German Bible and Calvin’s Geneva Bible
employed the feminine noun for the sorcery worker: Zauberinnen and sorciere.
The King James En­glish Bible chose a neutral noun: “Thou shalt not suffer a
witch to live” (emphasis added).
The witch hunts that unfolded in the late sixteenth c­ entury had long and
ancient roots. A key development in the ninth ­century, which would become part of
canon law, was the l­egal definition of sorcery as apostasy and heresy, a spiritual
crime punishable by the church. Maleficium was now an offense that straddled
church and state: as the act of inflicting harm on o
­ thers, it was a civil crime; as
apostasy and heresy, it was a spiritual crime. This influential l­ egal text, known
as the Canon Episcopi, pronounced “the pernicious art of sorcery and magic” to
be “in­ven­ted by the devil” and called on all bishops to chase away from the
church all followers of such “wickedness.”65 The most immediate origins of early
modern witch-­hunting can be traced to 1320, when Pope John XXII authorized
the prosecution of sorcerers by the Inquisition on the grounds that all sorcery
was demonic, and its prac­ti­tion­ers ­were therefore to be dealt with as heretics.
 306 malevolent

In his day, maleficium had already begun to assume certain diabolical charac-
teristics, which he described in his 1326 decretal Super illius specula. “Grievingly
we observe . . . ​that many who are Christians in name only . . . ​sacrifice to de-
mons, adore them, make images, rings, mirrors, phials, or other ­things for magic
purposes, and bind themselves to demons. They ask and receive responses from
them and to fulfill their most depraved lusts ask them for aid. Binding them-
selves to the most shameful slavery for the most shameful of ­things, they ally
themselves with death and make a pact with hell. By their means a most pesti-
lential disease . . . ​grievously infests the flock of Christ throughout the world.”66
The prosecution of sorcerers was sporadic from 1320 on, but as ­these t­ rials
evolved, the notion that sorcerers belonged to an or­ga­nized satanic cult increased
in popularity, especially among the learned. Popu­lar preachers such as Ber-
nardino of Siena (1380–1440) helped to spread this belief among the laity, too,
and sparked many a local persecution along the way. In his own native Siena, in
1427, he called on every­one to turn in ­these evildoers: “­Whether within the city
or outside its walls, accuse . . . ​­every witch, ­every wizard, ­every sorcerer or sor-
ceress, or worker of charms and spells.”67 In 1435–1437, as Bernardino and
­others preached against witches and as tribunals prosecuted them, Johann Ni-
der wrote his Formicarius, the first detailed description of a witch cult. Shortly
thereafter, systematic witch hunts began to take place in the Alpine regions of
Switzerland, Savoy, and Dauphiné.
Nider’s Formicarius could only be distributed in manuscript form and
would not be printed u
­ ntil 1479. By then, however, it had stiff competition from
about thirty other manuals, including one written in 1489, On Witches, by Ulrich
Molitor, which enjoyed a robust printing history during ­those early days of book
publishing. The most impor­tant of ­these newer books, by far, was the Malleus
Maleficarum (Hammer of witches), attributed to Heinrich Kramer (1430–1505)
and Jacob Sprenger (1436–1495), two Dominican inquisitors who had prose-
cuted witches and ­were commissioned directly by Pope Innocent VIII in 1484
to write the definitive book on witchcraft.68 Experts now attribute the writing
to Kramer (also known by his Latin humanist name Institoris), who had been
chased out of Innsbruck by the local authorities for being too extreme in his
witch-­hunting and felt compelled to defend his approach. First published in
1486, the Malleus was reprinted fourteen times between 1487 and 1520 and
sixteen times between 1574 and 1669, and it would teach many an inquisitor
and magistrate how to identify, prosecute, and convict witches.
 p r o t e s ta n t s , d e v i lt ry , a n d t h e i m p o s s i b l e 307

Its very title—­which employed the feminine noun maleficarum, or “of

sorceresses”—­reflected one of the main propositions of the Malleus: that most of
­those involved in satanic maleficium w
­ ere ­women and that “all witchcraft came
from carnal lust.” Assuming that females had a much greater sex drive than
males, as was commonly believed in their day, the authors of the Malleus argued
that the devil could easily lure w
­ omen to serve him through their “insatiable”
lust. It also claimed that having sex with the devil was the first step to becom-
ing a witch and that ­those who became witches of the highest rank had to make
a pact with the devil, abjure their Christian faith, and seal their devotion to Sa-
tan with an oath of homage and a total, eternal surrender of their bodies and
souls. Sometimes t­hese pacts ­were made in private but more often in solemn
ceremonies attended by other witches. The diabolical power granted to witches
by this pact was im­mense:

­These sorceresses . . . ​stir up hailstorms and harmful winds with lightning; . . . ​
cause sterility in h
­ umans and domestic animals; . . . ​offer to demons or kill
the babies whom they do not devour. . . . ​They also know how to make h
­ orses
go crazy ­under their riders; how to move from place to place through the air,
­either in body or imagination; how to change the attitudes of judges and
governmental authorities so that they cannot harm them; how to bring
about silence for themselves and o
­ thers during torture . . . ​how to reveal hid-
den ­things and to foretell certain f­uture events; . . . ​how to turn ­human
minds to irregular love or hatred; on many occasions, how to kill someone
they wish to with lightning, . . . ​how to take away the force of procreation or
the ability to copulate; how to kill infants in the ­mother’s womb with only
a touch on the outside; also on occasion how to affect ­humans and domes-
tic animals with sorcery or inflict death upon them by sight alone without
touch; and how to dedicate their own infants to demons.69

This was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Any mundane misfortune
could be blamed on witches, along with unspeakable crimes such as infanticide
and cannibalism. The factual claims of the Malleus concerning the power of
witches made it relatively easy to try anyone for witchcraft, which is why so many
experts on the history of witchcraft have assigned it such significance. From a
­legal standpoint—­and the Malleus was above all a manual for identifying and
trying witches in court—­this seemingly limitless evil power meant that nearly
­every misfortune could be attributed to witches and that the evidence needed
 308 malevolent

to convict someone for the crime of maleficium tended to be purely circumstan-

tial. Moreover, since curses ­were commonly used in premodern culture and
since belief in their efficacy ran deep, the potential was always high for any quar-
rel in which curses had been uttered to turn into a witchcraft accusation. A
strained relationship between individuals or any prior verbal threats or insults
­were all that was needed to establish a likely motive for maleficium, and the
misfortune itself—be it a lightning strike, or an illness, or an obsessive attrac-
tion to someone, or the death of a child or a cow—­could easily serve as the ul-
timate proof.
Almost any accusation could therefore be taken seriously, and in many
cases, proving that someone was a witch could be relatively easy, especially if
torture was employed to extract a confession from the accused. Even worse, the
Malleus set up the witch as supernaturally endowed to lie, resist torture, and
plant doubts in the minds of judges and civil officials, making it all that much
easier for the courts to disregard all denials made by the accused and what­ever
misgivings might arise from a lack of solid evidence.
The publishing success of the Malleus and its influence should not be mis-
taken for ­
wholesale ac­
cep­
tance. Even before it was written, disagreements
about witchcraft ­were common, so as soon as the Malleus was published, ­there
­were dissenting voices. In fact, one of the purposes of the book was to refute
skeptics who denied the existence of witchcraft and stood in the way of its
prosecution. That the University of Cologne ultimately refused to approve the
book—­although the authors claimed to have its endorsement—­points to the
lack of agreement that surrounded witch-­hunting. While some found the Mal-
leus too extreme, ­others found it lacking, especially regarding its coverage of the
widely held belief that witches worshiped the devil together in wild ceremonies
known as sabbats, which ­were an inversion of Christian ritual and in which they
danced naked, kissed the dev­il’s rear end, engaged in sexual orgies, sacrificed
­children, ate h
­ uman flesh, and flew through the air. In exchange they received
preternatural powers that allowed them to change shapes and perform other
won­ders and ­were also assigned an “imp” or “familiar spirit,” a demonic side-
kick who obeyed their commands.
Disagreements over details such as ­these ­were never fully resolved, and
scholars in our own day disagree on how to best interpret that fact. But experts
do tend to agree on two points: first, that the Malleus figured prominently in all
debates over witchcraft for a long time, as well as in many a witch hunt, and
 p r o t e s ta n t s , d e v i lt ry , a n d t h e i m p o s s i b l e 309

second, that differences of opinion among ­those who believed in witchcraft sel-
dom gave them pause or prevented witch-­hunting.

Exterminating the Dev­il’s Minions

The Protestant Reformation did not cause massive witch hunts, at least not ini-
tially. In fact, the advent of Protestantism slowed down the persecution of
witches, as Catholics focused their energies on combating Protestants, and the
Protestants, in turn, concentrated on surviving and on expanding their reach.
However, while the publication of witchcraft texts ceased between 1520 and
1570 and the number of persecutions declined, witch-­hunting never ­stopped al-
together. Strange as it may seem, one of the few ­things that Catholics and
Protestants agreed on was the need to exterminate witchcraft.
On a purely civil secular level, in 1532 the Holy Roman Empire ­adopted
a unified criminal code, known as the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina, in which
the practice of maleficium through sorcery was designated a capital crime, pun-
ishable by death. The Carolina also called for the extraction of confessions
through torture. Meanwhile, the nascent Protestant churches began to prose-
cute witches. In Zu­rich, ­under Bullinger’s leadership, witchcraft t­ rials began
in 1533. Luther, who claimed to have constant confrontations with the devil,
praised the execution of four witches in Wittenberg in 1541. Calvin, likewise,
called for the “extirpation” of all witches in 1545 when plague broke out in
Geneva, and in that year alone forty-­three witch ­trials ­were held in that rela-
tively small city, resulting in twenty-­nine executions.70
­These Protestant outbursts against witchcraft ­were a sign of ­things to
come. By the late 1550s, as the era of orthodoxy, confessionalization, and so-
cial disciplining dawned, persecutions intensified. In Geneva around 90 ­people
­were tried for witchcraft between 1556 and 1570, and 30 of ­these ­were executed.
The year 1571 was the worst of all in Geneva, when over 100 witchcraft t­ rials
­were held, and 36 of them led to executions. Similarly, Lutherans in Wiesensteig—­
with a population of only 5,000—­convicted and killed 63 witches in 1563 and
then broadcast the news in a pamphlet titled The True and Horrifying Death of
Sixty-­Three Witches.71 For the next ­century or so, from the 1560s on, the situa-
tion only worsened. In the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel, for instance, 360 witch-
craft ­trials would be held between 1588 and 1677, with 243 ­people executed, a
conviction rate of almost 68 ­percent. In the nearby canton of Luzern, between
 310 malevolent

1550 and 1675, the conviction rate was nearly 50 ­percent, with 505 ­trials and
254 executions.72
Catholics turned on witches with equal ferocity. In one of the most in-
tense witch hunts of the age, in the lands of the archbishop-­elector of Trier, 368
­people w
­ ere burned as witches in twenty-­two villages in the six years between
1587 and 1593; two of ­those villages ­were left with only one female inhabitant
apiece. The Trier witch hunt did not target w
­ omen, however. Its net caught men,
­women, and c­ hildren from all classes, even from the governing elite, including
burgomasters, councilors and judges, canons of vari­ous collegiate churches, and
even parish priests. Of ­those executed, 108 came from the aristocracy. Among
the elite victims was Dietrich Flade, chief judge of the electoral court and rector
of the university, who had opposed the witch hunt and spoken out against the
use of torture. The death of Flade, whose leniency had aroused suspicion, gave
even greater license to the witch-­hunters.73
Trier was only a prelude to greater horrors on both sides of the confessional
divide. In Lutheran Quedlinburg, for instance, about 133 witches ­were executed
in a single day in 1589. At Catholic Fulda, about 200 ­were burned between 1603
and 1605. Hunts of this sort, as well as many smaller ones, w
­ ere repeated many
times over, in many places throughout Eu­rope, even into the eigh­teenth ­century.
Experts estimate that 100,000 to 200,000 witch ­trials w
­ ere conducted be-
tween the 1560s and 1680s and that ­these led to somewhere around 50,000
to 60,000 executions. The most notorious persecutions ­were ­those chain-­
reaction hunts in which the accused w
­ ere asked to name their fellow witches
­under torture. In ­these massive hunts, accusations would spiral out of control,
and ste­reo­types would break down. Instead of focusing on ­women—as the Mal-
leus and other treatises advised—­these hunts would drag in anyone who was
accused. Such persecutions peaked in the 1620s and 1630s, mostly within the
Holy Roman Empire, in areas where local courts had no higher authority to
restrain them. The highest tolls ­were at the Catholic prince-­bishoprics of Bam-
berg (1623–1633), where 600 witches ­were killed, and Würzburg (1626–1631),
where among the 900 killed w
­ ere a nephew of the bishop, a score of priests,
and several small ­children. In Bonn, which endured a similar persecution at
that same time, an eyewitness described the havoc in detail:

­There must be half the city implicated: for already professors, law-­students,
pastors, canons, vicars, and monks have ­here been arrested and burned. His
Princely Grace the Elector-­Archbishop of Cologne has seventy wards who
 p r o t e s ta n t s , d e v i lt ry , a n d t h e i m p o s s i b l e 311

are to become pastors, one of whom, eminent as a musician, was yesterday

arrested; two o
­ thers ­were sought for, but have fled. The Chancellor and his
wife and the Private Secretary’s wife are already executed. . . . ​A canon of
the cathedral, named Rotenhahn, I saw beheaded and burned. ­Children of
three or four years have dev­ils for their paramours. Students and boys of
noble birth, of nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen years have been
burned. In fine, t­hings are in such a pitiful state that one does not know
with what p
­ eople one may talk and associate.74

How the pro­cess could reach such ferocity was described in heartbreaking de-
tail by Johannes Junius, mayor of the city of Bamberg, who managed to smug-
gle out a letter to his ­daughter while he awaited execution in 1628: “Innocent
I have come into prison, innocent have I been tortured, innocent must I die.
For whosoever comes into the witch prison must become a witch or be tortured
­until he invents something out of his head. . . . ​And so I made my confession . . . ​
but it was all a lie.”75
Trier, Bamberg, Bonn, and Würzburg ­were extreme cases. And so was Ger-
many as a ­whole, which racked up about 25,000 executions—by both Catho-
lics and Protestants—­half of the total for all of Eu­rope. Exact statistics are
difficult to calculate, and experts can disagree on the numbers, but it seems clear
that t­ here was a ­great unevenness in the number of ­trials held in dif­fer­ent re-
gions and also in their execution rates. At the low end of the spectrum, accord-
ing to Wolfgang Behringer’s calculations, the regions with the least intense witch
hunts w
­ ere Ireland, Portugal, Iceland, Croatia, and Lithuania. At the high end,
the areas most deeply scarred by witch-­hunting ­were Germany (especially in the
south and west), the south of France, Switzerland, Poland, Belgium/Luxembourg,
Italy, Britain, and Denmark. Execution rates varied im­mensely too. Spain and
its notorious Inquisition, for instance, not only had relatively few witch ­trials
but also a low execution rate of single-­digit percentages. In contrast, some Ger-
man, French, and Swiss areas killed around 90 ­percent of ­those tried for witch-
craft.76 The disparities can be as surprising as they are revealing: Scotland, which
had only one-­quarter as many p
­ eople as ­England, killed over three times more
witches than its southern neighbor and, according to Julian Goodare, had one
of “the most severe witch hunts in Protestant Eu­rope,” with an extremely high
rate of executions per capita.77 In contrast, in other areas such as ­England witch
persecution was steady and prolonged, but it involved relatively low numbers
year ­after year, save for an intense spike in the 1640s and 1650s during the civil
 312 malevolent

war and the era of the Puritan Commonwealth.78 More or less is also true of
eastern Eu­rope. Many t­rials in areas with fewer ­trials tended to be generated
from below, by neighbors, and to focus on specific individuals and their alleged
acts of maleficium rather than on the w
­ holesale extermination of anti-­Christian
demon-­worshiping misfits whose perversions fit the profiles outlined in learned
witchcraft manuals. For instance, in Finland about 1,500 to 2,000 witch accu-
sations during this period involved maleficium but made no mention of the Sab-
bat or of pacts with demons. In t­ hese areas, the fiercest persecutions w
­ ere ­those
carried out by local authorities who could not be easily reined in by any higher
power. Fi­nally, the most salient statistical disparity of all throughout Eu­rope is
that, overall, about 75 ­percent of ­those executed as witches w
­ ere ­women. But in
Finland the majority w
­ ere men.79
Flying witches, male and female, eventually dis­appeared from Christian
skies due to rising skepticism. Nowadays, they emerge once a year at the end
of October, mostly as harmless props, mere caricatures of old hags, but they
only do so in nations that observe a secular sanitized version of the old feast
of All Hallows’ Eve, better known as Halloween. The devil who supposedly
made their flights pos­si­ble has largely vanished from that festival, but during
the transition to modernity, he was all too real. Even pioneering skeptics who
opposed witch hunts, such as Johann Weyer (1515–1588), who argued that
most witches ­were poor, deluded old w
­ omen who should not be persecuted,
never let go of the conviction that the devil was very real indeed and that he
was largely responsible for the mayhem of the witch craze. “This sly old fox,”
he said about the devil, “needs no one’s help, being abundantly capable on his
own of mocking men, blinding them mentally and physically, torturing them
with unnatural maladies, striking them with ulcers, and disturbing the air in
many ways.” Fooling ­people into believing that their misfortunes ­were caused
by witches, rather than by him, was one of his favorite tricks. A
­ fter all, Weyer
warned: “It is the principal aim of that blood-­thirsty scoundrel to promote
strife and devise slaughter.”80
By the late seventeenth c­ entury, flying witches had begun to dis­appear, but
one could still find “experts” such as Joseph Glanvill (1636–1680), a member of
the Royal Society who published a massive tome in which he argued for the
real­ity of witchcraft and provided scores of accounts of individuals affected by
their demonic power. His Saducismus triumphatus (1681) compared t­ hose who
refused to believe in witchcraft with the Sadducees of the New Testament
who refused to believe in spirits (fig. 37).81
Figure 37. Frontispiece to Joseph Glanvill’s Protestant exposé on the many ways in which the
devil could work won­ders and deceive the faithful.
 314 malevolent

Figure 38. Detail of the butler in Glanvill’s account who flew with assistance from the devil.

Reprinted numerous times, Glanvill’s text contained two accounts of de-

monic levitations. One account involved a bewitched butler who was “carried
in the air to and fro” over the heads of several men who had tried unsuccess-
fully to hold him down, with several of them “still r­unning u
­ nder him to pre-
vent his receiving hurt if he should fall.” Fortunately, when the butler suddenly
plummeted to the ground, t­hose men ­were able to catch him in their arms
(fig. 38).82 The other account involved a young boy who “passed in the air over
a garden wall, and was carried so above ground more than thirty yards” and on
another occasion was also seen by nine ­people inside his ­house “strangely hang-
ing above the ground; his hands being flat against a ­great beam in the top of
the room, and all his body two or three foot from ground” for “a quarter of an
hour” (fig. 39). Young Richard Brown claimed that his flights and hoverings had
 p r o t e s ta n t s , d e v i lt ry , a n d t h e i m p o s s i b l e 315

Figure 39. Detail of the boy in Glanvill’s account who hovered near the ceiling and could not be
restrained or pulled down.

been caused by a neighbor, Jane Brooks, who was a witch. Brooks was tried and
executed in March 1658.83 Images of both stories ­were prominently displayed
on the title page of several editions. Glanvill’s fiercest opponent in the public
sphere was John Webster (1610–1682), a physician and skeptical rationalist.
Their intense debate was a last ­great gasp of sorts, as skepticism increased and
witch persecutions gradually dwindled.84
Across the Atlantic Ocean in New E
­ ngland, Increase Mather (1639–1723),
a Puritan minister, theologian, and president of Harvard College, continued to
believe in witches’ flight. “It is not usual for Dev­ils to be permitted to come and
violently carry away persons through the Air, several Miles from their Habita-
tions,” he said, adding: “Nevertheless, this was done in Sweedland about Twenty
 316 malevolent

Years ago, by means of a cursed Knot of Witches ­There.”85 Mather also believed
that God could grant permission to the devil to “change himself into what Form
or Figure he pleaseth.” In essence, Mather’s devil was still identical to Luther’s
Tausendkünstler: “He has perfect skill in Opticks and can therefore cause that
to be vis­i­ble to one, which is not so to another; and ­things also to appear far
other­wise than they are.” Moreover, it was “most certain,” he warned, “that be-
witched Persons are many times ­really possessed with evil Spirits.”86
Ironically, such intense belief in the dev­il’s power to deceive prob­ably
played a large role in bringing the witch hunts to an end, out of fear that per-
haps too many of ­those accused of witchcraft could be innocent folk falsely ac-
cused by witnesses in the grip of the dev­il’s wiles. That was Mather’s ultimate
argument. If one cannot trust the devil, especially b
­ ecause he loves mayhem and
finds it so easy to deceive ­humans, then why trust the testimony of ­those who
denounce witches? But for anyone to argue as Mather did, and for such argu-
ments to be convincing, ­there had to be many shared assumptions about the
devil. And t­hose shared assumptions—­whether put to the test in a court of
law or on the streets—­had to be part of “an intellectually sophisticated soci-
ety” in which, as Sarah Ferber has pointed out, “educated ­people exposed to
sceptical views” could still believe in phenomena that modern science would
deem impossible.87 Grappling with that intellectual sophistication is our next
crucial step.
 10. The Devil Himself

Faced with a case of supposed possession a sixteenth-­century observer had the

choice of three pos­si­ble kinds of explanation: first, a super­natural cause, a dev­il;
second, disease; third, fraud. . . . ​Now, as an historian (which is what I am trying
to be), the first possibility, a devil, must be excluded. What­ever their personal
beliefs, historians should not ask their readers to accept super­natural phenomena.
I think this is a sound princi­ple and a widely accepted one.
—D. P. Walker

That the devil was considered real in the early modern world cannot be denied.
One may relativize “real” by placing quotation marks around the word to sug-
gest that, yes, the concept of the devil—­rather than the devil himself—­played
a role in abstract theology and in the lives of early modern men and ­women. But
they themselves would have objected to such a relativist dilution of the dev­il’s
real­ity, and many would have surely mocked British historian D. P. Walker, quoted
above.1
Excluding the devil from history, as Walker advises, was not as ­viable an
option in early modern times as it is ­today, and assuming that the devil cannot
be real would not have been considered a “sound princi­ple” e­ ither. Back then
way too many p
­ eople, w
­ hether learned or ignorant, Protestant or Catholic,
thought that the devil was very real and that he knew how to make the impos-
sible pos­si­ble. Levitation and bilocation ­were definitely in his bag of tricks, much
like the rabbits and pigeons usually hidden in the top hats of twentieth-­century
stage magicians.
The devil might not have been deemed omnipotent since only God can
have total control of creation, but it was widely believed that demons could still

317
 318 malevolent

perform impossible marvels. A hell of a lot of them. ­After all, h

­ adn’t Jesus called
the devil the “ruler of this world”?2
Ignoring the distinction between preternatural and super­natural, as Walker
does, would have been considered unsound, and highly risky too. ­After all, de-
monology became a science in the sixteenth ­century, and that science was all
about fine distinctions of this sort. In fact, mistakenly calling the devil a super­
natural cause rather than a preternatural one might have caused many an early
modern student to fail certain kinds of exams, at many schools. A fine distinc-
tion, yes, but im­mensely significant, especially for ­those who dealt with two
groups of dangerous p
­ eople who levitated and bilocated and w
­ ere considered
agents of chaos: demoniacs and witches. The early modern world was full of both
of ­these ­people, or at least full of learned men who w
­ ere convinced that such
­people did exist and posed a threat to society. And dealing with them required
making fine distinctions.
Let us deal with the demoniacs first. While relatively fewer in number than
witches, the demonically possessed w
­ ere considered more frightening in vari­
ous ways and their impossible feats more disturbing and more revealing of the
dev­il’s preternatural powers. In addition, cases of demonic possessions could
become lightning rods for polemics on both sides of the Catholic-­Protestant
divide.

Demoniacs and the Impossible

A relatively little-­known fact in the history of Western civilization is that as witch
hunts waxed and waned in early modern Eu­rope, printers throughout the con-
tinent cranked out title a­ fter title on demonology and witchcraft for nearly three
centuries, the vast majority of which ­were authored by im­mensely learned men.
And this is such a notable characteristic of the transition to modernity—­
alongside that of the birth of modern empirical science—­that one could argue
that the creation of demonology is a parallel scientific revolution, unjustly and
imprudently ignored.3
Though ancient and medieval Christians had dealt with the devil head-
on since the Apostolic Age, up ­until the fifteenth ­century all codification of this
subject was somewhat haphazard, with no definitive systematic treatment of the
devil and his work on earth through his diabolical and ­human minions. And it
was not ­until the sixteenth ­century that demonology per se—­the systematic
study of all ­things diabolical—­became a thriving branch of theology and of
 the devil himself 319

jurisprudence. Statistics speak for themselves. While at the start of the sixteenth
­century all the existing books dedicated solely to demonology could easily be
contained within a single bookshelf, by 1799 a large room might not be enough,
for by then, over 1,000 titles on subjects related to the devil and sorcery had
been published. Demonology had come into its own as a bona fide science,
alongside the works of Copernicus and Galileo.4
We ­shall return to ­these books in the second half of this chapter. For now,
let us turn our attention to the demoniacs, t­ hose unlucky h
­ uman beings osten-
sibly possessed by the devil who could make the subject of all ­those texts seem
very, very real.
Belief in demonic possession was widespread among Catholics and Prot-
estants. Why this is so is difficult to determine from the perspective of social
history and to some extent that of intellectual history. Its cause is ultimately
impossible to gauge, as is the veracity of possession events, for all religious be-
lief encompasses doubt, and belief does not necessarily cancel out a ­whole range
of be­hav­iors, from the cold, insincere, calculated manipulation of o
­ thers to the
manifestation of bizarre, seemingly unexplainable phenomena. In the early mod-
ern age, then, the devil could be used to serve certain purposes, but he could
also become manifest in many other ways, some predictable and o
­ thers not
at all.
Christian diabology is rooted in the New Testament, which is full of ac-
counts of demonic possession and of warnings about the dev­il’s evil power and
his insatiable appetite for mayhem. It is also deeply rooted in the monastic tra-
dition. From its inception, monasticism had been a way of life built out of du-
alities, its very structures and dimensions devised cosmically as an extension
on earth of the strug­gle between God and Satan. As monasticism grew in popu-
larity and the monks’ strug­gles with demons became part of Christian lore, evil
spirits became an ever-­growing preoccupation for the church at large. By the
fourth c­ entury, the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate could say of Christians:
“­These two ­things are the quintessence of their theology, to hiss at demons and
make the sign of the cross on their foreheads.”5
Throughout late antiquity and the ­Middle Ages, the devil was a constant
presence to Christians, and accounts of personal encounters with the devil and
of demonic possessions ­were plentiful. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centu-
ries, as Christendom splintered and the printing press made the circulation of
­these testimonies much easier and widespread, such accounts multiplied expo-
nentially. Naturally, given the differences among the vari­ous competing religious
 320 malevolent

camps at that time, the dev­il’s ­doings could vary in accordance with beliefs, as
did the ways in which he was handled. But no ­matter how dif­fer­ent his profile
was in each church, ­there is no denying that he did show up often, and not only
in theological texts and sermons.
As previously mentioned, Martin Luther provided his followers with de-
tailed descriptions of his encounters with the devil, as well as advice on how
best to deal with him. This Lutheran preoccupation with the devil gave rise to
a new genre of devotional texts in the 1550s: the Teufelsbuch, or “devil book.”
Though ­these books ­were intended to call for repentance and to warn the faith-
ful about the dangers of specific sins, they also managed to sustain the dev­il’s
prominence and to instill fear of him. Closely related to social disciplining and
to the attempt to instill the Reformation ethic of “decency, diligence, gravity,
modesty, orderliness, prudence, reason, self-­control, sobriety, and thrift,”6 the Lu-
theran devil books mirrored the Catholic cult of the saints in which each saint
had his or her specialty, with specific dev­ils being assigned mastery over certain
sins. Some of ­these texts addressed the central Lutheran issue of faith, such as
Andreas Fabricius’s Holy, Clever, and Learned Dev­il, Simon Musaeus’s Melancholy
Dev­il, and Andreas Lange’s The Worry Dev­il. ­Others focused on individual sins
that affected every­one: the drunkenness devil, the gluttony devil, the lust devil,
and so on. Some introduced dev­ils who w
­ ere highly specialized, such as Johann
Ellinger’s “walk-­about devil who loiters on the street” and the “frivolous, volup-
tuous, hopping and skipping dance devil who is an intimate companion of the
walk-­about devil.” Some devil books singled out sins that w
­ ere specific to one
class. Andreas Musculus’s Trousers Dev­il, for instance, condemned rich young
men who wore sexually suggestive garb. Cyriakus Spangenberg’s Hunt Dev­il
blasted away at the nobility’s obsession with hunting.7 ­These devil books proved
to be so popu­lar that the Catholic Church began producing their own versions,
eventually publishing thirty-­nine such texts.8 The most famous devil book of
all, perhaps, is the Historia von Dr. Johann Fausten, first published in 1587, which
tells the cautionary tale of Faustus, a learned man who allowed his insatiable
curiosity to get the best of him and sold his soul to the devil. While ­these texts
portrayed the sinner as responsible for breaking God’s Law, they nonetheless
stressed the power of the devil and the cosmic strug­gle between h
­ umans and
the spiritual forces of Satan and his minions. With an estimated 250,000 of
­these Teufelsbücher in circulation by the 1590s, the devil certainly gained much
exposure thanks to the Lutheran clergy.
 the devil himself 321

Among the Reformed, no leading light spoke of the devil as frequently, or

on such intimate terms, as Luther. Nonetheless, the devil played a significant
role in Reformed theology. Zwingli believed that the devil was very active in the
world and a masterful deceiver and that he had to be actively opposed. “Ye know
well what work the devil has sometimes done in many places,” he said, “which
if it had not been obstructed would have resulted in g­ reat deception and injury
of all Christendom.”9 Zwingli also tended to demonize his opponents and to
blame their errors on the devil, especially in the case of Catholics and Anabap-
tists. In addition, Zwingli was convinced that many of the miracles claimed by
the Catholic Church ­were demonic in origin.
Calvin agreed with Zwingli on all ­these points but spoke of the devil much
more often, elaborating on his many fiendish roles. Calvin’s devil was a liar, a
trickster, and a tempter. Above all, the devil was a “constant presence” and “the
most daring, the most power­ful, the most crafty, the most indefatigable, the most
completely equipped” of all enemies, as well as the best armed, “with all the
engines,” and, to top it off, “the most expert in the science of war.”10 Fortunately,
especially for the elect, this mighty ­enemy was constantly reined in by God: what­
ever he did, he could only carry out with God’s permission. This meant that the
devil acted much like an executioner who fulfilled sentences imposed by God,
the supreme judge. As Calvin put it, the devil was the “minister” of the wrath of
God.11 Moreover, Calvin also stressed that without the gift of God’s grace, h
­ uman
beings ­were not much dif­fer­ent from dev­ils.
Ever pragmatic, Calvin stressed that being aware of the dev­il’s power was
necessary for two reasons: first, it made the elect realize how much grace and
protection they needed from God, and second, it made them grateful for being
rescued from such a ­great, wicked power. This very providential take on the devil,
so closely linked to the doctrine of election, placed all t­ hose who w
­ ere not among
the elect in the dev­il’s camp. By the same token, this view of the devil also made
it the responsibility of the elect to wage war against him and his ­human min-
ions, especially the sorcerers. For the Reformed, then, the devil was very real and
very active, constrained by God but always ­there to be fought against. Unlike
Luther, however, none of the Reformed leaders put much stress on apparitions
of the devil or personal scuffles with him. Unlike Lutherans, Calvinists also
tended to remove the rite of exorcism that had long been attached to the sacra-
ment of baptism. This practice became controversial and caused much division
in some places, such as in Saxony, when the Crypto-­Calvinist chancellor Krell
 322 malevolent

introduced this change in ritual. Given the Reformed influence on ­England, the
devil found in the Anglican Church had Reformed features, but o
­ thers, too,
marked him as distinctly En­glish, unmistakably ambivalent, and as given to pu-
ritan restraint as to popish excess.
Among Catholics, all medieval diabolism remained in place, both among
monastics and layfolk. But, as the dev­il’s presence was intensified by the ever-­
growing number of Protestant heretics, so was the church’s vigilance and its
response to all t­ hings demonic. Among monastics, the devil seemed to become
ever more active and more aggressive, especially as the mystical streak deepened
in response to Protestantism. As previously detailed several times, in convents
and monasteries all over Catholic Eu­rope and even in the New World, monks
and nuns who claimed extraordinary spiritual experiences w
­ ere subjected
to rigorous questioning and often pro­cessed by the Inquisition. And the
monastics themselves grew ever more conscious of the devil and his infinite
capacity for deception. For t­ hose mystics and would-be mystics who crossed
over to the spiritual dimension, especially w
­ omen, becoming a demonologist
was essential.
A case in point is Teresa of Avila (fig. 40), who mentioned the devil regu-
larly in her works and described her encounters with demons as if she w
­ ere dis-
cussing the pots and pans in her convent’s kitchen.12 While many of ­these
passages refer to demonic temptation, the number that deal with demonic ap-
paritions is also high. Sometimes the devil appeared in “physical form” and also
in “formless” visions. Once, for instance, she claimed she saw two demons wrap
themselves around the throat of a priest who was living in a state of mortal sin.
On another occasion at a funeral, she saw the corpse being mauled by demons.
Sometimes the demons attacked her. “One night,” she said, “I thought they w
­ ere
choking me.”13 Teresa was not alone, or that unusual. By the mid-­sixteenth
­century, convents suddenly seemed full of dev­ils and of nuns like Teresa, who
resisted them, and of nuns who did not (fig. 41).
Teresa herself was subjected to painfully meticulous scrutiny, and her con-
fessors tried to convince her that all of her raptures and visions—­including
­those in which she saw Jesus Christ—­were straight from the devil. At one point,
she was even ordered to respond to her visions of Jesus with obscene gestures.
And she also came close to being exorcised of the demons that her superiors
suspected had taken control of her body and mind. Cases of nuns who w
­ ere easily
deceived by the devil and of nuns who w
­ ere possessed by him began to multiply
rapidly in the 1550s and 1560s, as did Inquisition ­trials and exorcisms. One
 the devil himself 323

Figure 40. Medieval demonology reified: a baroque depiction of Saint Dominic u

­ nder demonic
attack during a levitating ecstasy.

such case involving John of the Cross, who was called upon to deal with a pos-
sessed nun, was typical: “The exorcisms are accompanied by terrible convul-
sions in the poor girl: she furiously insults Friar John, foams at the mouth,
screams, thrashes about in a frenzy on the floor, and even tries to attack the
Friar and his companions. . . . ​The young exorcist holds a cross before her. . . . ​
 324 malevolent

Figure 41. Saint Teresa ­under attack from demons during prayer and penitential scourging.

The demoniac throws the cross to the ground; but the friar o
­ rders her to take it
up and kiss, and she obeys, while bellowing.”14
Exorcisms could turn into titanic strug­gles that took weeks or months to
complete, some of which became public spectacles, with huge audiences. In
most cases, the devil—or devils—­would eventually be vanquished. The Cath-
olic Church had well-­established rituals to deal with demoniacs, and they in-
volved the use of both verbal and physical components: adjurations, prayers,
commands, questions—­all in the name of Christ—­along with the use of crosses,
images, consecrated hosts, and holy w
­ ater. Distinctions ­were also made between
vari­ous degrees of demonic influence: infestation (when dev­ils congregate in a
certain location), obsession (when dev­ils assail someone constantly), and posses-
sion (when dev­ils take over someone’s body and mind).
In the sixteenth c­ entury, this rite had yet to be standardized, so t­ here ­were
local as well as personal variations, some of which came to be viewed as cor-
rupt and too reliant on superstition and magic. In the 1530s Pedro Ciruelo had
already warned that the devil himself had corrupted the rite and that many
priests employed “gross expressions as well as superstitious formulas” that w
­ ere
 the devil himself 325

mixed with “holy and pious words.”15 To do away with such abuses, the rite of
exorcism would be standardized in the Rituale Romanum, the definitive liturgi-
cal compendium issued by Pope Paul V in 1614. This new rite, which replaced
all ­others, prescribed set firm guidelines concerning the identification of genu-
ine possessions and their treatment.16
By 1614, as possession cases continued to proliferate, this codification
was more than a reform: it was an affirmation of the power and authority of
the rites, sacraments, and sacramentals of the Catholic Church. In other words,
by 1614, exorcisms had become one of the strongest proofs the Catholic Church
had to offer of its authenticity and its superiority to all Protestant churches.
Moreover, exorcism acquired a polemical dimension ­because possessions w
­ ere
not ­limited to convents and monasteries, or even to Catholics. As in the case of
witchcraft, demonic possession crossed religious bound­aries. And some of the
most salient differences between the religion of Catholics and Protestants
stood in sharpest contrast when it came to possession, for while Catholics had
an elaborate rite that was physically grounded in the use of images, sacraments,
and the sacramentals of holy ­water and oil, Protestants employed prayer alone and
the reading of Scripture. ­These differences applied to all phenomena involving
the devil.
As possessions increased among laypeople, Catholics found a distinct ad-
vantage in their rite of exorcism, especially in areas where religious allegiance
was contested. Successful exorcisms became part of the Catholic polemical ar-
senal, not just on the local level, or in monolithically Catholic places such as
Italy,17 but throughout Eu­rope, thanks to the printing press. Among ­those who
capitalized on the polemical dimension of exorcism, one of the earliest—­and
one of the most impressive—­was the Jesuit Peter Canisius (1521–1597), whose
successful exorcisms w
­ ere credited with effecting many conversions back to Ca-
tholicism. His exorcism in 1570 of the young noblewoman Anna von Bernhau-
sen was among the most dramatic and the most publicly acclaimed.18
In France, especially, the polemical use of exorcism acquired an unpar-
alleled intensity.19 Among the most celebrated, or infamous, is the case of
Nicole Obry in 1566, which came to be known as the Miracle of Laon. The
demoniac in this case was a married adolescent, about fifteen or sixteen years
old, who at first was exorcized by both Huguenots and Catholics. While the
Huguenots seemed to be getting nowhere with their prayers, the Catholics
gained access to the demons through their rites, and the fallen angels began to
speak through Obry. Not surprisingly, t­ hese demons openly expressed allegiance
 326 malevolent

to Geneva and the Calvinist cause. The first six demons to be expelled from
her body reportedly headed straight for Geneva, and the seventh and most
power­ful identified himself as Beelzebub, the Prince of the Huguenots. A
­ fter
a series of public debates with the bishop at the cathedral of Laon, in which
the remaining demon inside Obry constantly boasted of his success among
the Huguenots, the bishop fi­nally vanquished the devil by holding a conse-
crated host above the girl’s body.
The attention paid to this case in print was enormous. On the Catholic
side, the Miracle of Laon was promoted as proof positive of the real presence of
Christ in the Eucharist and of the divine power inherent in the Catholic Church.
Among the Huguenots—­who had been unsuccessful with ­these demons—­Obry’s
possession was portrayed as a fraud, the very embodiment of Catholic supersti-
tion and deception, as well as of the diabolical nature of Catholic rituals. Some
Huguenots attributed all ­these events to witchcraft too.20
The Miracle of Laon was no isolated case: dozens of such well-­attended
spectacles dotted the map of war-­torn France. As with the case of would-be mys-
tics, many frauds also attracted attention and caused discord. One of the most
extraordinary of such exorcisms was that of Marthe Brossier in 1598–1599, who
was publicly exorcized in several dif­fer­ent towns and cities. Though Brossier was
pronounced a fake in Paris, not all Catholics agreed with this verdict, and she
continued to have very public demonic fits outside France for a few years and
to attract much attention.21
Brossier was only one of many such demonically possessed exhibition-
ists. For the next ­century, the devil continued to vex religiously divided France,
and ­every public exorcism, genuine or not, elicited polemical responses. In
seventeenth-­century France, over twenty nunneries w
­ ere hard-­hit with a series
of mass possessions.22 Three convents received a ­great deal of attention due to
their communal possessions, in which many nuns w
­ ere si­mul­ta­neously possessed
and in which the exorcisms became public spectacles as well as polemical c­ auses.
The first such case involved the Ursuline convent at Aix-­en-­Provence in
1611, where eight nuns became demon possessed, and a priest, Louis Gaufridi,
was eventually convicted of causing this demonic invasion through a pact with
the dev­il.23 The second and most celebrated diabolical invasion of an entire
convent took place in 1632–1634, at Loudun.24 Once again, a priest, Urbain
Grandier, was found guilty of unleashing all of ­these dev­ils on the nuns, and
the exorcisms ­were held in public. The wild gyrations, lewd contortions, and ob-
scene speech of the possessed Ursuline nuns, as well as the exhausting efforts of
 the devil himself 327

the exorcists, w
­ ere witnessed by huge crowds, numbering up to 7,000. Nicolas
Aubin, who identified himself as an eyewitness, described what he saw:

When the exorcist gave some order to the Devil, the nuns . . . ​struck their
chests and backs with their heads, as if they had their necks broken, and
with inconceivable rapidity; they twisted their arms at the joints of the
shoulder, the elbow, or the wrist, two or three times around. Lying on their
stomachs, they joined the palms of their hands to the s­ oles of their feet;
their f­aces became so frightful one could not bear to look at them; their
eyes remained open without winking. Their tongues issued suddenly from
their mouths, horribly swollen, black, hard, and covered with pimples, and
yet while in this state they spoke distinctly. They threw themselves back till
their heads touched their feet, and walked in this position with wonderful
rapidity, and for a long time. They uttered cries so horrible and so loud that
nothing like it was ever heard before. They made use of expressions so in-
decent as to shame the most debauched of men, while their acts, both in
exposing themselves and inviting lewd be­hav­ior from ­those pre­sent would
have astonished the inmates of the lowest brothels in the country.

Levitation was part of the spectacle too. According to Aubin, the ­mother
superior, Jean des Anges, “was carried off her feet and remained suspended
in the air at the height of twenty-­four inches.” Then, he added, “A report of
this was drawn up and sent to the Sorbonne, signed by a ­great number of wit-
nesses, ecclesiastics and doctors, and . . . ​the Bishop of Poitiers who was also
a witness. . . . ​Both she and other nuns lying flat, without moving foot, hand,
or body, ­were suddenly lifted to their feet like statues. In another exorcism
the ­Mother Superior was suspended in the air, only touching the ground with
her elbow.”25
Thousands of readers w
­ ere made aware of all the bizarre events through
printed accounts that expressed conflicting points of view, with Catholics tout-
ing their church’s power over the demons and Huguenots denouncing the en-
tire spectacle as a hoax.26 But Catholics had a polemical advantage over the
Huguenots. All the Huguenots could do is argue that the possessions w
­ ere faked,
the result of madness, or the work of the devil. Some Protestants in ­England
found the Catholic account of Aubin (quoted above) so ludicrous that they pub-
lished a verbatim translation u
­ nder a misleading title, convinced that the sheer
outrageousness of the claims would itself unmask the fraud: The cheats and
illusions of Romish priests and exorcists. Discover’d in the history of the dev­ils of
 328 malevolent

Loudun.27 Unconvinced that the title was sufficiently polemical, the same text
was reissued in 1710 as The devil in disguise: or, Rome run a roving: Being a won-
derful discovery of many monstrous cheats and impostors that the popish clergy in
France designed to impose upon mankind, ­under the mask of singular piety and
holiness, but have thereby exposed themselves to all men as the very original of vil-
lany and wickedness. A narrative of extraordinary use to all Protestants who intend
to continue steadfast in the reformed religion.
Proving fraudulence was difficult, nonetheless, especially in the face of
public spectacles such as this. Moreover, to accept the possessions as genuine
rather than fraudulent would be to give credit to Catholic rituals, given that so
many of ­these exorcisms resulted in victories over the dev­ils. Catholics, in con-
trast, could use the exorcisms as proof of the power of their church and their
rituals.28 Additionally, in ­those cases where priests ­were convicted of sending
the devil into nuns, Catholics could also boast of the efficacy of their reforms.
Few other events could prove that the Catholic Church would not tolerate bad
priests better than the public execution of some of them.
Loudon was not the last spectacular possession event. A third such case
arose at Louviers in 1647, where two priests w
­ ere convicted of causing a dia-
bolical infestation.29 And one of the largest of all mass possessions, which af-
fected at least fifty nuns, occurred forty years l­ater in Lyons, between 1687 and
1690. By that time, however, such events attracted much less attention, and this
mass possession in Lyons—­though larger than the one in Loudon—­received
much less coverage. In the long run, however, the events at Loudun could not
be easily buried. Four centuries l­ater, during the Cold War, the dev­ils, nuns, and
exorcists of Loudun attracted unexpected attention from novelists, playwrights,
musicians, and filmmakers, as well as scholars, as no possession story ever had
or perhaps ever ­will.30
Moreover, while ­these French outbursts of mass possession may have at-
tracted more attention than any o
­ thers in print, they w
­ ere only part of a larger
phenomenon. We have no definitive list, but we do know that mass possession
was something rarely seen before the fifteenth c­ entury, while t­ here ­were at least
twenty such events in the sixteenth ­century, in Italy, Germany, Spain, France,
and the Netherlands, and twenty or more in the seventeenth ­century, in the very
same lands and also in far-­off Peru. We also know of two outbreaks in the eigh­
teenth ­century: one in Italy in 1721 and one in Germany in 1750.31 The vast
majority of ­these cases, unlike the three French ones mentioned above, did not
involve charges of witchcraft. ­These mass outbreaks, along with smaller ones,
 the devil himself 329

proved divisive, not only in Catholic–­Protestant relations but also within the
Catholic community itself.
In the Puritan En­glish colony of Mas­sa­chu­setts, demonic possessions
could be linked to witch hunts, as happened in 1693, around the time of the
infamous Salem witch ­trials. Cotton Mather (1663–1728), son of Harvard pres-
ident Increase Mather, an eminent Puritan divine who had played a role in the
Salem witch hunt, became involved in the attempt to rid a possessed girl named
Margaret Rule of her demons. In many re­spects, Mather’s description of her dia-
bolical fits reads much like the accounts from Loudun, especially regarding her
contortions. “She would also be strangely distorted in her Joynts,” wrote Mather,
“and thrown into such exorbitant convulsions as ­were astonishing unto the spec-
tators.”32 In addition, Margaret Rule also levitated, and on one occasion “her
tormentors [the demons] pulled her up to the ceiling of the chamber, and held
her ­there, before a very numerous com­pany of spectators, who found it as much
as they could all do to pull her down again.”33 Five eyewitnesses who submitted
affidavits to Mather confirmed the levitations. One of ­these, Samuel Aves, wrote:

I do Testifie that I have seen Margaret Rule in her Afflictions from the In-
visible World, lifted up from her bed, wholly by an Invisible force, a g­ reat
way ­toward the top of the Room where she lay. In her being so lifted she
had no Assistance from any use of her own Arms or Hands or any other
part of her Body, not so much as her Heels touching her Bed, or resting on
any support whatsoever. And I have seen her thus lifted, when not only a
strong Person hath thrown his ­whole weight across her to pull her down,
but several other Persons have endeavored with all their might to hinder
her from being so raised up; which I suppose that several o
­ thers ­will testify
as well as myself when called unto it.34

Two other Puritans involved in this demonic levitation had this to say:

One Eve­ning when we ­were in the Chamber where Margaret Rule then lay,
in her late Affliction, we observed her to be, by an Invisible Force, lifted up
from the Bed whereon she lay, so as to touch the Garret Floor [the ceiling
of the room], while yet neither her Feet, nor any other part of her Body
rested e­ ither on the Bed, or any other support, but ­were also by the same
force, lifted up from all that was u
­ nder her, and all this for a considerable
while, we judged it several Minutes; and it was as much as several of us could
do, with all our strength, to pull her down. All which happened when ­there
 330 malevolent

was not only we two in the Chamber, but we suppose ten or a dozen more
whose Names we have forgotten.35

According to ­these affidavits, then, Margaret Rule’s levitating body behaved ex-
actly as did Saint Teresa’s, which resisted all the efforts of her nuns to hold or
pull her down.36 The huge difference, of course, is that Teresa was a Catholic
nun levitating in divine ecstasy, and Margaret Rule was a Protestant Calvinist
demoniac being raised up in the air by dev­ils. Robert Calef, a skeptical Boston
merchant who was opposed to witch hunts and belief in demonic wonder-­
working, wrote to Mather a­ fter reading the levitation affidavits, pointing out
that if demonic levitation ­were indeed pos­si­ble, then the Catholic position on
miracles would be proved correct. Calef wrote: “I suppose you expect I should
believe it [Rule’s levitation], and if so, the only advantage gained is that what
has so long been controverted between Protestants and Papists, w
­ hether mira-
cles are ceast, ­will hereby seem to be de­cided for the latter; it being, for aught I
can see, if so, as true a Miracle as for Iron to swim; and the Devil can work such
Miracles.”37
Eventually, all t­hese demonic spectacles, Catholic as well as Protestant,
would cast too large a shadow over religion in general, especially in certain elite
intellectual circles. By the mid-­eighteenth c­ entury, the devil would come to be
viewed by many Enlightenment thinkers as the worst of all superstitions and the
ultimate proof of the absurdity and danger of all traditional religion. Such think-
ing would turn practical too, and judges would eventually begin to chase the
devil out of courtrooms and to exile him from official rec­ords. Mr. Justice Pow-
ell in Hertford, ­England, deserves much “far-­reaching” credit for this develop-
ment, simply for supposedly refusing to accept testimony in 1712 from a witness
who claimed to have seen accused witch Jane Wenham flying, ruling that it was
inadmissible b
­ ecause “­there is no law against flying.”38 But such elite concep-
tions of what was pos­si­ble or impossible, no m
­ atter how cheeky or progressive,
did not stop the devil from possessing thousands of ­people or deter exorcists and
hypnotists from trying to expel them from ­human bodies.39

Witches, the Impossible, and the Science of Demonology

Interest in demonology began to blossom in the 1530s, a period of relative calm
in witch-­hunting, with the publication of two texts that elaborated further on
questions of magic, superstition, and witchcraft. Both ­were written by Spanish
 the devil himself 331

theologians. The first of ­these, Martín de Castañega’s Treatise on Superstitions

and Sorceries (1529), stressed the real­ity of the diabolical dimension through a
stark duality: “­There are two churches in this world,” Castañega wrote, “one Cath-
olic, and one demonic . . . ​and, just as the Catholic Church has sacraments . . . ​
the Diabolical Church has its execraments, which, in everyday speech we call
superstitions and sorceries.”40 The second, A Treatise Reproving All Superstitions
and Forms of Witchcraft (1530), enjoyed a much wider circulation and was re-
printed numerous times over the next c­ entury. Its author, Pedro Ciruelo, was a
biblical scholar and professor of theology at the University of Alcalá. Ciruelo’s
treatise, a veritable encyclopedia of unsanctioned popu­lar piety, further rein-
forced the notion that witchcraft was a demonic counterreligion: “Necromancy
is one of the arts taught by the devil to witches, who are men or ­women that
have made a pact with the devil, and who, a­ fter rubbing certain ointments on
their bodies and saying certain words, they fly through the sky at night and travel
to far-­off lands to perform their malevolent acts.”41
Ciruelo emphasized that the devil allowed witches to traverse distances
by carry­ing them physically through the air but that, more often than not, witches
simply fell into trances, and the devil made them imagine they had gone some-
where and done all sorts of ­things that seemed so real that they would after-
ward be convinced that the illusory events had r­ eally taken place. On this point, as
on so many o
­ thers, Ciruelo said nothing new, but he lent his authority to many of
the beliefs that became entrenched among the learned and t­hose who carried
out witch hunts.
Though skeptics who rejected such beliefs could be found h
­ ere and t­ here,
the first major challenge to dominant witchcraft theories, to witches’ flight, and
to witch-­hunting came from a Calvinist Protestant physician, Johann Weyer
(1515–1588), a disciple of the learned occultist Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa,
mentioned in chapter 9. Weyer was convinced of the real­ity of the devil and of
his power to deceive ­human beings but refused to believe that witchcraft was a
demonic counterreligion of the sort described by the Malleus or experts such as
Ciruelo. Witches w
­ ere not evil ­humans endowed with preternatural powers by
the devil, he argued, but wretched melancholics who ­were mentally ill. Most of
them, he affirmed, w
­ ere “stupid, worn-­out, unstable old w
­ omen” who had been
seduced by the dev­il’s deceptions and by the constant use of hallucinogenics.42
Consequently, he argued, to persecute witches was not only wrong but unneces-
sary, illegal, and illogical b
­ ecause their alleged crimes had not actually taken
place. Weyer opposed the use of torture, especially the extraction of confessions.
 332 malevolent

The real solution to the prob­lem of witchcraft, as he saw it, lay in treating the
madness of the accused rather than in killing them.
In 1563, Weyer put forward this radically new medical interpretation in a
massive book titled De Praestigiis Daemonum (On the deceptions of demons),
which also contained medical advice on how to treat ­those who thought they
­were victims of sorcery. This work was followed in 1577 by a condensed ver-
sion, De Lamiis (On witches). While Weyer’s take on witchcraft as insanity may
seem ahead of its time, his thinking was still guided by belief in demons and
their power. He also thought that some sorcerers he called magi infames—­
disreputable magicians—­really did knowingly deal with the devil and should
be persecuted. In an appendix to De Praestigiis published in 1577 titled Pseudo-
monarchia Daemonum (The false kingdom of the demons), Weyer provided a
cata­logue of demons, complete with the instructions that “disreputable magi-
cians” used in their approach to them. Weyer’s Pseudomonarchia was not a man-
ual but an exposé of what he deemed to be the real threat to society: t­ hose
occultists who conjured demons while whispering secrets to one another. So to
ensure that the Pseudomonarchia would not be used to summon demons, Weyer
left the incantations incomplete.
Weyer’s books enjoyed a wide circulation but had no discernible effect on
witch-­hunting. ­Those who agreed with him tended to have l­ittle impact too.
Among ­these, Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), the g­ reat French statesman
and essayist, was perhaps the best known. But Montaigne wrote no treatise on
witchcraft, only an essay, “On Cripples” (1588), in which he echoed Weyer’s senti-
ments, arguing that medical prescriptions ­were the real solution to the witchcraft
prob­lem, not executions. Two followers of Weyer who did seem to have some in-
fluence on policy ­were the jurist Franz Balduin and the mathematician Hermann
Witekind. Balduin was opposed to witch ­trials on ­legal grounds. Witekind, who
published an antipersecution treatise in 1585 u
­ nder the pen name Augustin
Lercheimer, reiterated Weyer’s pleas for the more compassionate treatment of
deluded old ­women who confessed their pacts with the devil. As a Calvinist, he
also emphasized the supremacy of God’s providence and turned this teaching into
an argument against witch-­hunting: all misfortunes are r­ eally nothing other than
punishments inflicted by God. And the devil is clever enough, he added, to fool
­people—­including the accused—­into thinking that a witch has caused what­ever
harm is in question. In E
­ ngland, Weyer influenced Reginald Scot, who put an
anti-­Catholic spin on his treatise The Discoverie of Witchcraft, first published in
1584. Scot sought to prove, much like Weyer, that most of ­those prosecuted as
 the devil himself 333

witches w
­ ere “poor, aged, deformed, ignorant ­people” whose dreary lives had been
twisted by illusions. Scot argued that the irrational and un-­Christian practices of
witch-­hunters—or “witchmoongers,” as he called them—­stemmed from the su-
perstitious beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church. He bemoaned the fact that
while all the “popish charmes, conjurations, exorcismes, benedictions, and curses”
­were now totally discredited in ­England as “ridicu­lous, and of none effect,” “witches,
charms, and conjurors,” which w
­ ere just as ludicrous, w
­ ere “yet thought effectuall”
by his fellow En­glishmen. And he also made it clear that his purpose was to ensure
that “the massemoonger [papist] for his part, as the witchmoonger for his, ­shall
both be ashamed of their professions.”43 His information on witchcraft was gleaned
not just from books like Weyer’s but also from his own observations in rural courts
and from his personal experiences with neighbors who believed in witches and
leveled accusations against them. Though banned by King James I in 1603, Scot’s
Discoverie was published abroad, in translations, and would l­ater be reprinted
numerous times in ­England.
Skepticism and moderation could not compete with the devil, however, at
least not for another ­century or so. ­Those who called for restraint ­were drowned
out by a loud and per­sis­tent chorus of experts who never tired of calling for
more vigilance and more persecutions. ­After 1570, a slew of texts on witchcraft
poured forth from presses everywhere, the vast majority of which upheld the
traditional line. Curiously, this crusade against witchcraft may have been the
most intensely ecumenical event of the Reformation era, for Lutheran, Reformed,
Anglican, and Catholic pounced on the witches with equal fervor and read each
other’s books.
The Reformed churches led the way in this publishing boom with three
books. First, in Zu­rich in 1571, Heinrich Bullinger wrote and published On
Witches, which outlined the Reformed position very carefully.44 In Geneva, only
one year ­later, theologian Lambert Daneau came out with a dialogue, Les Sor-
ciers,45 which was quickly translated into Latin. An En­glish translation, A
Dialogue of Witches, was published in London in 1575, and a German one was
published in 1576. Daneau, like Bullinger, called for the harshest pos­si­ble pros-
ecution of witches. In Heidelberg, where witch-­hunting was banned, Thomas
Erastus attacked Weyer and all lenient skeptics head-on in his Disputation on
Witches, published in 1572 and expanded in 1578, adding yet another well-­respected
voice to the Reformed chorus.46
Among Lutherans, the Danish theologian Nils Hemmingsen published his
Admonishment to Avoid Magical Superstitions in 1575, during an outburst of
 334 malevolent

witch-­hunting in Denmark.47 In 1583, Paul Frisius dedicated his highly anec-

dotal The Dev­il’s Hoodwink to Landgrave George I of Hesse-­Darmstadt, in support
of witch-­hunting. Arguing that witches w
­ ere “poor whores of the devil,” Frisius
insisted that they had no power of their own. Their maleficium, which was real
enough, came straight from the devil, though they themselves and ­those around
them failed to grasp that. This was the “dev­il’s hoodwink,” which si­mul­ta­neously
blinded the witches to their real powerlessness and cloaked the devil in invisi-
bility. Ultimately, Frisius sought to instill belief in the real­ity of the devil, who
worked his evil in disguise. His devil was a “master conjurer,” an “arch-­trickster,”
a “master magician,” and an “artist with a thousand skills.”48 The witches, though
puppets of the devil, ­were still blameworthy and more than deserving of death,
for their intention was evil to the core, and they allowed themselves to become
diabolical instruments. All in all, thanks in large mea­sure to Luther’s own in-
tense and complex emphasis on the power of the devil, Lutherans produced a
substantial number of texts on witchcraft and demonology, including “devil
books,” that genre of lit­er­a­ture previously mentioned.
In ­England and Scotland, many treatises on witchcraft w
­ ere published
­after 1570, including translations of continental works, but all ­were eclipsed by
Daemonologie, written by King James VI of Scotland in 1597, six years before
he assumed the En­glish throne as James I.49 The king’s interest in witchcraft
stemmed largely from his wedding trip to Denmark in 1590, where he met Nils
Hemmingsen, just mentioned above, the author of Admonishment to Avoid
Magical Superstitions. By coincidence—or by design, as James would come to
believe—­this voyage was plagued by mis­haps, including some ferocious storms
at sea on the way back to E
­ ngland. Suspecting sorcery, a witch hunt was launched
in Copenhagen, and as expected, several of the ­women who ­were rounded up
confessed to having raised the storms with the aid of the devil. A corresponding
witch hunt in Scotland, where King James himself did some of the questioning,
yielded similar testimony. Touched in such a personal way by maleficium, inspired
by Hemmingsen’s work, and angered by that of the skeptics Johann Weyer and
Reginald Scot, who needed to be refuted, King James felt compelled to warn all
his subjects as no monarch had ever done before. And in his preface, he laid all
his cards on the t­able in the opening sentence: “The fearefull aboundinge at
this time in this countrie, of ­these detestable slaves of the Dev­ill, the Witches
or enchanters, hath moved me (beloved reader) to dispatch in post, this follow-
ing treatise of mine, not in any way (as I protest) to serve for a shew of my
learning and ingine, but onely (mooved of conscience) to preasse thereby, so
 the devil himself 335

farre as I can, to resolve the doubting harts of many; both that such assaultes
of Sathan are most certainly practized, and that the instrumentes thereof, mer-
its most severely to be punished.”50
The North Berwick witch hunt of 1590, in which over 100 suspects w
­ ere
rounded up, including some nobility, was the first of many large-­scale witch hunts
in Scotland. In the same year that Daemonologie was published, from March to
October 1597, around 400 suspected witches w
­ ere brought to trial in Scotland,
and about half of them ­were executed. Other witch hunts would follow, some
of them very intense, especially t­hose of 1628–1631, 1649, 1661–1662, and
1697–1700. The exact number of witch ­trials and executions is not known, due
to incomplete rec­ords, but it is estimated that the total number of witches
killed in Scotland during the Reformation era is about 1,500. Calvinist demon-
ology provided the framework for t­ hese persecutions, not only in Scotland but
also in New E
­ ngland, where a c­ entury ­after King James’s Daemonologie was
published, Puritan divines such as Cotton Mather—­son of Increase Mather,
cited in chapter 9—­would still be cranking out texts such as Won­ders of the In-
visible World, which argued for the necessity of the infamous Salem witch ­trials
in Mas­sa­chu­setts.51
Within the Catholic fold, the learned response to the witchcraft issue was
just as severe. One of the most significant texts on the subject appeared in 1580:
On the Demon-­Mania of Witches.52 Authored by French jurist and statesman Jean
Bodin (1530–1596), this text was a long and detailed refutation of Johann Weyer
and all other skeptics. Convinced of the real­ity of witches, their flights, and their
pacts with the devil, as well as of the danger they posed to society, Bodin pro-
posed that normal trial procedures concerning evidence, witnesses, testimony,
and torture be relaxed or set aside in witchcraft ­trials since, as he saw it, the
existing regulations made it hard to convict anyone, and most rumors about
witches w
­ ere true, anyway.53 His aim was to streamline the ­trials so that courts
could eliminate witches more quickly and efficiently, for, as he said, “anyone
accused of being a witch o
­ ught never to be fully acquitted and set f­ree u
­ nless
the calumny of the accuser is clearer than the sun, inasmuch as the proof of
such crimes is so obscure and so difficult that not one witch in a million would
be accused or punished.”54 Bodin’s Démonomanie would be reprinted numer-
ous times, just like Weyer’s De Praestigiis, not just in French but also in Latin,
Italian, and German.
As persecutions intensified, more and more learned treatises ­were pub-
lished. Some w
­ ere written by scholars, o
­ thers by witch-­hunters. Peter Binsfeld,
 336 malevolent

episcopal vicar of Trier, the man responsible for one of the largest of all witch
hunts, published a Latin treatise in 1589 titled Of the Confessions of Warlocks
and Witches, which was based on his own experiences with sorcerers.55 Another
expert author was Nicholas Remy, a magistrate and witch-­hunter in the Duchy
of Lorraine who boasted of having sentenced at least 900 sorcerers to death.
Remy’s Daemonolatreiae, published in 1595 and dedicated to his sovereign
Duke Charles III, was translated into German and reprinted often.56 It would
eventually compete with the Malleus for the top spot on the list of definitive
witch-­hunting textbooks. Since it was based on experience, like Binsfeld’s Con-
fessions, it had an air of gritty authenticity that was lacking in more scholarly
texts. Remy was well aware of this advantage: “It may be that some ­will accuse
me of being nothing but a retailer of marvelous stories, seeing that I speak of
witches raising up clouds and traveling through the air, penetrating through
the narrowest openings, eating, dancing, and lying with Demons, and perform-
ing many other such prodigies and portents. But I would have them know first
that it was from no scattered rumours, but from the in­de­pen­dent and concor-
dant testimony of many witnesses that, as I have said, I have reported t­hese
­things as certain facts.”57
Remy’s Daemonolatraie earned its renown and longevity by being many
­things at once: an engaging collection of bizarre, fantastic tales; an encyclope-
dia of witchcraft; a proof of the dev­il’s existence and power; and a vindication
of witch-­hunting.
A third experienced judge who chose to write about his personal encoun-
ters with witchcraft was Pierre de Lancre, who in 1609 conducted a witch hunt
in southwestern France among the Basque p
­ eople. Like Remy, de Lancre boasted
of having executed many witches (around 600, he claimed) and of having gained
intimate knowledge of their crimes and their infernal rituals. Sent by King Henry
IV to the town of Labourd, where residents had complained of being overrun
with witches, de Lancre was given full authority over witchcraft cases. The re-
sult was a chain-­reaction panic, like ­those in many other places where a local
court handled witch-­hunting. A
­ fter he had finished his work at Labourd, de
Lancre penned three treatises based on his experiences as a witch-­hunter. The
most influential of ­these books was his first, On the Inconstancy of Evil Angels
and Demons.58 Filled with lurid accounts of the diabolical activities of the
Basque witches, including a very detailed description of a witches’ Sabbat,
this sensational book was translated into German in 1630. De Lancre’s two other
 the devil himself 337

books, which had less of an impact, expanded on what he had covered in his
Inconstancy.59
The most significant Catholic text—­which would eventually eclipse the
Malleus and Remy’s Daemonolatreiae—­was written not by a prosecutor but by a
learned Jesuit priest, Martin del Rio (1551–1608). Born in Antwerp of Spanish
descent, this polymath who was fluent in at least nine languages and wrote on
many dif­fer­ent subjects would be called “the won­der of the c­ entury” by the Flem-
ish humanist Justus Lipsius (1547–1606). But he is best remembered—­and
not too fondly—­for his Investigations into Magic,60 a nearly encyclopedic study
of all t­hings diabolical and occult. This work, first published in three parts in
1599–1600, was reprinted at least twenty times. And its influence would cross
religious bound­aries and oceans and would eventually be used in 1692 by
the Puritan judges of Salem in their witch hunt. The last reprint was in 1755,
at Cologne.
Del Rio dealt with witchcraft and magic as a scholar rather than a jurist,
linking the subject to other disciplines such as mathe­matics, astrology, and
alchemy. In ­doing so, he gave his work an edge that most ­others lacked, synthe-
sizing theology and law, philosophy, and what was then the cutting edge of sci-
ence. His explanation for the surge in witches experienced in the sixteenth
­century was that heresy leads to diabolism, magic, and witchcraft. The thesis
itself was not novel, for it had already been proposed by his fellow Jesuit Juan
de Maldonado (1533–1583), but his rendering of it struck a deep chord among
Catholics, especially ­those who had to deal with the witchcraft issue. “Magic
follows heresy, as plague follows famine,” he said. “We have seen heresy flourishing
in Belgium and we see swarms of witches laying waste the w
­ hole of the North,
like locusts. The heretics are strongly opposed by the Jesuits. This book is a
weapon in that war.”61
Unlike Binsfeld, Remy, and De Lancre, who had prosecuted witches and
heard their confessions, Martin del Rio obtained his information second­hand,
through research. Ironically, his derivative description of the witches’ Sabbat
became definitive. And it doubtlessly played a role in shaping the assumptions
of many a judge and prosecutor. Absurd as the rites described may seem in our
day and age, they seemed all too real in their own day.

­There, on most occasions, once a foul, disgusting fire has been lit, an evil spirit
sits on a throne as president of the assembly. His appearance is terrifying,
 338 malevolent

almost always that of a male goat or a dog. The witches come forward to
worship him in dif­fer­ent ways. Sometimes they supplicate him on bended
knee; sometimes they stand with their back turned to him. They offer can-
dles made of pitch or a child’s umbilical cord and kiss him on the anal ori-
fice as a sign of homage. Sometimes they imitate the sacrifice of the Mass
(the greatest of all their crimes) . . . ​and similar Catholic ceremonies. ­After
the feast, each evil spirit takes by the hand the disciple of whom he has
charge, and so that they may do every­thing with the most absurd kind of
ritual. . . . ​They sing very obscene songs in his [Satan’s] honour. They be-
have ridiculously in e­ very way . . . ​and then their demon-­lovers copulate with
them in the most repulsive fashion.62

Not surprisingly, experts disagree on how to interpret this text, and ­every
approach offers its own theory, so consequently, economic, social, po­liti­cal, psy-
chological, anthropological, and even biological interpretations compete for at-
tention. Since the total number of ­women executed in witch hunts was three
times greater than that of men, many experts have focused on issues of gender.
Despite all the disagreement, however, t­ here seems to be some consensus on
four points.
First, it is clear that the increase in witch-­hunting in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries ­really did take place and is no exaggeration, even though
the number of ­trials and executions was lower than previously believed.
Second, it is also clear that witch hunts w
­ ere not all alike, due to compet-
ing ideologies and vast regional differences. For instance, we know that some
witch hunts w
­ ere generated from above, by elites, and o
­ thers from below, by the
common ­people. Another notable difference, now highlighted, is that between
the older tradition of maleficium, or s­ imple harming through magic, and a newer
diabolical tradition—­developed in the fifteenth ­century—­that focused on the
pact, demonic worship, the Sabbat, demonic sex, aerial flight, infanticide, can-
nibalism, shapeshifting, and the use of imps and familiars. We now know that
­these two traditions existed si­mul­ta­neously; sometimes they mixed, but often
they did not.
Third, it is becoming increasingly clear that early modern witch hunts
should not be thought of as a “panic” or a “craze”—­that is, as some irrational
blip in Western civilization or some form of temporary insanity. A
­ fter all, not
­every witch was burned in a chain-­reaction hunt like ­those of Trier or Bamberg.
A steadier sort of persecution was always ­there, bubbling up from below along-
 the devil himself 339

side the massive witch hunts, and many witch t­ rials ­were strictly about malefi-
cium and not about devil worship. In other words, in many cases witch ­trials
­were pragmatic solutions to everyday prob­lems, approached according to an un-
derstanding of the world and premises and assumptions that not only made
sense but ­were considered rational even by the most learned savants.
Fi­nally, a fourth point—­which is seldom discussed openly—­concerns the
dev­il’s absence, or, more precisely, his nonbeing. In other words, it is taken for
granted that the devil is not and never has been a “real” being, much less a causal
agent, and that the only acceptable way to study witchcraft is to share in that
assumption. In addition, that shared assumption is most often viewed not as a
mere conjecture, or a hypothesis, but rather as an incontestable fact, accepted
with a strong degree of conviction that resembles that of the inquisitors who
assumed that all magic involved implicit dealings with the devil. As a result, ­those
who study witchcraft nowadays face the daunting task of explaining why so many
early modern Eu­ro­pe­ans believed in the devil and why he was so real to so many
of them. This is a thorny prob­lem, for sure: so thorny that most scholars prefer
it to remain as invisible as the devil himself.

Levitation, Transvection, and Witches on Pitchforks

Maleficium might have been the main concern every­one had with witchcraft,
but ­there w
­ ere other issues connected to it that vexed churchmen and jurists,
and one of ­these was w
­ hether or not witches flew through the air to attend their
diabolical Sabbat rituals (fig. 42). In his Compendium Maleficarum (1608), Cath-
olic demonologist Francesco Maria Guazzo said: “Many of the followers of
Luther and Melanchthon maintained that witches went to their Sabbats in imag-
ination only, and that ­there was some diabolical illusion in the ­matter, alleging
that their bodies had often been found lying at home in their beds and had never
moved from them.”63
Guazzo was not ­really addressing some new disagreement caused by Prot-
estant Reformation. The issue in question—­whether the devil ­really made
witches fly or merely caused them to imagine that they flew—­had been hotly
contested since the early tenth c­ entury, when a l­egal text known as the Canon
Episcopi decreed it a heresy to believe in the claims of “some wicked ­women,
who have given themselves back to Satan and been seduced by the illusions and
phantasms of demons” and insisted that they rode in the air “upon certain beasts
with Diana, the goddess of pagans . . . ​and in the silence of the night traverse
 340 malevolent

Figure 42. A Calvinist repre­sen­ta­tion of witches’ demonic flight on brooms, from Cotton Mather’s
Won­ders of the Invisible World.

­great spaces of earth” (fig. 43). Addressed to bishops in the barely Christianized
Frankish Empire, where “an innumerable multitude” believed this to be true,
this decree commanded that “the priests in all their churches should preach with
all insistence to the ­people that they may know this to be in ­every way false and
that such phantasms are imposed on the minds of infidels and not by the di-
vine but by the malignant spirit . . . ​Satan himself.” In addition, the Canon also
denied that the devil could ­really transform ­humans into animals, as was also
commonly believed. It was all an illusion, but such illusions ­really did happen,
in the spirit. “Who is so stupid and foolish as to think that all t­ hese ­things which
are only done in spirit happen in the body?” asked the Canon impatiently, while
affirming the real­ity of spiritual illusions and of the dev­il’s power and arguing
for the annihilation of witchcraft.64
Even though the Canon Episcopi was eventually included in Gratian’s Cor-
pus Juris Canonici in the twelfth c­ entury and thus became part of the church’s
canon law, its position on the flight of Satanists and the transformation of
witches into animals was contested and circumvented in vari­ous ways through-
Figure 43. Albrecht Dürer, one of the greatest German Re­nais­sance artists, reflects popu­lar
beliefs by depicting a witch riding backward on a flying goat.
 342 malevolent

out the M
­ iddle Ages by several prominent churchmen and theologians, espe-
cially as concern over witchcraft began to increase in the thirteenth c­ entury.
Some argued that the witches mentioned in the Canon ­were totally dif­fer­ent from
­those of the thirteenth ­century; some claimed that the Canon was not binding
­because it had not been approved by a church council; some complained that
following the Canon would interfere with the extermination of witches; and
­others cleverly pointed out that the Canon did not explic­itly say that flying was
impossible.
Curiously, disagreements about witches’ flight led to the development of a
cluster of positions on the issue of flying that combined ele­ments of flight, trans-
vection, illusion, and bilocation, an amalgam of propositions that basically de-
fended the possibility of someone ­going airborne and of being in two places at
the same time. What Ulrich Molitor—­a proponent of the idea that witches’ flight
and the Sabbat w
­ ere illusions—­had to say in 1489 about such illusions was very
similar to what would be said to explain the bilocations of Luisa de Carrión
and María de Ágreda in the seventeenth ­century, save for the fact that Molitor
was speaking about demonic rather than divine or angelic agency. “During sleep
as well as during a waking state, dev­ils can produce impressions so vivid that
men believe they see or act in actuality,” he argued, adding that “at the precise
moment that a man is one place, nevertheless he is able to appear in spirit in
another.”65 Tellingly, Molitor’s text On Witches contained images depicting what
the witches i­ magined, representing the illusion as real, including one of the first
images of witches in flight to appear in a printed book, in the original Latin
edition, depicting three witches who have been transformed into animals rid-
ing on pitchforks (fig. 44). A dif­fer­ent version of this image was used in a ­later
German translation, and a totally dif­fer­ent image appeared in another ­later
German translation, showing a witch on a pitchfork being borne aloft by a
demon (fig. 45).66
By 1489, when Molitor was writing, belief in witches’ flight had gained
considerable ground but was nonetheless in flux. In addition, many demonolo-
gists had by then linked the issue of flying to that of the witches’ Satanic ritual
of the Sabbat. And this intertwining was itself in flux, necessarily, as evidenced
by the fact that the magisterial and definitive book on witchcraft, the Malleus
Maleficarum—­which codified the idea of the Sabbat—­did not elaborate on
witches’ flight.67
But belief in the Sabbat and in witches’ flight had become common among
inquisitors before Molitor and the Malleus came along. One fifteenth-­century
Figure 44. One of the earliest printed depictions of witches as changelings with animal
heads, flying on a crude pitchfork, from Ulrich Molitor’s On Witches, 1489.
Figure 45. A very early printed depiction of a devil carry­ing a witch aloft on a pitchfork,
from Ulrich Molitor’s On Witches, 1489.
 the devil himself 345

document that predates the Malleus—­The Vauderie of Lyon—­painted a vivid pic-

ture of the Sabbat that included flying witches. Referring to “apostates from
the faith” who “have or acquire g­ reat familiarity with demons,” this text written
by an anonymous inquisitor describes how “they go out at night, following a­ fter
Satan—­some walking, some riding on a malign spirit . . . ​­others on a staff . . . ​
and they go to an assembly, sometimes quite far and distant.” The descriptive
narrative continues, focusing on the staff “on which some of ­these faithless
­people say and declare that they are borne through the air and also over ­great
distances” and on the “abominable ointment” derived from the body parts
of slain ­children with which the witches anoint themselves and their staffs,
“directed by the demon’s craft and instruction” (fig. 46). The Sabbat itself is
described as follows, ostensibly based on confessions made by the witches
themselves:

Whenever they gather at the synagogue of Satan, t­hese perverse, blind,

and wretched ­people worship that demon . . . ​as if it ­were a god. They do
this with suppliant prostration and kneeling or genuflection with clasped
and clapping hands, and by kissing the demon on some part of his body,
usually his backside or posterior. . . . ​Also, ­after the aforesaid impious apos-
tates have done homage . . . ​with all pos­si­ble reverence, they give themselves
to the demon whom they worship. And some receive that one as their mas-
ter, o
­ thers truly and more commonly as their god, promising ­under oath
that they w
­ ill not worship or have any other god thereafter. . . . ​Also, at that
assembly, immediately a­ fter ­doing homage . . . ​they begin to dance to the
sound of a faint horn or pipes. . . . ​During this dance, at a signal known to
them, ­every man and w
­ oman lies down and mingles together in the manner
of brutes or sodomites. And even the devil, as an incubus or succubus, takes
­ oman he wishes and has carnal knowledge of them,
what­ever man or w
although brutishly.68

This description contains all the basic ele­ments of the Sabbat: A nighttime
assembly at a remote site; witches’ flight; ointments that involve child killing;
devil worship; pacts with the dev­il; unbridled feasting, dancing, and sex; and a
renunciation of the Christian God. But belief in such assemblies or in any of
their components was not univocal or universal among clerics, scholars, or the
unschooled. This was one realm of belief with considerable room for disagree-
ment on the details, as well as on the chief premises. So it is not surprising that
major Protestant Reformers such as Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingli, and Calvin
Figure 46. Belief in the witches’ Sabbat and in their malevolent activities also included belief in
their ability to fly, depicted ­here—­before the advent of Protestantism—by Hans Baldung Grien,
one of Germany’s most prominent artists.
 the devil himself 347

should have appropriated dif­fer­ent strands of medieval demonology and dif­fer­

ent positions on what sorts of impossible feats the devil could perform. What is
surprising is that the strands and attitudes they a­ dopted w
­ ere still fundamen-
tally identical to t­ hose found in Catholicism. Luther and Melanchthon’s denial
of physical witches’ flight was based principally on what was found in the Canon
Episcopi and in the writings of ­those who accepted its take on flying. For in-
stance, despite his absolute belief in the real­ity of the devil and his powers,
Luther had this to say in 1518, a year before he was excommunicated by the
pope: “Many believe that they r­ide on a broom or a goat, still o
­ thers on other
­things, to some place, where they celebrate strange rites with o
­ thers, which is
not only forbidden to be done, but even to be believed in . . . ​or that old ­women
are transformed into cats or other beasts and wander at night, and this, too,
must not be believed. . . . ​­These are illusions of the devil, not true t­ hings.”69
Similarly, Calvin, who thought that the devil was God’s power­ful avenger
against the reprobate, argued as follows about the illusions with which the
devil—at God’s command—­fools ­humans in a very real way:

The devil has such dominion over the unbelievers that although a ­thing may
not be done in a­ ctual deed, yet the illusion is such that it makes men be-
lieve that they see that which they do not see. And so it is a kind of en-
chantment, that is to say of dev­ilish illusion, when a man s­ hall be made to
think that one is transformed into a wolf, or that he sees the shape of a ­thing
that has no a­ ctual substance or truth in fact. . . . ​If we are faithless, it is a
just reward for our quenching of the light that should have shone into us
and of our turning of our backs on God. And when we ­will not be ruled by
him, then we no longer discern between white and black, but men seem to
us to be wolves, and all ­things are out of order, and justly so.70

Yet not all Calvinists felt the need to agree with Calvin. A case in point is
the French Huguenot Lambert Daneau, whose De Veneficiis was translated into
En­glish in 1575 and had a profound influence on the development of witch-
craft beliefs in ­England, giving credence t­ here to the absolute physical real­ity of
witches’ flight. Stressing the significance of evidence gathered in witchcraft ­trials,
Daneau denied that the Sabbat and witches’ flight ­were “onely in cogitation of
mind and illusion of the devil.” Admitting that “this m
­ atter hath bin in ­great
controversie,” he argued on logical grounds that “the constant confessions of
sorcerers themselves, along with other infinite testimonies,” could not be easily
dismissed, “for they confesse this when they are neare their death, and when
 348 malevolent

Figure 47. Witches flying on a goat and a crude pitchfork in the background of this 1591 illustration
from Peter Binsfeld’s On the Confessions of Magicians and Witches drive home the point that
witches’ flight was inseparable from all their other malevolent activities, such as the ritual murder
of infants.

they are condemned and lead to execution for that offence, and when they bee
tormented, when such talke can help them no longer.”71 In other words, the
scenes malevolent sorcery depicted in Peter Binsfeld’s Of the Confessions of War-
locks and Witches ­were most definitely accurate (fig. 47).
So when we find Francesco Guazzo, a Catholic, arguing against skeptics
on the issue of witches’ flight, condemning Luther and Melanchthon, what we
see is not necessarily anti-­Protestant polemic, for belief in witches’ flight was
not required of Catholics, and some of them actually preferred to agree with
the Canon Episcopi. Consequently, Guazzo’s description of the Sabbat, which is
nearly identical to that of The Vauderie of Lyon, was aimed at some fellow Cath-
olics as much as at Protestants he singled out for criticism. In fact, his conjur-
ing of the names of two Protestant heresiarchs could have very well been a way
of shaming fellow Catholics who refused to believe in the real­ity of witches’ flight.

I hold it to be very true that sometimes witches are ­really transported from
place to place by the devil, who in the shape of a goat or some other fantastic
animal carries them bodily to the Sabbat. . . . ​This is the general opinion of
the theologians and Jurists of Italy, Spain, and Catholic Germany, while a
­great many ­others are of a like opinion. . . . ​But it must be known that be-
fore they go to the Sabbat they anoint themselves upon some part of their
 the devil himself 349

Figure 48. A Catholic depiction of a witch flying through storm clouds on a goat, from Francesco
Maria Guazzo’s Compendium Maleficarum (1608).

bodies with an unguent made from vari­ous foul and filthy ingredients, but
chiefly from murdered ­children; and so anointed they are carried away on
a cowl-­staff, or a broom, or a reed, a cleft stick or a distaff, or even a shovel,
which t­ hings they ­ride.72

As Guazzo pointed out, many authorities believed that witches did indeed
fly to their Sabbats (fig. 48). As he put it, “This is the general opinion,” which he
very well knew was not at all the same as a “universal opinion,” much less a doc-
trine. Moreover, he was painfully aware of the fact that t­here ­were many who
disagreed with him, both Catholic and Protestant. Moreover, he surely must have
known that not ­every Protestant agreed with Luther, ­either, and that the issue
of flight, levitation, or transvection of witches was an ambiguous and hotly con-
tested issue within confessional bound­aries as well as across them.
What relatively few Catholics or Protestants dared to openly challenge,
however, was the necessity of wiping out witches and their maleficium. And
much of the effort to wipe out the witches involved having no patience with
 350 malevolent

ambiguities, among Protestants as much as among Catholics. So, as some his-

torians of witchcraft have pointed out, t­here was a vicious cycle, or “chain of
causality,” established by witch-­hunters, which made witches’ flight necessary for
them: “No flight, then no searching for a Sabbat, no Sabbat, then no question-
ing of ‘accomplices,’ and no confessions from them, and then no new charges
to be made. And this is why the question of witches’ flight assumed central
significance.”73
Due to the demonology they shared, Lutherans, Reformed Protestants, and
Catholics could persecute witches with equal ferocity, regardless of ambiguities
and disagreements surrounding belief in witches’ flight. As mentioned in chap-
ter 9, witches ­were burned alive in Luther’s Wittenberg. They ­were also burned
in Denmark and Württemberg, which w
­ ere also Lutheran, and in Calvin’s Re-
formed city of Geneva—­including some who confessed to flying to a Sabbat
and having sex with the devil—­and witch ­trials and executions continued to
be carried out by that city-­state well into the seventeenth c­ entury.74 Meanwhile,
in Zu­rich, where witch ­trials would be held ­until 1714, Heinrich Bullinger
wrote against witches and other “black arts” and argued that God was pleased
by the execution of sorcerers.75 Witchcraft lit­er­a­ture and persecution spread
across the map, along with Protestantism, to E
­ ngland, Scotland, Scandinavia,
Transylvania, and other lands. And, naturally, Protestants everywhere contin-
ued to believe that Catholicism and witchcraft ­were linked due to the strangle-
hold the devil had on it, especially when it came to its “idolatry and superstition.”
As far as witches’ flight was concerned, it has been argued that ­after 1590 Prot-
estants began to see witches’ flight as a demonic illusion rather than a physical
act, but this shift in thinking did not necessarily lead to a reduction in witch-
craft persecutions.76 The persecutions wound down for vari­ous other reasons,
both among Catholics and Protestants, as skepticism gained ground among
educated elites and churchmen.
Belief in the demonic nature of witchcraft and in its existence underwent
many permutations in the seventeenth ­century, as did belief in the “impossible”
phenomenon of witches’ flight. Some of ­these changes can seem startling, and
one of the most startling of all is the seemingly “modern” attitude taken by
Alonso de Salazar Frías, a Spanish inquisitor in the Basque region of Navarre,
in Spain, where an outbreak of witchcraft caused much commotion. Salazar be-
gan his investigation of witchcraft confessions and accusations in 1611, and
­after reviewing what he had found, he declared in 1612 that the witch ­trials
should be ­stopped immediately. What Salazar reported to the Supreme Council
 the devil himself 351

in Madrid stunned them: as he saw it, the witches’ confessions ­were too full of
contradictions, and he could not find any physical evidence of devil worship or
maleficium.77
In 1614, due largely to Salazar’s recommendations, the Spanish Inqui-
sition pardoned all t­hose who had already been condemned for witchcraft in
Navarre—an incredibly rare admission of error—­and established new rules that
ended all witch-­hunting in Spain. ­These rules required distinguishing between
real­ity and illusion, proving intent to cause harm, avoiding forced confessions,
and searching for natu­ral ­causes of the illnesses, injuries, deaths, and disasters
reported in accusations. So, even in ultra-­Catholic Spain, during the height of
witch persecutions that led to the slaughter of thousands of suspected witches
elsewhere, a major rejection of the leading witchcraft theories occurred in an
unlikely place.78 When it came to the devil and his flying witches, then, t­here
could be significant disagreement and surprising turns in any narrative.

The Devil in the Details

Po­liti­cal, social, economic, and cultural circumstances had a lot to do with ­every
diabolical manifestation, and the phenomenon can certainly be better under-
stood when all of ­these vari­ous perspectives are taken into account. But none
of ­these approaches in isolation can explain the phenomenon in its complex to-
tality. Luther referred to the devil as a Tausendkünstler (an artist with a thou-
sand skills). If the thousand skills ­were to be ascribed instead to the men and
­women who used the devil for their own purposes, then Luther might seem even
more perceptive in our own day and age. W
­ hether the devil was ­really ­there four
centuries ago, employing his thousand skills, is no easier to prove or disprove
now than it was then. The fact remains that ­whether it was the devil himself or
men and ­women who employed him for their own purposes, the devil played
one hell of a role in the birth of modernity during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, that era also known as the Age of Reason.
Ironically, the devil continues to cause trou­ble in our own day and age for
anyone who thinks of the ascent from “medieval” to “modern” or from “super-
stition” to “reason” as one neat upward line on a graph with no downward dips,
or just a few, at most. But the devil is not at fault. The prob­lem is not the dev­il’s
presence in the early modern age, which is undeniable, w
­ hether folk believe in
him or not. The real prob­lem is that some definitions of “modernity” cannot
take him and his thousand tricks into account. Epochal transitions can be slow
Figure 49. The Enlightenment did l­ittle to stifle popu­lar beliefs in witches and their ability to
overcome gravity, as depicted ­here by Spanish artist Francisco Goya in one of several witchcraft
paintings commissioned by a Spanish nobleman in the late 1790s.
 the devil himself 353

and messy and cannot ­really be charted neatly, especially with single lines
that always curve upward. Protestants put into motion many changes that can
easily be identified as modern—­changes that ushered in new mentalities and
worldviews—but they also prized traits that do not lend themselves to cate-
gorizing as “modern” or “not modern.” Simply put, Protestants did not make a
clean break with the medieval past. The devil proves this conclusively, and so do
some other curious Protestant beliefs and practices.
Protestants continued to believe in a world peopled by evil spirits and in
divinely crafted natu­ral signs and in impossible events such as levitation and
bilocation, even if only as demonically induced illusions. Consistory and visita-
tion rec­ords show that many Protestants did not abandon the “magical” or “su-
perstitious” world of their forebears and had to be constantly reprimanded for
their lapses.79 Some Protestants even ascribed enchanted qualities to their lead-
ers: some Zu­richers, for instance, spread a rumor that Zwingli’s heart had re-
mained intact when Catholics burned his corpse,80 and some Lutherans came
to believe that pictures of Luther could not burn.81 ­These parallel beliefs in in-
combustibility should not be ignored or squirreled away out of sight as end-
notes. When all is said and done, they are facts to be reckoned with: details that
should make every­one acknowledge that the past is as complex as the pre­sent
and that the usefulness of concepts such as “modernity” or “post-­modernity” can
sometimes be very l­imited. When it comes to tracing transitions to modernity,
as well as seemingly impossible feats, the devil is always in the details, ever ready
to pounce on the unaware and the ill-­informed, as well as on anyone who en-
counters Francisco Goya’s witchcraft paintings82 for the first time, one of which
depicts a frightful demonic levitation. (fig. 49). Goya, ­after all, has been “vener-
ated as the first modern artist,”83 and far too often heralded as a harbinger of
“modernity.”84 Surprise! Modernity, post-­modernity, and post-­post-­modernity
have many dimensions, some of which tend to be ignored or summarily dis-
missed, often at an undetected cost.
 Epilogue
Vague Logic, Leaps of Faith

Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according

to certain laws, but ­whether this agent be material or immaterial
I have left to the consideration of my readers.
—Isaac Newton

The world’s first certifiable levitator was no saint, thaumaturge, witch, or demo-
niac. He was Jean-­François Pilâtre de Rozier (1754–1785),1 a young physicist,
chemist, and inventor, a genuine child of the Enlightenment who moved with
­great ease in elite scientific and social circles, despite having been dismissed by
his Benedictine teachers as “scatterbrained, dissipated, keen on plea­sure and
unamenable to studies.”2 As much a showman as a scientist, Pilâtre would de-
light his bewigged audiences by performing flashy experiments, such as inhal-
ing hydrogen and setting it ablaze as he exhaled it through a glass tube, much
like some fire-­breathing dragon (fig. 50). He also once convinced the Acad­emy
of Science and the Royal Society of Medicine to approve a respirator he had
in­ven­ted by donning a rubberized suit, strapping on his contraption—­a snorkel-­
like device connected to an air tank—­and immersing himself in excrement in a
Paris sewer for over half an hour, u
­ nder three feet of lethal mephitic gas, and
then emerging hale and hearty from the stygian depths thanks to empirical sci-
ence and his ingenuity.
His first levitation took place on October 15, 1783, in the gondola of a
tethered hot-­air balloon crafted by ­brothers Joseph-­Michel and Jacques-­Étienne
Montgolfier, which ­rose into the air at the Château de la Muette, near the outskirts

354
 epilo gue 355

Figure 50. The world’s first certifiable levitator, Jean-­François Pilâtre de Rozier, blowing
hydrogen into a flame.

of Paris, and allowed him to hover aloft for about four minutes, a far shorter
time than some of the levitating saints of old but certainly at a much, much
higher altitude than any of them had ever reached (fig. 51).3 Climbing onto this
machine aérostatique was riskier than any of his previous stunts since no ­human
being had ever reached such heights and the highly flammable varnish-­glazed
cloth balloon was propelled upward by a burner that consumed straw and wool
as fuel, but Pilâtre had been given some mea­sure of assurance by three aero-
nauts who had preceded him.
 356 epilo gue

Figure 51. Jean-­François Pilâtre de Rozier’s first balloon levitation at the Château de la Muette,
October 15, 1783.

About a month ­earlier at the Palace of Versailles, on September 19, a lamb,

a duck, and a rooster had gone up in a balloon, confined in a cage. Much like
the mid-­twentieth-­century Rus­sian dog Laika and the American chimp Ham,
who w
­ ere launched into space before any h
­ umans had ever ventured so far be-
yond the earth’s atmosphere, ­these three barnyard critters ­were test subjects. If
their blood vessels could withstand the high altitude, it was assumed, then
­humans might also survive such a levitation. Their flight lasted eight minutes,
and they landed safely about two miles away. ­After being examined by Pilâtre
de Rozier, who declared them to be perfectly healthy, the beasts w
­ ere declared
“heroes of the air” and granted a place of honor in the royal menagerie at Ver-
sailles. Their takeoff had been viewed by the ill-­fated King Louis XVI and Queen
Marie Antoinette, as well as by a tightly packed crowd of 120,000 to 130,000
that included “the greatest, the most illustrious, and the most knowledgeable
in the nation gathered to pay a solemn homage to the sciences u
­ nder the eyes
of the august court that protected and encouraged them.”4 King Louis had sug-
gested sending condemned criminals up in the balloon rather than animals but
ultimately relented in the face of pressure. ­There ­were simply too many ­eager
 epilo gue 357

elite volunteers who objected to the possibility of having any such honor be-
stowed on any low-­born miscreants who might survive.5
Pilâtre de Rozier extended the range of his levitating on November 21,
1783, along with the Marquis d’Arlandes, a French military officer, when both
of them flew in an untethered hot-­air balloon, traversing about five and a half
miles in twenty-­five minutes and ultimately landing safely outside Paris.6 One
eyewitness wrote: “The emotion, the surprise and the kind of anxiety caused by
a spectacle so rare and so new was carried to the point that several ladies ­were
taken ill.”7 Having just negotiated the Treaty of Paris with G
­ reat Britain that
ended the American Revolutionary War, Benjamin Franklin was ­there too, along
with “a vast concourse of gentry” and thousands of other witnesses: “We ob-
served it lift off in the most majestic manner,” wrote Franklin, adding some
details: “When it reached around 250 feet in altitude, the intrepid voyagers low-
ered their hats to salute the spectators. We could not help feeling a certain
[crossed out: “religious”] mixture of awe and admiration. Soon the navigators
of the skies ­were out of sight, but the machine, gliding on the horizon and op-
erating at its best, ­rose to at least 3,000 feet, where it remained vis­i­ble. It crossed
the Seine just beyond the Conference toll ­house. Passing between the mili-
tary school and the Royal Hospital of the Invalids, it was carried into full view
of all Paris.”8 Meanwhile, a French noblewoman sat in her carriage near the
Seine River observing for the first time a hot-­air balloon rise into the sky, con-
firming what many believed: that modern science could make the impossible
pos­si­ble. “Oh yes, now it’s certain!” she cried with mixed emotions, reflecting
the materialist optimism of her day, as well as the many disappointments it
would engender. “One day t­ hey’ll learn to keep p
­ eople alive forever, but I s­ hall
already be dead!”9
­Whether this story about the noblewoman is apocryphal or not is imma-
terial. It reflects the spirit of the times. By 1783 the so-­called Age of Reason
and the Enlightenment, along with advancements in empirical science and tech-
nology, had created a new way of seeing and interpreting the world, reflected as
much in the noblewoman’s anguished optimism as in the ingenuity and daring
of the Montgolfier ­brothers and Pilâtre de Rozier. Call it a “worldview,” “mind-
set,” “mentality,” or “social imaginary.” Throw in the German weltanschauung or
the French mentalité too. Any of ­these terms ­will do. A new way of thinking had
emerged, an epistemic revolution, and in the minds and hearts of myriad phi­
los­o­phers, scientists, inventors, atheists, freethinkers, and even churchmen and
theologians, the super­natural had been expelled from earth, relegated to some
 358 epilo gue

unseen, utterly unreachable dimension or declared an infantile and useless con-

cept. Hence Benjamin Franklin’s decision to scratch out the word “religious” in
reference to his impressions about the balloon flight he witnessed. It was a very
revealing slip of the pen: It was no longer proper or wise to speak of “a religious
mixture of awe and admiration.” Much better to say, he obviously thought, “a
certain mixture of awe and admiration.” The bound­aries of the impossible, too,
had been reconfigured. Levitation was no longer a rare super­natural or preter-
natural won­der. It was definitely pos­si­ble, with the proper equipment, and it
could be achieved naturally. But it was still dangerous, w
­ hether one was carried
aloft in a cloth balloon propelled by flames or w
­ hether one was leaning over a
­dying saint in his wheelchair.
Tragically, the pioneering aeronaut Pilâtre de Rozier died while attempt-
ing to cross the En­glish Channel on June 15, 1785, when his balloon caught
fire at an altitude of 1,500 feet and plummeted to earth near the Pas-­de-­Calais.
The clever and fearless Pilâtre was done in by a malfunction in one of his own
inventions, a hybrid balloon with two chambers: one for heated air and another
for nonheated lighter-­than-­air hydrogen gas. He and his companion, Pierre Ro-
main, hold the unenviable distinction of being the first known victims of an
aviation disaster.
So much for the predictable dangers of early ballooning. Now for the un-
predictable. What could possibly be dangerous about levitating in a wheelchair?
Two years a­ fter Pilâtre’s fatal crash, ninety-­year-­old Bishop Alphonsus
Liguori was near death, confined to a wheelchair, struggling to cope with his
loss of eyesight, hearing, and mobility. Born in 1696, Liguori was a con­temporary
of many of the leading figures of the Enlightenment and had outlived several
of them, including Voltaire, Julien Offray de La Mettrie, David Hume, and De-
nis Diderot. While they and o
­ thers had been busy d
­ oing away with the super­
natural realm, Bishop Liguori had spent his long life tending his flock as a
dedicated shepherd and establishing a new religious order, the Redemptorists.
A musician, painter, poet, and prolific writer, the author of over 100 titles in
theology and spirituality, some of which ­were best sellers, he was revered as holy
by many who knew him, and he was a miracle-­worker too, well known for spec-
tacular levitations and bilocations. The fact that so many leading lights of his
day had done away with God and the super­natural realm did not seem to in-
hibit his mysticism or its physical side effects.
One testimony relates how in 1787, near the end of his life, while being
wheeled about by his caretaker, a certain ­Father Volpicelli, Alphonsus said that
 epilo gue 359

he was extremely distressed by his physical disabilities and the way they pre-
vented him from fulfilling his obligations as a priest. ­Eager to cheer up the nearly
deaf bishop, ­Father Volpicelli stooped down to speak some words of comfort di-
rectly into his ear. “Given your limitations,” suggested Volpicelli, “all you need
to do is to say, ‘My God, I love you with all my heart!’ ” Im­mensely cheered by
this, Alphonsus repeated the words and went into ecstasy instantly, springing
about a palm’s length into the air—­about nine or ten inches—­and ramming
his head very hard into Volpicelli’s chin. Some days ­later, Alphonsus asked the
bruised Volpicelli to remind him again of the brief prayer he had previously re-
cited into his ear. This time around, we are told, “Volpicelli took the precaution
of not leaning down so closely” when repeating the formula, to avoid another
collision. “And he was right to do so,” it turned out, “for the old saint was again
raised in the air the same way.”10
So it was at the dawn of modernity. Two very dif­fer­ent kinds of levitation
coexisted in 1787, a mere twenty years a­ fter the canonization of Joseph of Cu-
pertino: a super­natural or preternatural one rarely seen and l­imited to folk who
surrendered their w
­ ills ­either to God or the devil and another purely natu­ral,
readily vis­ib
­ le to thousands and available to anyone with access to the proper
equipment. T
­ hese two forms of levitation w
­ ere based on conflicting and seem-
ingly irreconcilable conceptions of real­ity and of what is deemed pos­si­ble and
impossible. They w
­ ere also based on dif­fer­ent belief systems: an older one
that included God, a super­natural realm, and levitating saints and which kept
shrinking and losing influence as time passed, and a newer one that had l­ittle
or no need for God, the super­natural, or miracles and which kept expanding
and gaining an ever-­widening influence. In this newer belief system governed
by empiricism and the “ironclad rules of cause and effect,” God was left with
­little to do, if anything.11 Or, as the biblical scholar David Strauss would put it
in the nineteenth c­ entury, ­those ironclad deterministic rules created a “housing
prob­lem” for God.12
But ­these belief systems have never coexisted as a pure and s­ imple di-
chotomy. T
­ here has always been—­and one might argue ­there always might
be—­a third way of believing, a vast polymorphous variegated m
­ iddle between
­those two extreme poles, abounding in myriad attitudes and convictions, which
include open-­mindedness and compromise as well as confusion, skepticism, in-
difference, and apathy, ever in flux according to time, place, and circumstances.
Within this third way t­ here has always been ample room for empirical science and
religion to interact rather than contradict or repel one another and for creative
 360 epilo gue

inspiration and influences to flow in both directions. This is why Isaac Newton
wrote as much about theology, spirituality, alchemy, and prophecy as he did
about science, penning about 1.3 million words on biblical subjects alone, an
astonishing legacy that languished in nearly total obscurity ­until 1936 when
his nonscientific writings ­were auctioned.13
Newton was not the only scientist of his day intrigued by the interrela-
tionship between the natu­ral and the super­natural. Robert Boyle (1627–1691)
was also very interested in what he called “Phaenomena that are, or seem to be,
of a Super­natural Kind of Order” and had even begun to write a book on this
subject shortly before he died.14 In the preface to this unfinished and unpub-
lished treatise, he said:

I am well aware that we live in an age when men of judgment consider it

their part to greet a report of super­natural phenomena with contempt and
derision . . . ​but if the natu­ral phi­los­o­pher observes some phenomena that
are above nature, t­ here w
­ ill arise the humbler consideration that t­ here are
objects beyond the grasp even of a phi­los­o­pher in this life, and that some
truths are not explicable by the powers of m
­ atter and motion, which truth
is indeed of ­great importance in this age, when the Epicureans use the no-
tions of their philosophy to reject every­thing that is contrary to it.15

Newton and Boyle are stellar examples of an attitude that was prevalent
among a fairly large number of scientists. Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772)
is a more extreme and astounding example of an Enlightenment scientist
drawn to the super­natural. Swedenborg, the son of a Swedish Lutheran bishop,
was an anatomist, physiologist, chemist, metallurgist, geometrician, engineer,
and inventor credited with several pathfinding discoveries in neurology.16 In
the 1730s, Swedenborg was drawn to spiritual m
­ atters and set out to find theo-
ries for the relationship between ­matter and spirit, soul and body, the finite and
the infinite, and the order and purpose of creation. In the 1740s he began hav-
ing dreams and visions and writing texts based on ­these mystical experiences,
including his magnum opus, Arcana Celestia, or Heavenly Mysteries. Swedenborg
quickly gained a reputation as a mystic and prophet, and eventually, his followers
established a church based on his revelations. Among t­ hose who ­were initially
drawn to him was hyperrational phi­los­o­pher Immanuel Kant, who purchased
all eight volumes of the Arcana Celestia—­which he could barely afford on his pro-
fessor’s salary—­and pored through them with his usual obsessive intensity. Al-
though initially impressed, Kant would soon afterward publish an anonymous
 epilo gue 361

refutation of Swedenborg’s spiritual and psychic “nonsense.”17 Privately, Kant

ridiculed himself for getting caught up in such “metaphysical daydreaming,” say-
ing that his interest in Swedenborg’s stories only proved to him how far over the
edge one can go with philosophical fabrications when one’s thinking is com-
pletely unhindered by empirical data. Yet, even in his dismissal of the scientist-­
turned-­mystic, Kant admitted privately that ­things spiritual had a tug of their
own on him. “I ­can’t help but feel a l­ittle attraction to nonsensical t­ hings of this
sort, as well as to their rational under­pinnings, and to suspect they have some
legitimacy,” he said, “despite all the absurdities involved in the stories about
them, and the inconsistencies and incomprehensible concepts which rob them
of their value.”18
Within the Catholic Church ­were many clerics in positions of authority
who ­were also aware of this new way of addressing the issue of the relationship
between the natu­ral and the super­natural and of the negative effect that ad-
vances in science ­were having on religion. One of the responses of the Catholic
Church to this changing intellectual climate—as ­shall be soon discussed—­was
the establishment of very strict scientific guidelines for the verification of mir-
acles.19 ­These guidelines w
­ ere a clear indication that the miracle-­rich Catholic
Church was painfully aware of the need to keep up with changes in the wider
world. Ultimately, as an institution based on truth claims, it simply could not
afford to bury its head in the sand. And the same was true of most other churches
in Western Eu­rope. Readjusting perspectives became an absolute necessity. ­After
all, as has been observed, if it is true that “scientific and religious ideas always
come braided together,” it is also true that they “influence and shape each other
to a degree that has gone unnoticed for several reasons, including the fact that
­until recently cultural elites and other commentators have held simplistic,
reified views about science and religion and have often understood them as
implacable enemies.”20
This vast expanse of specific beliefs, opinions, and uncertainties that ex-
isted and still exists alongside the religious and scientific belief systems is not
to be mistaken for unbelief, for belief of one sort or another is always inescap-
able for anyone who is not an omniscient being. This welter of perspectives, ob-
jective and subjective, was the result of an epistemic revolution, a seismic rift in
thinking, a paradigm shift in belief, which has been interpreted in vari­ous ways.
Brad Gregory has referred to it as “hyperpluralism,” and Charles Taylor has called
it “the ­great disembedding,” both of them identifying the Protestant Reformation
as its efficient cause.21 Ethan Shagan has argued that it is a “transformation of
 362 epilo gue

belief ” which can be credited with having “propelled Western thought into mo-
dernity” in­de­pen­dently of Protestantism.22
This third way of believing can rightfully be called a belief system, untidy,
fuzzy, and mutable as it can be. The word that comes to mind when dealing
with this vast j­umble is bricolage, b
­ ecause ever since the dawn of modernity it
has been a realm of belief that mixes a diverse range of available ideas, possi-
bilities, mentalities, and attitudes and what­ever configuration ­those mixtures
take. That configuration can always vary from individual to individual and in-
stitution to institution, and it is always susceptible to change too. This way of
believing, which Shagan identifies as “modern belief” or “sovereign belief,” cre-
ates a framework for credulity but leaves a huge space for private judgment and
­every individual’s perception of what could or should be believed. In other words,
specific beliefs are malleable, even interchangeable, in this modern way of be-
lieving, but its chief assumptions are relatively solid and stable and anchored
in private judgment.23
Ultimately, this means that “­every era is credulous, but they are credulous
in dif­fer­ent ways,” which is why modern-­day unbelief is, in fact, a form of belief,
and why phenomena such as levitation end up being dismissed as impossible
in modern and postmodern materialistic culture.24 ­Every age and culture has
its own unquestionable beliefs, and our own tends to prize the rationality and
superiority of unbelief as one of its core beliefs, especially in regard to denying
the existence of a super­natural dimension. Such unquestionable pervasive
beliefs—­Troelstch’s “social facts”—­which William Blake called “mind-­forged
manacles” in 1794 and Max Weber spoke of as the “steel-­hard casing” or an “iron
cage” a ­century ­later, are difficult to detect and acknowledge, for they frame our
thinking and are very much like the air we breathe, which we take for granted
as much as an octopus takes ­water for granted. And even when perceived for
what they are—as difficult as that is to do—­these manacles and cages are even
harder to discard or annihilate.25
The old premodern way of viewing the pos­si­ble and impossible, the new
modern scientific way, and the myriad ways to do so in between ­those two poles
have now coexisted for at least five centuries, with varying degrees of friction
and always—­always—­with extremists at ­either pole shouting loudly at each
other and at every­one in between. Such occurred in “a brisker than usual” de-
bate at the Metaphysical Society in London in 1875, where Frederic Harrison,
a Positivist, dismissed belief in miracles as “the commencement of insanity,” and
Henry Edward Manning, Archbishop of Westminster, retorted that an inability
 epilo gue 363

to believe in the super­natural was “a commencement of the ossification of the

brain.”26
Yet it is obvious that despite all the shouting, the older belief system has
never been fully eclipsed by the new one. Reports of super­natural levitations
and bilocations gradually shrank in numbers in the Western world a­ fter 1787
but have never ceased surfacing altogether. Nearly a ­century ago, Olivier Leroy
identified nineteen levitators in the period between 1700 and 1800 and the
same number between 1800 and 1912. Since Leroy was the only researcher to
have ever compiled lists of levitators—­and he admitted his lists ­were far from
complete—we have no reliable statistics on modern or postmodern cases of
super­natural levitations.27 Finding statistics on bilocation is even more diffi-
cult, and the same is true when it comes to demonic phenomena, be it levita-
tion, bilocation, transvection, or witches’ flight. Nonetheless, it is pos­si­ble to find
reports of all such phenomena, super­natural as well as demonic, occurring con-
stantly all the way into the pre­sent day. Two previously mentioned levitating and
bilocating twentieth-­century monastics offer ample proof of the per­sis­tence of
belief in ­these phenomena: Yvonne-­Aimée de Malestroit (1901–1951), whose
reported bilocations ­were among the most extreme in all of Christian history,
and Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, also known as Padre Pio (1887–1968), canonized
in 2002, whose frequent levitations and bilocations ­were acknowledged by many
eyewitnesses, along with many other charisms associated with mystical ecstasy,
including the stigmata (fig. 52).28 One could also cite the case of S
­ ister Maria
Teresa Carloni (1919–1983), whose frequent bilocations ­were said to comfort
persecuted leaders of the Catholic Church in the satellite states of the Soviet
Union at the height of the Cold War, as well as that of ­Sister Rita Montella
(1920–1992), who is believed to have bilocated numerous times alongside Pa-
dre Pio and also has been credited with saving Pope John Paul II’s life through
bilocation by suddenly showing up at St. Peter’s Square in Rome and pulling on
the arm of assassin Ali Agca as he fired his gun.29
Then, on the preternatural side of the impossible—­which is still as in-
separable from the super­natural nowadays as it has ever been—­reports of de-
monic levitations have continued to surface well into the pre­sent day, usually in
connection with exorcisms. And such stories have made their way into con­
temporary popu­lar culture with a vengeance through films such as William
Friedkin’s The Exorcist—­which was based on a true story—­and o
­ thers of the
same genre.30 Catholic lit­er­a­ture on this subject continues to thrive and flour-
ish in spite of the theologians who eliminated the devil and bid farewell to him,31
Figure 52. Two twentieth-­century
avatars of the impossible: Padre Pio
of Pietrelcina, levitator, bilocator,
and stigmatist, and ­Sister Yvonne-­
Aimée de Malestroit, extraordinary
bilocator.
 epilo gue 365

as well as the Second Vatican Council’s deemphasizing of the dev­il.32 Even more
surprising is the resurgence of possession stories involving levitation among
Protestants and the veritable flood of texts published by nonmainstream Prot-
estants on “spiritual deliverance.”33
That such beliefs should be thriving among nonmainstream Protestants
at the start of the third millennium is not too surprising, given the fact that
this segment of the Protestant spectrum is deeply rooted in dissenting tradi-
tions that have rejected vari­ous tenets of the magisterial Reformations of the
sixteenth ­century and the major denominations that stem from them. More-
over, the revivalist movements of the nineteenth ­century that spawned evan-
gelical Protestantism, especially of the Pentecostalist strain in the twentieth
­century, have passed on their rejection of the cessation-­of-­miracles doctrine to
their followers, all the way down to the pre­sent.34
That such beliefs are still thriving among Catholics should surprise no one.
­These have always been core beliefs of Catholicism. Although a good number
of Catholics in North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope no longer pay much attention to this
marker of Catholic identity—­and some might even express embarrassment and
dismay at its robust survival—­these core beliefs remain embedded in global Ca-
tholicism as well as in the official teaching of the Catholic Church.35 ­Because
­these beliefs are still a cornerstone of the cult of the saints and this cult is itself
an essential component of Catholic piety and identity, it is very difficult to imag-
ine them being jettisoned.36 Simply put: no miracles, no Catholicism. Not real
Catholicism, anyway, or at least not the traditional sort of Catholicism depicted
by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo in his painting The Angels’ Kitchen, which bewil-
ders most visitors to the Louvre Museum (fig. 53).
The endurance of ­these beliefs among Catholics can be attributed to many
dif­fer­ent ­factors, a major one of which is the creation of a strong link between
empirical science and the super­natural. This pro­cess of “rationalizing” the mi-
raculous began in 1588 with the creation of the Congregation of Sacred Rites
(Congregatio Sacrorum Rituum), which was placed in charge of h
­ andling the
canonization of saints, among other ­things. Through a gradual pro­cess of re-
form that stretched from its founding to 1642, the Congregatio established new
criteria for assessing the veracity of miracle accounts through a pro­cess of em-
pirical fact-­checking, much of which required the participation of medical and
scientific experts. As a result, the Congregatio assumed the dual role of assur-
ing Catholics of the veracity of miracles through scientific criteria and of si­
mul­ta­neously refuting Protestant dismissals of miracles as demonic or fraudulent.
Figure 53. In this 1646 painting commissioned by the Franciscan friars of Seville, Spanish artist Bartolomé Murillo intertwines the mundane and the super­natural. The
event depicted ­here is the ecstasy of a friar whose kitchen duties—­which he was obligated to carry out due to his vow of obedience—­are being miraculously fulfilled by
angels while he is ecstatic, suspended motionless in midair. Tellingly, Murillo’s depiction of this event places as much emphasis on the presence of witnesses as on the
angels and the levitation itself. The identity of the levitating friar has been disputed for centuries, but the Louvre Museum, which owns the painting, guesses that it
could have been a lay b­ rother named Francisco Dirraquio.
 epilo gue 367

In addition, by serving in ­these two roles the Congregatio could naturally claim
to uphold the new criteria set in Western culture by the emerging empirical
sciences. As Paolo Parigi has argued, the work of the Congregatio enabled the
Catholic Church to ensure that “a rational space for miracles could therefore
always exist.”
Creating this rational space was a masterful adaptation to the ­great epis-
temic paradigm shift of the era, Parigi avers, for rather than abdicating control
of the super­natural to the scientists, “Rome created an institutional mechanism
that, while allowing for the impossible to change depending on the level of sci-
entific knowledge, firmly maintained the power of proclaiming miracles in the
hands of religious authorities.”37 Moreover, ­others have argued that the benefits
of this move ­toward empiricism extended beyond the Catholic Church itself to
the emerging natu­ral sciences. Bradford Bouley goes as far as to propose that
through its collaboration with science and medicine the Catholic Church be-
came “a major contributor in early modern attempts to understand the natu­ral
world.”38
A key feature of the empiricism injected into the canonization pro­cess
by the Congregatio was the creation in 1631 by Pope Urban VIII of the posi-
tion of the promotor fidei, or promoter of the faith. Ironically, Urban was the
pope above whose head Joseph of Copertino had ostensibly levitated and who
had supposedly vowed to testify about this miracle w
­ ere he to live long enough
to take part in Joseph’s canonization inquest.39 The promotor fidei came to be
better known as the “dev­il’s advocate” (advocatus diaboli) due to the chief task
assigned to whoever held this post, which was to ferret out errors in the pro-
ceedings of the Congregatio, find reasons for denying canonization to candi-
dates, and cast doubt on the testimony presented in their ­favor, especially on
all claims being made for super­natural activity.
Casting doubt had a method and a purpose. To be judged legitimately
super­natural in origin, the phenomenon involved in any miracle claim had to
be deemed totally impossible—­that is, beyond nature according to empirical
medical and scientific princi­ples. As Parigi explains, “The task of the Dev­il’s Ad-
vocate was not to deny the existence of miracles but to create space for false
miracles—­that is, for the occurrence of events, or facts that, although inexpli-
cable by science or medicine, w
­ ere nevertheless not true miracles. D
­ oing so le-
gitimized the claim of the Church to be the guardian of the super­natural.”40 In
other words, by denying that many miracle claims did not involve super­natural
agency, which the advocate often did, even in the case of some of Joseph of
 368 epilo gue

Cupertino’s levitations,41 Catholic religious authorities ­were able not only to

maintain control of the boundary between the pos­si­ble and the impossible but
also to suffuse that control and e­ very earthly event they deemed truly super­
natural with a lustrous rational sheen.
One dev­il’s advocate in par­tic­u­lar did much to make the rationality of that
sheen even more lustrous: Prospero Lambertini (1675–1758), who would go on
to become Pope Benedict XIV in 1740 and ended up approving Joseph of Cu-
pertino’s beatification in 1753 and his canonization in 1767.42 While he was
serving in the Congregatio, the f­ uture Benedict XIV, who was very deeply influ-
enced by the intellectual and scientific currents of the Enlightenment, took up
the challenge of bringing more empirical scientific rigor to the canonization
pro­cess, especially its evaluation of miracle claims.43 His effort culminated in
the publication of an enormous multivolume book, On the Beatification of the
Servants of God and the Canonization of the Blessed,44 which set stricter empiri-
cal standards for distinguishing between natu­ral and super­natural phenomena.
One category of miracle on which Lambertini’s book focused very intensely
was that of medical oddities found in the corpses of saints, ranging from incor-
ruption, to the oozing of substances, to peculiar anatomical abnormalities, such
as the extraordinarily large heart of Philip Neri, which had apparently broken
some ribs due to its size, and the total absence of body fat or a penis in Charles
Borromeo.45 Autopsying and examining the corpses of holy men and ­women
had become routine in the late sixteenth ­century, and this practice had assumed
an increasingly larger role in proving the genuine holiness of ­those who ­were
on the path to canonization. One of the first prospective saints to undergo sev-
eral autopsies was Teresa of Avila, whose corpse refused to decompose, emitted
a wondrously pleasant aroma, and oozed a substance that could effect healing
miracles.46 Lambertini’s book was full of guidelines for judging signs of genu-
ine holiness in the corpses of individuals who had acquired a reputation as holy.
Anatomical abnormalities and asceticism, for instance, w
­ ere among some of the
traditional markers of holiness he targeted for deemphasizing. An extreme lack
of body fat, such as found in Borromeo’s corpse, for instance, could be attributed
entirely to the natu­ral effects of fasting. In the case of stigmata, he warned that
the h
­ uman imagination could have too intense an effect on perceptions and that
some of the wounds taken to be of super­natural origin could merely be the re-
sult of psychosomatic autosuggestion.47
When it came to physical phenomena associated with mystical ecstasy,
Lambertini found a way of affirming their absolute possibility through an in-
 epilo gue 369

terweaving traditional theology and philosophy with the science of his day and
age. Focusing on the relationship between soul and body—­and even citing an-
cient authorities such as Plato—he set down criteria for distinguishing dif­fer­
ent levels of ecstasy, rapture, or elevation and of determining w
­ hether they had
genuine super­natural origins. Super­natural raptures, such as ­those experienced
by Joseph of Cupertino, ­were a more extreme form of ecstasy in which the body
was affected so profoundly by the soul’s presence in the divine realm that it, too,
became thoroughly spiritualized and immune to gravity. Simply put, a metaphys-
ical transformation canceled out the laws of physics. In the case of Joseph,
then, according to Lambertini, “in an intimate u
­ nion with God, his heart aflame
with the love of God, nearly torn asunder by this sweet love, he went into ecsta-
sies and raptures.”48
Nowadays, nearly three centuries a­ fter the publication of Lambertini’s
book, belief in the super­natural and the seemingly impossible still endures
among Catholics and some Protestants, and the survival of this belief defies the
empiricism and the hegemonic cultural tendencies that declare ­these phenom-
ena impossible, nonsensical, absurd, ridicu­lous, and worthy of scorn. This brings
us full circle, back to a question raised at the very start, slightly amended. How
does one sum up a history of what could never have happened, a history of the
impossible? Obviously, ­there is no denying the existence of testimonies, and
­these accounts are not just a fact but also evidence of what Émile Durkheim
called a social fact, which he defined as follows: “In real­ity, t­ here is in ­every so-
ciety a clearly determined group of phenomena separable, b
­ ecause of their dis-
tinct characteristics, from t­ hose that form the subject m
­ atter of other sciences
of nature. . . . ​­Here, then, is a category of facts which pre­sent very special char-
acteristics: they consist of manners of acting, thinking, and feeling external to
the individual, which are invested with a coercive power by virtue of which they
exercise control over him. . . . ​Thus, they constitute a new species and to them
must be exclusively assigned the term social.”49
Belief in impossible phenomena such as levitation and bilocation was a
social fact in the early modern age, especially in Catholic enclaves, large and
small, but also in Protestant ones, where such belief involved the devil rather
than God. It was a belief “invested with a coercive power” that exerted control
over members of ­these socie­ties. Simply put, such belief was an inescapable real­
ity that determined what was pos­si­ble or impossible.50 ­Whether one assented to
­these beliefs or not was immaterial. One was expected to accept it, and many did
so, to some extent, ­because rejecting it involved being punished or ostracized in
 370 epilo gue

myriad ways. Among Catholics, denying a saint’s ability to levitate might prompt
accusations of heresy; among Protestants, denying the real­ity of witches’ flight
might cause the skeptic to be denounced as a witch. Skepticism often exacted a
high price during the transition to modernity.
­Whether levitations and bilocations ­were actually happening and being
witnessed—­thereby giving rise to the belief and the social fact of the belief—is
ultimately unprovable, given the surviving evidence at our disposal, but the so-
cial fact is easy enough to verify, convincingly, as is the undeniable admixture
of belief and skepticism and vari­ous epistemic stances that marked the passage
to modernity.
The impossible miracles of the early modern age can be approached in
vari­ous ways, some of which are incompatible and each of which provides its
own valuable perspective.
The oldest approach is the original one, which comes from within the phe-
nomenon and is also its wellspring, so to speak: the perspective of faith. From
this perspective, God’s super­natural agency—or the dev­il’s preternatural one—­
can make the impossible pos­si­ble. Another approach is that of purely material-
ist empirical science, which excludes the existence of super­natural or preternatural
agency and has traditionally denied the possibility of anything it deems natu-
rally impossible. This perspective is now hegemonic in Western culture. A third
approach is that taken by the Catholic Church a­ fter the Council of Trent, which
involves employing medical and scientific knowledge in the investigation of mir-
acle claims. This perspective is still an essential component of the Catholic
Church’s take on impossible phenomena, especially in its canonization pro­cess
and in its approach to all miracle claims.
A fourth and relatively more recent approach is that taken by social sci-
entists and other scholars influenced by social science. This approach, which
ignores the metaphysical issue of the super­natural altogether, focuses on the so-
cial matrix in which impossible miracles occur and has multiple perspectives.
Overall, such studies tend to be functionalist; that is, their analy­sis is guided by
the theory that all aspects of society serve a pragmatic purpose or role and can
best be understood in the context of the needs and goals they fulfill for the so-
cial organism in question.51
Examples of this functionalist approach abound, but one of the best-­
known and most influential functionalist scholars is historian Keith Thomas,
who has argued that belief in magic and miracles was an absolute necessity in
premodern times due to “a preoccupation with the explanation and relief of
 epilo gue 371

­human misfortune” due to all the concerns raised by “the ­hazards of an intensely
insecure environment.”52 A nearly identical functionalist interpretation of mir-
acles can be found in Paolo Parigi’s analy­sis: “Miracles are reducers of uncer-
tainty,” he declares. “They give a sense of meaning to life’s hardships and mitigate
life’s vicissitudes.”53 Parigi’s work is also representative of another social-­scientific
perspective, previously mentioned, in which all wonder-­working tends to be iden-
tified as magic or thaumaturgy, thus echoing Protestant polemics from a by-
gone era. Rather than saving the miraculous, he concludes, “Rome succeeded in
saving magic.”54
A focus on institutional and po­liti­cal structures also pervades social-­
scientific approaches to miracles. This is especially true of studies that analyze
the canonization pro­cess and the work of the Inquisition and, quite intensely, the
persecution of witches. Since all charismatic Catholic miracle-­workers intrinsi-
cally pose a threat to the stability of church authority and so many of them end
up being placed ­under investigation, it could be argued that analy­sis of this
dimension of the miraculous is necessary for a full understanding of any mi-
raculous phenomena associated with holy men and ­women. This is also true in
the case of witches, even though the threat they pose is to all of society rather
than any specific church authorities. As far as gender is concerned, the same
could be said, given that so many levitators and bilocators w
­ ere ­women and that
most witches w
­ ere also female.
Such a pronounced gender imbalance cries out for analy­sis. Issues of class
also enter into consideration when the social matrix of miracles is being ana-
lyzed, for obvious reasons. A case in point is that of Magdalena de la Cruz, who
stirred up class frictions within her convent as abbess. But class issues attract
less attention than gender when it comes to Catholic miracles, principally
­because class imbalances are not as pronounced as t­hose in gender when it
comes to this subject and have therefore been considered less significant to the
interpretation of the miraculous. When it comes to witches, however, class is-
sues do loom large in much of the scholarship due to the marginal social status
of so many of ­those who ­were persecuted.
A fifth approach to the miraculous is that of postsecular interpretation, the
under­lying assumption of which is that the spheres of faith and reason, religion
and science, or the natu­ral and super­natural are not at all incompatible, as many
intellectual elites have been saying since the dawn of modernity. Although ­there
is plenty of disagreement over the exact meaning of the term “postsecular,” it is
generally applied to a perspective that challenges the chief premises of the
 372 epilo gue

scientific revolution and the Enlightenment—­and of the materialist secularism

they engendered—­and therefore seeks to dethrone them.55 The concept and
term “postsecular” has a combative edge to it as well as a pragmatic one. Much
like the terms “postmodern,” “poststructural,” “postfeminist,” and “postcolo-
nial,” the term “postsecularism” is rooted in the conviction that Western culture
has arrived at some sort of apogee (or nadir) that needs to be transcended.
Consequently, postsecular and all the other vari­ous “posts” share in a common
epistemological and historical conceit, as well as in a triumphalist and quasi-­
apocalyptic claim to finality, each proclaiming itself an interpretive end point,
a “post” ­after which ­there could be no more “posts.” Unlike all the other “posts,”
however, which tend to ignore metaphysical issues, the postsecular approach
has less of a triumphalist streak and a much greater degree of tolerance and
appreciation for the miraculous—­perhaps even a yen for ­those impossible phe-
nomena discarded so flippantly by benighted materialists.
Not every­one who fits into the postsecularist mold would accept the term
as an adequate label for themselves, and if all who do fit the mold w
­ ere herded
into a room, t­ here would surely be many who would feel uncomfortable being
near one another and bolt for the nearest doorway or win­dow, but that is ulti-
mately immaterial. It is their perspective that links postsecularists, not the term,
much less any membership in some specific academic society. Consequently,
­there are vari­ous types of postsecularist approaches to the miraculous, some of
which overlap in perspective and methodology. One type is rooted in religious
belief itself and in personal encounters with spiritual and otherworldly phenom-
ena.56 Another type in par­tic­u­lar has generated the most serious and challeng-
ing scholarly approach. This approach has a firm grounding in the discipline of
the history of religions and comparative religion. Its credentials are impecca-
ble, and its methodology is academically sound. But its daring leap beyond the
bound­aries of traditional religious studies puts it in a category of its own.
It would be foolish to try to name this approach, or to pigeonhole it, es-
pecially ­because it is still evolving, and the individuals involved are a very di-
verse group. Some of ­these daring scholars have issued a rallying cry against the
“dogmatic secularism” that permeates the academic study of religion. Calling
for a new kind of skepticism—­one that questions the validity of dogmatic
secularism—­they state their goals clearly, as follows: “Taking a cue from their
less-­than-­marginal place in scholarship ­today, we call super­natural beings the
‘Unbelieved’ and the explicit or implicit denial of them ‘Dogmatic Secularism.’
We argue that objective historians should not discount, in advance, evidence that
points to the existence or involvement of the ‘Unbelieved’ in history; instead,
 epilo gue 373

we should cultivate a sceptical attitude ­towards all sources.”57 Their rallying cry
drew a spirited response by several other scholars, the contents of which clearly
indicate that t­ here are vari­ous ways to challenge dogmatic secularism, and no
single approach is likely to nudge it aside, much less replace it.58
Meanwhile, a group of scholars associated with medievalist Sylvain Piron
at L’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris have created a new
publishing ­house dedicated to exploring the significance of the impossible as
well as “ways of living with the invisible.”59 In his recent study of Christina the
Astonishing, Piron avers that the most impor­tant question is not what Chris-
tina’s contemporaries might have thought of levitation as some sort of trope
but rather what the obstacle might be against levitation in our own day and
age.60 In his concluding remarks he calls for the creation of a “social science of
the activities of the invisible,” avoiding terms such as “religion” and “magic,”
which, he avers, are “excessively burdened with value judgments.” For this sci-
entific approach to move forward, he boldly advises, what is needed is “a sus-
pension of disbelief which neither affirms nor judges, but simply allows itself
and invites us to observe, to listen, possibly to admit that the worlds of the
spirit are undoubtedly even richer and more surprising than we think or could
imagine.”61
Another approach is best reified in the scholarship of Jeffrey Kripal, a Uni-
versity of Chicago-­trained historian of religion who constantly dares to cross
bound­aries and venture into subjects that fall outside the purview of traditional
academic religious studies, such as encounters with extraterrestrial beings or the
religious dimension of science fiction lit­er­a­ture. Kripal is brutally honest about
his openness to the pos­si­ble existence of dimensions and phenomena beyond
the ken of present-­day science while exemplifying to the fullest all the scholarly
rigor demanded of a professional academic. He wears his passion for alternate
possibilities on his sleeve with as much boldness as he refuses to hide his impa-
tience with the limitations of the “iron cage” of secularist materialism into which
all scholarship on the seemingly impossible is imprisoned.
As a historian of religion, Kripal calls attention to the fact that “although
­there is a fundamental base to what h
­ uman beings experience as real­ity, this
real­ity behaves differently in dif­fer­ent historical periods and linguistic registers”
and that “­things that are pos­si­ble in one place and time are impossible in an-
other, and vice versa.”62 Intensely aware of what scholars of religion have been
trained to do and to say, Kripal challenges the dogmatic materialism that guides
scholarly research on religion and, more specifically, research on ostensibly im-
possible miracles. His reaction to the functionalist evasiveness drummed into
 374 epilo gue

all scholarship on the history of the impossible is eloquently summed up in the

following outburst, which deserves to be quoted at length, especially ­because of
its points of reference.

I cannot tell you how many times I have heard an other­wise admired col-
­ atter if Joseph of Cu-
league say something like, “Well, it does not ­really m
pertino flew up into the tree ­after a scream, or if Teresa of Avila floated off
the floor as her ­sisters piled on top of her to avoid a social embarrassment.
What ­matters is how the popu­lar belief in such presumed levitations was
disciplined, controlled, and maintained by the church and ­later constructed
as sanctity and as a saint. . . . ​­Really? I want to pull my hair out in such mo-
ments. . . . ​A super-­pious Italian man ecstatically flies into a tree and has to
be retrieved with a ladder, or a raptured Spanish nun cannot keep herself
on the floor in front of some visiting noblewomen, and ­these physical events
­ atter to you? Uh, excuse me, if ­either of ­those ­things actually hap-
do not m
pened (and our historical rec­ords suggest strongly that they did), such anom-
alous events change pretty much every­thing we thought we knew about
­human consciousness and its relationship to physics, gravity, and material
real­ity. ­Either single event would fundamentally change our entire order of
knowledge. And you d
­ on’t care? D
­ on’t you find that disinterest just a l­ittle
bit perverse?63

Kripal’s approach ruffles feathers in academia. But he has also touched a raw nerve
in ­today’s ostensibly secularist culture and has won over many a reader. Despite
a lingering fear of the COVID-19 pandemic, an international conference hosted
by Kripal at Rice University in 2022 attracted 200 in-­person attendees along
with 1,700 online registrants.64
Another type of postsecularist approach, less scholarly, has generated the
greatest amount of lit­er­a­ture. This approach focuses on the h
­ uman mind and
its relation to the physical world and could be aptly described as psychophysi-
ological. It evolved gradually, mostly within the field of psy­chol­ogy in the early
twentieth ­century, but ultimately coalesced at a 1998 conference at the Center
for Theory and Research of the Esalen Institute,65 where discussions eventu-
ally led to the following realization, as expressed nine years l­ater in a ground-
breaking coauthored book, Irreducible Mind: “By the year 2000 our discussions
had advanced to the point where we believed we could demonstrate, empirically,
that the materialistic consensus which undergirds practically all of current main-
stream psy­chol­ogy, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind is fundamentally
 epilo gue 375

flawed.”66 Much of the lit­er­a­ture generated within this perspective argues for
hidden powers inherent in the ­human mind and the real­ity of many phenom-
ena deemed impossible by empirical science, with an eclectic blending of per-
spectives from empirical science, psy­chol­ogy, medicine, and liminal branches of
­these materialist disciplines that shade off into the psychical, the parascientific,
and the occult.67 A central assumption of some of this work is that ­human minds
do not emerge from brains but are rather an expression of an elemental force:
“Mind is a fundamental pro­cess in its own right, as widespread and deeply em-
bedded in nature as light or electricity.”68 The observations and arguments made
from within this perspective can sometimes be dizzying, as in the following case:
“­There is no doubt that hints of large changes in cosmology are on the horizon.
Perhaps the most startling claim to come from some quantum physicists is that
consciousness creates real­ity. This inverts the metaphysics of classical physics,
in which mind is a passive onlooker, as it ­were hanging on to ­matter by its shirt-­
tails, in quantum mechanics, mind makes a comeback onto the stage of real­ity,
this time as a sovereign performer.”69
That “performer,” of course, can bring about levitation and bilocation, and
that is precisely what went on e­ very time Joseph of Cupertino r­ose aloft into
the air with one of his shrieks. “To make sense of Joseph’s phenomena,” says this
author, “then, we need to upgrade our view of h
­ uman ­mental potential.”70 Need-
less to say, this perspective on the possibility of the impossible has difficulty
finding ac­cep­tance in academia precisely ­because it calls into question too many
of its assumptions and guiding princi­ples. And by dismissing the super­natural
and preternatural and ascribing levitation to “mind,” it also runs against the
grain of traditional Chris­tian­ity, both Catholic and Protestant.
Beyond the fringe of academia ­there exist vari­ous approaches to the mi-
raculous that should not be classified as postsecular, for even if they refer to
empirical science or claim to be parascientific, their main intent is not to rec-
oncile faith and reason or religion and science but to explore the paranormal
with ele­ments of pseudoscience and in some cases even to revive ancient occult
traditions or to blend them with nineteenth-­century Spiritualism. At this end
of the interpretive spectrum, academic historians can easily lose their bearings
as well as their wits and perhaps any chance of being taken seriously by their
colleagues.
When all is said and done, phenomena deemed impossible in the twenty-­
first c­ entury remain a risky liminal field of study, suspended between legitimacy
and illegitimacy. Rooted as they are in belief and closely tied as they are to a
 376 epilo gue

worldview directly derived from ancient and medieval times, t­ hese phenomena
are markers of alterity; that is, they reify a premodern “otherness” that is at once
marginal, primitive, and somewhat unsettling to many in modern society who,
like D. P. Walker, prefer to keep the super­natural safely encased in amber like
one of the Mesozoic insects used to clone dinosaurs in the fictional world of
Jurassic Park.71 One might even say that the cognitive and epistemic dissonance
created by levitation, bilocation, and all such “impossible” miracles is extreme
enough to make them radically dif­fer­ent from modernity, even grotesque, and
to imbue them with that “hard edged alterity” that so many modern elites at-
tribute to all t­ hings medieval.72
Nonetheless, for all of their hard-­edged alterity, ­these impossible phenom-
ena are unavoidable for anyone who ventures into the early modern age or even
into some corners of our secular world, where p
­ eople can be found who believe
not just in the levitations and bilocations of saints long dead but also in ­those
of men and ­women who lived fairly recently, such as Gemma Galgani (d. 1903),
Faustyna Kowalska (d. 1938), Yvonne-­Aimée de Malestroit (d.1950), and Pio of
Pietrelcina (d. 1968). The Durkheimian social fact that makes ­these impossible
phenomena pos­si­ble in certain settings is still with us—as unavoidable as moun-
tains in Tibet—­along with the “fact” of the testimonies of ­those who claim to
have witnessed such ­things. When all is said and done, the levitations and biloca-
tions of the early modern age are no dif­fer­ent from the miraculous apparitions
of Christ or the Virgin Mary in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which
scholars have deftly analyzed as undeniable “facts” that w
­ ere not only inextri-
cable from the social and po­liti­cal matrix of their time and place but also pro-
foundly affected history, locally as well as globally; which is why now, in the
early twenty-­first ­century, over five million pilgrims still flock to the Marian
shrine at Lourdes e­ very year.73 As the titles of relatively recent books on appari-
tions in Germany, Spain, France, and Portugal make clear,74 the miracles being
analyzed in them are approached as a component of secular history, politics,
and culture rather than as some “lingering cultural manifestation of a remote,
impoverished and illiterate world.”75 One of ­these scholars, William Christian Jr.,
trained as a sociologist, has proven through his work that late medieval and early
modern apparitions are in essence no dif­fer­ent from ­those of the twentieth
­century, insofar as they occur in specific time-­and place-­bound matrices that can
be analyzed in very similar ways.76 Belief, ­after all, has as much of a po­liti­cal or
socioeconomic context as unbelief.77 Time and place make for dif­fer­ent con-
texts, but context itself is always a constant real­ity. And that context, social
 epilo gue 377

scientists tend to say, determines the appeal as well as the function of miracles,
even ­those deemed most impossible. In turn, t­ hose miracles, which tend to be
viewed primarily from a functionalist perspective, become phenomena that in-
evitably “teach us much about the ways social realities are variously constructed,
contested, and transformed,”78 even when ­those social realities include belief in
saints who can resurrect dismembered infants.79
As valuable as such insights are in a utilitarian sense—­usefulness being
the very telos or purpose of social science—­they cannot shed light on the total-
ity of the miraculous. No currently acceptable scholarly perspective can do that
­either, for the super­natural ele­ment of the miraculous eludes academic scrutiny.
Miracles take place in the realm of faith, and that realm, by definition, tran-
scends ordinary experience, as do the testimonies of the eyewitnesses who
avouch for their occurrence and the social facts that make t­hose testimonies
pos­si­ble. Miracles, it could be said, are not just puzzling for historians but also
im­mensely frustrating. The further one goes back in time, the more difficult it
becomes not to bump into them, or into their preternatural demonic counter­
parts. The testimonies are simply t­ here in the historical rec­ord, cluttering it up
abundantly, and their existence cannot be denied. But ironically, it is ultimately
impossible to prove that what is claimed in t­ hese testimonies happened exactly
as recorded. Beyond the realm of faith, the evidence can seem insufficient de-
spite its sheer volume. Hence the frustration.
Yet levitation and bilocation accounts are as hard to dismiss as to prove
true. By raising questions about our perception of the past, t­ hese accounts of
the impossible also force us to confront our assumptions in the pre­sent and per-
haps even to confront our own unreflective enmeshment in the social facts that
govern our thinking and behaving and our own role in the construction of so-
cial facts for our time and place. Moreover, t­ hese accounts do more than raise
significant questions. They also reveal the power of belief to shape mentalities
and the power of social facts to shape thought and be­hav­ior or to determine
the limits we place on what might be pos­si­ble.
Funny ­thing, how the word “suspend” in the expression “to suspend dis-
belief ” is also the same word used to describe the condition of “being held aloft
without attachment,”80 a semantic coincidence that places disbelief in the same
situation as any levitator, including both Joseph of Cupertino and Jean-­François
Pilâtre de Rozier: Suspended. Strange stuff, this bit of poetic justice, as strange
as levitation itself. Disbelief is the opposite of belief, of course, but both modes
of thinking are opposite sides of the same coin that most of us call “real­ity.” We
 378 epilo gue

live in an era in which disbelief is so power­ful it seems almighty, principally

­because “real­ity” is conceived of as one-­dimensional, not as some two-­dimensional
coin or multidimensional universe. Suspending disbelief has become difficult,
even impossible. But that might be a misperception, a mirage of sorts, caused
by our constant immersion in our own zeitgeist or dominant worldview. His-
tory itself teaches us that the power of belief should never be underestimated,
neither in the pre­sent nor in the past nor perhaps in the ­future as well. Belief is
real. Its power is a constant, always t­ here in the profane as much as in the sa-
cred, ever on the edge of surging, ever ready to be tapped, for good or for ill.
Even as the content of belief evolves and specific beliefs go extinct and ­others
arise, belief itself remains an inescapable real­ity for all individuals and socie­
ties, even the most materialistic—as any former subject of the Third Reich or
the Soviet Empire ­will confirm—­and its potential power endures, undimmed
by the passage of time or what­ever kind of slippage eventually brings revered
orthodoxies to their doom. Belief is the immortal soul of the imagination, as
well as of all mentalities, mindsets, worldviews, epistemic regimes, discourses,
social imaginaries, and social facts. And when it comes to t­ hings super­natural—­
that inexhaustible fuel of the fires of faith—­the power of belief can be limit-
less. Anything is pos­si­ble. One might even dare to add an exclamation point at
the end of the following sentence:
They flew!
 Appendix 1
Seventeenth-­and Eighteenth-­Century Bilocators
in Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope

Bilocating Nuns from the Spanish Colonies

María de Jesús Tomellín (1582–1637), also known as Lily of Puebla, a Con-

ceptionist Mexican nun who claimed to have visited Eu­rope and several pagan lands
and to have been pre­sent at the funeral of Spanish king Philip III. As with other
nuns of her age, she attributed her journeys to “spiritual flights” or super­natural “agil-
ity” rather than bilocation per se. She was so well known in her day that she was the
subject of three hagiographies and is second only to Rose of Lima in the amount of
attention paid to her in the early modern era. Despite much lobbying for her beati-
fication and canonization, however, her case stalled, much like that of María de
Ágreda.1
Francisca de la Natividad (d. 1658), a Discalced Carmelite nun from
Puebla, Mexico, claimed to visit several heathen lands in the autobiography she was
ordered to write by her male superiors. Francisca claimed to have taught the pagans
she visited to make the sign of the cross and recite the paternoster, the Ave Maria,
and the Credo, as well as the Ten Commandments, “most efficaciously and tenderly
with my heart and soul, as if she had them visibly pre­sent and saw them with her
corporeal eyes.”2 As in the case of María of Ágreda and Ana María de San José in
Spain, Francisca attributed her missionary journeys to the deep anguish she felt
about the souls who w
­ ere headed for certain damnation. Additionally, she said she
wished she had been a male so she could have been a missionary physically instead
of spiritually.3
Catarina de San Juan (1607–1688), also known as the China Poblana, a
beata, or intensely devout laywoman from Puebla, Mexico, claimed to have made
frequent journeys to vari­ous continents. Born in India, kidnapped by Portuguese
pirates, converted to Chris­tian­ity by Jesuits, and taken as a slave to the Philippines

379
 380 appendix 1

and afterward to Mexico, she was eventually freed and became a prominent figure
in the religious life of Puebla, where she remained close to the Jesuits of that city.
Her visits to her native India, the Philippines, Japan, China, and the Mariana Is-
lands, as well as to North Amer­ic­ a, ­were described by her Jesuit hagiographer Alonso
Ramos.4 Quite often, her “spiritual presence” in ­these distant lands served as scout-
ing trips for the Jesuits, during which she would find the most suitable mission fields
and potential converts. Sometimes she would act as a missionary herself, as she
claimed she did with none other than the emperor of China, to whom she preached
the words placed in her mouth by Christ and the Virgin Mary.5 Additionally, as if all
this w
­ ere not impressive enough, she claimed to have taken part in some ­battles in
Eu­rope and to have braved pirates in the Ca­rib­be­an.6 Given such claims, it is not
too surprising, then, that the Inquisition banned the circulation of Catarina’s im-
ages in 1690 and censured her biographies in 1695, including the massive multi-
volume work by Alonso Ramos, “for containing useless revelations, visions, and
apparitions that are implausible as well as full of contradictions and indecent, reck-
less, and improper comparisons that are knowingly blasphemous.”7
Despite such reversals, accounts of bilocating or transvecting American nuns
continued to surface well into the eigh­teenth ­century, as the Enlightenment was
sweeping through Eu­rope.
Ana Guerra de Jesús (1639–1713), a Guatemalan beata whose hagiogra-
phy was written by her Jesuit confessor Antonio de Siria, claimed to have visited the
rebellious region of Petén, one of the last Ma­ya strongholds in Central Amer­i­ca.8
Ursula Suárez (1666–1749), a Chilean nun, wrote an autobiography in which
she claimed to have visited an unidentified land, and perhaps also Arabia.9
Jéronima del Espiritu Santo (1669–1749), a Colombian from Bogotá, told
of visiting Asia and the Indies in her autobiographical diary.10 Jacinta María Ana
de San Antonio (1674–1720), from Oaxaca, Mexico, told of numerous visits to other
local, regional, and international locations, including Jerusalem.11
Francisca de los Ángeles (1674–1744), a nun from Queréntaro, Mexico,
claimed in her letters that she had visited Texas and New Mexico, accompanied by
Christ, her guardian angels, and Saint Rose of Viterbo (the patroness of her con-
vent). During one such visit, she claimed she met two old Indians who remembered
having seen María de Ágreda, a clear indication of the influence of the so-­called
Lady in Blue in colonial monastic circles. She also explained that she got t­ here by
flying and walking “with super­natural speed.”12
María Manuela de Santa Ana (1695–1793), a nun from Lima, Peru, de-
tailed in her autobiography how she had visited many locations around the world,
including China, Guinea, and Turkey, and how she had gone to Rome with Saint
 appendix 1 381

Paul and Saint Augustine. She also expressed ­great sorrow for not being able to
“travel the world and catechize Jews, heretics, and pagans, especially blacks, for whose
conversion and baptism I beg God constantly.”13
Similar late seventeenth-­and eighteenth-­century claims of nearby or far-­flung
visits to other locations can be found in the lives of numerous nuns, including An-
tonia de la Madre de Dios, a Mexican Augustinian;14 María de Jesús, from Colom-
bia;15 Inés de la Cruz, from Mexico;16 and Dolores Peña y Lillo, from Chile.17 And
in the nineteenth ­century, one can still find nuns, such as María Ignacia del Niño
Jesús, claiming to have visited Spain and Rome.18

Bilocating Saints and Aspiring Saints from the Baroque

and Enlightenment Eras

In the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment, several bilocators ­were exceptionally
prominent, but relatively l­ittle scholarly attention has been paid to their bilocations.
Ursula Micaela Morata (1628–1703), a Capuchin Poor Clare nun and ab-
bess in Alicante, Spain, who claimed many mystical gifts, including that of biloca-
tion to distant lands and incorruptibility, and whose canonization is still pending.19
María de Jesús de León y Delgado (1643–1731), a Spanish Dominican
lay s­ ister known as La Siervita (The ­Little Servant) who lived in the Canary Islands
and reportedly exhibited all the major physical phenomena associated with mysti-
cal ecstasy, including bilocation, levitation, the stigmata, and incorruptibility, but
has yet to be canonized.20
John Joseph of the Cross (1654–1739), a Discalced Franciscan from the
island of Ischia who was canonized in 1839.21
Angelo of Acri (1669–1739), a Capuchin priest and spellbinding preacher
who was active in southern Italy and hailed as a saint in his own day but was not
canonized ­until 2017 by Pope Francis.22
Paul of the Cross (1694–1775), from Savoy, founder of the Passionist or-
der, canonized in 1867.23
Alphonsus Liguori (1696–1787) is the best-­known and most significant of
this band of bilocators. Founder of the Redemptorist order that Geraldo Majella
joined, Alphonsus was a multitalented musician, artist, ­lawyer, theologian, phi­los­o­
pher, and writer of extremely popu­lar devotional lit­er­a­ture who was appointed bishop
of Sant’Agata dei Goti in 1762, much to his own dismay. A levitator as well as a bi-
locator, he was observed by vari­ous witnesses at two locations si­mul­ta­neously sev-
eral times, most notably when seen aiding Pope Clement XIV at his deathbed in
Rome in September 1774 while o
­ thers witnessed him rapt in a cataleptic ecstasy in
 382 appendix 1

his episcopal residence near Naples. Alphonsus was canonized in 1839, on the same
day as fellow bilocator John Joseph of the Cross.24
Felice Amoroso of Nicosia (1715–1787), a Capuchin friar, beatified in
1888.25
Geraldo Majella (1726–1755), a Redemptorist lay ­brother from the King-
dom of Naples canonized in 1904, who not only bilocated but also reportedly walked
on ­water to rescue some fishermen during a storm.26
 Appendix 2
The Emergence of the “Lady in Blue” Legend
A Chronology

1610s: Luisa de Carrión claims she bilocates to vari­ous distant locations,

such as Rome, Japan, New Mexico. She begins to be revered as a “living saint.”
1611: Luisa de Carrión is accused of feigning inedia by some fellow nuns; the
Inquisition passes the investigation of this case to the Franciscan order.
­ ather Antonio de Trejo, the vicar general of the Spanish Franciscans,
1614: F
pronounces Luisa de Carrión innocent of all the charges against her.
1620: In Ágreda, Sor María begins to experience ecstatic raptures during which
she ostensibly bilocates and interacts with natives in the New World. She speaks with
her confessors and fellow nuns in Ágreda about her visits to Amer­i­ca and her mis-
sionary work with Indians, providing many details of the New Mexican landscape,
climate, flora, fauna, and ­people.
1620s: According to ­later accounts, Franciscan friars at the mission of San
Antonio de Isleta in New Mexico receive visits from Jumano Indians from hundreds
of miles away, begging for baptism for all their ­people. ­Father Esteban de Perea, the
superior of the mission, repeatedly turns down their requests.
1620s: Bilocations by Luisa de Carrión continue.
1622: Sor María meets with the minister-­general of the Franciscans, F
­ ather
Bernardino de la Sena, and gives him a detailed account of her bilocations. Satisfied
that the miracle is genuine and of divine origin, he approves of it but refrains from
publicizing it in print, therefore keeping the story out of public view.
1623: Sor María’s raptures, levitations, and bilocations cease, according to
­later testimony from her, but other accounts ­will ­later claim that she kept visiting
New Mexico for several years, although perhaps with less frequency.
1625: According to José Jiménez Samaniego, her hagiographer, Sor María is
still visiting New Mexico.

383
 384 appendix 2

1625: The San Antonio mission receives a new custos sent from Spain, ­Father
Alonso de Benavides, along with twelve additional friars. Benavides ­will ­later claim
that he learned immediately of the Jumanos and their request for baptism and that
the Indians failed to mention visits from a nun.
1626: One of María’s confessors, Sebastián Marcilla, sends a letter to the
archbishop of Mexico, Francisco de Manso y Zúñiga, which contains an account of
María’s bilocations and of her miraculous missionary efforts in the New World. Mar-
cilla mentions place-­names as well as certain tribes, including the Jumanos, hoping
­these details ­will catch Archbishop Manso’s eye. Marcilla also begs Archbishop Manso
to send Franciscan missionaries to the Jumanos to investigate María’s claims. Manso
sits on this information and does nothing.
1628: First written account of the Lady in Blue. Gerónimo Zárate Salmerón, a
Franciscan missionary, writes a chronicle about his missionary work in New Mexico.
This account—­though sketchy—­tells of a local narrative circulating by word of mouth
in the New Mexico Territory about numerous visits paid to native tribes by a Span-
ish nun. Although the nun is not named in the narrative itself, the subtitle that pre-
cedes it makes her identity explicit: “Account of the Holy M
­ other María de Jesús,
abbess of the convent of Santa Clara de Ágreda.”
1629: According to Alonso de Benavides, “the same nun” is still visiting New
Mexico.
1629: A fresh contingent of missionaries arrive at San Antonio de Isleta in
July, led by F
­ ather Esteban de Perea, the previous custos of the mission. Perea hands
Benavides a letter from Archbishop Manso conveying the information he received
about Sor María’s bilocations from her confessor and commands him to investigate
María’s claims about what has been occurring in the land of the Jumanos.
1629: According to Alonso de Benavides, he interrogates some visiting Juma-
nos, and they reveal that a nun in a blue cloak has indeed been visiting them. When
shown an image of Luisa de Carrión, they say the garb is identical, but their visitor
is much younger and prettier. Benavides sends two missionaries to the Jumano lands,
and they find evidence of Catholic piety, especially the veneration of crosses and of
images of Christ.
1629: Narratives from Spain and New Mexico merge during this encounter
between missionaries and Jumanos. Sor María becomes the most likely match for
the Lady in Blue.
1630: Second written account of the Lady in Blue. Relieved of his post a­ fter
five years at the San Antonio de Isleta mission, Alonso de Benavides heads back to
Spain via Mexico and writes a lengthy report on t­ hose missions for King Philip IV
that includes one chapter on the “temporal and spiritual trea­sures” of New Mexico.
In this chapter, Benavides relates the story of a nun who has visited local natives.
 appendix 2 385

This account, which does not identify María as the missionary nun, has come to be
known simply as the 1630 Memorial of Alonso Benavides.
1631: According to Alonso de Benavides, “the same nun” is still visiting
New Mexico.
1631: Third written account of the Lady in Blue. Alonso de Benavides meets
with María at her convent in Ágreda and afterward writes a letter to the missionar-
ies in New Mexico about María’s bilocations. He attaches a letter ostensibly penned
by María herself—­that he forced her to write u
­ nder her vow of obedience—in which
she confirms that she had indeed evangelized the Jumano Indians. This text, which
would not be published ­until a ­century ­later, is the third account and the first to
contain direct testimony from María.
1632: Francisco de la Fuente is condemned by the Inquisition for falsely claim-
ing he had bilocated to the New World to evangelize some natives.
1633: Luisa de Carrión is accused of fraud and pacts with the devil and de-
nounced to the Inquisition.
1634: Fourth written account of the Lady in Blue. Alonso de Benavides pens
yet another report, this one addressed to Pope Urban VIII, in which he includes de-
tails not found in his previous two accounts. This fourth manuscript, known as
Benavides’s 1634 Memorial, appears to have never been published.
1634: Benavides suggests in his Memorial that ­there w
­ ere ­really two Ladies in
Blue, Sor María and Luisa de Carrión, according to testimony he received from ­Father
Juan de Santander, commissary general of the Indies, and Domingo de Aspe, Sor
Luisa’s confessor. But this information does not become part of the Lady in Blue
legend.
1635: Luisa de Carrión is moved by the Inquisition to an Augustinian con-
vent in Valladolid.
1636: Luisa de Carrión dies sixteenth months ­later, still ­under suspicion of
fraud.
1648: The Inquisition finds Luisa de Carrión innocent of all charges,
posthumously.
1650: Fifth written Lady in Blue account. A
­ fter being questioned by the
Inquisition for the second time in her life, Sor María writes a new account of her
bilocations for ­Father Pedro Manero, the superior general of the Franciscan order
in Spain. In this manuscript, Sor María seeks to correct or even deny many of the
details found in e­ arlier accounts, including some that she had e­ arlier declared to be
accurate.
1670: Sixth written account of the Lady in Blue. José Jiménez Samaniego
includes a new account in chapter 12 of his hagiography of Sor María. This account
consolidates the merging of María’s identity with the Lady in Blue legend.
This page intentionally left blank
 Notes

Abbreviations Used in the Notes

Archives
AHN Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid
ASV Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Rome
BNE Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid
BNF Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris

Collected Works
AS Acta Sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur, 69 vols. (Brussels:
Alphonsum Greise, 1863–1940)
CO E. Cunitz, J.-­W. Baum, and E. W. E. Reuss, eds., Joannis
Calvini Opera Quae Supersunt Omnia, 59 vols. (Braunschweig:
C. A. Schwetschke, 1863–1900)
LW Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, 55 vols., edited by Jaroslav
Pelikan et al. (St. Louis: Concordia, 1955–1986)
Migne, PL Jaques-­Paul Migne, ed., Patrologiae Cursus Completus / Series
Latina, 221 vols. (Paris: Migne, 1844–1864)
O.C. Santa Teresa de Jesús, Obras Completas, edited by Efrén de la
Madre de Dios and Otger Steggink, 9th ed. (Madrid:
Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1997)
OCLG Fray Luis de Granada, Obras Completas, 51 vols. (Madrid:
Fundación Universitaria Española, 1994–2008)
WA D. Martin, Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 136 vols.
(Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1883–2009)
WAT D. Martin, Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Tischreden,
6 vols. (Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1912–1921)

387
 388 notes

Hagiographies and Biographies

Agelli Paolo Agelli, Vita del Beato Giuseppe di Copertino (Livorno,
1753)
Bernino Domenico Bernino, Vita del Venerable Padre Fr. Giuseppe Da
Copertino De’ Minori Conventuali (Rome, 1722)
JSRV José Jiménez Samaniego, Relación de la vida de la Venerable
Madre Sor María de Jesús (Madrid, 1727)
Nuti Roberto Nuti, Vita del servo di Dio P. Giuseppe da Copertino
(Palermo, 1678)
Parisciani, ND Gustavo Parisciani, San Giuseppe Da Copertino a la luce dei
nuovi documenti, 2nd ed. (Osimo, Italy: Donare Pace e Bene,
2009)
Pastrovicchi Angelo Pastrovicchi, Compendio della vita, virtù e miracoli del
Beato Giuseppe di Copertino (Rome, 1753)

Texts
Ayer MS Benavides Memorial of 1634, Ayer MS 1044, Newberry
Library, Chicago
HIEA Joaquín Pérez Villanueva and Bartolomé Escandell Bonet,
eds., Historia de la Inquisición en España y Amer­i­ca, 3 vols.
(Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1984)
Institutes John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, edited by J. T.
McNeill, translated by F. L. ­Battles, 2 vols. (1559; repr.,
Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960)
MCD The Venerable María de Agreda, Mystica Ciudad de Dios
(Madrid: Bernardo de Villa-­Diego, 1670)
P1807 María de Agreda, Mystica Ciudad de Dios (Pamplona, 1807)
Procesos Procesos de beatificación y canonización de Santa Teresa de
Jesús, edited by Silverio de Santa Teresa, 3 vols. (Burgos:
Bibloteca Mística Carmelitana, 1934–1935)

All translations of non-­Biblical texts are my own, u

­ nless other­wise indicated.
The En­glish translation of the Bible quoted ­here is the New International Version.

Preface

1. On the comparison to Satan, see J. Parnell McCarter, “Book Review: Carlos

Eire’s War against the Idols,” accessed January 21, 2023, http://­www​.­puritans​
.­net​/­bookreviewwaragainstidols​.­htm. On the other accusations: unfortunately,
 n o t e s t o pa g e s xi –xv 389

all the vitriol spewed online by the Socialist utopia of Cuba has vanished from
view, as often happens with totalitarian regimes that have trou­ble maintain-
ing their websites or excelling at anything other than imprisoning ­those who
disagree with them.
2. Montague Summers, The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism, with Especial Ref-
erence to the Stigmata, Divine and Diabolic (New York: Barnes and Noble,
1950).
3. Gabriel García Márquez, Cien Años de Soledad (Havana: Casa de las Américas,
1968); translated by Gregory Rabassa as A Hundred Years of Solitude (New
York: Harper and Row, 1970).
4. Immanuel Kant, Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft (1793);
translated by Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson as Religion within the
Limits of Reason Alone (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960).
5. Scientists do take this phenomenon seriously. See David Burkus, “How to
Have a Eureka Moment,” Harvard Business Review, March 11, 2014, https://­
hbr​.­org​/­2014​/­03​/­how​-­to​-­have​-­a​-­eureka​-­moment; and Hannah ­England, “The
Science of Eureka Moments,” Ness Labs, accessed January 21, 2023, https://­
nesslabs​.­com​/­eureka​-­moments.
6. Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning (1605), bk. 1, chap. 5, sec. 8.
7. René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, translated by Donald Cress,
3rd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993), Meditation I, pp. 13–17. See also
Diego Morillo-­Velarde, René Descartes: De omnibus dubitandum (Madrid:
EDAF, 2001).
8. Blaise Pascal, Pensées, translated by W. F. Trotter (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2018),
p. 23.
9. Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, translated by
Willard R. Trask (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1959), p. 26.
10. Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” in Dylan Thomas:
Selected Poems 1934–1952 (New York: New Directions, 2003), p. 122.
11. See Adam Frank, “The Discover Interview: Max Tegmark,” Discover, July 2008,
pp. 38–43. For an introduction to multiverse cosmology and theories other than
Tegmark’s, see Alex Vilenkin, Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Uni-
verses (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007). See also Carlos Eire, A Very Brief History
of Eternity (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2010), pp. 211–16.
12. See Fouad Khan, “Confirmed! We Live in a Simulation,” Scientific American,
April 1, 2021, https://­www​.­scientificamerican​.­com​/­article​/­confirmed​-­we​-­live​-­in​
-­a​-­simulation​/­. See also Michael Talbot, The Holographic Universe: The Revolu-
tionary Theory of Real­ity (New York: Harper Perennial, 2011).
 390 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1–5

Introduction

1. Agelli, pt. 2, chap. 3, p. 198.

2. One historian of religion who has engaged with the impossible and very elo-
quently argued for its validity as a scholarly subject is Jeffrey Kripal, whose
focus is on the recent past and the pre­sent. See his The Super Humanities: His-
torical Pre­ce­dents, Moral Objections, New Realities (University of Chicago Press,
2022); Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred (University of
Chicago Press, 2010); and (with Whitley Strieber) Super Natu­ral: Why the Un-
explained Is Real (New York: Tarcher Perigree, 2016).
3. See Jacalyn Duffin, Medical Miracles: Doctors, Saints, and Healing in the Modern
World (Oxford University Press, 2009).
4. The Compact Edition of the Oxford En­glish Dictionary, 2 vols. (Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1971), 1:947.
5. William James, “What Psychical Research Has Accomplished,” in The ­Will to
Believe and Other Essays in Popu­lar Philosophy (New York: Longmans Green,
1905), pp. 299–302.
6. Lorraine Daston, “Marvelous Facts and Miraculous Evidence in Early Modern
Eu­rope,” Critical Inquiry 18, no. 1 (1991): 93–124. Daston argues that during
the early modern age, facts came to be regarded as “evidence in potentia” and
takes up the question: “How did our current conceptions of neutral facts and
enlisted evidence, and the distinction between come to be?” (pp. 93–94).
7. The Compact Edition of the Oxford En­glish Dictionary defines “anecdote” as
“the narrative of a detached single event, told as being in itself in­ter­est­ing or
striking” (p. 80). As Jeffrey Kripal has observed, to categorize certain testimo-
nies as “anecdotal” is to argue that they have no broader context and are there-
fore “pure anomalies that can be fully explained (away) as local constructions
of a single h
­ uman psyche and so should not concern us as e­ ither meaningful
or real in the sense that other t­ hings are real. . . . ​No ‘broader context’ equals
‘unreal.’ ­These anomalies are best left ignored, then, as meaningless blips,
as statistical flukes, or as neurological hiccups.” Kripal and Strieber, Super
Natu­ral, p. 84.
8. See Louise and Richard Spilsbury, Maglev Trains (New York: Gareth Stevens,
2017); or Hyung-­Suk Han and Dong-­Sung Kim, Magnetic Levitation: Maglev
Technology and Applications (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2016).
9. A few authors, such as Michael Grosso in his study of Saint Joseph of Cuper-
tino, The Man Who Could Fly (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016),
try to promote rational ac­cep­tance of levitation and other such phenomena.
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 5–9 391

For more on this approach, see E. F. Kelly, E. W. Kelly, M. Grosso, et al., eds.,
Irreducible Mind: ­Toward a Psy­chol­ogy for the 21st ­Century (Lanham, MD:
Rowman and Littlefield, 2007); and E. F. Kelly, A. Crabtree, and P. Marshall,
eds., Beyond Physicalism: ­
Toward Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality
(Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015).
10. Most scholars avoid the subject, but nonscholarly studies abound, such as
Steve Richards, Levitation: What It Is, How It Works, How to Do It (Wellingbor-
ough, UK: Aquarian Press, 1980). And some have examined it as a cultural
phenomenon, especially Peter Adey, Levitation: The Science, Myth, and Magic of
Suspension (London: Reaktion Books, 2017). For my review of Adey’s book,
see Annals of Science 75, no. 4 (2018): 368–69.
11. The most thorough study of Christian levitation is that of Olivier Leroy, La
Lévitation (Paris: Librairie Valois, 1928); translated as Levitation (London:
Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1928). Joachim Bouflet, La lévitation chez les mys-
tiques (Paris: Le jardin des Livres, 2006) relies on Olivier but also ventures
beyond Chris­tian­ity and into the twentieth ­century. Albert de Rochas
D’Aiglun’s Recueil de Documents Relatifs à La Lévitation du Corps Humain
[Suspension Magnétique] (Paris: P. G. Leymarie, 1897) is a relic of late nineteenth-­
century occult and pseudo-­scientific approaches to the subject.
12. Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, Historia de los heterodoxos españoles, 8 vols. (Ma-
drid: C.S.I.C., 1947), 4:249–50.
13. Lucien Febvre, Combats pour l’histoire (Paris: A. Colin, 1952), p. 96.
14. Darren Oldridge, Strange Histories: The Trial of the Pig, the Walking Dead, and
Other ­Matters of Fact from the Medieval and Re­nais­sance Worlds, 2nd ed. (Lon-
don: Routledge, 2018), p. 3. Oldridge adds that “to view them [premodern
­people] as irrational is no less insulting—or mistaken—­than to view African
tribespeople as ‘savages.’ ”
15. As historian of witchcraft Erik Midelfort has said: “When we ignore the awk-
ward realities and contradictions of this or any period, we shortchange the
past. We shortchange ourselves as well. If we choose to remember only the
‘progressive’ parts of history, the ones that readily ‘make sense’ to us, we over-
simplify the past and our own lives. We cultivate an artificially naive view of
the world.” Midelfort, Exorcism and Enlightenment: Johann Joseph Gassner and
the Demons of Eighteenth-­Century Germany (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2005), p. 6.
16. See David Walker, “The Humbug in American Religion: Ritual Theories of
Nineteenth-­Century Spiritualism,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of
Interpretation 23, no. 1 (Winter 2013): 30–74.
 392 n o t e s t o pa g e s 9–15

17. See Oliver Fox, Astral Projection (New York: Citadel Press, 1993); Robert Mon-
roe, Journeys out of the Body (New York: Doubleday, 1973).
18. See Linda Rodriguez McRobbie, “The Strange and Mysterious History of the
Ouija Board,” Smithsonian Magazine, October 27, 2013.
19. See Stefan Bechtel, Through a Glass, Darkly: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the
Quest to Solve the Greatest Mystery of All (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017);
and Erika White Dyson, “Gentleman Mountebanks and Spiritualists: ­Legal,
Stage and Media Contest between Magicians and Spirit Mediums in the
United States and ­England,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Nineteenth-­
Century Spiritualism and the Occult, edited by Tatiana Kontou and Sarah Will-
burn (London: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 231–66.
20. 1 Cor. 7:7, 12:4–11.
21. See Arnold I. Davidson, “Miracles of Bodily Transformation, or How St. Fran-
cis Received the Stigmata,” Critical Inquiry 35, no. 3 (2009): 451–80.
22. Protestantism and skepticism have all but driven the history of Christian
mysticism out of view in Western culture. See Karen Wetmore, The Empire
Triumphant: Race, Religion and Rebellion in the Star Wars Films (Jefferson, NC:
McFarland, 2005), especially chap. 2; and Stephen Teo, Eastern Approaches to
Western Film: Asian Reception and Aesthetics in Cinema (London: Bloomsbury
Academic, 2019), especially chap. 1.
23. See Jeffrey Kripal, Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and
the Paranormal (University of Chicago Press, 2015); Christopher Knowles, Our
Gods Wear Spandex: The Secret History of Comic Book Heroes (Newburyport,
MA: Weiser Books, 2007); and Stephanie Burt, “Who ­Really Created the Mar-
vel Universe?,” New Yorker, February 15, 2021.
24. For a masterful analy­sis of this mentality, see Caroline Walker Bynum, Chris-
tian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Eu­rope (Brooklyn, NY:
Zone Books, 2011).
25. Thomas Aquinas, “On Miracles,” in Summa Contra Gentiles, bk. 3, chap. 101,
translated by ­Fathers of the En­glish Dominican Province, 4 vols. (London,
1928), vol. 3, pt. 2, pp. 60–61. For Balaam’s talking ass, see Num. 22:2–25:9.
26. “Now a miracle is so called as being full of won­der, as having a cause abso-
lutely hidden from all: and this cause is God. Wherefore t­hose ­things which
God does outside ­those ­causes which we know, are called miracles.” Thomas
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, translated by ­Fathers of the En­glish Dominican
Province, 3 vols. (New York: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1947), vol. 1, pt. 1,
question 105, article 7, objection 3, p. 520.
27. Gen. 1:26.
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 5 – 19 393

28. For a brilliant and concise introduction to this subject, see Peter Brown, The
Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Chris­tian­ity (University of Chi-
cago Press, 1981).
29. See D. P. Walker, “The Cessation of Miracles,” in Hermeticism and the Re­nais­
sance: Intellectual History and the Occult in Early Modern Eu­rope, edited by In-
grid Merkel and Allen G. Debus (Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library,
1988), pp. 111–24; Alexandra Walsham, “Miracles in Post-­Reformation En­
gland,” in Signs, Won­ders, Miracles: Repre­sen­ta­tions of Divine Power in the Life of
the Church, edited by Kate Cooper and Jeremy Gregory (London: Boydell
Press, 2005), pp. 273–306; Moshe Sluhovsky, “Calvinist Miracles and the Con-
cept of the Miraculous in Sixteenth-­Century Huguenot Thought,” Re­nais­
sance and Reformation / Re­nais­sance et Réforme 19, no. 2 (1995): 5–25; and
Philip Soergel, Miracles and the Protestant Imagination (Oxford University
Press, 2012), pp. 33–46.
30. See, for instance, William Whiston, Account of the exact time when the miracu-
lous gifts ceas’d in the church (London, 1749). This belief has waxed and waned
in significance throughout the history of Protestantism and was intensely ana-
lyzed a ­century ago by the Calvinist scholar Benjamin Warfield in Counterfit
Miracles (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1918).
31. Martin Luther began attributing Catholic miracles to the devil in 1520 in his
Address to the German Nobility (WA 6:447) and continued to do so thereafter.
All the magisterial Protestant Reformers agreed on this point, including the
influential John Calvin, who dismissed Catholic miracles as “mere illusions of
Satan” in the prefatory letter to King Francis in his Institutes of the Christian
Religion (CO 2.17). En­glish translation by Ford Lewis ­Battles in Institutes.
32. Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica or Enquiries into very many received
tenents and commonly presumed truths (1646), in The Works of Thomas Browne,
edited by Charles Sayle, 3 vols. (Edinburgh: Grant, 1912), 1:188.
33. William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act 3, scene 1.
34. James Weatherall, Void: The Strange Physics of Nothing (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2013), p. 13.
35. Gillian Brockell, “During a Pandemic, Isaac Newton Had to Work from Home,
Too. He Used the Time Wisely,” Washington Post, March 12, 2020.
36. See Philip E. Tetlock, Richard Ned Lebow, and Geoffrey Parker, eds., Unmak-
ing the West: “What-if ” Scenarios That Rewrite World History (Ann Arbor: Uni-
versity of Michigan Press, 2006), esp. chap. 1, “Counterfactual Thought
Experiments: Why We ­Can’t Live without Them and Must Learn to Live with
Them,” by Geoffrey Parker and Philip Tetlock.
 394 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 0 – 23

37. David Hume, An Enquiry concerning ­Human Understanding, pt. 1, sec. 10, “Of
Miracles,” in The Clarendon Edition of the Works of David Hume, edited by
Tom L. Beauchamp (Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 86–87.
38. Febvre, Combats pour l’histoire, p. 96.
39. Natalie Zemon Davis, “On the Lame,” American Historical Review 93, no. 3
(1988): 574.
40. “Whiggish” historians hail the Protestant Reformation as the beginning of
modernity and of the upward march of science, pro­gress, and freedom. See
Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (London: Bell, 1931).
Butterfield uses the terms “Protestant history” and “Whiggish history” inter-
changeably. See pp. 5–20.
41. This assumption is brilliantly questioned by Fabián Alejandro Campagne in
“Witchcraft and the Sense-­of-­the-­Impossible in Early Modern Spain: Some Re-
flections Based on the Lit­er­a­ture of Superstition (ca. 1500–1800),” Harvard
Theological Review 96, no. 1 (January 2003): 25–62.
42. See Anthony Cascardi, The Subject of Modernity (Cambridge University Press,
1992); Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah, Magic, Science, Religion, and the Scope of Ra-
tionality (Cambridge University Press, 1990).
43. Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” in Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited
by Hans Heinrich Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1946). This “disenchantment” thesis is an essential component of one
of the most influential books on early modern religion: Keith Thomas, Reli-
gion and the Decline of Magic (Oxford University Press, 1971). For a revision-
ist take on this classic text, see Michael Hunter, The Decline of Magic: Britain
in the Enlightenment (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020).
44. See Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons (Oxford University Press, 1997);
Midelfort, Exorcism and Enlightenment.
45. See Robert Scribner, “The Reformation, Popu­lar Magic, and the ‘Disen-
chantment of the World,’ ” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23 (1993):
484, 487.
46. In addition to the work of Andrew Keitt and Fabián Alejandro Campagne,
see Julie Crawford, Marvelous Protestantism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity Press, 2005); Daston, “Marvelous Facts and Miraculous Evidence”; and
Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Won­ders and the Order of Nature (New
York: Zone Books, 1998).
47. For an insightful summary and analy­sis of the development of ­these concepts
in medieval and early modern thought, see Daston, “Marvelous Facts and Mi-
raculous Evidence,” pp. 95–100.
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 3 – 30 395

48. Andrew Keitt argues in Inventing the Sacred: Imposture, Inquisition, and the
Bound­aries of the Super­natural in Golden Age Spain (Leiden: Brill, 2005) that
the seventeenth ­century was “a period in which rationalism was employed as
often to shore up belief in the miraculous as to challenge it” (p. 7). For a con-
cise summary of Keitt’s views, see his article “Religious Enthusiasm, the Span-
ish Inquisition, and the Disenchantment of the World,” Journal of the History
of Ideas 65, no. 2 (2004): 243–44.

1. Hovering, Flying, and All That

1. William Crookes, “Notes of an Enquiry into the Phenomena Called Spiritual

during the Years 1870–1873,” Quarterly Journal of Science, 2nd ser., 41 (Janu-
ary 1874): 77.
2. Crookes, “Notes of an Enquiry,” p. 77.
3. “­Human Levitation,” a history of the phenomenon, appeared in Crookes’s
Quarterly Journal of Science, 2nd ser., 45 (January 1875): 31–61.
4. Naturally, this claim has been contested. See Sergio Luzzatto, Padre Pio: Mir-
acles and Politics in a Secular Age (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010),
p. 212; and Claudia Baldoli, “Religion and Bombing in Italy,” in Bombing,
States and P
­ eoples in Western Eu­rope, 1940–1945, edited by C. Baldoli, A.
Knapp, and R. Overy (London: Continuum International, 2011), p. 147.
5. See Luzzatto, Padre Pio.
6. Michael Grosso, The Man Who Could Fly: St. Joseph of Copertino and the Mys-
tery of Levitation (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015); Steve Rich-
ards, Levitation: What It Is, How It Works, How to Do It (Newburyport, MA:
Weiser Books, 2015).
7. See Wolfgang Behringer and Constance Ott-­Koptschalijski, Der Traum vom
Fliegen (Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 1991); Wolfgang Behringer and Dieter Bauer,
Fliegen und Schweben (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch, 1997); Constance
Ott-­Koptschalijski, ed., Märchen und Mythen vom Fliegen (Frankfurt: Fischer-­
Taschenbuch, 1992); Clive Hart, Images of Flight (University of California
Press, 1988); Serenity Young, W
­ omen Who Fly: Goddesses, Witches, Mystics, and
Other Airborne Females (Oxford University Press, 2018).
8. See Montague Summers, The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism (London: Rider,
1950), esp. chap. 2.
9. Pope Benedict XIV, De Servorum Dei Beatificatione et Beatorum Canonizatione,
4 vols. (Rome, 1743), vol. 3, chap. 49.3.
 396 n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 0 – 34

10. See W. J. Crawford, Experiments in Psychical Science, Levitation, Contact, and the
Direct Voice (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1919).
11. David Blaine, “Levitation,” accessed January 21, 2023, https://­www​.­youtube​
.­com​/­watch​?­v​=­w6CNvFnlPL0; Criss Angel, “Levitation,” accessed January 21,
2023, https://­w ww​.­youtube​.­com​/­watch​?­v​=­WKedVg0t0Jk; “How to Levitate
Like Criss Angel,” Wikihow, December 21, 2022, https://­w ww​.­wikihow​.­com​
/­Levitate​-­Like​-­Criss​-­Angel.
12. Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, translated by F. C. Conybeare (Loeb
Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1912), I.3.15.
13. Kenneth L. Woodward, The Book of Miracles: The Meaning of the Miracle Sto-
ries in Chris­tian­ity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam (New York: Simon
and Schuster, 2001), p. 317.
14. See Glenn H. Mullin, The Flying Mystics of Tibetan Buddhism (Chicago: Serin-
dia, 2006), pp. 48, 50, with graphic illustrations on pp. 103, 106, 119, 120, 128,
138, 150, 155, 181, and 206.
15. Anonymous, “­Human Levitation,” Quarterly Journal of Science 45 (January
1875): 41–42. See also Olivier Leroy, La Lévitation (Paris: Librairie Valois,
1928), pp. 4–13.
16. Gillian Clark, introduction to Iamblichus: On the Pythagorean Life (Liverpool
University Press, 1989), p. xvi.
17. Helena Blavatsky, comments on “A Treatise on the Yoga Philosophy,” in Col-
lected Writings, 15 vols. (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Press, 1966–1968),
2:466–67.
18. 2 Kings 2.11; Dan. 14:36.
19. Matt. 14:22–36; Mark 6:45–56; John 6:16–24.
20. Luke 24:50–53; Acts of the Apostles 1:9–12.
21. Acts of the Apostles 8:26–40.
22. Matt. 4:1–11; Mark 1:12–13; Luke 4:1–13.
23. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, translated by William Granger Ryan,
2 vols. (Prince­ton University Press, 1993), 1:380.
24. For mention of some apocryphal second-­and third-­century noncanonical
texts with references to apostolic ascents to heaven, see Xavier Yvanoff, La
Chair des Anges: Les phénomènes corporels du mysticisme (Paris: Editions
Seuil, 2002), pp. 146–50. Unfortunately, Yvanoff provides no footnotes or
citations.
25. See Robert Knapp, The Dawn of Chris­tian­ity: P
­ eople and Gods in a Time of
Magic and Miracles (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017); Har-
old Remus, Pagan-­Christian Conflict over Miracle in the Second ­Century (Phila-
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 4 – 39 397

delphia: Philadelphia Patristic Foundation, 1983); and Howard Clark Kee,

Miracle in the Early Christian World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1983).
26. From the Greek: thauma = marvel or won­der + ergos = working; from the
Greek: hieros = sacred + pharein = to reveal. Basically, an intercessor with the
divine, who can make it pre­sent.
27. See Matthew W. Dickie, Magic and Magicians in the Greco-­Roman World (Lon-
don: Routledge, 2001), chaps. 9 and 10.
28. Johann Christoph Wagenseil, ed., Tela Ignea Satanae: Arcani, et horribiles Ju-
daeorum adversus Christum Deum et Christianam Relgionem Libri (Altdorf,
1681). For much more recent attempts to explore this dimension of the mir-
acles of Jesus, see Bertrand Méheust, Jesus Thaumaturge: Enquête sur l’homme
et ses miracles (Paris: Intereditions, 2015).
29. Acts 8:9–11. ­There are vari­ous legends about Simon Magus, and not all of
them agree. See Florent Heintz, Simon “le magicien” (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1997);
and Alberto Ferreiro, Simon Magus in Patristic, Medieval, and Early Modern Tra-
ditions (Leiden: Brill, 2005).
30. Acts of Peter 31–32, in The Apocryphal New Testament, translated by J. K. El-
liott (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), in Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not
Make It into the New Testament, edited by Bart Ehrman (Oxford University
Press, 2003), pp. 150–51.
31. Nazianzen, First Invective against Julian, sec. 74; see also secs. 54–56; Julian
the Emperor, Containing Gregory Nazianzen’s Two Invectives, translated by
C. W. King (London: Bohn’s Classical Library, 1888), pp. 43, 30–32.
32. Émile Lamé, Julien L’Apostat (Paris: Charpentier, 1861 pp. 51–52.
33. 1 Peter 5:8.
34. For Hilary, see Contra Constantium, in Migne, PL, vol. 10, cols. 584–85.
35. Sulpicius Severus, Dialogues, 3.6; Migne, PL, vol. 20, col. 215.
36. Candido Brognoli, Manuale Exorcistarum ac Parochorum (Bergamo, 1651),
p. 90, item 26.
37. St. Athanasius, Life of Antony, translated by Robert Gregg (Mahwah, NJ: Pau-
list Press, 1980), pp. 76, 78–79.
38. E. Amélineau, Les moines égyptiens: Vie de Schnoudi (Paris: Leroux, 1889),
pp. 318–19.
39. See Benedicta Ward, Harlots of the Desert (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1987).
40. Sophronius of Jerusalem, “Sancta Maria Aegyptiaca,” AS, April, 1:79, 83.
41. Vie de Théodore de Sykéon, translated by A. J. Festugière (Brussels: Société des
Bollandistes, 1970), chaps. 15–16.
 398 n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 9 – 43

42. The 68-­volume hagiographical collection of the AS, cited in note 40, is the
result of a monumental proj­ect launched in 1643 and completed in 1940 by
the Bollandist Society, originally a Jesuit enterprise. The volumes and entries
are or­ga­nized according to the months of the year and each saint’s feast day.
43. AS, November, 2:352, 398: “Suspensum a terra in aere quasi duobus cubitis
totum illuminatum et supra solem splendentem.”
44. AS, February, 2:85; translated by Walter Connor and Carolyn Loessel as The
Life and Miracles of Saint Luke of Steiris (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox
Press, 1994), chap. 7.
45. AS, May, vol. 6, Corollarium ad XVIII Maii, pp. 15–16 (supplement at the back
of the volume, with its own pagination). For more on holy fools in Orthodox
Chris­tian­ity, see John Saward, Perfect Fools: Folly for Christ’s Sake in Catholic
and Orthodox Spirituality (Oxford University Press, 1980), esp. chap 2; trans-
lated by Lennart Rydén as The Life of St. Andrew the Fool (Uppsala: Uppsala
University, 1995).
46. Perfunctory levitation accounts can sometimes be found in devotional texts
such as Thomas of Cantimpré’s Bonum universale de apibus (thirteenth
­century), or in sermon exempla such as Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogus
Miraculorum (thirteenth c­ entury), or in letters from prominent churchmen
such as Peter Damian (eleventh ­century). For exact references to ­these texts,
see the entries u
­ nder the keyword “levitation” in Thesaurus Exemplorum Me-
dii Aevi, accessed February 24, 2023, http://­thema​.­huma​-­num​.­fr​/­keywords​
/­KW0663.
47. Leroy, La Lévitation, pp. 39–49.
48. Saint Douceline is not as well known as the other thirteenth-­century levita-
tors listed ­here, but she has been receiving more attention since her hagiogra-
phy was translated into En­glish by Kathleen Garay and Madeleine Jeay, The
Life of Saint Douceline, Beguine of Provence (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell and
Brewer, 2001). The original Occitan text by Felipa Porcelet, Vida de la Ben-
haurada Sancta Douceline, was first translated into French by J. H. Albanés
(Marseille: Camoin, 1879) and again, nearly a ­century ago, by R. Gout, La Vie
de Sainte Douceline (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1927). See Sean Field, Courting Sanc-
tity: Holy ­Women and the Capetians (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019),
chap. 2, “Douceline of Digne, Co-­mother to the Capetians”; and Madeleine
Jeay and Kathleen Garay, “Douceline de Digne: De l’usage politique de l’extase
mystique,” Revue des Langues Romanes 106, no. 2 (2002): 475–92.
49. AS, May, 4:374.
50. AS, July, 5:651.5 C–­D.
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 4 4 – 50 399

51. AS, July, 5:652 B.

52. AS, July, 5:653 A. “In subtilissimis arborum ramusculis dependeret.”
53. Translated by Margot King as The Life of Christina Mirabilis (Toronto: Pereg-
rina, 1986); Latin original and French translation, with abundant commen-
tary and analy­sis, by Sylvain Piron, Christine l’Admirable: Vie, chants et merveilles
(Brussels: Vues de l’Espirit, 2021).
54. Leroy, La Lévitation, p. 42.
55. Arnold Davidson and Maggie Fritz-­Morkin, “Miracles of Bodily Transforma-
tion, or How St. Francis Received the Stigmata,” Critical Inquiry 35, no. 3
(Spring 2009): 456.
56. See Gilbert Wdzieczny, “The Life and Works of Thomas of Celano,” Franciscan
Studies, n.s., 5, no. 1 (March 1945): 55–68.
57. Second Life, chap. 61, translated by Placid Hermann, in St. Francis of Assisi:
Writings and Early Biographies, edited by Marion A. Habig (Chicago: Francis-
can Herald Press, 1973), pp. 439, 443.
58. See Jay M. Hammond, “Bonaventure’s Legenda Major,” in A Companion to
Bonaventure, edited by Jay M. Hammond, J. A. Wayne Hellmann, and Jared
Goff (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 453–507.
59. Timothy J. Johnson, “The Legenda Minor,” in Hammond, Hellmann, and Goff,
A Companion to Bonaventure, p. 435.
60. Legenda Major, chap. 10, translated by Benen Fahy, in Habig, St. Francis of
Assisi, pp. 705–6. This passage is nearly identical in Legenda Minor, chap. 4,
p. 812.
61. A more recent edition is available: Actus Beati Francisci et Sociorum, edited by
Marino Bigaroni and Giovanni Boccali (Assisi: Edizioni Porziuncola, 1988).
62. Translator Raphael Brown thinks that this text “represents not folklore, but a
direct oral tradition transmitted by several of the Saint’s closest friends . . . ​
through a few intermediaries to the author, and that this oral tradition, al-
though occasionally inaccurate in chronology and topography, is in the main
reliable, ­unless disproved by ­earlier evidence.” Brown then provides a long list
of eminent experts who share this opinion. See Brown’s introduction to his
translation of Ugolino di Monte Santa Maria’s The ­Little Flowers of Saint Fran-
cis (Garden City, NY: Image Books / Doubleday, 1958), p. 27.
63. Brown, ­Little Flowers, “Considerations on the Holy Stigmata,” p. 1438.
64. Brown, p. 1439.
65. Brown, pp. 1439–40.
66. Brown, pp. 1328–29.
67. AS, July, 3:791 E: “Sinamus, inquit, Sanctum qui laborat pro Sancto.”
 400 n o t e s t o pa g e s 5 0 – 59

68. AS, March, 1:669 A–­B: “Duobus cubitis elevatus a terra.” French translation
of William de Thoco’s hagiography, Saint Thomas d’Aquin: Sa vie (Paris: Téqui,
1924).
69. AS, April, 2:792.
70. AS, March, 1:558.
71. AS, March, 1:295 A.
72. Figure cited by José Luis Sánchez Lora, Mujeres, conventos, y formas de la
religiosidad barroca (Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 1988),
p. 374.
73. See Peter Burke, “How to Be a Counter-­Reformation Saint,” in Religion and
Society in Early Modern Eu­rope, 1500–1800, edited by Kaspar von Greyerz
(London: George Allen and Unwyn, 1984), pp. 45–55.
74. Pedro de Rivadeneyra, Tratado de la tribulación, quoted in Richard Kagan, Lu-
crecia’s Dreams (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 115.
75. Martín Gonzalez de Cellorigo, Memorial de la política necesaria y util restaura-
ción a la república de España, quoted in J. H. Elliott, Spain and Its World, 1500–
1700 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), pp. 262–86.
76. Hyacintha was beatified in 1726 and canonized in 1807, and is depicted
levitating in vari­ous engravings. Her hagiographer was the Theatine priest
Girolamo Ventimiglia. See his Vita della beata Giacinta Marescotti (Brescia:
Turlino, 1729), pp. 187–88.
77. See Jesús Imirizaldu, Monjas y Beatas Embaucadoras (Madrid: Editora Nacio-
nal, 1977).
78. AS, July, 7:441 D, n111.
79. Dominique Bouhours, SJ, La vie de S. François Xavier, apôtre des Indes et de
Japon, 2 vols. (Louvain, 1683–88), vol. 2, bk. 6, pp. 348–49.
80. AS, September, 5:832 F.
81. AS, October, 8:764 F: “Aliquando ab horto ad ecclesiam subito per aera duce-
batur.” See also pp. 755 F, 756 A.
82. AS, October, 8:734 A (three hours); p. 764 EF (luminosity): “Candidisima nube
radios solis imitante caput ipsius circumdari, totamque splendore viciniam
illustrari.”
83. AS, May, 6:584 DE.
84. AS, March, 2:679 AB.
85. The awkward term “social imaginary” has been used by vari­ous phi­los­o­phers
and social scientists to describe this complex relation between conceptual
structures and social realities. For a brilliant analy­sis of the changes in the
social imaginary brought about by the Protestant Reformation, see Charles
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 5 9 – 62 401

Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University

Press, 2007), pp. 146–211.
86. Zwingli, “Commentary on the True and False Religion” (1525), in The Latin
Works and the Correspondence of Huldreich Zwingli, edited by S. M. Jackson,
3 vols. (London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1912–1929), 2:92.
87. Calvin, “Commentary on the Four Books of Moses,” CO 24:387.
88. Huldrych Zwinglis Sämtliche Werke, 21 vols. (Berlin: C. A. Schwetschke und
Sohn, 1905), 8:194–95.
89. Calvin, “Commentary on the Four Books of Moses,” CO 24:387.
90. “Denn jene sichtbare Werk sind allein Zeichen für den unverständigen, un-
gläubigen haufen. . . . ​Darumb ist nicht Wunder, dass sie nu aufgehöret.” Third
Sermon for Pentecost, John 13:23–31, Dr. Martin Luther’s Sämmtliche Werke,
edited by Ernst Ludwig Enders, 2nd ed., 67 vols. (Erlangen, 1862–1885),
12:236–37.
91. William Tyndale, An Answer to Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue, edited by Henry
Walter (Cambridge University Press, 1850), p. 130.
92. Heinrich Bullinger, A Commentary upon the Second Epistle of Saint Paul to the
Thessalonians, translated by R. H. (London, 1538), fol. 51.
93. Institutes I.8. 5–6, CO 2.63; see also Commentary on Acts 5:15, CO 48.104.
94. “Et nous doit aussi souvenir que Satan a ses miracles.” Institutes, Prefatory
Address to King Francis I, CO 3.18, pp. 16–17.
95. Georg Nigrinus (Schwartz), Papistiche Inquisition und gulden flus der Römischen
Kirchen (1582); Philips van Marnix, The bee hive of the Romishe Church (1579);
John Bale, The Pageant of Popes (1574).
96. See Helen Parish, “Magic and Priestcraft: Reformers and Reformation,” in The
Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West, edited by David Col-
lins, SJ (Cambridge University Press, 2015), chap. 13.
97. John Napier, A Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of St. John (Edinburgh,
1594).
98. John Bale, A mysterye of inyquyte contayned within the hereticall genealogye of
Ponce Pantolabus (1545), fols. B2r–­v, B5v, C8r. See also Helen Parish, Monks,
Miracles, and Magic: Reformation Repre­sen­ta­tions of the Medieval Church (Lon-
don: Routledge, 2005), chap. 6.
99. William Perkins, A Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft (Cambridge,
1608), p. 5r.
100. Quoted in Parish, Monks, Miracles and Magic, p. 146.
101. See Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (Oxford University Press,
1971), p. 78; and Parish, Monks, Miracles, and Magic, pp. 140–46.
 402 n o t e s t o pa g e s 6 2 – 67

102. See Philip Soergel, Miracles and the Protestant Imagination (Oxford University
Press, 2012), pp. 33–46; and Jane Shaw, Miracles in Enlightenment ­England
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006).
103. “De votis monasticis Martini Lutheri iudicium,” WA 8:573–669; translated
as “Judgment of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows,” LW 44:305.
104. See Bradford Bouley, Pious Postmortems: Anatomy, Sanctity, and the Catholic
Church in Early Modern Eu­rope (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2017); and Paolo Parigi, The Rationalization of Miracles (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2012).
105. Calvin, “Commentary on John’s Gospel,” CO 47.90.
106. “Mais l’ame estant abysmée nc e gouffre d’iniquité, non seulement est vicieuse,
mais aussi vuide de tout bien.” Institutes II.3.2, CO 3.335, p. 292.
107. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, pp. 107–8.
108. Thomas Sprat, The History of the Royal-­Society of London, For the Improving of
Natu­ral Knowledge (London, 1667), pp. 360–61.
109. Kenneth P. Minkema, Catherine A. Brekus, and Harry S. Stout, “Agitations,
Convulsions, Leaping, and Loud Talking: The ‘Experiences’ of Sarah Pier-
pont Edwards,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 78, no. 3 (July 2021):
491–536.
110. Minkema, Brekus, and Stout, “Agitations,” p. 530.
111. Minkema, Brekus, and Stout, “Agitations,” pp. 524, 525, 530.
112. Parish, Monks, Miracles, and Magic, p. 46.
113. Thomas More, “Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer,” in The Complete Works of
St. Thomas More, 21 vols. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973),
8:244–47. Original spelling modernized. The argument about miracles was
but one of many in this nearly encyclopedic exchange over points of doctrine
and ecclesiology.
114. Luis de Granada, Historia de Sor María de la Visitación y Sermón de las caídas
públicas (Barcelona: J. Flors, 1962), p. 154. Similar statements can be found
on pp. 26, 148–49, and 156.
115. Diego de Yepes, Vida, Virtudes, y Milagros de la Bienaventurada Virgen Teresa de
Jesús (Madrid, 1599); modern edition published ­under the title Vida de
Santa Teresa de Jesús (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1946), p. 17.
116. Yepes, Vida, Virtudes, y Milagros, p. 14.
117. Yepes, pp. 17–18.
118. Sermones Predicados en la Beatificación de la B.M. Teresa de Jesús (Madrid, 1615),
fol. 172r (Juan de Herrera, SJ); fol. 123 r–­v (Juan Gonzalez OP).
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 6 7 – 73 403

119. Fray Luis de León, Obras Completas Castellanas de Fray Luis de León, edited by
Félix Garcia, OSA, 4th ed., 2 vols. (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos,
1967), 1:905–6.
120. Julio Caro Baroja, Las formas complejas de la vida religiosa: Religión, sociedad y
carácter en la España de los siglos XVI y XVII (Madrid: Akal, 1978), p. 92.
121. See Sánchez Lora, Mujeres, conventos y formas de la religiosidad barroca, p. 258.
122. Fray Luis de León, Obras Completas, 1:915–20.
123. Francisco de Ribera, SJ, Vida de la Madre Teresa de Jesús (Salamanca, 1590).
Modern edition edited by Jaime Pons, SJ (Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 1908),
p. 543.
124. Jerónimo de Gracián de la Madre de Dios, “Dialogos del tránsito de la Madre
Teresa de Jesús” (1584), in Fuentes históricas sobre la muerte y cuerpo de Santa
Teresa de Jesús (1582–1596), edited by J. L. Astigarrage, E. Pacho, and O. Ro-
driguez (Rome: Teresianum, 1982), pp. 43–44, 46.
125. Gracián, “Dialogos,” pp. 77–78.
126. Gracián, p. 44.
127. Yepes, Vida, Virtudes, y Milagros, pp. 18, 423.
128. Ribera, Vida de la Madre Teresa de Jesús, p. 543. Ribera’s circular reasoning
can be found in Gregory of Tours (sixth c­ entury): “For, as Gregory frequently
repeats, if healing and mercy did not happen in his own days, who would be-
lieve that they had ever happened or ever would happen again?” Peter Brown,
The Cult of the Saints (University of Chicago Press, 1981), p. 82.
129. Luis de León, Obras Completas Castellanas, 1:920.

2. Saint Teresa of Avila, Reluctant Aethrobat

1. Testimony of ­Sister Isabel de Santo Domingo, in Procesos, 2:463.

2. Libro de la Vida 20.1, O.C., p. 108.
3. See Jodi Bilinkoff, The Avila of Saint Teresa (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1989); and Alison Weber, Teresa of Avila and the Rhe­toric of Femininity
(Prince­ton University Press, 1990).
4. See Alison Weber, “Saint Teresa, Demonologist,” in Culture and Control in
Counter-­Reformation Spain, edited by Anne J. Cruz and Mary Elizabeth Perry
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991).
5. Medieval ­
women mystics w
­ ere often suspected of greater spiritual and
­mental instability than men, but it is Jean Gerson, theologian and chancel-
lor of the University of Paris, who is often credited with intensifying this
 404 n o t e s t o pa g e s 7 3 – 77

suspicion and lending it greater intensity in his 1415 treatise De probatione

spirituum, in Jean Gerson, Opera omnia, edited by Louis Ellies Du Pin, SJ,
5 vols. (Antwerp, 1706), 1:37–43. See Wendy Love Anderson, “Gerson’s
­ omen,” in A Companion to Jean Gerson, edited by Brian Patrick
Stance on W
McGuire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 293–316. For attitudes t­oward w
­ omen
mystics in Teresa’s day and age, see Weber, Teresa of Avila and the Rhe­toric of
Femininity, esp. chap. 1, “­Little W
­ omen: Counter-­Reformation Misogyny,”
pp. 17–41.
6. Girolamo Savonarola, Trattato della revelazione della Chiesa divinitus fatta /
Compendio di rivelazioni (Venice, 1536), fols. 16r–16v; Diego Perez de Valdivia,
Aviso de gente recogida, edited by Alvaro Huergo and Juan Esquerda Bifet (Uni-
versidad de Salamanca, 1977), pp. 17–21, 55–104; Alison Weber, “Between
Ecstasy and Exorcism: Religious Negotiation in Sixteeenth-­Century Spain,”
Journal of Medieval and Re­nais­sance Studies 23 (1993): 221–34.
7. See Andrew Keitt, Inventing the Sacred: Imposture, Inquisition, and the Bound­
aries of the Super­natural in Golden Age Spain (Leiden: Brill, 2005).
8. See Carlos Eire, The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila: A Biography (Prince­ton Uni-
versity Press, 2019), esp. chaps. 1 and 2.
9. Diego de Yepes, Vida, Virtudes, y Milagros de la Bienaventurada Teresa de Jesús
(Madrid, 1797), chap. 15, p. 112. All subsequent page references ­will be to this
edition.
10. Yepes, Vida, Virtudes, y Milagros, chap. 15, p. 113.
11. Vida 20.5, O.C., p. 109, where she uses “arrebatamiento” to describe a purely
spiritual vision with no accompanying physical phenomena.
12. As in Vida 38.1, O.C., p. 207.
13. Vida 20.6, O.C., p. 109. Teresa also complained that they left her wracked with
pain, as if all her joints had been pulled apart. Vida 20.12, O.C., pp. 111–12.
14. For Sor María, see Richard Kagan, “Politics, Prophecy, and the Inquisition in
Late Sixteenth-­Century Spain,” in Cultural Encounters: The Impact of the In-
quisition in Spain and the New World, edited by Mary Elizabeth Perry and
Anne J. Cruz (University of California Press, 1991), pp. 105–20, and esp. note
50 for further reading.
15. Vida 31.12, O.C., p. 168.
16. Moradas 6.6.2, O.C., p. 544.
17. For an incisive analy­sis of the direct effect of such beliefs on Teresa, see We-
ber, “Saint Teresa, Demonologist,” pp. 171–95.
18. Vida 29:5–6, O.C., pp. 155–56.
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 7 7 – 82 405

19. Pope Gregory XV, “Bula de canonización de Santa Teresa de Jesús,” in Biblio-
teca mística carmelitana, edited by Silverio de Santa Teresa, 35 vols. (Burgos:
El Monte Carmelo, 1934–1949), 2:219–21.
20. For details, see Eire, Life of Saint Teresa, pp. 50–54, 150–55.
21. Fray Luis de León, Obras Completas Castellanas de Fray Luis de León, edited by
Félix Garcia, OSA, 4th ed., 2 vols. (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos,
1967), 1:905–6.
22. Vida 20.19, O.C., p. 113: “Muchas veces se engolfa el alma u la engolfa el Se-
ñor en si, por mijor decir.”
23. Vida 20.18, O.C., p. 113: “Este transformamiento de el alma de el todo en
Dios.”
24. Vida 24.5, O.C., p. 133.
25. Cuentas de conciencia 58.8, O.C., p. 626.
26. Moradas 6.5.1, O.C., p. 540.
27. Vida 20.18, O.C., p. 113. Teresa adds: “Although one rarely loses conscious-
ness, it has happened to me sometimes, totally, but only infrequently and
briefly. Ordinarily, one’s consciousness does get disturbed, but despite one’s
inability to do anything outwardly, one is still able to hear and understand
every­thing, as if it ­were taking place far away.”
28. Vida 20.13, O.C., p. 112.
29. Vida 20.14, O.C., p. 112.
30. Catalepsy (from Greek for “seizing, grasping”) is a neurological condition that
­causes muscular rigidity, fixity of posture, and unresponsiveness to external
stimuli, as well as decreased sensitivity to pain. Teresa of Avila has been diag-
nosed with temporal lobe epilepsy. See Marcella Biro Barton, “Saint Teresa of
Avila: Did She Have Epilepsy?,” Catholic Historical Review 68, no. 4 (October
1982): 581–98; and Encarnación Juárez-­Almendros, “Historical Testimony
of Female Disability: The Neurological Impairment of Teresa de Ávila,” in
Disabled Bodies in Early Modern Spanish Lit­er­a­ture (Liverpool University Press,
2017), pp. 116–66.
31. Cuentas de conciencia 58.7, O.C, p. 626. In the Vida 20.4, she says, “The soul
seems to stop animating the body, and thus the natu­ral heat of the body di-
minishes very sensibly, and it grows colder gradually, though with the greatest
sweetness and delight.” O.C., p. 109.
32. Vida 20.18, O.C., p. 113.
33. Vida 20.19, O.C., p. 113.
34. Moradas 6.5.12, O.C., p. 543.
 406 n o t e s t o pa g e s 8 2 – 89

35. Vida 20.12, O.C., pp. 111–12: “Que parece me han desconyuntado.”
36. Vida 20.21, O.C., p. 114.
37. Vida 20.11, O.C., p. 111: “Un recio martirio sabroso.”
38. Vida 29.14, O.C., p. 158.
39. Moradas 6.5.9, O.C., p. 543: “Con la presteza que sale la pelota de un arcabuz,
cuando le ponen el fuego.” Teresa uses terms from her own ­century: an arquebus
that shoots balls rather than bullets and a fuse that is lit and ignites gunpow-
der rather than a trigger.
40. Vida 20.3–4, O.C., p. 109.
41. Vida 20.4, O.C., p. 109.
42. Vida 20.6, O.C., p. 109.
43. Vida, 20.7, O.C., pp. 109–10.
44. Vida 20.7, O.C., p. 110; emphasis added.
45. Vida 20.7, O.C., p. 110.
46. Moradas 6.6.2, O.C., p. 544.
47. Moradas 6.6.1, O.C., p. 544.
48. O.C., p. 1074.
49. According to the ultimate Spanish lexicographical authority, “tornar” means
“to rotate the arm a fraction of a circle in order to launch the bird of prey on
one’s wrist.” “Girar el brazo una fracción de círculo para lanzar al aire el ave
de cetrería posada en el puño,” Diccionario de la Lengua Española, 2 vols.,
21st ed. (Madrid: La Real Academia Española, 1992), 2:1997.
50. See Breck Falconry, “Falconry Glossary,” accessed January 5, 2023, https://­
sites​.­google​.­com​/­site​/­breckfalconry​/­glossary. See also The Compact Edition
of the Oxford En­glish Dictionary, 2 vols. (Oxford University Press, 1971),
1:350.
51. Yepes, Vida, Virtudes, y Milagros, chap. 15, p. 110.
52. Moradas 6.5.2, O.C., p. 541.
53. In the first ­century AD, Pliny the Elder mentions in his Natu­ral History: “When
rubbing with the fin­gers draws forth the caloris anima (heat of the soul),
amber attracts straw, dry leaves, and linden bark, just as the magnet attracts
iron.” See Yoshitaka Yamamoto, The Pull of History: ­Human Understanding of
Magnetism and Gravity through the Ages (Singapore: World Scientific Publish-
ing, 2018), p. 94.
54. Moradas 6.5.12, O.C., p. 543.
55. Moradas 6.6.2, O.C., p. 544.
56. One need not puzzle much over this, given that Teresa consistently explains
why she wanted her levitating raptures to cease: they attracted too much of
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 8 9 – 97 407

the wrong kind of attention, they left her feeling like a stupefied drunkard,
and worst of all, as far as she could tell, they ­were unnecessary.
57. Her hagiographer Diego de Yepes (Vida, Virtudes, y Milagros, chap. 15, p. 114)
says the levitations ­stopped “fifteen years before her death,” which would be
the year 1567. Teresa finished writing her Vida in 1565.
58. Vida 20.5, O.C., p. 109.
59. Cuentas de conciencia 9, O.C., p. 597: “No conviene ahora; bastante crédito
tienes para lo que yo pretendo.”
60. Procesos, 2:463.
61. Fundaciones 5.8, O.C., p. 690.
62. Francisco Ribera, Vida de Santa Teresa de Jesús (Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 1908),
p. 465.
63. Miguel Batista de Lanuza, Vida de la bendita madre Isabel de Santo Domingo,
compañera de Santa Teresa de Iesus, coadjutora de la santa en la nueua reforma
de la Orden (Madrid, 1638), p. 33.
64. The artists involved ­were Adriaen Collaert and Cornelis Galle. For more on
this graphic hagiography, see Eire, Life of Saint Teresa, pp. 136–41.
65. Yepes, Vida, Virtudes, y Milagros, chap. 15, p. 112.
66. Yepes, chap. 15, p. 110.
67. Jeronimo de San José, Historia del Venerable Padre Fr. Juan de la Cruz, Pimer
Descalzo Carmelita, Compañero y Coadjutor de Santa Teresa de Jesus en la Fun-
dación de su Reforma (Madrid, 1641), bk. 2, chap. 9, p. 183.
68. De San José, Historia, bk. 2, chap. 9, p. 185. Carmelites believed that they
could trace the origins of their monastic rule all the way back to the prophet
Elijah, who was taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot (2 Kings 2:3–9). Teresa
and John ­were attempting to reinstate the “ancient rule” among the Carmel-
ites that they claimed was based on Elijah’s.
69. E. Allison Peers, introduction to The Autobiography of Teresa of Jesus (New
York: Image Books, 1991), p. xlix: “Her methods of exposition are not rigidly
logical. . . . ​Her books have a gracioso desorden [Herrick’s ‘sweet disorder’].”
(Note: Peers’s parenthetical reference is to a poem by Robert Herrick, “Delight
in Disorder.”)
70. Vida 20.5, O.C., p. 109.
71. Gen. 18:16–33; Exod. 32:9–14; 2 Kings 20:1–11.
72. See Gillian Ahlgren, Teresa of Avila and the Politics of Sanctity (Ithaca, NY: Cor-
nell University Press, 1996).
73. See José Luis Sánchez Lora, Mujeres, conventos, y formas de la religiosidad rar-
roca (Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 1988).
 408 n o t e s t o pa g e s 9 8 – 10 4

3. Saint Joseph of Cupertino, Shrieking Aerial Ecstatic

1. Bernino, pp. 1–2.

2. Parisciani has compiled the most complete listing of all t­hese manuscript
sources in his ND, pp. xix–­xxvii.
3. Such as Pastrovicci, and Beatificationis et canonizationis Josephi a Cupertino
(Rome, 1751).
4. Bernino/Bernini also wrote a history of heresies and a biography of his own
­father. For a documented discussion of Domenico’s biography and professional
­career, see Franco Mormando, Domenico Bernini: The Life of Gian Lorenzo Ber-
nini; A Translation and Critical Edition, with Introduction and Commentary
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011), pp. 4–14.
5. “Immobile in estasi in presenza mia.” Bernino, p. 345.
6. See note 1.
7. Agelli, p. 2. The legend that Saint Francis was born in a stable—­accepted as a
fact by several of Saint Joseph’s biographers—­has been traced to Bartholomew
of Pisa’s De Conformitate Vitae B. P. Francisci ad Vitam Domini Nostri Jesu Christi,
which was approved by the Observant Franciscan order in 1399.
8. Cupertino, California, was named ­after Arroyo San José de Cupertino, now
known as Stevens Creek, a stream named ­after Saint Joseph of Cupertino in
1776 by Spanish explorers.
9. Parisciani, ND, p. 5.
10. Nuti, p. 2. Gustavo Parisciani, however, points out in ND, p. 11, that ­others
remembered young Joseph as very good natured, “di buona indole e di buona
inclinazione.”
11. Agelli, p. 2.
12. Agelli, p. 3.
13. Bernino shortens the name to Boccaperta, p. 5.
14. The earliest hagiography (Nutti, p. 4) says six years; l­ater ones say four (Agelli,
p. 4), or five (Pastrovicchi, p. 2).
15. Agelli, p. 3: “Massime non ammaestrato nelle scienze.”
16. Agelli (pp. 5–7) and Pastrovicchi (pp. 3–4) disagree on ­these details. Pastro-
vicchi only mentions ­Uncle Francesco, but Agelli says that ­Uncle Giovanni
­ ncles considered Joseph totally
also partook in this rejection and that both u
unfit for monastic life or the priesthood.
17. Pastrovicchi (pp. 3–4) attributes the contact with the Capuchin provincial to
­Uncle Francesco Desa’s patronage, but Nuti (p. 8), Bernino (p. 13), and Agelli
(pp. 7–8) say that Joseph approached him on his own initiative.
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 0 4 –1 1 3 409

18. Agelli, p. 8: “Stolido di mente, o malsano di corpo, o insofferente d’animo, o

mancate di vista per gli esercizi manuali del Convento.”
19. Agelli, p. 8: “Sentirsi cavar la pella e distaccare la carne dalle ossa.”
20. “Secolo ingannevole,” a term employed by Pastrovicchi, p. 3.
21. Pastrovicchi, p. 5.
22. Bernino, p. 27.
23. Bernino, p. 28.
24. Nuti, p. 15.
25. Agelli, p. 16.
26. Pastrovicchi, p. 9.
27. Bernino, p. 41. Like Saint Francis, Joseph also took to calling his own body
­Brother Ass (Frà Asino), p. 46.
28. Agelli, p. 21.
29. “O come alienato da’ sensi, o come disdegnosoi porgere sollievo a quel corpo.”
Agelli, p. 122.
30. Vida 29.13, O.C., p. 158.
31. Gustavo Parisciani, Ecstasy, Jail, and Sanctity (Osimo, Italy: Pax et Bonum,
1964), p. 12.
32. Pastrovicchi, pp. 30–32. For an attempt to distinguish Joseph’s levitations as
“holy” rather than demonic, see Antonio Blasucci, “Il fenomeno dell’estasi in
San Giuseppe da Copertino,” in San Giuseppe da Copertino tra storia ed attual-
ità, edited by Gustavo Parisciani and Giancarlo Galeazzi (Padua: Messagero,
1984), pp. 93–118.
33. Such callous testing of cataleptic saints in ecstasy was nothing new. Saint
Douceline was subjected to even worse treatment in the thirteenth ­century.
See Philippine De Porcelet, La Vie de Sainte Douceline fondatrice des béguines
de Marseille, Composée Au Treizième Siècle En Langue Provençale, translated by
J. H. Albanés (Marseille: Camoin, 1879), pp. 81, 93.
34. Agelli, pp. 25–26.
35. Pastrovicchi, pp. 20–21.
36. Pastrovicchi, p. 22; Agelli, p. 90.
37. Acts of the Apostles 2:1–4.
38. Pastrovicchi, p. 22.
39. Pastrovicchi, pp. 21–22.
40. Bernino, pp. 56–70.
41. Bernino, p. 81.
42. ASV, Riti, 2045, fol. 119v, cited in Parisciani, ND, p. 169.
43. Agelli, p. 28: “Miracolo di Santità.”
 410 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 1 3 –1 2 1

44. Pastrovicchi, p. 11: “Prodigiosa beneficenza.”

45. See Andrew W. Keitt, Inventing the Sacred: Imposture, Inquisition, and the Bound­
aries of the Super­natural in Golden Age Spain (Leiden: Brill, 2005).
46. For a thorough account of Joseph’s brush with the Inquisition, accompanied
by original documents, see Gustavo Parisciani, L’Inquisizione e il caso S. Gi-
useppe da Copertino (Padua: Edizioni Messaggero Padova, 1996).
47. Parisciani, ND, p. 202.
48. ASV, Riti, 2039, fol. 77, cited by Agelli, p. 45; Parisciani, L’Inquisizione, pp. 50–
51. Bernino, p. 84, has slightly dif­fer­ent wording.
49. Agelli, p. 47.
50. This narrative is based on Prospero Bottini’s Relation to the Holy Office in
Rome, app. I in Parisciani, L’Inquisizione, pp. 285–90, as well as Parisciani’s
own summary of the proceedings, pp. 43–80.
51. Saint Teresa of Avila also begged God to stop her levitations, but in her case—
in contrast to Joseph’s—­God granted her request. Vida 20.5, O.C., p. 109.
52. As one of Joseph’s accusers put it, “La santità si deve occultare, e non andarsi
publicando per le piazze.” Parisciani, L’Inquisizione, app. 1, “Relazione di Pros-
pero Bottini,” p. 286.
53. Agelli, pp. 50–52; Bernino, pp. 92–94.
54. Pastrovicchi, p. 24; Agelli, p. 57; Bernino, p. 103.
55. Pastrovicchi, p. 15; Agelli, p. 64.
56. Agelli, p. 65; Pastrovicchi, p. 16.
57. San Giovanni Laterano, San Pietro, San Paolo fuori le mura, Santa Maria
Maggiore, San Lorenzo fuori le mura, San Sebastiano, and Santa Croce in
Gerusalemme.
58. Bernino, p. 128.
59. Agelli, p. 69.
60. Pastrovicchi, p. 17.
61. For more on Joseph’s impact in Poland, see Gustavo Parisciani, San Giuseppe
da Copertino e la Polonia (Padua: Edizione Messaggero, 1988).
62. Bernino, pp. 170–76.
63. Agelli, p. 102; Nuti, pp. 572–73.
64. Bernino, pp. 176–77.
65. Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, 56 vols. (Leipzig: Jetzer-­Kähler, 1881),
14:177–80.
66. The diary of the Franciscan abbot of Assisi suggests that Johann Friedrich
was already leaning t­ oward Catholicism at the time of his visit. See I Tre Diari
(1645–1652) dell’abate Arcangelo Rosmi su San Giuseppe da Copertino, edited
by Gustavo Parisciani (Padua: Messagero, 1991), pp. 199–201.
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 2 1 –1 3 2 411

67. Bernino, p. 181; Agelli, p. 105.

68. Pastrovicchi, pp. 29–30. “Sia maledetto quando son venuto in questi paesi;
stavo nella mia patria quieto d’animo, ed ora qui mi agitano furie, e scrupoli
di coscienza.”
69. Agelli, pp. 113–14.
70. Agelli, pp. 109–11.
71. “Alquanto disturbato in quel punto.” Pastrovicchi, p. 69.
72. Parisciani, Ecstasy, Jail, and Sanctity, p. 45.
73. The full text of the instructions can be found in Parisciani, ND, p. 1012.
74. “Era la più oscura e cattiva di quel Convento.” Agelli, p. 121.
75. “Migliaja di persone.” F
­ ather Giovanni Battista, Capuchin Vicar of Pietrarub-
bia, quoted in Agelli, p. 125.
76. Quoted by Agelli, p. 126. Pastrovicchi also mentions capanne (huts), p. 70.
77. Bernino, p. 344.
78. Quoted in Agelli, p. 125.
79. Pastrovicchi, pp. 70–71.
80. “Con forza sovrumana.” Agelli, p. 135.
81. “Con grande sbigottimento.” Agelli, p. 134.
82. Agelli, pp. 135–36; Pastrovicchi, p. 71.
83. See petition dated May 26, 1656, in Parisciani, ND, p. 1014.
84. “In quel santuario basta un San Francesco.” Agelli, p. 139.
85. See document 18 in Parisciani, ND, pp. 1014–15.
86. Agelli, p. 140.
87. For more on this shrine, see Karin Vélez, The Miraculous Flying House of Lo-
reto: Spreading Catholicism in the Early Modern World (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­
ton University Press, 2018).
88. Agelli, p. 143; Pastrovicchi, pp. 75–76.
89. “Soli religiosi più accreditati e più savi.” Agelli, p. 147.
90. ­Father Eugenio Maccatelli, quoted in Parisciani, Ecstasy, Jail, and Sanctity,
p. 55.
91. Pastrovicchi, p. 77.
92. Agelli, p. 155; Nuti, p. 661. Parisciani, ND, p. 917, adds hemorrhoids to his
list of ailments.
93. Agelli, p. 158.
94. Nuti, pp. 667–68.
95. Agelli, p. 160; Nuti, p. 666.
96. Pastrovicchi, pp. 81–82.
97. Agelli, p. 162; Pastrovicchi, p. 82; Nuti, p. 669.
98. Agelli, pp. 163–65.
 412 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 3 2 –1 3 9

99. Nuti, p. 676. The practice of performing autopsies on the corpses of holy men
and ­women became common in this era. See Bradford A. Bouley, Pious Post-
mortems: Anatomy, Sanctity, and the Catholic Church in Early Modern Eu­rope
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017).
100. “Fiamma sovrannaturale d’amor divino.” Agelli, p. 166; Pastrovicchi, p. 84.
101. Agelli, pp. 167–68; Pastrovicchi, pp. 84–85; Nuti, pp. 678–79.
102. Parisciani, ND, pp. 965–1003, provides a detailed account of Joseph’s canon-
ization pro­cess.
103. A development well documented and analyzed by Paolo Parigi, The Rational-
ization of Miracles (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
104. Manifesto summário para os que ignoram poderse navegar pelo elemento do ar.
See Adílio Jorge Marques, ed., Bartolomeu Lourenço de Gusmão: O padre inven-
tor (Rio de Janeiro: Andrea Jakobsson Estúdio, 2011).
105. For a dif­fer­ent sort of miracle account connected to this patronage, see “A
Feud with Saint Joseph Cupertino,” From the House­tops, vol. 3.1, 1948, repro-
duced at https://­catholicism​.­org​/­a​-­feud​-­with​-­st​-­joseph​-­cupertino​.­html.

4. Making Sense of the Flying Friar

Epigraph: Agelli, p. 154.

1. For a long list of witnesses and visitors, see Parisciani, L’Inquisizione e il caso
S. Giuseppe da Copertino (Padua: Edizioni Messaggero Padova, 1996), pp. 202–
11; Pastrovicchi, p. 87. See also Gustavo Parisciani, San Giuseppe da Coper-
tino e la Polonia (Padua: Messagero, 1988).
2. Agelli (pp. 198–99) stresses this fact, emphasizing that the authenticity of
­these elite testimonies was confirmed by the authority of the papacy (“For-
matti coll’ autorità della Sede Apostolica”).
3. William Crookes, “Notes of an Enquiry into the Phenomena Called Spiritual
during the Years 1870–1873,” Quarterly Journal of Science, 2nd ser., 3 (Janu-
ary 1874): 77.
4. Joseph’s transfer from Assisi to Pietrarubia was “cum ordine praeciso et ei non
permitteretur allocutio cum saecularibus.” Parisciani, L’Inquisizione, appx. I,
pp. 289–90.
5. But not at all as architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe meant it when he coined
this expression. See Jeremy Till and Sarah Wigglesworth, “The ­Future Is Hairy,”
­ atter, edited by Jonathan Hill (Milton Park,
in Architecture—­the Subject Is M
UK: Routledge, 2001), p. 12.
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 4 0 –1 4 5 413

6. Bertrand Méheust, Somnambulisme et médiumnité, 2 vols. (Le Plessis-­Robinson:

Empecheurs, 1999), 2:271–73. For more on this insight, see Jeffrey Kripal,
Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred (University of Chicago
Press, 2010), p. 224.
7. Jure Kristo, “The Interpretation of Religious Experience: What Do Mystics
Intend When They Talk about Their Experiences?,” Journal of Religion 62,
no. 1 (January 1982): 21–38.
8. For a more detailed account of editions and translations of Teresa’s texts, see
Carlos Eire, The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila: A Biography (Prince­ton Univer-
sity Press, 2019), pp. 99–131.
9. Libro de la Vida 20.1, O.C., p. 108.
10. “Questo fortunato stato di Estasi, o Ratti” is but one example: Bernino, p. 334.
11. Agelli, pp. 188–89.
12. See Kristo, “Interpretation of Religious Experience.”
13. “La mente, e il corpo, l’huomo interno, e’l esterno.” Bernino, p. 323.
14. Nuti, p. 516; Bernino, p. 287. See also Parisciani, ND, p. 326.
15. Bernino, p. 334: “Perche di lui allora non v’era altro, che l’Anima, che tutta
stava fuori di sè in altro Mondo.”
16. Vida 20, O.C. For more on this subject, see Olivier Leroy, La Lévitation (Paris:
Librairie Valois, 1928), pp. 190–202, and the entry “Lévitation” in Diction-
naire de spiritualité, ascétique et mystique, 17 vols. (Paris: Beauchesne, 1933–1995),
9:738–41.
17. Nuti, p. 156.
18. Bernino, p. 334.
19. See Edward Shorter and Max Fink, The Madness of Fear: A History of Catato-
nia (Oxford University Press, 2018); and Stanley Caroff, Stephan Mann, and
Andrew Francis, eds., Catatonia: From Psychopathology to Neurobiology (Wash-
ington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing, 2007).
20. Agelli, pp. 134–35.
21. This is not to say that some retroactive diagnosis is impossible. Other mys-
tics have had their ecstasies and visions attributed to some kind of pathology.
Hildegard of Bingen was diagnosed as suffering from visual migraines over
100 years ago. See Charles Singer, “The Scientific Views and Visions of Saint
Hildegard (1098–1180),” in his Studies in the History and Method of Science
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1917), pp. 1–58. As previously mentioned, Teresa
of Avila has been retroactively diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy (see
chapter 2, note 30).
 414 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 4 5 –1 5 2

22. “Fu una gran forza quella, fu una gran forza, fu una gran forza!” Parisciani,
ND, p. 438. Teresa writes: “Desde debajo de los pies me levantavan fuerzas
tan grandes que no sé como lo comparar.” Vida 20.6, O.C., p. 109.
23. “Mi venne una cosa soave, soave.” Nuti, p. 570.
24. “Oh, questa mia infermità!” Bernino, p. 339.
25. “Come un assaggio della vera gloria del paradiso.” Parisciani, ND, p. 440.
26. Agelli, p. 181.
27. Agelli, p. 189; Bernino, pp. 329–30. Saint Teresa said: “As quickly as a bullet
leaves a gun when the trigger is pulled, ­there begins within the soul a flight.”
Moradas 6.5.9, O.C., p. 543. Could this coincidence suggest this meta­phor was
commonly used in monastic circles?
28. Agelli, pp. 135–36; Pastrovicchi, p. 71. Joseph’s ecstatic screaming is totally
unique.
29. ASV Riti 2044. See Catrien Santing, “Tira mi sù: Pope Benedict XIV and the
Beatification of the Flying Saint Giuseppe da Copertino,” in Medicine and Re-
ligion in Enlightenment Eu­rope, edited by Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cun-
ningham (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2007), p. 97.
30. Parisciani, ND, p. 442n12. The number of Joseph’s levitations is unique too,
as is their frequency. No other levitator on rec­ord comes close to matching
him.
31. Pastrovicchi, p. 27. Yet another use of the gunpowder meta­phor.
32. Once, for instance, merely hearing a girl sing made him rise a few feet off the
ground “higher than a ­table.” Agelli, p. 40.
33. Bernino, p. 343.
34. Agelli, p. 184.
35. Agelli, p. 123.
36. Agelli, p. 102; Nuti, pp. 572–73; Bernino, pp. 176–77.
37. Agelli, p. 97; Bernino, pp. 172, 180.
38. Agelli, p. 104; Bernino, p. 181.
39. Bernino, p. 184; Agelli, pp. 106–7.
40. Bernino, pp. 195–96; Agelli, pp. 109–11.
41. Pastrovicchi, pp. 29–30; Agelli, p. 107; Bernino, pp. 183–84.
42. Eric John Dingwall, Some ­Human Oddities: Studies in the Queer, the Uncanny
and the Fanatical (London: Home & Van Thal, 1947), p. 20.
43. For a brief account of his f­amily’s machinations, see Oskar Garstein, Rome
and the Counter-­Reformation in Scandinavia: The Age of Gustavus Adolphus and
Queen Christina of Sweden (Leiden: Brill, 1992), p. 461.
44. “Tenerissima divozione.” Agelli, p. 108.
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 5 2 –1 5 6 415

45. For a brief account of this horrifically unhappy marriage, see Charles Ingrao,
The Habsburg Monarchy, 1618–1815, 2nd ed. (Cambridge University Press,
2003), p. 128.
46. Georg Heinrich Pertz, ed., “Bey dem so genandten wunderübenden Pater Jo-
seph,” Leibnizens Geschichtliche Aufsätze und Gedichte Gesammelte Werke. Aus
den Handschriften der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Hannover, 4 vols. (Hannover,
1843), vol. 1, p. 9.
47. For more on this mathematical puzzle that remained unsolved for three and
a half centuries, see Simon Singh, Fermat’s Last Theorem (London: Fourth Es-
tate, 1997).
48. Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-­rational ­Factor in the
Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational, translated by John W. Har-
vey (Oxford University Press, 1936), p. 22.
49. “The attributes of liminality or of liminal personae (‘threshold ­people’) are nec-
essarily ambiguous.” See Victor Turner, The Ritual Pro­cess (London: Penguin,
1969), p. 81. Anthropologist Victor Turner developed the concept of liminality
in the twentieth ­century, relying on the work of Arnold Van Gennep, Rites of
Passage (1909). See also Victor Turner, “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal
Period in Rites de Passage,” in The Forest of Symbols (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 1967).
50. Agelli, p. 154.
51. Otto, Idea of the Holy, p. 7. “Numinous” derives from the Latin “numen” (“god,”
“spirit,” or “divine”); “ominous” from the Latin “omen” (potentially forebod-
ing event). T
­ hese terms, as used in the study of religion, w
­ ere developed by
Rudolph Otto in his Das Heilige (Breslau: Trewendt and Granier, 1917).
52. Agelli, p. 161.
53. Otto, Idea of the Holy, pp. 12–30.
54. As in the case of some paint­ers at Assisi: Pastrovicchi, p. 25.
55. As in the case of the congregation at Nardo: Pastrovicchi, p. 23.
56. As in the case of the Spanish viceroy’s wife: Bernino, pp. 176–77.
57. Bernino (p. 178) lists weeping as a common response to Joseph’s levitations.
58. As in the case of one of the Capuchin friars at Fossombrone: Agelli, p. 134.
59. Bernino, p. 341: “Oppressi da sacro terrore”; emphasis added.
60. Agelli, p. 27: “Disturbandosi co’ suoi ratti ed estasi le funzioni.”
61. Agelli, pp. 115–16.
62. Bernino, pp. 169–70.
63. Gustavo Parisciani, Ecstasy, Jail, and Sanctity (Osimo, Italy: Pax et Bonum,
1964), pp. 43–44.
 416 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 5 6 –1 6 0

64. For a superb summary and analy­sis of this archetype, see John Saward, Perfect
Fools: Folly for Christ’s Sake in Catholic and Orthodox Spirituality (Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1980).
65. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, The Letters of St Bernard of Clairvaux, translated
by B. Scott James (London: Burns and Oates, 1953), p. 130.
66. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica II–­II, Q. 113, Art. 1 ad 1, translated by
T. R. Heath, accessed January 22, 2023, https://­www​.­newadvent​.­org​/­summa​
/­3113​.­htm.
67. Agelli, p. 91.
68. Nuti (pp. 369–401), devotes an entire chapter (33) to the marvel of Joseph’s
super­natural wisdom.
69. Another cleric who was a theologian agreed, saying “­Brother Giuseppe dis-
coursed on Divine Attributes very learnedly b
­ ecause of his infused super­natural
knowledge, and left me stunned and amazed.” Bernino, pp. 166–67.
70. “Si vedeva chiaramente che la sua scienza erea soprannaturale ed infusa.”
Agelli, p. 95; Bernino, p. 167.
71. Agelli, p. 26.
72. “E qui pregollo a non interrogarlo di vantaggio, perchè era ignorante, e non
sapeva discorrere.” Agelli, p. 118.
73. Recognizing Saint Francis as a holy fool is a centuries-­old tradition stretch-
ing back to his own day, but in the late twentieth c­ entury, it began to receive
increasing attention, as evidenced by the publication of books that linked
Francis with foolishness in their titles, such as Julien Green, God’s Fool: The
Life and Times of Francis of Assisi (Harper San Francisco, 1987); Christopher
Coelho, A New Kind of Fool: Meditations on St. Francis and His Values (London:
Bloomsbury, 1991); and Jon Sweeney, The St. Francis Holy Fool Prayer Book
(Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2017). Curiously, Fools for Christ: Essays on the
True, the Good and the Beautiful (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2001), by the
eminent theological historian Jaroslav Pelikan, does not include Saint Fran-
cis or any Catholic figures.
74. The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, 37 vols. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
1986), 2:71.
75. “Hò veduto, e parlato con un altro San Francesco”: Bernino, p. 176; Agelli,
p. 102.
76. Nuti, p. 246.
77. Bernino, p. 332: “La celebrava più in aria, che in terra”; Agelli, p. 193.
78. Agelli, p. 123; Bernino, pp. 334–35, 346.
79. Agelli, p. 193; Bernino, pp. 332–33; Nuti, p. 247.
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 6 2 –1 7 4 417

80. Agelli, pp. 24–25; Nuti describes an instance of clasped hands (p. 570): “Con
le mani giunte.”
81. “Sonnolenza, Infermità, e Sbalordimento suo”: Bernino, p. 335. Displays such
as this are numerous: see Agelli, p. 196.
82. “Con somma mia ammirazzione giudicai impossibile che umanamente ciò
accadesse.” Summarium, pp. 8, 11, cited in Parisciani, ND, p. 448.
83. Bernino pp. 333–34; emphasis added.
84. Agelli, p. 195; Bernino, p. 340.
85. Agelli, p. 196; Bernino, pp. 340–41.
86. Agelli, p. 195; Bernino, p. 340.
87. Pastrovicchi, pp. 20–21.
88. Bernino, p. 339.
89. Bernino, p. 332.
90. Bernino, p. 341; Agelli, p. 196.
91. Agelli, p. 197.
92. Agelli, p. 88.
93. Agelli, pp. 88–89; Pastrovicchi, p. 26.
94. Pastrovicchi, p. 22; Agelli, p. 90.
95. Agelli, pp. 89–90; Pastrovicchi, p. 26.
96. Nuti, p. 247: “Un grido grande, che si sentiva molto lontano.”
97. Agelli, p. 189; Bernino, pp. 329–30.
98. Pastrovicchi, p. 71.
99. “Urlo sì strano di veemente rimbombante voce.” Agelli, pp. 135–36.
100. Agelli, p. 22.
101. William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act 3, scene 1.

5. Transvection, Teleportation, and All That

1. Saint Joseph did bilocate, according to some accounts, but only a few times.
One such account can be found in Bernino, p. 103.
2. King Philip IV’s ­father, Philip III, had established a similar relationship with
the nun Sor Luisa de Carrión, who ended up being denounced to the Inquisi-
tion and died ­under a cloud of suspicion. For more on her, see the two studies
by Patrocinio García Barriúso, OFM: La monja de Carrión: Sor Luisa de la As-
censión Colmenares Cabezón (Zamora, Spain: Ediciones Monte Casino, 1986)
and Sor Luisa de la Ascensión: Una contemplativa del Siglo xvii (Madrid: self-­
published, 1993). See also Teófanes Egido López, “Religiosidad Popu­lar y Tau-
maturgia del Barroco: Los milagros de la Monja de Carrión,” in Actas del II
 418 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 7 6 –1 7 8

Congreso de Historia de Palencia, 4 vols., edited by María Valentina Calleja

González (Palencia, Spain: Departamento de Cultura, 1990), 3:11–40.
3. To read about bilocation in the Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mys-
tique (Paris, 1937–1995), one must do so in the article titled “Multilocation.”
4. For more on the science of teleportation, see Michio Kaku, Physics of the
Impossible (New York: Doubleday, 2008), chap. 4, pp. 55–69; and Chad Orzel,
“The Physics of Star Trek: Quantum Teleportation versus Transporters,” Forbes,
August 15, 2015.
5. See Charles Richet, Traité de métapsychique (Paris: Alcan, 1923), pp. 700–710;
Jean Lhermitte, Le problème des miracles (Paris, 1956), pp. 179–212. On the
pseudo-­philosophical subject of métapsychique, see J. de Tonquédec, Merveil-
leux et miracle chrétien (Paris: Centre d’étude Laennec, 1955); and Yvonne Cas-
tellan, La métapsychique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1955; ­later
editions have the title La parapsychologie).
6. At least in Western Eu­ro­pean languages. See Ernest Bozzano, Considerazioni ed
ipotesi sui fenomeni di bilocazione (Rome: Tipografia Dante, 1911); translated
into French as Les phénomènes de bilocation (Paris: Éditions Jean Meyer, 1937).
7. See Pamela Rae Heath, Mind-­Matter Interaction: A Review of Historical Reports,
Theory, and Research (London: McFarland, 2011), esp. pp. 28–32; and the essays
in Edward Kelly, Adam Crabtree, and Paul Marshall, eds., Beyond Physicalism:
­Toward Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality (New York: Rowman and Lit-
tlefield, 2015).
8. Defined in the Encyclopedia Britannica as “Uncertainty princi­ple, also called
Heisenberg uncertainty princi­ple or indeterminacy princi­ple, statement, ar-
ticulated (1927) by the German physicist Werner Heisenberg, that the posi-
tion and the velocity of an object cannot both be mea­sured exactly, at the
same time, even in theory. The very concepts of exact position and exact ve-
locity together, in fact, have no meaning in nature.”
9. Bernino, p. 103.
10. Dominik Wujastyk, “The Path to Liberation through Yogic Mindfulness in
Early Āyurveda,” in Yoga in Practice, edited by David Gordon White (Prince­
ton University Press, 2012), p. 34.
11. Quote from Porphyry cited in Christoph Riedweg, Pythagoras: His Life, Teach-
ing, and Influence, translated by Steven Rendall (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univer-
sity Press, 2002), p. 4.
12. See Mark Verman and Shulamit H. Adler, “Path Jumping in the Jewish Magi-
cal Tradition,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 1, no. 2 (1993/1994): 131–48.
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 7 8 –1 8 2 419

13. Gen. 24:42: “I came ­today to the spring, and I said: O Lord, God of my mas-
ter Abraham, if You would indeed grant success to the errand on which I am
engaged.” A mystical Talmudic reading of this passage interprets the usage of
“I came ­today” as indicating that “the land contracted” so Eliezer could “mi-
raculously reach his destination quickly,” and that his intention “was to say to
the members of Rebecca’s ­family that on that day he left Canaan and on the
same day he arrived, to underscore the miraculous nature of his undertaking
on behalf of Abraham.” See Sefaria, “The William Davidson Talmud,” Sanhe-
drin 95a, accessed January 3, 2023, https://­www​.­sefaria​.­org​/­Sanhedrin​.­95a​
.­16​?­ven​=­William​_­Davidson​_­Edition​_­​-­​_­English&vhe​=­Wikisource​_­Talmud​
_­Bavli&lang​=­bi&with​=­all&lang2​=­en.
14. Qur’an, sura 27 (An-­Naml), ayat 38–40.
15. See Reynold A. Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam (London: G. Bell, 1914).
16. Oxford Biblio­graphies, October 25, 2018, https://­w ww​.­oxfordbibliographies​
.­com​/­view​/­document​/­obo​-­9780195399318​/­obo​-­9780195399318​-­0208​.­xml.
17. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I.76.8: “But since the soul is united to
the body as its form, it must of necessity be within the entire body, and within
each of its parts. For it is not an accidental form of the body, but rather its
substantial form.” (Sed quia anima unitur corpori ut forma, necesse est quod
sit in toto, et in qualibet parte corporis. Non enim est forma corporis acci-
dentalis, sed substantialis.)
18. Francis Siegfried, “Bilocation,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 2 (New York:
Robert Appleton, 1907).
19. Walter Stephens, Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 291–92.
20. 1 Kings 18:12. This is not to say that other passages that do not explic­itly
suggest bilocation cannot be subjected to mystical interpretations that read
bilocation into the narrative. See notes 12 and 13 in this chapter.
21. John 20:26; Luke 24:13–35.
22. Acts of the Apostles 8:39–40.
23. MCD IV.7.17.347–56. For a glimpse of the attention lavished on this shrine
in Sor María’s day, see Antonio de Fuertes y Biota, Historia de Nuestra Señora
del Pilar de Caragoza (Brussels, 1654); and Joseph Felix de Amada, Conpendio
de los Milagros de Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Zaragoza, Primer Templo del Mundo
Edificado en la Ley de Gracia, consagrado con asistencia personal de la Virgen
Santissima, viviendo en carne mortal (Zaragoza, Spain, 1680).
24. MCD IV.7.16.319–26.
 420 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 8 2 –1 8 9

25. Some lists of bilocators include Pope Clement I (d. 99 AD), but what­ever leg-
end is ­behind this listing is not mentioned as a point of reference in subse-
quent early Christian accounts of other bilocating saints.
26. Gregory of Tours, De miraculis S. Martini I, 5, Migne, PL, vol. 71, 918c–919b.
The chronology of this account is problematic since Ambrose died in April of
397, seven months before Martin, who died in November of that year.
27. See Bruce Cole, “Giotto’s Apparition of St. Francis at Arles: The Case of the
Missing Crucifix?,” Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 7, no. 4
(1974): 163–65.
28. Bonaventure, Legenda Major, pp. 4, 10; translated by Emma Gurney Salter as
The Life of Saint Francis by Saint Bonaventura (London: J. M. Dent, 1904),
p. 42. This bilocation is also described by Thomas de Celano in his Vita Prima
I.18.48. See St. Francis of Assisi: Writings and Early Biographies, edited by Mar-
ion A. Habig (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1972), pp. 269–70.
29. Jean Rigauld, The Life of St. Antony of Padua (London, 1904), pp. 47–48. En­
glish translation from a French translation by “An En­glish Franciscan.” Ed-
ited and translated in French by Ferdinand-­Marie d’Araules as Vie de Saint
Antoine de Padoue (Bordeaux, 1899), pp. 44–46. T
­ here are vari­ous versions of
this story.
30. “San Pedro Regalado, patrón de los internautas,” El Mundo, December 14,
1999; and “The Internet’s Open-­Source Patron Saint,” Economist, April 22,
2000, https://­w ww​.­economist​.­com​/­science​-­and​-­technology​/­2000​/­04​/­20​/­the​
-­internets​-­open​-­source​-­patron​-­saint.
31. See AS, April 1, pp. 103–234, which includes material collected for his canon-
ization. See also Giuseppe Roberti, San Francesco di Paola: Storia della sua
Vita, 2nd ed. (Rome: Curia Generalizia dell’Ordine dei Minimi, 1963).
32. Christoph Genelli, Das Leben des heiligen Ignatius von Loyola, Stifters der Ge-
sellschaft Jesu (Innsbruck, 1848), pp. 358–59; Genelli, The Life of St. Ignatius of
Loyola, translated by Thomas Meyrick (London: Burns, Oates, and Co., 1871),
pp. 309–10.
33. Mikolaj Leczycki, The glory of the B. F
­ ather S. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the
Society of Jesus (Rouen, 1633), p. 188.
34. Dominique Bouhours, La Vie de Saint François Xavier de la Compagnie de Je-
sus, Apostre des Indes et du Japon (Paris, 1682), bk. 5, pp. 444–54. This miracle
is not mentioned in early hagiographies and only begins to appear in 1596,
in that of Orazio Torsellino, De Vita Francisci Xaverii.
35. Horatii Tursellini, De Vita Francisci Xaverii, Qui primus è Societate Iesu in In-
diam et Japoniam Evangelium inuexit (Antwerp, 1596).
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 8 9 –1 9 3 421

36. See Andrew Dickson White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology
in Christendom, 2 vols. (New York: D. Appleton, 1896), 2:5–15.
37. Procesos 3:444.
38. Procesos 1:17.
39. Procesos 1:477.
40. Pietro Giacomo Bacci, Vita di San Filippo Neri (Rome, 1622), bk. 3, chap. 11;
Filippo Guidi, Vita della venerabile Madre Suor Caterina De Ricci (Florence,
1622), chap. 43, pp. 132–33; F. X. Schouppe, Instruction Religieuse en Examples
Suivant l’ordre du Catéchisme (Paris, 1883), p. 199; Florence Mary Capes,
St. Catherine de’ Ricci: Her Life, Her Letters, Her Community (London: Burns and
Oates, 1905), p. 251.
41. See Jane Tar, “Flying through the Empire: The Visionary Journeys of Early
Modern Nuns,” in ­Women’s Voices and Politics of the Spanish Empire, edited
by Jennifer Eich, Jeanne Gillespie, and Lucia Harrison (New Orleans: Uni-
versity Press of the South, 2008), pp. 263–302; and Magnus Lundberg, Mis-
sion and Ecstasy: Contemplative W
­ omen and Salvation in Colonial Spanish
Amer­i­ca and the Philippines (Uppsala: University of Uppsala, 2015), esp.
pp. 183–214.
42. The terms “mystical displacement” and “mystical journey” are employed by
Silvia Evangelisti in “Religious ­Women, Mystic Journeys and Agency in Early
Modern Spain,” Journal of Early Modern History 22 (2018): 9–27.
43. Pseudoscientific experiments in remote viewing w
­ ere carried out by the US
and Soviet governments during the Cold War. See M. Srinivasan, “Clairvoyant
Remote Viewing: The US Sponsored Psychic Spying,” Strategic Analy­sis 26,
no. 1 (January–­March 2002): 131–39.
44. On nun’s autobiographies, see James S. Amelang, “­Women’s Spiritual Autobi-
ography in Early Modern Spain: From Sacred Conversation to Mistero Buffo,”
Dimensioni e Problemi della Ricerca Storica 2 (2002): 63–74.
45. A la Serenísima Señora Infanta Sor Margarita de la Cruz, Religiosa Descalça de
su Real Convento de Descalças Franciscas de Madrid, en Razón del Interrogatorio
en la Causa de la Venerable Virgen Sor Ana Maria de San Ioseph, Abadessa de la
mesma Orden (Salamanca, 1632), chap. XLI, pp. 110–11.
46. See Sonja Herpoel, “L’autobiographie de Sor Ana María de San José, un ser-
mon volé?,” Neophilologus 70 (1986): 539–46; and Lundberg, Mission and
Ecstasy, pp. 187–88.
47. Francisco de Ameyugo, Nueva maravilla de la Gracia descubierta en la vida de
la venerable madre Sor Juana de Jesús Maria (Barcelona, 1676), pp. 426–29.
48. Evangelisti, “Religious ­Women, Mystic Journeys,” p. 19.
 422 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 9 3 –1 9 6

49. Andrés de Ma­ya y Salaberria, Vida prodigiosa y exercicio admirable de vir-

tudes de la V.M. sor Martina de Los Ángeles y Arrilla (Zaragoza, 1678), pp.
176–78.
50. Isabelle Poutrin, Le voile et la plume: Autobiographie et sainteté féminine dans
l’Espagne moderne (Madrid: Casa Velazquezz, 1995), pp. 83–84; Stephen Hal-
iczer, Between Exaltation and Infamy: Female Mystics in the Golden Age of Spain
(Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 259–63.
51. Bernino, p. 140.
52. On the impact of race on Martín’s life, ministry, and canonization pro­cess,
see Celia Cussen, Black Saint of the Amer­i­cas: The Life and Afterlife of Martín de
Porres (Cambridge University Press, 2014). For an analy­sis of the context of
race in Martín’s role as a baroque saint, see Erin Rowe, Black Saints in Early
Modern Global Catholicism (Cambridge University Press, 2019), esp. pp. 77, 172,
180, 185–90, 206–10.
53. For an early summary of ­these accounts, see Bernardo de Medina, Vida
Prodigiosa del Venerable Siervo de Dios Fr. Martin de Porras (Lima, 1673),
pp. 68–79; for a summary from the time of his beatification, see Alberto M.
Valdés, Vida Admirable del Bienaventurado Martín de Porres, 3rd ed. (Lima: La
Providencia, 1907), esp. pp. 189–253.
54. On this point, especially, see Alex García-­Rivera, St. Martin de Porres: The “­Little
Stories” and the Semiotics of Culture (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995), chaps.
5, 7, 8.
55. See Frank Graziano, Wounds of Love: The Mystical Marriage of Saint Rose of
Lima (Oxford University Press, 2004).
56. See Anna Nogar, Quill and Cross in the Borderlands: Sor María de Ágreda and
the Lady in Blue, 1628 to the Pre­sent (University of Notre Dame Press, 2018),
chaps. 3–5.
57. For a glimpse of the pioneering work on colonial nuns carried out two de­
cades ago, see the review essay by Asunción Lavin, “The Church: Institution
and Spirituality in New Spain,” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 17, no. 2
(Summer 2001): 403–12.
58. On Don Bosco’s spiritual side, see Cristina Siccardi, Don Bosco mistico: Una
vita tra cielo e terra (Turin: La Fontana di Siloe, 2013); on his pragmatic side,
see Pier Luigi Guiducci, Senza aggredire, senza indietreggiare: Don Bosco e il
mondo del lavoro: La difesa dei giovani (Turin: Elledici, 2012).
59. Ernest Bozzano wrote about forty-­eight such cases in his Considerazioni ed
ipotesi sui fenomeni di bilocazione (Rome: (Luce e Ombra, 1911); translated in
French as Les phénomènes de bilocation (Paris: J. Meyer, 1937).
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 9 7 –2 0 2 423

60. Philippe Barthelet and Olivier Germain-­Thomas, Charles de Gaulle jour après
jour: Chronologie détaillée (Paris: F.-­X. de Guibert, 2000), p. 96.
61. See Patrick Mahéo and René Laurentin, Bilocations de Mère Yvonne-­Aimée:
Étude critique en réference á ses missions (Paris: O.E.I.L, 1990), esp. the charts
on pp. 137–57.
62. See Gerald Messadié, Padre Pio, ou, Les prodiges du mysticisme (Paris: Presses
du Châtelet, 2008); and Bernard Ruffin, Padre Pio: The True Story, rev. 3rd ed.
(Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 2018), esp. chap. 30 on bilocation; and
Sergio Luzzatto, Padre Pio: Miracoli e politica nell’Italia del Novecento (Turin,
2007).
63. See Francesco Castelli, Padre Pio ­under Investigation: The Secret Vatican Files
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008); and Sergio Luzzatto, Padre Pio: Mira-
cles and Politics in a Secular Age, translated by Frederika Randall (New York:
Picador, 2010; original Italian edition Turin, 2007).
64. See Andrea Tornielli, Il segreto di Padre Pio e Karol Wojtyla (Segrate, Italy:
Piemme, 2006).

6. María de Ágreda, Avatar of the Impossible

1. JSRV, pp. 82–83.

2. See Marilyn H. Fedewa, María of Ágreda, Mystical Lady in Blue (Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 2009), pp. 14–15.
3. This document is available in Eduardo Royo, ed., Autenticidad de la Mística
ciudad de Dios y biografía de su autora, vol. 5 of María de Ágreda’s Ciudad
Mística de Dios (Barcelona: Herederos de Juan Gili, 1914), pp. 18–101.
4. Royo, Autenticidad, p. 43.
5. Royo, p. 44. No information is given on how and where her ­mother acquired
a ­human skull for her meditations.
6. Royo, p. 53: “Animo varonil.”
7. Clark Colahan, trans., The Visions of Sor María de Ágreda: Writing Knowledge
and Power (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994), report to
­Father Manero, p. 115. See also María’s unfinished autobiography in Royo,
Autenticidad, p. 41.
8. JSRV, p. 8.
9. Royo, Autenticidad, p. 86. María provides a detailed account of her precocious
mysticism in pp. 81–94.
10. Royo, p. 97. Her dark night is vividly described in pp. 95–101, which are the
last pages she was able to write before ­dying.
 424 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 0 2 –2 1 0

11. JSRV, chaps. 1–4; quotes from p. 8.

12. Redondez de la tierra y mapa de los orbes celestes. An En­glish translation of most
of this remarkable document, titled “Face of the Earth,” can be found in Co-
lahan, Visions of Sor María de Agreda, pp. 41–97. Colahan attributes this text
to the young María but argues that she revised it ­later in life.
13. Royo, Autenticidad, pp. 44–76.
14. JSRV, p. 55.
15. JSRV, p. 48.
16. JSRV, pp. 51–52.
17. JSRV, p. 105. “Además del perpetuo ayuno referido, ayunaba tres dias en la
semana a pan, y agua”; JSRV, p. 104. “Nunca comía carne, ni lacticinios. . . . ​
Su ordinaria comida era legumbres, y yerbas; y de esto solo lo que bastaba
para sustentarse.”
18. JSRV, pp. 98–100; also Fedewa, María of Agreda, p. 33.
19. JSRV, p. 62; also p. 56.
20. JSRV, p. 102: “Cada noche le parecía le avían de acabar la vida.”
21. JSRV, pp. 72, 74.
22. JSRV, p. 77.
23. JSRV, pp. 80–81.
24. JSRV, pp. 81–83.
25. JSRV, p. 85.
26. JSRV, pp. 85–86.
27. JSRV, p. 129.
28. JSRV, p. 80.
29. JSRV, p. 130.
30. JSRV, p. 133; Colahan, Visions of Sor María de Ágreda, report to F
­ ather Manero,
p. 118.
31. JSRV, pp. 131–33. For María’s own account of ­these events, see her letter to
­Father Manero in Colahan, Visions of Sor María de Ágreda, pp. 117–18.
32. JSRV, p. 133.
33. JSRV, p. 134.
34. JSRV, pp. 134–35.
35. JSRV, pp. 136–37.
36. JSRV, pp. 138–39.
37. ­Father Gerónimo’s chronicle was titled Relaciónes de todas las cosas que en el
Nuevo-­Mexico se han visto y sabido, asi por mar como por tierra, desde el año 1538
hasta el de 1626. For more on this text, see Anna Nogar, Quill and Cross in the
Borderlands: Sor María de Ágreda and the Lady in Blue, 1628 to the Pre­sent (Uni-
versity of Notre Dame Press, 2018), pp. 14–18.
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 1 0 –2 1 6 425

38. Memorial que Fray Juan de Santander de la Orden de San Francisco, Comissario
General de Indias, presenta a la Magestad Catolica del Rey don Felipe Quarto,
nuestro Señor. Hecho por el Padre Fray Alonso de Benavides, Comissario del Santo
Oficio, y Custodio que ha sido de las Provincias y conversiones del Nuevo Mexico.
Tratase en el de los Tesoros espirituales, y temporales, que la divina Majestad ha
manifestado en aquellas conversiones y nuevos descubrimentos, por medio de los
Padres desta serafica Religion (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1630).
39. Tanto que se sacó de una carta que el Reverendo Padre Fray Alonso de Benavides,
custodio que fue del Nuevo Mexico, embió a los religiosos de la Santa custodia de
la conversión de San Pablo de dicho reyno, desde Madrid, el año de 1631. Included
in Francisco Palóu, Evangelista del Mar Pacifico: Fray Junípero Serra (Mexico,
1730). Available in a modern edition (Madrid: Aguilar, 1944), pp. 308–17;
translated by Colahan in Visions of Sor María de Agreda, pp. 104–14.
40. Alonso de Benavides, Memorial a la Sanctidad de Urbano VIII nuestro señor
açerca de las conuerçiones del Nueuo Mexico hechas en el felicissimo tiempo del
govierno de su pontificado, 1634, Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, Vatican Ar-
chives, Rome, Ayer MS.
41. The manuscript has yet to be published in Spanish. An En­glish translation
was published by the University of New Mexico Press in 1945 with the title
Fray Alonso de Benavides’ Revised Memorial of 1634. Colahan also provides an
En­glish translation in Visions of Sor María de Agreda, pp. 101–10.
42. One social scientist has observed: “Benavides’s Memorials have the appear-
ance of a curious mixture of ethnography, fiction, and fable.” See Daniel Reff,
“Contextualizing Missionary Discourse: The Benavides ‘Memorials’ of 1630
and 1634,” Journal of Anthropological Research 50, no. 1 (1994): 52; for a dif­
fer­ent analy­sis, see Anthony J. Cárdenas-­Rotunno, “Fray Alonso de Benavides’s
Memoriales of 1630 and 1634: Preliminary Observations,” University of New
Mexico Latin American Institute Research Paper Series 45 (July 2007): 5–23.
43. Colahan, Visions of Sor María de Ágreda, report to ­Father Manero, p. 120.
44. Colahan, p. 121.
45. Colahan, p. 124.
46. Colahan, pp. 118–19.
47. Colahan, p. 119.
48. For more on her, see Patrocinio García Barriúso, La monja de Carrión (Ma-
drid: Monte Casino, 1986); and P. García Barriuso, Sor Luisa de la Ascensión:
Una contemplativa del Siglo xvii (Madrid, self-­published, 1993).
49. For very detailed accounts of the accusations leveled against Sor Luisa, see
Relación de la causa de Sor Luisa de la Ascensión, monja del Conuento de Santa
Clara de Carrión que se da para calificar (1633); and Pedro de Balbas, OFM,
 426 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 1 6 –2 1 8

Memorial informativo en defensa de sor Luisa de la Ascensión, monja professa de

Santa Clara de Carrión (Madrid, 1643).
50. See Francisco Luis Rico Callado, “La Inquisición y las visionarias clarisas del
siglo XVII: El caso de sor Luisa de la Ascensión,” Bulletin of Spanish Studies
92, no. 5 (2015): 771–90.
51. Friar Francisco is mentioned repeatedly in the “cartas de Consejo” sent to the
Logroño Inquisition in 1635 and 1648. AHN, Inquisition, leg. 2220.96a, b,
and c.
52. Juan Gomez de Mora, Auto de la Fé celebrado en Madrid este año de MDC
XXXII (Madrid, 1632). Francisco’s sentence can be found on p. 11v.
53. For more on t­ hese natives, see Nancy Parrott Hickerson, The Jumanos: Hunt-
ers and Traders of the South Plains (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994);
see also her article “The Visits of the ‘Lady in Blue’: An Episode in the History
of the South Plains, 1629,” Journal of Anthropological Research 46, no. 1
(Spring 1990): 67–90.
54. Colahan, Visions of Sor María de Agreda, report to F
­ ather Manero, pp. 121,
126.
55. Benavides Memorial of 1634, Ayer MS, p. 109.
56. Tanto que se sacó de una carta, in Palóu, Evangelista del Mar Pacifico, p. 311: “Y
la primera vez que ha ido fué el año de 1620 y ha continuado siempre, hasta
el año de 1631.” Colahan, Visions of Sor María de Agreda, p. 107.
57. Benavides, 1630 Memorial, pp. 79–80, clearly states that “la santa”—as he
calls the Lady in Blue—­visits the Jumanos and helps them greet the mission-
aries sent in 1629. Jiménez Samaniego (JSRV, 136–37) claims that all the
exterioridades ceased in 1623 but also relates that María saw Benavides and
his friars at the San Antonio mission when she went ­there with the Jumanos
(JSRV, p. 124). Benavides arrived at San Antonio in 1625 and departed in
1629.
58. Tanto que se sacó de una carta, in Palóu, Evangelista del Mar Pacifico, p. 314:
“Desde el año 1620 hasta este presente de 1631.” Colahan, Visions of Sor María
de Agreda, p. 111.
59. Benavides, 1634 Memorial, Ayer MS, p. 108.
60. Benavides, 1634 Memorial, Ayer MS, p. 109.
61. Benavides, 1634 Memorial, Ayer MS, p. 109.
62. Benavides, 1634 Memorial, Ayer MS, p. 109.
63. Clark Colahan raises the question of ­whether Benavides asked the Jumanos
“leading questions that encouraged them to give the answers he wanted.” Vi-
sions of Sor María de Agreda, p. 95.
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 1 9 –2 2 2 427

64. Benavides, 1630 Memorial, pp. 78, 80; Memorial of 1634, Ayer MS, p. 109.
Jiménez Samaniego (JSRV, p. 119) says the image was shown to the natives
­because Luisa de Carrión was well known for her bilocations in Spain, and
the friars suspected she might be the mysterious missionary.
65. Benavides, 1634 Memorial, Ayer MS, p. 109: “Porque vosotros no nos la aveis
preguntado y entendiamos que tambien andava por aca.”
66. Benavides, 1630 Memorial, p. 80; 1634 Memorial, Ayer MS, p. 109. Jiménez
Samaniego simply says, “They ­were received with ­great demonstrations of piety
and joy.” JSRV, p. 119.
67. Benavides’s 1630 Memorial (p. 80) mentions two crosses, but the revised text
of 1634 mentions only one cross and says María had “helped them decorate”
it (1634 Memorial, Ayer MS, p. 109).
68. Benavides, 1634 Memorial (Ayer MS, p. 110).
69. Benavides’s 1630 Memorial (pp. 80–81) reports a crowd of 10,000 natives as-
sembled to ask for baptism but does not mention any baptisms actually tak-
ing place at this time. In contrast, the 1670 hagiography (JSRV, pp. 119–20)
says that the natives had learned so much from María that they needed no
further instruction before being baptized and that so many received the
sacrament that they could not be counted (“Fueron innumerables los que
bautizaron”).
70. Benavides, 1634 Memorial, Ayer MS, p. 110.
71. Benavides, 1634 Memorial, Ayer MS, p. 110.
72. Benavides, 1634 Memorial, Ayer MS, p. 111.
73. A compelling argument made by John Kessell in “Miracles or Mystery: María
de Ágreda’s Ministry to the Jumano Indians of the Southwest in the 1620s,”
in ­Great Mysteries of the West, edited by Ferenc Morton Szasz (Wheat Ridge,
CO: Fulcrum, 1993), p. 127.

7. The Trou­ble with María

1. Question asked by the Inquisition in 1650. In Eduardo Royo, ed., Autenticidad

de la Mística ciudad de Dios y biografía de su autora, vol. 5, María de Ágreda’s
Ciudad Mística de Dios (Barcelona: Herederos de Juan Gili, 1914), p. 421.
2. See Joaquín Pérez Villanueva, “Sor María de Ágreda y Felipe IV: Un epistolario
en su tiempo,” in Historia de la Iglesia en España, edited by Ricardo García
Villoslada, 5 vols. (Madrid: BAC, 1979), 4:384.
3. See Andrew Keitt, Inventing the Sacred: Imposture, Inquisition, and the Bound­
aries of the Super­natural in Golden Age Spain (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 1–12.
 428 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 2 3 –2 2 8

4. AHN, Inquisition, leg. 2220.96b, letter of June 6, 1635, signed by Isidoro de

San Vicente.
5. AHN, Inquisition, leg. 2220.96 contains t­ hese letters, which w
­ ere bound to-
gether haphazardly, with no regard for sequence, continuity, or chronology.
6. AHN, Inquisition, leg. 2220.96b, letter of October 6, 1635, signed by Isidoro
de San Vicente. See also Clark Colahan, “María de Jesús de Ágreda: The Sweet-
heart of the Holy Office,” in W
­ omen in the Inquisition: Spain and the New
World, edited by Mary E. Giles (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1999), p. 160.
7. AHN, Inquisition, leg. 2220.96d, unsigned copy of letter of May 26, 1635:
“Francisco de la Fuente declaró con la misma forma había sido llevado para
el proprio effecto y tubo tan mal fín.”
8. AHN, Inquisición, leg. 2220.96a, letter of December 1, 1648.
9. This correspondence can be found in an appendix to María de Jesús de Ágreda,
Correspondencia con Felipe IV: Religión y Razón de Estado (Madrid: Castalia,
1991), pp. 247–52. For details on this doomed plot, see Ramón Ezquerra
Abadía, La conspiración del duque de Híjar, 1648 (Madrid, 1934).
10. Royo, Autenticidad, pp. 406–7 (Royo had access to the original documents and
claims to quote directly from them).
11. Royo, pp. 407–11. Final remark on p. 411: “Que ellas vivan persuadidas á que
no ha de haber en el mundo quien se acuerde de ellas.”
12. Royo, pp. 411–13.
13. Unfortunately, the transcript of this inquest has vanished. Francisco Silvela,
editor of the correspondence between Sor María and King Philip IV, claimed
to have found it in the 1880s at the archive of the Dukes of Gor and so did
Eduardo Royo in the early 1900s, but all subsequent attempts to find it have
failed. The only access to it available now is an extract published by Eduardo
Royo in volume 5 of his Autenticidad, pp. 416–37. This extract, in turn, is sum-
marized by Pérez Villanueva in “Sor María de Ágreda y Felipe IV,” vol. 4, chap.
3, pp. 361–418.
14. Letter 244, Sor María to King Philip, March 11, 1650. In Francisco Silvela,
Cartas de la Venerable Madre Sor María de Agreda y del Señor Rey Don Felipe IV,
2 vols. (Madrid, 1886), 2:20.
15. Royo, Autenticidad; Pérez Villanueva, “Sor María de Ágreda y Felipe IV,” vol. 4,
chap. 3, pp. 361–418.
16. Royo, Autenticidad, p. 421.
17. Royo, p. 419.
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 2 9 –2 3 5 429

18. Clark Colahan, trans., The Visions of Sor María de Ágreda: Writing Knowledge
and Power (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994), report to
­Father Manero, pp. 120–21.
19. 2 Cor. 12.2–4: “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up
to the third heaven. ­Whether it was in the body or out of it I do not know, but
God knows. And I know that this man—­whether in the body or out of it I do
not know, but God knows—­was caught up to Paradise. The ­things he heard
­were too sacred for words, ­things that man is not permitted to tell.”
20. Colahan, Visions of Sor María de Ágreda, report to ­Father Manero, p. 121.
21. Colahan, Visions of Sor María de Ágreda, report to ­Father Manero, pp. 121–23.
22. Colahan, Visions of Sor María de Ágreda, report to ­Father Manero, p. 127.
23. Colahan, Visions of Sor María de Ágreda, report to ­Father Manero, pp. 121–23.
24. Royo, Autenticidad, p. 426.
25. Pérez Villanueva, “Sor María de Ágreda y Felipe IV,” p. 387.
26. Colahan, Visions of Sor María de Ágreda, report to ­Father Manero, p. 127.
27. Colahan, report to ­Father Manero, p. 128.
28. Royo, Autenticidad, pp. 430–32. At one point she cites “San Eusebio (Homilia
segunda de Deipara) y también San Idelfonso.”
29. Royo, p. 432.
30. Royo, pp. 433–35.
31. Royo, “Mi interior,” pp. 435–36; Pérez Villanueva, “Sor María de Ágreda y Fe-
lipe IV,” p. 387.
32. Royo, Autenticidad, pp. 436–37. The final sentence reads: “Es católica y fiel
cristiana, bien fundada en nuestra santa fe, sin ningún genero de ficción ni
embeleco del demonio.”
33. Letter 242, February 18, 1650, in Silvela, Cartas, 2:15.
34. Letter 243, February 26, 1650, in Silvela, Cartas, 2:17.
35. Letter 242, February 18, 1650, in Silvela, Cartas, 2:15.
36. For Philip’s life, see Aurelio Musi, Filippo IV: La malinconia dell’impero (Rome:
Salerno, 2021); Alfredo Alvar Ezquerra, Felipe IV, El Grande (Madrid: La Es-
fera, 2018); Eduardo Chamorro, Felipe IV (Barcelona: Planeta, 1998).
37. See R. A. Stradling, Philip IV and the Government of Spain, 1621–1665 (Cam-
bridge University Press, 1988).
38. See John H. Elliott, The Count-­Duke of Olivares: The Statesman in an Age of De-
cline (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986).
39. See John H. Elliott, The Revolt of the Catalans: A Study in the Decline of Spain,
1598–1640 (Cambridge University Press, 1963).
 430 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 3 6 –2 4 0

40. Text available in Luis Villasante, “Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda a través de su
correspondencia con el rey,” Archivo Ibero-­Americano 25, no. 98–99 (1965):
149. Also available in Anna Nogar, Quill and Cross in the Borderlands: Sor María
de Ágreda and the Lady in Blue, 1628 to the Pre­sent (University of Notre Dame
Press, 2018), p. 47.
41. Nogar, Quill and Cross, p. 62n9.
42. Mystica Ciudad de Dios, Milagro de su Omnipotencia y Abismo de la Gracia, His-
toria Divina, y Vida de la Virgen Madre de Dios, Reyna, y Señora Nuestra Maria
Santissima, Restauradora de la Culpa de Eva, y Medianera de la Gracia. Mani-
festada en estos Ultimos Siglos por la Misma Señora a su Esclava Sor María de
Jesús, Abadesa de el Convento de la Inmaculada Concepción, de la Villa de Ágreda
(Madrid: Bernardo de Villa-­Diego, 1670) (hereafter MCD). I have used the
Spanish 1807 Pamplona edition (P1807) ­because it is available online and
is therefore accessible—at least for now—to anyone with internet access
(https://­academica​-­e​.­unavarra​.­es​/­handle​/­2454​/­12299).
43. See Ismael Bengoechea Izaguirre, “Vidas de la Virgen María en la España del
siglo XVII,” Estudios Marianos 49 (1984): 59–103.
44. For a listing of pre-­twentieth-­century editions and translations, see Zótico
Royo Campos, Agredistas y Antiagredistas: Estudio Histórico-­Apologético (Mur-
cia: San Buenaventura, 1929), pp. 468–70. The most widely printed En­glish
translation of The Mystical City is that of ­Father George J. Blatter, who chose
to publish it u
­ nder the pen name Fiscar Marison (Charlotte, NC: TAN Books,
2006).
45. Rev. 21:9–27. The Heavenly Jerusalem was also known as the City of God,
and the title of Sor María’s book, The Mystical City of God, was an allusion to
the intimate connection between the Virgin Mary and the Heavenly Jerusa-
lem as co-­redeemer of the ­human race along with her son Jesus, the divine
ruler of that apocalyptic city.
46. MCD I.1.1.5 (P1807 1:27); Rev. 12.1–6: “A w
­ oman clothed with the sun, with
the moon ­under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.”
47. MCD III.6.21.1358 (P1807 6:402–4); Blatter, The Mystical City of God, para.
647.
48. MCD IV.8.5.458 (P1807 8:90).
49. MCD I.1.1.9 (P1807 1:32–33).
50. MCD I.1.1.9 (P1807 1:33).
51. See Benito Mendía, “En torno al problema de la autenticidad de la Mistica
Ciudad de Dios,” Archivo Ibero-­Americano 42, no. 165–68 (1982): 391–430.
52. MCD I.1.1.10 (P1807 1:34).
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 4 1 –2 4 6 431

53. MCD I, introduction, paragraph 12 (P1807 1:11–12).

54. MCD I.1.2.14 (P1807 1:36–37).
55. MCD IV.8.23, letter to ­sisters. 16 (P1807 8:419).
56. JSRV, pp. 301–6. T. D. Kendrick, Mary of Ágreda: The Life and Legend of a Span-
ish Nun (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967), p. 73, disagrees with Jimé-
nez Samaniego on the date of the book burning, offering proof that it must
have been 1646 rather than 1645.
57. JSRV, pp. 307–8. The hagiographer blames the second burning on the same
confessor who ordered the first burning. Kendrick disagrees, attributing the
second burning to María’s fear of the Inquisition. Kendrick, Mary of Ágreda,
p. 74.
58. Kendrick, Mary of Agreda, p. 77n2.
59. MCD IV.8.23.791 (P1807 8:403).
60. MCD IV.8.23, letter to ­sisters. 15–16 (P1807 8:417–18).
61. “Historical Notice,” appendix to The Admirable Life of the Glorious Patriarch
Saint Joseph: Taken from the Cité Mystique de Dieu (New York, 1860), pp. 320–
21; En­glish translation of José Jiménez Samaniego’s Life of the Venerable Mary
of Jesus of Agreda (Evansville, IN: Keller-­Crescent Printing and Engraving,
1910), pp. 144–45.
62. This seemingly “impossible” miracle was relatively common throughout me-
dieval and early modern times in the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, and
the phenomenon has continued up u
­ ntil the pre­sent day. See Heather Prin-
gle, “The Incorruptibles,” Discover 22, no. 6 (June 2001): 66–71; and also the
chapter with the same title in her book The M
­ ummy Congress: Science, Obses-
sion, and the Everlasting Dead (New York: Hyperion, 2001), pp. 242–68. For
more on Saint Teresa’s incorruptible corpse, see Carlos Eire, From Madrid to
Purgatory (Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 425–45.
63. For a thorough Agredista summary of the polarization, see Benito Mendía
and Antonio M. Artola Arbiza, La Venerable M. María de Jesús de Ágreda y la
Inmaculada Concepción: El proceso eclesiástico a la “Mística Ciudad de Dios
(Ágreda: Monasterio de la Concepción., 2004).
64. Mendía and Artola Arbiza, La Venerable M. María de Jesús de Ágreda, p. 66;
Nogar, Quill and Cross, p. 252n15.
65. Nogar, Quill and Cross, pp. 55n75, 56n82.
66. See Luis Villasante, “La Mística Ciudad de Dios y el problema de la revelacio-
nes privadas,” Scriptorium Victoriense 19 (1972): 35–62.
67. Andrés Ivars, “Expediente relativo a los escritos de la Venerable Madre Sor
María de Jesús de Ágreda,” Archivo Ibero-­Americano, 1917, p. 132.
 432 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 4 7 –2 4 8

68. On this point, see Villasante, “La Mística Ciudad de Dios.”

69. Nogar, Quill and Cross, p. 57n90.
70. Quoted in Royo Campos, Agredistas y Antiagredistas, p. 327.
71. “Finalmente no puede atribuirse al demonio, porque desde el principio al fin
no inspira ni respira otra cosa que humildad, paciencia, amor y sufrimiento
de trabajos.” MCD; P1807, vol. 1. The first seventy-­two unnumbered pages of
volume 1 of the 1807 Pamplona edition contain vari­ous approbations of The
Mystical City, including ­those from the universities of Salamanca, Alcalá, and
Louvain. The quote from Louvain cited ­here appears two pages back from
the final unnumbered page.
72. See G. Calvo Moralejo, “El Escotismo de la Mística Ciudad de Dios y su influ-
encia en el proceso de beatificación de la M. Ágreda,” in Giovanni Duns Scoto:
Studi e ricerche nel VII Centenario della sua morte, 2 vols. (Rome: Antonianum,
2008), 2:257–78; and Alessandro Apollonio, “The Decisive Contribution of
Blessed John Duns Scotus to the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception:
Objections, Old and New,” in Blessed John Duns Scotus and His Mariology
(New Bedford: Acad­emy of the Immaculate, 2009), pp. 43–71.
73. Mendía, “En torno al problema de la autenticidad,” p. 405.
74. Kendrick, Mary of Ágreda, p. 80.
75. For a very detailed but partisan summary of the controversies generated by
Sor María over three centuries, see Royo Campos, Agredistas y Antiagredistas;
also the more recent work of F
­ athers Mendía and Artola Arbiza, La Venerable
Madre Maria de Jesús de Ágreda.
76. The findings of ­these reviews ­were published. See Sacra Rituum Congregatio,
Examen responsionis ad Censuram olim editam super libris misticae civitatis Dei
(Rome, 1730); Synopsis observationum et responsionum super libris ven. abbatis-
sae Mariae a Jesu de Agreda (Rome, 1737); Super examine operis a Maria a Jesu
de Agreda conscripti (Rome, 1747).
77. Eusebius Amort, De revelationibus, visionibus et apparitionibus privatis regulae
tutae ex Scripturâ, Conciliis, Sanctis Patribus aliisque optimis auctoribus collectae,
explicatae atque exemplis illustratae (Augsburg, 1744). See Royo Campos, Agre-
distas y Antiagredistas, pp. 373–91.
78. See Eusebius Amort, Controversia de Revelationibus Agredanis Explicate Cum
Epicrisi Ad Ineptas Earum Revelationum Vindicias (Augsburg, 1749); and Nova
Demonstratio de Falsitate Revelationum Agredanarum cum Parallelo Inter Pseudo
Evangelia et Easdem Revelationes, Adita Nova Defensione Agredana a R. P. Dal-
matius Kick (Augsburg, 1751).
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 4 8 –2 5 6 433

79. For examples, see Dalmatius Kick, Revelationum agredanarum iusta defensio
(Regensburg, 1750); Excussio novae defensionis agredanae (Augsburg, 1751);
and Continuatio iustae defensionis revelationum agredanarum (Madrid,
1754).
80. Mendía, “En torno a la autenticidad,” pp. 417, 421.
81. Montague Summers, The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism (New York: Barnes
and Noble, 1950), p. 61.
82. Nogar, Quill and Cross, p. 59n99.
83. Giacomo Casanova, Histoire de ma Fuite des Prisons de la Republique de Venise,
qu’on Apelle Les Plombs (Leipzig, 1788), p. 40.
84. Casanova, p. 43.
85. Casanova, p. 42.
86. Casanova, p. 41.
87. María de Agreda and her Mystical City had a profound impact on Spanish
Amer­ic­ a, especially colonial and postcolonial Mexico. For this dimension of
the cult of Sor María, see the definitive study of this subject: Nogar, Quill and
Cross, chaps. 3–6.
88. See Marilyn H. Fedewa, María of Ágreda, Mystical Lady in Blue (Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 2009), pp. 258–73.

8. Tricksters of the Impossible

Epigraph: Testimony from Damian de Fonseca, onetime secretary to Luis de Granada:

Damiani a Fonseca Itinerarium, cited by Alvaro Huerga, “La vida seudomística de la
Monja de Lisboa,” Hispania Sacra 12 (1959): 97n25.
1. Gospel of John 8:44.
2. The term “trickster” has multiple meanings. In everyday speech it normally
refers to someone who can fool ­others. In the study of folklore and religion,
the trickster is any being—­usually charismatic—­who deceives, plays tricks,
ignores rules, defies convention, and creates mayhem, both constructive and
destructive. Scholars have most often examined tricksters in ancient mythol-
ogies and tribal religions rather than in the major world religions, but their
universality is undeniable. Anthropologist Victor Turner proposed that trick-
sters inhabit liminal spaces in society and ritual. Psychologist Carl Jung iden-
tified the “trickster” as one of the archetypes of the collective unconscious.
All ­these meanings are applicable to the liminal “living saints” who are the focus
of this chapter. See Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
 434 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 5 7 –2 6 0

University Press, 1967), esp. p. 99; Robert D. Pelton, The Trickster in West Af-
rica: A Study of Mythic Irony and Sacred Delight (Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1989), pp. 5–18.
3. William C. Christian Jr., “The Delimitations of Sacred Space and the Visions
of Ezquioga, 1931–1987,” in Luoghi sacri e spazi della santità, edited by Sofia
Boesch Gajano and Lucetta Scaraffia (Università degli studi dell’Aquila, 2009),
pp. 85–103; see also Carlo Ginzburg, “The Inquisitor as Anthropologist,” in
Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, translated by John and Anne Tedeschi
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), pp. 156–64.
4. Anne Jacobson Schutte, Aspiring Saints: Pretense of Holiness, Inquisition, and
Gender in the Republic of Venice, 1618–1750 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity Press, 2001), pp. 201–4.
5. See Bernard McGinn, The Per­sis­tence of Mysticism in Catholic Eu­rope: France,
Italy, and Germany, 1500–1675 (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2020), pt. I,
chaps. 1–5.
6. See Schutte, Aspiring Saints; and Pasquale Palmieri, I taumaturghi della soci-
età: Santi e potere politico nel secolo dei Lumi (Rome: Viella, 2010).
7. See Stuart Schwartz, All Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the
Iberian Atlantic World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008).
8. Memorial de la política necesaria y útil restauración a la república de España
(Valladolid, Spain, 1600), fol. 25v; translated by John H. Elliott in Spain
and Its World, 1500–1700 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989),
p. 265.
9. Tratado del examen de las revelaciones verdaderas y falsas, y de los raptos (Valen-
cia, 1634), pp. 344–47.
10. Marcelino Menendez Pelayo, Historia de los heterodoxos españoles, 3 vols. (Ma-
drid: Librería Católica de San José, 1880–1881); facsimile edition, Madrid:
Grandes Clasicos, 1992, 2:249–50.
11. “Un tiempo fideista,” in José Antonio Maravall, La cultura del barroco (Ma-
drid: Ariel, 1975), p. 44.
12. Stephen Haliczer, Between Exaltation and Infamy: Female Mystics in the Golden
Age of Spain (Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 4.
13. Patrocinio García Barriúso, “El milagrismo: Sor Luisa de la Ascención, La
Monja de Carrión, el Fr. Frolán Díaz, y el inquisidor Mendoza,” in HIEA,
1:1089.
14. Teófanes Egido López, “Religiosidad popu­lar y taumaturgia del Barroco
(Los milagros de la monja de Carrión),” in Actas del II Congreso de Historia de
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 6 0 –2 6 3 435

Palencia, edited by María Valentina Calleja González, 4 vols. (Palencia, Spain:

Departamento de Cultura, 1990), 3:11.
15. José Luis Sánchez Lora, Mujeres, conventos, y formas de la religiosidad barroca
(Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 1988), pp. 456–57.
16. Fray Juan de los Angeles, Diálog­os de la conquista del reino de Dios (1595), mod-
ern edition annotated by Angel González Palencia (Madrid: Real Academia
Española, 1946), pp. 213–14.
17. Gaspar Navarro, Tribunal de la superstición ladina, explorador del saber, astucia
y poder del demonio (Huesca, Spain, 1631), p. 28r.
18. For a superb introduction to this subject, see Andrew W. Keitt, Inventing the
Sacred: Imposture, Inquisition, and the Bound­aries of the Super­natural in Golden
Age Spain (Leiden: Brill, 2005). The Inquisition in Venice preferred to use the
term “pretense of holiness” (simulata santità) and other variations of it, such
as affetata, falsa, finta, or pretesa santità. See Schutte, Aspiring Saints, preface,
p. x.
19. See Carmen Soriano Triguero, “Inquisición, beatas y falsarios en el siglo XVII:
Pautas del Santo Oficio para examinar visiones y apariciones,” in Disidencias
y exilios en la España moderna: Actas de la IV reunión científica de la Asociación
Española de Historia Moderna, edited by Antonio Mestre Sanchis, Pablo
Fernández Albaladejo, and Enrique Giménez López (Universidad de Alicante,
1997).
20. Keitt, Inventing the Sacred, p. 205.
21. Keitt, p. 7.
22. See María del Mar Graña Cid, “En torno a la fenomenologia de las santas
vivas,” in Responsabilidad y diálogo: Homenaje a José Joaquín Alemany Briz, ed-
ited by Xavier Quinzá Lleó (Madrid: Universidad Pontificia Comillas, 2002),
pp. 415–53; and Gabriella Zarri, Le sante vive: Cultura e religiosità femminile
nella prima età moderna (Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1990); as well as
her “Living Saints: A Typology of Female Sanctity in the Early Sixteenth
­Century,” in ­Women and Religion in Medieval and Re­nais­sance Italy, edited by
Daniel Bornstein and Roberto Rusconi (University of Chicago Press, 1996),
pp. 219–304.
23. See Carlos Eire, Reformations: The Early Modern World (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2016), pp. 399–404.
24. Cælestis Hierusalem Cives, July 5, 1534.
25. Sor Juana has received considerable attention in the past three de­cades. See
Jessica Boon, “Introduction,” in ­Mother Juana de la Cruz, 1481–1534: Visionary
 436 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 6 3 –2 6 5

Sermons, edited by J. Boon and R. E. Surtz (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medi-
eval and Re­nais­sance Studies, 2016), pp. 1–33; Ronald E. Surtz, The Guitar of
­ other Juana de la
God: Gender, Power, and Authority in the Visionary World of M
Cruz (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990); Inocente García
de Andrés, “Introduction,” in El conhorte: Sermones de una mujer; La Santa
Juana, edited by Inocente García de Andrés (Madrid: Fundación Universita-
ria Española, 1999); María Victoria Triviño, Mujer, predicadora, y párroco: La
Santa Juana (Madrid, 1999); Daniel de Pablo Maroto, “La ‘Santa Juana,’
mística franciscana del siglo XVI español,” Revista de espiritualidad 60 (2001):
577–601; María del Mar Cortés Timoner, Sor Juana de la Cruz (Madrid: Clas-
icas, 2004).
26. Her sermones ­were transcribed and archived. They are now available in Gar-
cía de Andrés, El Conhorte.
27. This phenomenon would also surface among “visionary” monastics in Italy.
See Schutte, Aspiring Saints, pp. 154–74.
28. For a detailed summary of this development, see Isabelle Poutrin, “Les chape-
lets bénits des mystiques espagnoles (XVI–­XVII siècles),” Mélanges de la Casa
de Velázquez 26, no. 2 (1990): 33–54.
29. Super virtutibus sanctae vitae et miraculis de sor Juana de la Cruz, 1621, ASV,
Congregazione dei Riti, n3076.
30. Vida y fin de la bienabenturada virgen sancta Juana de la Cruz (archived at the
library of El Escorial, K-­III-13); and Libro de la casa y monasterio de Nuestra
Señora de la Cruz (archived at the BNE, MS 9661).
31. Antonio Daza, Historia, vida y milagros, éxtasis y revelaciones de la bienaventu-
rada virgen santa Juana de la Cruz (Madrid, 1610).
32. Tirso de Molina, La Santa Juana, trilogía hagiográfica, 1613–14, edited by
Agustín del Campo (Madrid: Castilla, 1948).
33. Pedro Navarro, Favores de el Rey del Cielo hechos a su esposa la santa Juana de
la Cruz (Madrid, 1622).
34. When Juana’s canonization pro­cess was restarted nearly a ­century ­after her
death, Daza’s Historia, vida y milagros was translated and published in French
(1614), Italian (1618), German (1619), and En­glish (1625).
35. For a brief summary of her case drawn from Inquisition files, see “Proceso de
la monja Magdalena de la Cruz, que se finjió santa,” in Relación de las causas mas
notables que siguió el Tribunal de la Inquisición, contra los que se decian brujos,
hechiceros, mágicos, nigrománticos, y aliados con el demonio: Entre los que se refieren
la del famoso mágico Torralba, Falso Musico de Portugal, Monja de Córdoba fingida
santa, y otras de mucha nombradía (Seville: El Porvenir, 1839), pp. 74–93.
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 6 5 –2 6 6 437

36. “Muy preciada hija suya.” Eyewitness testimony quoted in “Proceso de la monja
Magdalena de la Cruz,” p. 75 See also “Proceso de la santa fingida de Córdoba,”
in Gaspar Matute y Liquín, Colección de los autos generales y particulares de fe
celebrados por el tribunal de la Inquisición de Córdoba (Córdoba: Santaló, Ca-
nalejas y Compañía, 1836), p. 183. A more recent edition (Madrid: D. Blanco,
1912), is actually harder to find. See also Geraldine McKendrick and Angus
MacKay, “Visionaries and Affective Spirituality during the First Half of the
Sixteenth ­Century,” in Cultural Encounters: The Impact of the Inquisition in
Spain and the New World, edited by Mary Elizabeth Perry and Anne J. Cruz
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), p. 95.
37. Jesús Imirizaldu, ed., “Testimony of Francisco de Encinas,” in Monjas y Bea-
tas Embaucadoras (Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1977), pp. 37–38.
38. Henry Charles Lea, A History of the Inquisition in Spain, 4 vols. (New York:
Macmillan, 1907), 4:82.
39. Matute y Liquín, Colección, pp. 189–90.
40. Excerpt of letter from Zapata, in Imirizaldu, Monjas, p. 33. On the b
­ attle of
Pavia, see Jean-­Marie Le Gall, L’honneur perdu de François Ier: Pavie, 1525
(Paris: Payot, 2015); and Angus Konstam, Pavia 1525: The Climax of the Ital-
ian Wars (Oxford: Praeger, 1996).
41. “Una reliquia andante.” Ana Cristina Cuadro García, “Tejiendo una vida de
reliqua: Estrategias de control de consciencias de la santa diabólica Magda-
lena de la Cruz,” Chronica Nova 31 (2005): 308.
42. Proçesso a Madalena de la Cruz, BNF, MS 354, fol. 252v. See Cuadro García,
“Tejiendo una vida de reliqua,” p. 308n1.
43. BNF, MS 354, fol. 257v.
44. “Sentencia de Magdalena de la Cruz,” I, in Imirizaldu, Monjas, p. 53. The cru-
cifixion was incomplete ­because she had no way of nailing the hand she had
used for nailing her other three extremities.
45. “Sentencia,” IX, in Imirizaldu, Monjas, p. 55.
46. BNF, MS 354, fol. 264r; “Sentencia,” VIII, in Imirizaldu, Monjas, p. 55.
47. Matute y Liquín, Colección, p. 185.
48. BNF, MS 354, fol. 253v; “Sentencia,” XXIX, in Imirizaldu, Monjas, p. 59.
49. “Sentencia,” XIII and XXIV, in Imirizaldu, Monjas, pp. 56, 58.
50. Matute y Liquín, Colección, p. 186; and “Sentencia,” V, in Imirizaldu, Monjas,
p. 54.
51. See Poutrin, “Les chapelets bénits des mystiques espagnoles,” pp. 33–54.
52. BNF, MS 354, fols. 251v–252r.
53. “Sentencia,” XXIX, in Imirizaldu, Monjas, p. 59.
 438 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 6 6 –2 7 0

54. Obras del Venerable Maestro Juan de Ávila, 9 vols. (Madrid, 1759), 2:127–28.
See also Rady Roldán-­Figueroa, The Ascetic Spirituality of Juan de Ávila (Leiden:
Brill, 2010), p. 82.
55. Pedro de Ribadeneyra, Vida del Padre Ignacio de Loyola, fundador de la Religión
de la Compañia de Jesús (Madrid, 1583), bk. 5, pp. 277–78.
56. Cuadro García, “Tejiendo una vida de reliqua,” p. 309; “Sentencia,” XV, in Imi-
rizaldu, Monjas, p. 57.
57. “Las críaba en su celda”: Rafael Gracia Boix, ed., Autos de fe y causas de la
Inquisición de Córdoba (Córdoba: Diputación Provincial de Córdoba, 1983),
p. 16.
58. BNF, MS 354, fol. 257r.
59. BNF, MS 354, fols. 253v–254r.
60. BNF, MS 354, fols. 252r, 265v.
61. BNF, MS 354, fol. 251v.
62. BNF, MS 354, fol. 259r.
63. BNF, MS 354, fol. 253r, 262r–262v; Cuadro García, “Tejiendo una vida de
reliqua,” pp. 310n4, 319n39.
64. BNF, MS 354, fols. 262r–262v; “Sentencia,” XXVIII, in Imirizaldu, Monjas,
p. 59.
65. BNF, MS 354, fol. 251r.
66. Letter written in early 1544 by a nun from the Santa Isabel convent in Cór-
doba, in Imirizaldu, Monjas, p. 44.
67. “Letter,” in Imirizaldu, Monjas, pp. 44–45.
68. “Letter,” in Imirizaldu, Monjas, pp. 47–48.
69. “Sentencia,” V, in Imirizaldu, Monjas, p. 54.
70. “Sentencia,” IX, in Imirizaldu, Monjas, p. 55.
71. “Sentencia,” XIII, XXIV, XXIX, XXXV, in Imirizaldu, Monjas, pp. 56, 58, 59, 60.
72. “Sentencia,” XIV, in Imirizaldu, Monjas, p. 56.
73. BNF MS 354, fol. 260v. Cuadro Garcia, “Tejiendo una vida de reliqua,” p. 323,
argues that Magdalena’s extreme inedia claims ­were her “Achilles’ heel.”
74. For a perceptive analy­sis of the social dimension of Magdalena’s downfall, see
María del Mar Graña Cid, “La Santa/Bruja Magdalena de la Cruz: Identidades
Religiosas y Poder Femenino en la Andalucía Pretridentina,” in Actas del III
Congreso de Historia de Andalucía, vol. 2: Las mujeres en la historia de Andalucía
(Cordoba: Publicaciones Obra Social y Cultural CajaSur, 2002), pp. 103–20.
75. Montague Summers, The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism (London: Rider and
Com­pany, 1950), p. 218.
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 7 1 –2 7 2 439

76. “Sentencia,” XXXVI, in Imirizaldu, Monjas, pp. 60–61.

77. Magdalena’s case would receive constant attention internationally in texts on
feigned sanctity and demonology, such as Juan de Horozco y Covarrubias’s
Tratado de la verdadera y falsa prophecia (1588); Jean Bodin’s De la démono-
manie des sorciers (1580); and Richard Baxter’s The Certainty of the Worlds of
Spirits (1691). In 1939, French jurist and polymath Maurice Garçon would
turn Magdalena’s story into a historical novel, Magdeleine de la Croix, abbesse
diabolique (repr., Grenoble: Éditions Jérome Millon, 2010).
78. Francisco de Encinas, in Imirizaldu, Monjas, p. 38.
79. On the development of this physical phenomenon of Christian mysticism, see
Carolyn Muessig, “Signs of Salvation: The Evolution of Stigmatic Spirituality
before Saint Francis of Assisi,” Church History 82, no. 1 (March 2013): 40–68.
80. Agustina Bessa Luís, A Monja de Lisboa (Lisbon: Guimarães Editores, 1985).
81. The convent of the Annunciation ­housed over sixty nuns. See Alvaro Huerga,
“El Proceso Inquisitorial de la ‘Monja de Lisboa’ y Fray Luis de Granada,”
Hispania Sacra 12 (1959): 334n6.
82. María could have read about Catherine’s spiritual marriage in Raymond of
Capua’s fourteenth-­century hagiography The Life of Saint Catherine of Siena,
pt, 1, chap. 11.
83. OCLG, vol. 17, Historia de Sor María de la Visitación (hereafter OCLG 17),
pp. 66–67.
84. Letter to Archbishop Juan de Ribera, March 1584, in OCLG, vol. 19, Episto-
lario (hereafter OCLG 19), p. 124; OCLG 17:147, 171.
85. OCLG 17:40, 47–48, 171.
86. OCLG 17:129, 169, 175–86.
87. OCLG 17:145. On this theme, see María Echaniz Sans, “El cuerpo femenino
como encarnación de Cristo: María de la Visitación, la monja de Lisboa,” Re-
vista d’etudis feministes 9 (1995): 27–45.
88. OCLG 17:146.
89. OCLG 17:146–47.
90. OCLG 17:148, 193.
91. María could have read about Catherine’s invisible stigmata in Raymond of
Capua’s fourteenth-­century hagiography, The Life of Saint Catherine of Siena,
pt. 2, chap. 5.
92. OCLG 17:146. The wounds on her head bled a l­ittle, constantly, and produced
horrific headaches e­ very Thursday eve­ning that would last twenty-­four hours
and make ­every Friday a painful ordeal for María.
 440 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 7 3 –2 7 6

93. OCLG 17:157, 193.

94. OCLG 17:164.
95. OCLG 17:151.
96. Alvaro Huerga, “Vida seudomística,” 46n41. The “nails” that protruded from
­these wounds ­were fleshy but ­were irregularly ­shaped and gave the appear-
ance of being made of rusty iron.
97. Letter of Luis de Granada to Juan de Ribera, March 1584, in OCLG 19: 124.
See Ramón Robres Lluch, “La monja de Lisboa. Sus fingidos estigmas. Fray
Luis de Granada y el Patriarca Ribera,” Boletín de la Sociedad Castellonense de
Cultura 83 (1947): 182–214, 230–78.
98. See Urbano Alonso del Campo, Vida y obra de Fray Luis de Granada (Sala-
manca: Editorial San Esteban, 2005); John A. Moore, Fray Luis de Granada
(Boston: Twayne, 1977); and Luis Muñoz, Vida y virtudes del venerable varon
Fray Luis de Granada (Madrid, 1639), esp. chaps. 9–13, on his involvement
with the Nun of Lisbon.
99. Cited in Ramón Robres, “La Monja de Lisboa según nuevos documentos ro-
manos con una carta de Fray Luis de Granada,” Boletín de la Sociedad Castel-
lonense de Cultura 28 (1952): 523. For the correspondence with Ribera, see
Ramón Robres and José Ramón Ortolá, La monja de Lisboa: Epistolario in-
édito entre Fr. Luis de Granada y el Patriarca Ribera (Castellón de la Plana: So-
ciedad Castellonense de Cultura, 1947).
100. Relación de la vida y milagros de la priora de la Anunciata (Paris, 1586).
101. OCLG 17:12–13.
102. The Fugger News Letters: Being a Se­lection of Unpublished Letters from the Cor-
respondents of the House of Fugger during the Years 1568–1605, edited by Victor
von Klarwill, translated by Pauline de Chary (New York: Putnam, 1925), p. 119.
103. Huerga, “Vida seudomística,” p. 62.
104. “Examen de fr. Luis de Granada y fr. Gaspar d’Aveiro,” app. 5.2, in Huerga,
“Vida seudomística,” pp. 88–89.
105. Report of Luis de Granada, Juan de las Cuevas, and Gaspar d’Aveiro, Decem-
ber 1587, app. 5.1, in Huerga, “Vida seudomística,” pp. 85–86.
106. Report of Luis de Granada, Juan de las Cuevas, and Gaspar d’Aveiro, Decem-
ber 1587, app. 5.1, in Huerga, “Vida seudomística,” p. 88.
107. Huerga, “Vida seudomística,” p. 76.
108. Daniel A. Mortier, Histoire de maítres généraux de l’ordre des frères prêcheurs,
8 vols. (Paris: Picard, 1903–1920), 5:645–46n1.
109. Mortier, Histoire de maítres généraux, 5:646n2; Huerga, “Vida seudomística,”
p. 96n20.
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 7 6 –2 7 8 441

110. Huerga, “Vida seudomística,” p. 77.

111. Astrologer Guillén de Casaos, AHN, Inquisition, leg. 312, no. 2, fol. 5, Casaos
to Alonso de Mendoza, Madrid, November 19, 1588, cited in Richard Kagan,
“Politics, Prophecy, and the Inquisition in Late Sixteenth-­Century Spain,” in
Cultural Encounters: The Impact of the Inquisition in Spain and the New World,
edited by Mary Elizabeth Perry and Anne J. Cruz (Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1991), p. 119n49.
112. Testimony from Damian de Fonseca, one-­time secretary to Luis de Granada:
“Non est vera sanctitas huius monialis, quae populum commovet et rebus
politicis sese immiscet.” Damiani a Fonseca Itinerarium ac gesta ex variis re-
lationibus eiusdem per me Io. Baptismam Reggianum, eius amanuensem, col-
lecta, AGOP, Santa Sabina, Rome, sec. 13, MS 460, fol. 131r., cited by Huerga,
“Vida seudomística,” p. 97n25.
113. A full description of this investigation can be found in the sentence eventu-
ally issued by the Inquisition in November 1588, which can be found in Imi-
rizaldu, Monjas, pp. 179–97.
114. “Sentencia,” in Imirizaldu, Monjas, pp. 181–87.
115. “Sentencia,” in Imirizaldu, Monjas, pp. 187–93; and “Relacion sumaria de
las cosas de Maria de la Visitacion, prioresa que fue del monasterio de la
Anunciada de Lisboa” (1588), app. 7, in Huerga, “Vida seudomística,” pp.
94–95.
116. “Sentencia,” in Imirizaldu, Monjas, pp. 192–93.
117. “Sentencia,” in Imirizaldu, Monjas, p. 193.
118. The official statement signed by Cardinal Archduke Albert, who was also in-
quisitor general, is at the BNE, MS. 11.077, fols. 12r–38v.
119. “Sentencia,” in Imirizaldu, Monjas, pp. 196–97; also in Huerga, “Vida seudo-
mística,” pp. 124–25.
120. Richard Kagan emphasizes the po­liti­cal dimension of María’s condemnation
in his essay “Politics, Prophecy, and the Inquisition,” pp. 118–20.
121. Huerga, “Vida seudomística,” pp. 86–87.
122. For a very perceptive analy­sis of this response in relation to María’s spectacu-
lar fall from grace, see Freddy Dominguez, “From Saint to Sinner: Sixteenth
­Century Perceptions of ‘La Monja de Lisboa,’” in A New Companion to Hispanic
Mysticism, edited by Hilaire Kallendorf (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 297–320.
123. Some of María’s devotees, such as Margarita de Agullona, w
­ ere devastated by
her fraudulence. See Jaime Sanchiz, Relación breve de la vida, virtudes, y mila-
gros de la humilde sierva del Señor sor Margarita Agullona (Valencia, 1607),
p. 95.
 442 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 7 8 –2 8 1

124. “Copia de una carta que el padre fray Luis de Granada escribió a la Majestad
de la Emperatriz sobre la causa de María de la Visitación.” OCLG 19:182–87.
125. “Sermón contra los escándalos en las caídas públicas,” OCLG 17:207–56. On
the writing of this sermon, see Muñoz, Vida y virtudes, chap. 13.
126. “Sermón,” OCLG 17:216.
127. “Sermón,” OCLG 17:237.
128. “Sermón,” OCLG 17:257.
129. Cipriano de Valera, Enjambre de los falsos milagros, y ilusiones del demonio con
que María de la Visitación priora de la Anunciada de Lisboa engañó a muy
muchos: Y de como fue descubierta y condenada en el año de 1588 (London,
1594). I have used this edition: Los dos tratados del papa i de la misa (Madrid,
1851), pp. 554–94.
130. De Valera, Enjambre, pp. 586–88, 591–94.
131. For more on Valera, see Paul J. Hauben, Three Spanish Heretics and the Refor-
mation: Antonio Del Corro, Cassiodoro De Reina, and Cypriano De Valera (Geneva:
Librairie Droz, 1967).
132. De Valera, Enjambre, p. 582.
133. The two definitive biographies on Sor Luisa by F
­ ather Patrocinio García Bar-
riúso are extremely difficult to find outside Spain: La monja de Carrión: Sor
Luisa de la Ascensión Colmenares Cabezón (Zamora, Spain: Ediciones Monte
Casino, 1986) and Sor Luisa de la Ascensión: Una contemplativa del Siglo xvii
(Madrid: self-­published, 1993). The most thorough listing of all the extant
manuscript sources on the life of Sor Luisa can be found in his Monja de Car-
rión, pp. 5–13.
134. Vari­ous visionary “living saints” of the seventeenth ­century ­were Spanish Fran-
ciscan nuns, and quite a few had run-­ins with the Inquisition. See Francisco
Luis Rico Callado, “La Inquisición y las visionarias clarisas del siglo XVII: El
caso de sor Luisa de la Ascensión,” Bulletin of Spanish Studies 92, no. 5 (2015):
771–90. And ­these Franciscans ­were part of a larger phenomenon: see María
Laura Giordano, “Al borde del abísmo: ‘Falsas santas’ e ‘ilusas’ madrileñas en
la vigilia de 1640,” Historia Social 57 (2007): 75–97.
135. See Patrocinio García Barriúso, “La Monja de Carrión Sor Luisa de la Asce-
sión y Sor María de Jesús, la Monja de Ágreda,” Verdad y Vida 49 (1961):
547–52.
136. See Barriúso, Monja de Carrión, pp. 193–222. For samples of her poetry, see
the appendix on pp. 509–19.
137. Pedro de Balbás, Memorial informativo en defensa de Sor Luisa de la Ascensión,
monja professa de Santa Clara de Carrión (1643), p. 153r.
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 8 1 –2 8 3 443

138. Alonso de Benavides, Memorial a la Sanctidad de Urbano VIII nuestro señor

açerca de las conuerçiones del Nueuo Mexico hechas en el felicissimo tiempo del
govierno de su pontificado, 1634, Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, Vatican Ar-
chives, Rome; Ayer MS, p. 111.
139. Alonso de Benavides, Memorial que Fray Juan de Santander de la Orden de San
Francisco, Comissario General de Indias, presenta a la Magestad Catolica del Rey
don Felipe Quarto, nuestro Señor. Hecho por el Padre Fray Alonso de Benavides,
Comissario del Santo Oficio, y Custodio que ha sido de las Provincias y conversio-
nes del Nuevo Mexico. Tratase en el de los Tesoros espirituales, y temporales, que la
divina Majestad ha manifestado en aquellas conversiones y nuevos descubrimen-
tos, por medio de los Padres desta serafica Religion (Madrid: Imprenta Real,
1630), pp. 78, 80; Ayer MS, p. 109; JSRV, p. 119.
140. Balbás, Memorial, pp. 158r–158v.
141. In the first denunciation of Sor Luisa made to the Inquisition, her accusers
charged that her reputation as a saint rested mainly on the claim “que a diez
y seis años que se sustenta sin comida o con tan poca, que se tiene por mila-
gro.” AHN, Inquisición, leg. 3708, caja 1, cited in Barriúso, “Milagrismo,”
HIEA, 1:1096.
142. AHN, Inquisición, leg. 3704, caja 3, fol. 166v; Fray Luis de Granada, Relación
de la causa de Soror Luisa de la Ascención, monja del convento de Santa Clara de
Carrión, que se da para calificar (1633), p. 92r.
143. AHN, Inquisición, leg. 3704, caja 1, fol. 531–32; AHN, Inquisición, leg. 3704,
caja 2, fol. 32v; Barriúso, “Milagrismo,” HIEA, 1:1094; de Granada, Relación
de la causa, pp. 32r–37v; Balbás, Memorial, p. 40r.
144. Balbás, Memorial, pp. 20v–22r.
145. De Granada, Relación de la causa, pp. 37v–39r. See also Barriúso, Monja de
Carrión, pp. 260–63.
146. De Granada, Relación de la causa, p. 10v: “Fray Antonio Daça y fray Alonso de
Prodo testifican averla visto tan pegada a la Cruz, como si estuviera clavada.”
147. Balbás, Memorial, pp. 12v, 13v, 14r–15v, 17v, 19r.
148. De Granada, Relación de la causa, p. 102r.
149. Relacion berdadera de las mercedes que la hermana Luysa de Colmenares a reci-
bido de la mano de Jesucristo el año 1604, cited by Barriúso, “Milagrismo,”
HIEA, 1:1096; Balbás, Memorial, pp. 59v–65v.
150. BNE, MS 8540 contains 215 folios full of signatures of the initial members.
Barriúso, “Milagrismo,” HIEA, p. 1094.
151. De Granada, Relación de la causa, pp. 85r–96r. According to the Catechism
of the Catholic Church (New York, 1995), p. 464, no. 1667, sacramentals “are
 444 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 8 3 –2 8 6

sacred signs which bear a resemblance to the sacraments. They signify effects,
particularly of a spiritual nature, which are obtained through the intercession
of the Church. By them, men are disposed to receive the chief effect of the
sacraments, and vari­ous occasions in life are rendered holy.”
152. Traditional iconography of the Immaculate Conception depicts the Virgin
Mary’s triumph over the devil and sin by showing her feet firmly planted on a
snake, in reference to Gen. 3:15 and Rev. 12:1–2.
153. Balbás, Memorial: on purgatory, p. 124r; on resurrections: p. 161r. For an in-
cisive analy­sis of Sor Luisa’s miracles, see Egido López, “Religiosidad popu­lar
y taumaturgia del Barroco,” 3:11–39.
154. Balbás, Memorial, fol. 142r.
155. One document describes the pro­cess of their creation as follows: “She would
bring the crosses and beads, e­ tcetera, and other t­ hings, and place them on the
altar in her hermitage, and she would ask God interiorly to bless them, and
she would go into ecstasy, and then she would see how Our Lord showered
them with His blessing.” De Granada, Relación de la causa, p. 126v.
156. AHN, Inquisición, leg. 3704, caja 2, fol. 146, Barriúso, “Milagrismo,” HIEA,
pp. 1095–96. The text lists six other “powers,” including one “over all tempta-
tions, and especially ­those related to marital infidelity and sins of the flesh.”
­ ere Inés Manrique, Jerónima Osorio, Susana Reinoso, María del Prado,
157. They w
María de Los Rios, and Constanza Alvarez. AHN, Inquisición, leg. 3708, caja
1. See Vicenta Maria Marquez de la Plata y Ferrandiz, Mujeres pensadoras,
místicas, científicas y heterodoxas (Madrid: Castalia, 2008), pp. 28–29.
158. AHN, Inquisición, leg. 3708, caja 1. Text available in Marquez de la Plata,
Mujeres, pp. 37–40.
159. AHN, Inquisición, leg. 3704, caja 3, fol. 165r–165v; Marquez de la Plata, Mu-
jeres, pp. 44–45.
160. For more on the failed “Spanish Match,” see Jean-­Luc Nardone, ed., The Spanish
Match: Le mariage manqué du prince de Galles et de l’infante d’Espagne (Tou-
louse: Presses Univeritaires du Midi, 2020); Alexander Samson, ed., The Span-
ish Match: Prince Charles’s Journey to Madrid (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2006);
and Glyn Redworth, The Prince and the Infanta: The Cultural Politics of the
Spanish Match (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003).
161. De Granada, Relación de la causa.
162. “Copia de la carta que el licenciado D. Francisco Vallejo de la Cueva, Corregi-
dor de Carrión escribió a S.M. en su Consejo Real de Castilla, en 3 de abril de
1635,” in Memorial Histórico Español (Madrid: Real |Academia de la Historia,
1961), 13:158. The full text is available in Barriúso, “Milagrismo,” HIEA, pp.
1098–99.
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 8 6 –2 9 0 445

163. Balbás, Memorial, fols. 7r–8r. See Rico Callado, “La Inquisición y las vision-
arias clarisas del siglo XVII,” p. 788.
164. De Granada, Relación de la causa, fols. 1r–4r.
165. AHN, Inquisición, leg. 3704, caja 2, fols. 204–422, cited in Barriúso, “Mila-
grismo,” HIEA, p. 1099.
166. Francisco Silvela, ed., Cartas de la Venerable Madre Sor María de Ágreda y del
Señor Rey Don Felipe IV (Madrid, 1885), 1:176–79.
167. Barriúso, “Milagrismo,” HIEA, pp. 1098–99.
168. Teófanes Egido López lists only five miracles in 1635–1636: “Religiosidad
popu­lar y taumaturgia del Barroco,” 3:18.
169. Barriúso, “Milagrismo,” HIEA, pp. 1101–2; Marquez de la Plata, Mujeres,
pp. 64–66.
170. Written testimony at AHN, Inquisición, leg. 3705/3; oral testimony at AHN,
Inquisición, leg. 3704, caja 2, cited in Marquez de la Plata, Mujeres, p. 69.
171. Text in Marquez de la Plata, Mujeres, p. 67.
172. AHN, Inquisición, leg. 3705, fols. 19–944, cited in Marquez de la Plata, Mu-
jeres, p. 68.
173. Balbás, Memorial.
174. Text in Marquez de la Plata, Mujeres, p. 72.
175. AHN, Inquisición, leg. 3708, caja 2. Text in Marquez de la Plata, Mujeres,
p. 73.

9. Protestants, Dev­iltry, and the Impossible

1. Affidavit signed by Thomas Thornton and William Hudson, Boston, Janu-

ary 1693, sent to Cotton Mather, published in Robert Calef’s More Won­ders of
the Invisible World (London, 1700), p. 23.
2. For a concise survey of the premodern devil, see the introduction written by
Richard Raiswell for his edited collection of essays, The Devil in Society in
Premodern Eu­rope, with Peter Dendle (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and
Re­nais­sance Studies, 2012), pp. 23–68.
3. Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern
Eu­rope (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 168.
4. Douglas Alchin, “Monsters and Marvels: How Do We Interpret the Preternatu-
ral?,” The American Biology Teacher, November 2007, p. 565.
5. See Harman Bhogal, “Miracles, Cessationism, and Demonic Possession: The
Darrell Controversy and the Par­ameters of Preternature in Early Modern En­glish
Demonology,” Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural 4,
no. 2 (2015): pp. 152–80.
 446 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 9 0 –2 9 2

6. Michelle Brock and David Winter, “Theory and Practice in Early Modern
Epistemologies of the Preternatural,” in Knowing Demons, Knowing Spirits in
the Early Modern Period, edited by Michelle Brock, Richard Raiswell, and David
Winter (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), p. 8.
7. “Ningun fundamento tienen sobre la palabra de Dios, sino sobre sueños, fal-
sos milagros . . . ​I sobre ilusiones del demonio, que se finjia ser no menos que
Christo.” Cipriano de Valera, Enjambre de los falsos milagros, y ilusiones del de-
monio con que María de la Visitación priora de la Anunciada de Lisboa engañó
a muy muchos: Y de como fue descubierta y condenada en el año de 1588 in Los
dos tratados del papa i de la misa (Madrid, 1851), p. 581.
8. “Verdadero milagro, pero de aquellos que haze Satanás para engañar los hom-
bres.” De Valera, Enjambre, p. 589.
9. “Et ea sunt opera diaboli; nos autem corporibus et rebus subiecti diabolo,
panis quo vivimus, et totum quo vivimus in carne, est sub imperio eius.” WA
40/1:314, Galatervorlesung (Commentary on Gal. 3:1).
10. See Erich Klingner, Luther und der deutsche Volksaberglaube (Berlin: Mayer und
Müller, 1912); and Heiko Oberman, Luther: Man between God and the Dev­il
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006).
11. WAT, Tischreden [­Table talk], vol. 6, passage 6811. Many of Luther’s most re-
vealing statements about the devil can be found in his Tischreden—­that is, in
transcripts of his conversations during meals with colleagues and students.
The most revealing cluster of demon tales can be found in WAT 6:6808–35.
12. WAT 6:6816. For another account of the nuts, see WAT 5:5358b.
13. WAT 6:6832. “Es ist aber nicht ein seltsam unerhört Ding, das der Teuffell
den häusern poltert und umhergebet.”
14. WAT 2:1429; WAT 3:3601. According to Luther, this is the lesson to be learned
­here: “Videte, tanta est potentia Sathanae in deludendis sensibus externis;
quid faciet in animabus?”
15. WAT 4:4040.
16. WAT 6:6814. “Gläube ich, dass de Affen eitel Teufel sind.” For more on this,
see A. Adam, “Der Teufel als Gottes Affe: Vorgeschichte eines Lutherwortes,”
Luther Jahrbuch 28 (1961): 104–9.
17. WAT 6:6815.
18. WAT 5:5358b. For a list of Luther’s demonic encounters, see Jeffrey Burton
Russell, Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 1986), p. 39.
19. WAT 3:2982b. “Et ego infirmitates meas non esse naturales, sed meras fasci-
nationes puto.” See also WAT 6:6819.
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 9 2 –2 9 4 447

20. WAT 6:6813.

21. WAT 3:2829.
22. WAT 3:3841. “Prus­sia est plena Daemonibus.”
23. WA 29:401.
24. WAT 6:6819. See also WAT 6:6813.
25. WAT 2:1252. Luther regarded Satan as both the instrument and the ­enemy
of God. See his commentary on Psalm 2: LW 14:335. For more on this
point, see Car­ter Lindberg, “Mask of God and Prince of Lies: Luther’s The-
ology of the Demonic,” in Disguises of the Demonic: Con­temporary Perspec-
tives on the Power of Evil, edited by Alan M. Olson (New York: Association
Press, 1975), p. 95.
26. See Kathryn Edwards, “Magic and the Occult in Luther’s World,” in The
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion (Oxford University Press, 2016), ac-
cessed July 3, 2021, https://­oxfordre​.­com​/­religion​/­view​/­10​.­1093​/­acrefore​
/­9780199340378​.­001​.­0001​/­acrefore​-­9780199340378​-­e​-­504.
27. WAT 1:491: “So w
­ ill ich sie in ars weysen, da gehort er hin.” An alternate ver-
sion of this line has Luther using an even more aggressive verb, substituting
“show” (weysen) with “shove” or “throw” (werfen): “So w
­ ill ich sie in Ars werfen.”
WAT 1:217.
28. WAT 2:2059. “Cognito autem Satana, quod Satanas sit, facili verbo superbiam
eius confundimus dicentes: Leck mich im arss, vel. Scheiss in die bruch und
hengs an den halz.”
29. WAT 5:5744. “Sihe da, Teufel, da hastu einen stab, gehe hin gen Rhom zu
deinen abgott.”
30. WAT 1:469. “Wenn das argumentum nit hilft, quod christianus est sine lege et
supra legem, so weyse man yhn flugs mit ein furz ab.”
31. WAT 1:812. See also WAT 6:6817.
32. WAT 6:6827. “So hab ich auch geschmissen und gepinkelt, daran wische dein
Maul und beisse dich wol damit!”
33. On this point, one can safely ignore Mikhail Bakhtin’s musings on Carnival
and Lent in Rabelais and His World, translated by Helene Iswolsky (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1968).
34. WAT 6:6827.
35. See Peter Morton, “Lutheran Naturalism, Popu­lar Magic, and the Devil,” in
Raiswell, Devil in Society, pp. 409–38.
36. See Moshe Sluhovsky, “Calvinist Miracles and the Concept of the Miraculous
in Sixteenth-­Century Huguenot Thought,” Re­nais­sance and Reformation/
Re­nais­sance et Réforme, n.s., 19, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 5–25.
 448 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 9 4 –2 9 8

37. “Merae sunt satanae illusions,” CO 2.17. An En­glish translation is available

in Institutes 1:17–18, “Prefatory Address to King Francis.”
38. Institutes 1:16:7; 1:13:13.
39. Bernard Vogler, “La Réforme et le concept de miracle au XVIème siècle,” Re-
vue du l’histoire de la spiritualité 48 (1972): 145; D. P. Walker, “The Cessation
of Miracles,” in Hermeticism and the Re­nais­sance: Intellectual History and the
Occult in Early Modern Eu­rope, edited by Ingrid Merkel and Allen G. Debus
(Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1988), pp. 111–24.
40. See Heribert Schutzeichel, Die Glaubenstehologie Calvins (Munich: M. Hueber,
1972), pp. 258–65; Ernst Saxer, Aberglaube, Heuchelei und Frömmigkeit: Eine
Untersuchung zu Calvins reformatorischer Eigenart (Zu­rich: Zwingli-­Verlag, 1970),
pp. 44–45; and Vogler, “Réforme,” pp. 145–49.
41. Institutes 1:8.5–6.
42. “Prefatory Address to King Francis,” Institutes, p. 16.
43. “Prefatory Address to King Francis,” Institutes, p. 17. Calvin cites Thess. 2:9–
10: “The coming of the lawless one w
­ ill be in accordance with how Satan
works. He ­will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and won­ders
that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives t­hose who are
perishing.”
44. Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, O.C., 48.104.
45. “Hic enim finis est, ut mundus a Chrsto abductus ad sanctos transfugiet.”
Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, O.C., 48.104.
46. John Bale, The Latter Examination of Mistress Anne Askewe, in Select Works of
John Bale, edited by Henry Christmas (Cambridge University Press, 1849),
p. 236.
47. Saint Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, bk. 2, chaps. 23–24, 30; and his City
of God, bk. 8, chaps. 17–23. See also Lynn Thorndike, “The Attitude of Ori-
gen and Augustine ­toward Magic,” The Monist 18, no. 1 (January 1908): 46–
66; and The Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Eu­rope, vol. 3: The
­Middle Ages, edited by K. Jolly, C. Raudvere, and E. Peters (London: Athlone
Press, 2002), 184.
48. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-­II:92:1. “Superstitio est vitium religioni
oppositum secundum excessum, non quia plus exhibeat in cultum divinum
quam vera religio, sed quia exhibet cultum divinum vel cui non debet, vel eo
modo quo non debet.” For a masterful survey of ­these premodern develop-
ments, see Euan Cameron, Enchanted Eu­rope: Superstition, Reason, and Reli-
gion, 1250–1750 (Oxford University Press), esp. pp. 1–140.
49. Saint Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, 2:20:30; 2:23:35.
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 9 8 –3 0 3 449

50. Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, edited by Stephen Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach,

and Oliver Berghof (Cambridge University Press, 2006), bk. 8, pp. 173–90.
51. Aquinas, Summa Theologica II-­II:96:2.
52. See Robin Barnes, Astrology and Reformation (Oxford University Press, 2016);
Wayne Shumaker, The Occult Sciences in the Re­nais­sance (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1972); Charles Webster, The G
­ reat Instauration: Science, Medicine,
and Reform, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2002).
53. See Christopher I. Lehrich, The Language of Demons and Angels: Cornelius
Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy (Leiden: Brill, 2003); and Marc van der Poel, Cor-
nelius Agrippa: The Humanist Theologian and His Declamations (Leiden: Brill,
1997).
54. Jean Gerson, “De Erroribus circa Artem Magicam et Articulis Reprobatis,” in
Malleus Maleficarum (Lyons, 1669), vol. 2, pt. II, p. 169. Cited in Cameron,
Enchanted Eu­rope, p. 131.
55. See Carlos Eire, War against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus
to Calvin (Cambridge University Press, 1986), esp. pp. 8–53 and 166–94.
56. “In all probability ­those common juggling words of hocus pocus are nothing
­else but a corruption of hoc est corpus, by way of ridicu­lous imitation of the
priests of the Church of Rome in their trick of Transubstantiation.” Tillotson,
Sermon II.xxvi.237 (1742), cited in The Compact Edition of the Oxford En­
glish Dictionary, 2 vols. (Oxford University Press, 1971), 1:314.
57. Session XXV: “On the Invocation, Veneration, and on the Relics of the Saints,
and Sacred Images,” in Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, original text
with an En­glish translation by Rev. H. J. Schroeder, OP (London: B. Herder,
1941), pp. 215–17.
58. Session XXII: “Decree Touching the ­Things to Be Observed and Avoided in
the Cele­bration of the Mass,” in Canons and Decrees, pp. 150–52.
59. For a longer list, see Joseph Wilhelm, “Superstition,” in The Catholic Encyclo-
pedia, 15 vols. (New York: Robert Appleton Com­pany, 1907–1912), vol. 14,
accessed January 29, 2023, https://­www​.­newadvent​.­org​/­cathen​/­14339a​.­htm.
60. See Soergel, Miracles and the Protestant Imagination (Oxford University Press,
2012); and Julie Crawford, Marvelous Protestantism: Monstrous Births in Post-­
Reformation ­England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005).
61. See Richard Kieckhefer, “The Specific Rationality of Medieval Magic,” American
Historical Review 99 (1994): 813–36, and Magic in the ­Middle Ages (Cam-
bridge University Press, 1989). For a monumental exploration of this subject,
see Lynn Thorndike, The History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols.
(New York: Macmillan, 1923–1958).
 450 n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 0 4 –3 1 0

62. See Laura Sumrall, “Natu­ral Magic in Re­nais­sance Magic,” in Encyclopedia of

Re­nais­sance Philosophy, edited by Marco Sgarbi (Cham: Springer, 2019), ac-
cessed January 29, 2023, https://­www​.­researchgate​.­net​/­publication​/­32064​5742​
_­Natural​_­Magic​_­in​_­Renaissance​_­Science.
63. See Paola Zambelli, White Magic, Black Magic in the Eu­ro­pean Re­nais­sance
(Leiden: Brill, 2007).
64. For a magisterial summary and analy­sis of all ­these aspects of magic viewed
from an En­glish setting, see Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic
(Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 25–50, 177–282.
65. Joseph Hansen, Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Hexenwahns
(Bonn: Universitäts-­Buchdruckerei, 1901), p. 38.
66. John XXII, Super illius specula, in Witchcraft in Eu­rope, 400–1700: A Docu-
mentary History, edited and translated by Alan Charles Kors and Edward
Peters, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), pp.
119–20.
67. Bernardino of Siena, Medieval Popu­lar Religion, 1100–1500: A Reader, edited
by John Shinners (University of Toronto Press, 2006), p. 245.
68. For more on this text and its context, see Hans Peter Broedel, The Malleus
Maleficarum and the Construction of Witchcraft (Manchester University Press,
2003).
69. Christopher Mackay, The Hammer of Witches: A Complete Translation of the Mal-
leus Maleficarum (Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 282.
70. See Otto Sigg, Hexenprozesse mit Todesurteil Justizmorde der Zunfstadt Zürich
(Zürich: Offizin, 2012); Bruce Gordon, “God Killed Saul: Heinrich Bullinger
and Jacob Ruef on the Power of the Devil,” in Werewolves, Witches, and Wandering
Spirits, edited by Kathryn Edwards (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University
Press, 2002), pp. 155–79; William Monter, “Witchcraft in Geneva, 1537–
1662,” Journal of Modern History 43, no. 2 (June 1971): 179–204; Edwards,
“Magic and the Occult in Martin Luther’s World.”
71. Wahrhaftige und erschreckliche Thatten und Handlungen der 63 Hexen, so zu Wi-
esensteig mit dem Brand gerichtet worden (1563). See H. C. Erik Midelfort,
Witch Hunting in Southwest Germany, 1562–1684 (Stanford University Press,
1972), pp. 88–90.
72. Monter, “Witchcraft in Geneva,” pp. 179–204; statistics on p. 187.
73. Hexenglaube und Hexenpro­cesse im Raum Rhein-­Mosel-­Saar, edited by Franz Ir-
sigler and Gunther Franz (Trier, Germany: Spee, 1995). Translated excerpts
from the prosecutions in Trier are available in Kors and Peters, Witchcraft in
Eu­rope, pp. 308–17.
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 1 1 –3 1 6 451

74. George L. Burr, ed., The Witch Persecutions, 6 vols. (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania History Department, 1898–1912), vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 18–19.
Translated excerpts from the prosecutions in Bamberg, Würzburg, and Bonn
are available in Kors and Peters, Witchcraft in Eu­rope, pp. 348–53.
75. Brian Levack, ed., The Witchcraft Sourcebook (New York: Routledge, 2004),
p. 201.
76. Wolfgang Behringer, Witches and Witch-­Hunts (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004),
pp. 47–64 and ­tables 4.3 and 4.5.
77. Julian Goodare, “Witchcraft in Scotland,” in The Oxford Handbook of Witch-
craft in Early Modern Eu­rope and Colonial Amer­i­ca, edited by Brian P. Levack
(Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 302. See also Brian Levack, Witch Hunting
in Scotland (London: Routledge, 2008); and Christina Larner, Enemies of God:
The Witch-­Hunt in Scotland (London: Chatto and Windus, 1981).
78. See Malcolm Gaskill, “Witchcraft T
­ rials in ­England,” in Levack, Oxford Hand-
book of Witchcraft, p. 299; James Sharpe, Witchcraft in Early Modern E
­ ngland,
2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2019), esp. chaps. 2–3; Thomas, Religion and the
Decline of Magic, chaps. 14–18; and Alan Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and
Stuart ­England, 2nd ed. (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 1999), esp. chaps. 3–4.
79. Raisa Maria Toivo, Witchcraft and Gender in Early Modern Society: Finland and
the Wider Eu­ro­pean Experience (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2008).
80. Johann Weyer, Witches, Dev­ils, and Doctors in the Re­nais­sance: Johann Weyer,
De Praestigiis Daemonum, translated by John Shea, edited by George Mora and
Benjamin Kohl (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Re­nais­sance Texts and Stud-
ies, 1991), pp. 34, 310–12, 315, 522.
81. Joseph Glanvill, Saducismus triumphatus: Or Full and Plain Evidence concern-
ing Witches and Apparitions (London, 1681). All page numbers cited ­here are
from the London (1700) edition.
82. Glanvill, Saducismus, pp. 131–33.
83. Glanvill, Saducismus, pp. 63–66.
84. For more on this debate, see Thomas Harmon Jobe, “The Devil in Restora-
tion Science: The Glanvill-­Webster Witchcraft Debate,” Isis 72, no. 3 (September
1981): 342–56.
85. Increase Mather, Cases of Conscience concerning evil Spirits Personating Men,
Witchcrafts, infallible Proofs of Guilt in such as are accused with that Crime (Bos-
ton, 1693), p. 20.
86. Mather, Cases of Conscience, pp. 7, 15, 38.
87. Sarah Ferber, Demonic Possession and Exorcism in Early Modern France (Lon-
don: Routledge, 2004), p. 153.
 452 n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 1 7 –3 2 5

10. The Devil Himself

1. D. P. Walker, Unclean Spirits: Possession and Exorcism in France and ­England in

the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1981), pp. 14–15. Walker adds that since he “cannot dem-
onstrate” the validity of this princi­ple, all he can do is announce that he
“­shall try to conform to it.”
­ ill no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming.”
2. “I w
John 14:30.
3. See Susanne Kord, “Ancient Fears and the New Order: Witch Beliefs and
Physiognomy in the Age of Reason,” German Life and Letters 61, no. 1 (2008):
61–78.
4. Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons (Oxford University Press, 1997), pp.
687–726.
5. Julian “the Apostate,” Epistolae, 19, in The Works of the Emperor Julian, trans-
lated by Wilmer Cave Wright, 3 vols. (London: Loeb Classical Library, 1930),
3:52.
6. Peter Burke, Popu­lar Culture in Early Modern Eu­rope, 3rd ed. (New York: Harper
Torchbooks, 2004), p. 213.
7. See K. L. Roos, The Devil in 16th ­Century German Lit­er­a­ture: The Teufelsbücher
(Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1972).
8. Charlene P. E. Burns, Christian Understandings of Evil: The Historical Trajectory
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016), p. 102.
9. Huldrich Zwingli, “Acts of the Convention Held in Zu­rich 29 January 1523,”
in Selected Works of Huldrich Zwingli, edited by Samuel Macauley Jackson
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1901), chap. 3.
10. Institutes I.15.13.
11. Institutes II.4.3; I.14.18.
12. See Alison Weber, “Saint Teresa, Demonologist,” in Culture and Control in
Counter-­Reformation Spain, edited by Anne J. Cruz and Mary Elizabeth Perry
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), pp. 171–95.
13. Vida 31.9, O.C., p. 167.
14. Cited by Weber, “Saint Teresa, Demonologist,” p. 182.
15. Pedro Ciruelo, Reprobación de las supersticiones y hechicerías (Salamanca, 1538).
Quote from the En­glish translation: A Treatise Reproving All Superstitions and
Forms of Witchcraft, translated by Eugene A. Maio and D’Orsay W. Pearson
(Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1977), p. 266.
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 2 5 –3 2 7 453

16. Rituale Romanum (Paris: Lecoffre, 1885), pp. 486–87.

17. See Guido Dall’Olio, “The Devil of Inquisitors, Demoniacs and Exorcists in
Counter-­Reformation Italy,” in The Devil in Society in Premodern Eu­rope, ed-
ited by Richard Raiswell with Peter Dendle (Toronto: Centre for Reformation
and Re­nais­sance Studies, 2012), pp. 511–36.
18. H. C. Erik Midelfort, A History of Madness in Sixteenth ­Century Germany (Stan-
ford University Press, 1999), p. 318.
19. See Robert Mandrou, Magistrats et sorciers en France au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Plon,
1968).
20. The principal source for this case is Jean Boulaese, Le thrésor et entiere his-
toire de la triomphante victoire du corps de Dieu sur l’espirit maling Beelzebub,
obtenue a Laon (1578). For analy­sis of this case, see Sarah Ferber, Demonic
Possession and Exorcism in Early Modern France (London: Routledge, 2004),
chap. 2; Irena Backus, Le Miracle de Laon (Paris: J. Vrin, 1994); and Walker,
Unclean Spirits, pp. 19–27.
21. See Anita Walker and Edmund Dickerman, “A W
­ oman ­under the Influence: A
Case of Alleged Possession in Sixteenth-­Century France,” Sixteenth ­Century
Journal 22, no. 3 (1991): 534–54; Ferber, Demonic Possession, pp. 40–60;
Walker, Unclean Spirits, pp. 33–42.
22. See Moshe Sluhovsky, “The Devil in the Convent,” American Historical Review
107, no. 5 (December 2002): 1379–411.
23. See Jean-­Raymond Fanlo, L’évangile du démon—­
La possession diabolique
d’Aix-­en-­Provence 1610–1611 (Paris: Champ Vallon, 2017); Anita Walker
and Edmund Dickerman, “A Notorious W
­ oman: Possession, Witchcraft and
Sexuality in Seventeenth-­Century Provence,” Historical Reflections / Réflex-
ions Historiques 27, no. 1 (2001): 1–26; and Ferber, Demonic Possession,
pp. 70–88.
24. See Michel de Certeau, The Possession at Loudun, translated by Michael B.
Smith (University of Chicago Press, 2000); Robert Rapley, A Case of Witch-
craft: The Trial of Urbain Grandier (Montreal: McGill–­Queen’s University Press,
1998); Michel Carmona, Les diables de Loudun (Paris: Fayard, 1988); and for
a collection of original documents, see Robert Mandrou, ed., Possession et sorcel-
lerie au dix-­septième siècle: Textes inédits (Paris: Fayard, 1979).
25. Nicolas Aubin [Des Niau], The History of the Dev­ils of Loudun, the Alleged Pos-
session of the Ursuline nuns, and the Trial and Execution of Urbain Grandier, told
by an Eyewitness, translated by Edmund Goldsmid, 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1887),
2:36–46. French original: La veritable histoire des diables de Loudun, de la
 454 n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 2 7 –3 3 0

possession des religieuses Ursulines et de la condamnation d’Urbain Grandier, par

un temoin (1634).
26. For a list of some of the accounts published in a single year, 1634, see de
Certeau, Possession at Loudun, pp. 184–86.
27. The cheats and illusions of Romish priests and exorcists. Discover’d in the history
of the dev­ils of Loudun: being an account of the pretended possession of the Ursu-
line nuns, and of the Condemnation and punishment of Urban Grandier a parson
of the same town (London, 1703).
28. As in the text La demonomanie de Loudun qui montre la veritable possesion des
religieuses Ursulines, et autres seculieres (1634).
29. Pierre Yvelin, Examen de la possession des religieuses de Louviers (1643); Récit
véritable de ce qui s’est fait et passé à Louviers, touchant les religieses possédées
(1647); Daniel Vidal, Critique de la raison mystique: Bénoit de Canfield, posses-
sion et dépossession au XVII siècle (Grenoble: Jérôme Milion, 1990); Ferber,
Demonic Possession, pp. 89–112.
30. The Dev­ils of Loudun (1952), a novel by Aldous Huxley; The Dev­ils (1961), a
play by John Whiting; ­Mother Joan of the Angels (1961), a novel by Jaroslaw
Iwaszkiewicz, turned into a film by director Jerzy Kawalerowicz; Die Teufel
von Loudun (1969), an opera by Krzysztof Penderecki, based on Huxley’s and
Whiting’s works; The Dev­ils (1971), a film directed by Ken Russell, based on
Huxley’s and Whiting’s works.
31. See Sluhovsky, “Devil in the Convent,” pp. 1383–85.
32. Cotton Mather, “The Afflictions of Margaret Rule,” in Robert Calef, More Won­
ders of the Invisible World (London, 1700), pp. 4–5.
33. Mather, “Afflictions,” p. 7.
34. Samuel Aves, in Calef, More Won­ders of the Invisible World, p. 22. Similar testi-
mony was offered by Robert Earle, John Wilkins, Daniel Williams, Thomas
Thornton, and William Hudson.
35. Affidavit signed by Thomas Thornton and William Hudson, Boston, Janu-
ary 1693, sent to Cotton Mather, published in Calef, More Won­ders of the In-
visible World, p. 23.
36. Testimony of ­Sister Isabel de Santo Domingo in Procesos 2:463. As mentioned
in chapter 9, the same phenomenon was reported in one En­glish demonic
levitation case by Joseph Glanvill in Saducismus Triumphatus (1700), p. 133.
37. Calef, More Won­ders of the Invisible World, p. 25.
38. Wallace Notestein, A History of Witchcraft in E
­ ngland from 1558 to 1718 (New
York: T. Y. Crowell, 1968), p. 328, admits in note 38 that the earliest source he
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 3 0 –3 3 5 455

could find for this account was Alexander Chal­mers, The General Biographical
Dictionary, 32 vols. (London, 1812–1827), 25:248.
39. For this encore per­for­mance of the devil, see H. C. Erik Midelfort, Exorcism
and Enlightenment (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005); and Gabri-
ele Amorth, An Exorcist Tells His Story, translated by Nicoletta V. MacKenzie
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999).
40. Martín de Castañega, Tratado muy sotil y bien fundado de las supersticiones y
hechizerías y vanos conjuros y abusiones (Logroño, 1529), quoted in María Taus-
iet Carlés, “Religíon, ciencia y superstición en Pedro Ciruelo y Martín de
Castañega,” Revista de Historia Jerónimo Zurita 65–66 (1992): 141. See also
David H. Darst, “Witchcraft in Spain: The Testimony of Martín de Castañe-
ga’s Treatise on Superstition and Witchcraft,” Proceedings of the American Phil-
osophical Society 123, no. 5 (October 1979): 298–322.
41. Pedro Ciruelo, Tratado en el qual se repruevan todas las supersticiones y hechize-
rias (Barcelona, 1628), p. 45.
42. On Witchcraft: An Abridged Translation of Johann Weyer’s De Praestigiis Daemo-
num, edited by Benjamin Kohl and H.C. Erik Midelfort (Asheville, NC: Pega-
sus Press, 1998), p. 96.
43. Reginald Scot, preface to The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584; repr., London:
Elliot, Stock, 1886), p. xx.
44. Von Hexen und unholden, wider die schwarzen kunst, abergleubigs sägnen, unwar-
haffts warsagen und andere derglychen von gott verbottne künst (1571).
45. Les Sorciers: Dialogue tres utile et necessaire pour ce temps auquel ce qui se dispute
aujourd’hui des Sorciers et Eriges, est traité bien amplement, et resolu (1574).
46. De lamiis seu strigibus no inutilia scitu (1572); Repetitio disputationis de lamiis
seu strigibus (1578). See Charles Gunnoe, Thomas Erastus and the Palatinate
(Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 339–74.
47. Hemmingsen, Admonitio de superstitionibus magicis vitandis (1575).
48. Paul Frisius, Dess Teuffels Nebelkappen: Das ist kurtzer begriff dess gantzen
Handels der Zauberey belangend (1583), fols. Bvii, r–­Cii, v; Ciii, r.
49. Daemonologie: In forme of a dialogue, diuided into three bookes (Edinburgh,
1597).
50. The Demonology of King James I, edited by Donald Tyson (Woodbury, MN:
Llewelyn, 2011), p. 221.
51. Cotton Mather, Won­ders of the Invisible World: Observations as well historical
as theological, upon the nature, the number, and the operations of the dev­ils: Ac-
companyd with, I. Some accounts of the grievous molestations, by daemons and
 456 n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 3 5 –3 4 2

witchcrafts, which have lately annoy’d the countrey; and the t­ rials of some eminent
malefactors executed upon occasion thereof (1693).
52. De la Démonomanie des Sorciers (Paris, 1580); translated by Randy Scott as
On the Demon-­Mania of Witches (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Re­nais­
sance Studies, 1995).
53. See ­Virginia Krause, “Listening to Witches: Bodin’s Use of Confession in De
la Démonomaie des Sorciers,” in The Reception of Bodin, edited by Howell A.
Lloyd (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 97–115.
54. Jean Bodin, Démonomanie, in Witchcraft in Eu­rope, 400–1700: A Documentary
History, edited and translated by Alan Charles Kors and Edward Peters, 2nd ed.
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), p. 302.
55. Peter Binsfeld, Tractatus de confessionibus maleficorum et sagarum (Trier, Ger-
many, 1589).
56. Daemonolatreiae libri tres: Ex ivdiciis capitalibus nongentorum plus minus ho-
minum, qui sortilegij crimen intra annos quindecim in Lotharingia capite luerunt
(Lyon, 1595).
57. Nicholas Remy, Demonolatry, edited by Montague Summers, translated by
E. A. Ashwin (London: J. Rodker, 1930), p. xii.
58. Pierre de Lancre, Tableau de l’inconstance des mauvais anges et démons, ou il est
amplement traicté des sorciers et de la sorcellerie (Paris, 1612).
59. La incredulité et mescréance du sortilège pleinement convaincue (1622); and Du
sortilège (1627), which was a rebuttal of Gabriel Naudé’s Apologie pour tous les
­grands personages qui ont esté faussement soupçonnés de magie (1625).
60. Martín del Rio, Disquisitionum magicarum Libri Sex (1599–1600).
61. Martín del Rio, Investigations into Magic, translated and edited by P. G.
Maxwell-­Stuart (Manchester University Press, 1999), pp. 28–29.
62. Del Rio, Investigations into Magic, pp. 92–93.
63. Compendium Maleficarum, ex quo nefandissima in genus humanum opera
venefica, ac ad illa vitanda remedia conspiciuntur (Milan, 1626), bk. 1, chap. 13,
p. 69; translated by E. A. Ashwin as Compendium Maleficarum: The Montague
Summers Edition (New York: Dover, 1988), p. 33.
64. Canon Episcopi (ca. 906), in Kors and Peters, Witchcraft in Eu­rope, pp. 61–62.
65. Ulrich Molitor, “Transvection,” quoted in The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and
Demonology, edited by Rossell Hope Robbins (n.p.: Girard and Stuart, 2015),
p. 511.
66. Ulrich Molitor, De Lamiis Et Pythonicis Mulieribus (1489); Von Hexen und Un-
holden (1508); and Hexen Meysterei (1544). For an analy­sis of the ambiguities
in the relation between text and image in vari­ous editions of Molitor’s work,
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 4 2 –3 5 1 457

see Natalie Kwan, “Woodcuts and Witches: Ulrich Molitor’s De lamiis et py-
thonicis mulieribus,” German History 30, no. 4 (2012): 493–527, esp. pp. 492,
509, and 511–13, and figs. 2, 12, and 13.
67. See Gerhild Scholz Williams, “Demonology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Witch-
craft in Early Modern Eu­rope and Colonial Amer­ic­ a, edited by Brian P. Levack
(Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 74.
68. Vauderie of Lyon, in Origins of the Witches’ Sabbath, translated by Michael D.
Bailey (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2021), pp.
89–103.
69. Martin Luther, Decem praecepta Wittenbergensi praedicta populo, in WA 1:406–
10; translated by Edward Peters in Kors and Peters, Witchcraft in Eu­rope,
p. 264.
70. The Sermons of M. John Calvin upon the Fifth Booke of Moses called Deuterono-
mie (London, 1583), in Kors and Peters, Witchcraft in Eu­rope, p. 264.
71. Lambert Danau, A dialogue of witches, in foretime named lot-­tellers, and now
commonly called sorcerers (London, 1575), chap. 4, originally published as De
venificis quos olim sortilegos, nunc autem vulgo sortarios vocant, dialogus (Geneva,
1564).
72. Compendium Maleficarum (1626), bk. 1, chap. 13, p. 70, in Ashwin, Compen-
dium Maleficarum, p. 34.
73. Wolfgang Behringer and Constance Ott-­Koptschallijski, Der Traum vom Flie-
gen: Zwischen Mythos un Technik (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1991), pp.
235–36, citing Brian Levack, The Witch Hunt in Early Modern Eu­rope (New York:
Longman, 1987), p. 40.
74. William Monter, “Witchcraft in Geneva, 1537–1662,” Journal of Modern His-
tory 43, no. 2 (June 1971): 179–204; confession on p. 193, statistics on pp. 187,
204.
75. Bullinger, Von Hexen und unholden, wider die schwarzen kunst (1571). See Bruce
Gordon, “ ‘God Killed Saul’: Heinrich Bullinger and Jacob Ruef on the Power
of the Devil,” in Werewolves, Witches, and Wandering Spirits, edited by Kathryn
Edwards (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2002), pp. 155–80.
76. Wolfgang Behringer, Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria, translated by J. C. Gray-
son and David Lederer (Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 212–321.
77. Lu Ann Homza, Village Infernos and Witches’ Advocates (University Park: Penn-
sylvania State University Press, 2022), p. 6.
78. Homza’s findings, cited in the previous note, are a major revision of previous
studies of the Navarrese witch t­ rials of the early 1600s and especially of the work
of Julio Caro Baroja, Las Brujas y su Mundo (Madrid: Revista de Occidente,
 458 n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 5 3 –3 5 4

1961), translated by Nigel Glendinning as The World of the Witches (London:

Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964); and also Gustav Henningsen, The Witches’
Advocate (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1980).
79. See Jeffrey R. Watt, The Consistory and Social Discipline in Calvin’s Geneva (Uni-
versity of Rochester Press, 2020), pp. 138–61; and his article “Calvin’s Geneva
Confronts Magic and Witchcraft: The Evidence from the Consistory,” Journal
of Early Modern History 17, no. 3 (2013): 215–44.
80. Bruce Gordon, The Swiss Reformation (Manchester University Press, 2002),
p. 144.
81. Robert Scribner, “Incombustible Luther: The Image of the Reformer in Early
Modern Germany,” Past and Pre­sent 110 (February 1986): 38–68.
82. See Juan José Junquera, The Black Paintings of Goya (London: Scala, 2008):
Valeriano Bozal, Goya: Black Paintings (Madrid: Fundación Amigos del Museo
del Prado, 1999); Avigdor Posèq, “The Goat in Goya’s Witches’ Sabbaths,” Notes
in the History of Art 18, no. 4 (1999): 30–39.
83. Arthur Lubow, “The Secret of the Black Paintings,” New York Times, July 27,
2003, https://­www​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2003​/­07​/­27​/­magazine​/­the​-­secret​-­of​-­the​-­black​
-­paintings​.­html.
84. See Janis Tomlinson, Goya: A portrait of the Artist (Prince­ton University Press,
2020), which is described by the publisher as “the first major English-­language
biography of Francisco Goya y Lucienne, who ushered in the modern era”;
see also Rose-­Marie Hagen, Francisco Goya, 1746–1828: On the Threshold of
Modernity (Cologne, Germany: Taschen, 2012); Fred Licht, Goya, the Origins
of the Modern Temper in Art (New York: Universe Books, 1979).

Epilogue

Epigraph: H. W. Turnbull, ed., The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, 7 vols. (Cambridge

University Press, 1961), 3:241. See also William H. Austin, “Isaac Newton on Science
and Religion,” Journal of the History of Ideas 31, no. 4 (1970): 521–42.
1. For a brief introduction to his life, see Clément Duval, “Pilâtre de Rozier
(1754–1785), Chemist and First Aeronaut,” Chymia 12 (1967): 99–117. For a
recent biography by one of his descendants, see Philip Buron Pilâtre, Pilâtre
de Rozier, un Lorrain d’exception, 1754–1785 (Metz: Éd. Serpenoise, 2006).
2. Jean-­Paul Poirier, Lavoiser, Chemist, Biologist, Economist, translated by Rebecca
Balinksi (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), p. 146.
Original French edition: Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier, 1743–1794 (Paris:
Pygmalion, 1993).
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 5 5 –3 6 0 459

3. Charles Coulston Gillispie, The Montgolfier ­Brothers and the Invention of Avia-
tion, 1783–1784 (Prince­ton University Press, 2014), pp. 45–47.
4. Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-­Fond, Description des expériences de la machine
aérostatique de MM de Montgolfier, et de celles auxquelles cette découverte a donné
lieu (Paris, 1783), pp. 25–27.
5. Mi Gyung Kim, The ­Imagined Empire: Balloon Enlightenments in Revolution-
ary Eu­rope (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016), p. 84. Charles Coulston Gil-
lispie thinks that the story of the king’s suggestion is “prob­ably apocryphal.”
Montgolfier ­Brothers, pp. 38–39.
6. For con­temporary accounts, see Faujas de Saint-­Fond, Description des expéri-
ences de la machine aérostatique; Jean-­Claude Pingeron, L’Art de faire soi-­même
les ballons aérostatiques, conformes à ceux de M. de Montgolfier (Paris, 1783);
Marc Marie Bombelles, Journal de Marquis de Bombelles, edited by Jean Gras-
sion and Frans Durif, 4 vols. (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1977), vol. 1.
7. La Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique 13 (November 1783): 393–
94. Also known as Grimm’s Correspondence, this publication was a cultural
newsletter distributed between 1753 and 1790 to elite subscribers. Friedrich
Melchior, Baron von Grimm, was its founder and first editor.
8. Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Yale University, accessed January 29, 2023,
https://­franklinpapers​.­org ​/­yale;jsessionid​=­node0vqvc52553jzij76y8kpbqv5r
40101248​.­node0​?­d​=­895503629&trans​=­true&vol​=­40&page​=­613.
9. Quoted by Andrew Stark, The Consolations of Mortality: Making Sense of Death
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 1.
10. Clément Villecourt, Vie et Institut de Saint Alphonse-­Marie de Liguori, 4 vols.
(Tournai, Belgium, 1864), 3:242; Augustin Berthe, Saint Alphonse de Liguori,
2 vols. (Paris: Victor Retaux, 1906), 2:591.
11. Christopher White, Other Worlds: Spirituality and the Search for Invisible Di-
mensions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), p. 5; see also his
article “Seeing ­Things: Science, the Fourth Dimension and Modern Enchant-
ment,” American Historical Review 119, no. 5 (2014): 1466–91.
12. “Die Wohnungsnot ist für Gott eingetretten.” David Friedrich Strauss, quoted
in Karl Heim in God Transcendent: Foundation for a Christian Metaphysic, trans-
lated by E. P. Dicke, rev. Edwyn Bevan (London: Nisbet and co., 1935), p. 31.
13. Charles E. Hummel, “The Faith b
­ ehind the Famous: Isaac Newton,” Chris­tian­
ity ­Today, April 1, 1991. See Rob Iliffe, The Religious Worlds of Isaac Newton
(Oxford University Press, 2017); and John Chambers, The Metaphysical World
of Isaac Newton: Alchemy, Prophecy, and the Search for Lost Knowledge (Roches-
ter, VT: Destiny Books, 2018).
 460 n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 6 0 –3 6 1

14. Robert Boyle, Works, edited by Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis, 14 vols.
(London: Pickering and Chatto, 1999–2000), 11:429. See Michael Hunter,
Boyle Studies: Aspects of the Life and Thought of Robert Boyle (Farnham, UK:
Ashgate, 2015), pp. 184–85.
15. Quoted in Michael Hunter, The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020), p. 12. For examples of other
early modern En­glish scientists interested in the super­natural, see pp. 1–27.
Hunter has written extensively on Boyle’s religious interests in Robert Boyle,
1627–91: Scrupulosity and Science (Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2000), esp.
pp. 230–31; and Boyle: Between God and Science (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2009).
16. For more on Swedenborg, see Signe Toksvig, Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and
Mystic (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1948); Ernst Benz, Emanuel
Swedenborg: Visionary Savant in the Age of Reason, translated by Nicholas
Goodrick-­Clarke (West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 2002); and Lars
Bergquist, Swedenborg’s Secret, translated by Norman Ryder and Kurt Nemitz
(London: Swedenborg Society, 2005).
17. For Kant’s text, see Kant on Swedenborg: Dreams of a Spirit-­Seer and Other Writings,
translated by G. Johnson and G. E. Magee (West Chester, PA: Swedenborg
Foundation, 2002). For a recent analy­sis, see Stephen R. Palmquist, Kant and
Mysticism: Critique as the Experience of Baring All in Reason’s Light (Lanham,
MD: Lexington Books, 2019).
18. Letter to Moses Mendelssohn, April 8, 1766, in Immanuel Kant’s Sämtliche
Werke, edited by K. Rosenkranz and F.W. Schubert, 11 vols. (Leipzig: Voss,
1842), 11:8.
19. See Paolo Parigi, The Rationalization of Miracles (New York: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2012); and Bradford Bouley, Pious Postmortems: Anatomy, Sanc-
tity, and the Catholic Church in Early Modern Eu­rope (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 2017).
20. White, Other Worlds, p. 13. For a blistering rejection of the “simplistic” views
mentioned by White, see Brad Gregory, “No Room for God? History, Science,
Metaphysics, and the Study of Religion,” History and Theory 47 (2008): 495–
519, and esp. p. 497n3, for a long list of books that c­ ounter t­ hose “simplistic”
views.
21. Brad Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secu-
larized Society (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
2015); Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Har-
vard University Press, 2007). For two other significant interpretations, see
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 6 2 –3 6 3 461

Alasdair McIntyrre, ­After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (University of Notre

Dame Press, 1981); and Michael Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Moder-
nity (University of Chicago Press, 2008).
22. Ethan Shagan, The Birth of Modern Belief: Faith and Judgment from the ­Middle
Ages to the Enlightenment (Prince­ton University Press, 2018), p. 1.
23. Shagan, Birth of Modern Belief, p. 282: “A credulity is a framework of intel-
lectual resources and assumptions that shapes religious knowledge and its re-
lationship to other truth claims.”
24. Shagan, Birth of Modern Belief, p. 282. Shagan refers to “credulities” as “spaces
or conditions of believing.”
25. See William Blake’s poem “London,” in The Complete Poetry and Prose of
William Blake, edited by David Erdman (New York: Anchor Books, 1988), p. 26;
on Weber, see Peter Baehr, “The ‘Iron Cage’ and the ‘Shell as Hard as Steel’: Parsons,
Weber, and the Stahlhartes Gehäuse Meta­phor in ‘The Protestant Ethic and the
Spirit of Capitalism,’ ” History and Theory 40, no. 2 (May 2001): 153–69.
26. “Remarks on the Proof of Miracles,” paper 57, November 1875, in The Papers
of the Metaphysical Society, 1869–1880: A Critical Edition, edited by C. Marshall,
B. Lightman, and R. ­England, 3 vols. (Oxford University Press, 2018), 2:327.
27. Olivier Leroy, La Lévitation (Paris: Librairie Valois, 1928), pp. 106, 118.
28. See R. Laurentin and P. Mahéo, Bilocations de Mère Yvonne-­Aimée: Étude critique
en réference á ses missions (Paris: O.E.I.L., 1990); and C. Bernard Ruffin, Padre
Pio: The True Story, 3rd ed. (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 2018).
29. On Carloni, see Didier Rance, Maria-­Teresa Carloni: Mystique au ser­vice des chré-
tiens persecutés (Paris: Editions Salvator, 2020); and Vincenzo Speziale, Maria
Teresa Carlon: Stimmatizzata (Udine: Edizione Segno, 2014). On Montella, see
Cristina Siccardi, La “Bambina” di Padre Pio, Rita Montella (Prato: Città
Ideale, 2003); and Aurino Arcangelo, Suor Rita Montella, monaca agostiniana:
Biografia, missione, carismi (Prato: Città Ideale, 2019).
30. In addition to Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973), see Daniel Stamm’s The Last Ex-
orcism (2010) and Ole Bornedal’s The Possession (2012). The diary of Ray-
mond Bishop, the Jesuit priest who performed the exorcism in St. Louis, can
be accessed at https://­sensusfidelium​.­com​/­2019​/­10​/­19​/­the​-­actual​-­1949​-­diary​
-­of​-­the​-­priest​-­who​-­inspired​-­the​-­1973​-­film​-­the​-­exorcist. See also Robert E. Bar­
tholomew and Joe Nickell, American Hauntings: The True Stories ­behind Hol-
lywood’s Scariest Movies—­from The Exorcist to The Conjuring (Santa Barbara,
CA: ABC-­CLIO, 2015).
31. See the work of Catholic theologian Herbert Haag, Abschied vom Teufel: Vom
christlichen Umgang mit dem Bösen (Einsiedeln, Switzerland: Benziger, 1969);
 462 n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 6 5 –3 6 7

translated into French as Liquidation du diable (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer,

1971); and the testy response from the f­ uture Pope Benedict XVI, “Abschied
vom Teufel?,” in Joseph Ratzinger, Dogma und Verkündigung (Munich: Wewel,
1973).
32. See the work of Gabriele Amorth, especially his An Exorcist Tells His Story (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999) and An Exorcist Explains the Demonic: The
Antics of Satan and His Army of Fallen Angels (Bedford, NH: Sophia Institute
Press, 2016); see also Richard Gallagher, Demonic Foes: My Twenty-­Five Years
as a Psychiatrist Investigating Possessions, Diabolic Attacks, and the Paranormal
(San Francisco: HarperOne, 2020); and Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, Diary
of an American Exorcist: Demons, Possession, and the Modern-­Day ­Battle against
Ancient Evil (Bedford, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2021).
33. See Griffin Paul Jackson, “Meet the Protestant Exorcists,” Chris­tian­ity ­Today,
September 19, 2019. For recent examples of texts, see Jennifer LeClaire, Deliv-
erance Protocols and Ethics: A Handbook for Accurate Deliverance Operations (Ft.
Lauderdale, FL: Awakening Media, 2021); Alexander Pagani, The Secrets to De-
liverance: Defeat the Toughest Cases of Demonic Bondage (Lake Mary, FL: Cha-
risma House, 2018); John Eckardt, Deliverance and Spiritual Warfare Manual: A
Comprehensive Guide to Living ­Free (Lake Mary, FL: Charisma House, 2014).
34. For a sample of essays in this tradition, see Gary S. Greig and Kevin N.
Springer, eds., The Kingdom and the Power: Are Healing and the Spiritual Gifts
Used by Jesus and the Early Church Meant for the Church T
­ oday? A Biblical Look
at How to Bring the Gospel to the World with Power (New York: Regal Books,
1993).
35. A Pew Research poll in 2019 revealed the following about one of the central
beliefs of the Catholic Church: “Nearly seven-­in-­ten Catholics (69%) say they
personally believe that during Catholic Mass, the bread and wine used in Com-
munion “are symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.” Just one-­third
of U.S. Catholics (31%) say they believe that “during Catholic Mass, the bread
and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus.” Pew Research Center,
“Just One-­Third of U.S. Catholics Agree with Their Church That Eucharist Is
Body, Blood of Christ,” August 5, 2019, https://­www​.­pewresearch​.­org​/­fact​-­tank​
/­2019​/­08​/­05​/­transubstantiation​-­eucharist​-­u​-­s​-­catholics​/­.
36. See Traci Badalucco, “Stories, Traditions Keep Devotions to the Saints Alive,”
National Catholic Reporter, October 29, 2016.
37. Parigi, Rationalization, p. 28.
38. Bouley, Pious Postmortems, p. 6.
39. Agelli, p. 57; Bernino, p. 103; Pastrovicchi, p. 24.
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 6 7 –3 7 0 463

40. Parigi, Rationalization, p. 14.

41. See Fernando Vidal, “Miracles, Science, and Testimony in Post-­Tridentine
Saint-­Making,” Science in Context 20, no. 3 (2007): 491.
42. For a perceptive analy­sis of Lambertini’s ambivalent approach to Joseph’s levi-
tations, see Catrien Santing, “Tiramisù: Pope Benedict XIV and the Beatifi-
cation of the Flying Saint Joseph of Cupertino,” in Medicine and Religion in
Enlightenment Eu­rope, edited by Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham
(Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 79–100.
43. See R. Messbarger, C. M. S. Johns, and P. Gavitt, eds., Benedict XIV and the
Enlightenment: Art, Science, and Spirituality (University of Toronto Press, 2015),
essays by Gianna Rebecca Messbarger, Gianna Pomata, Fernando Vidal, and
John Heilbron, pp. 93–205; also Maria Teresa Fattori, ed., Le Fatiche di Benedetto
XIV (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2011); and Giuseppe Cenachi,
“Benedetto XIV e l’Illumismo,” in Benedetto XIV (Prospero Lambertini): Con-
vengo internazionale di studi storici, vol. 2 (Ferrara, Italy: Centro studi Girolamo
Baruffaldi, 1982).
44. Doctrina de servorum Dei beatificatione et beatificatorum canonizatione (Bolo-
gna, 1734–1738).
45. Bouley, Pious Postmortems, pp. 54–56, 61–62.
46. See Carlos Eire, From Madrid to Purgatory (Cambridge University Press, 1995),
pp. 425–45.
47. Bouley, Pious Postmortems, p. 133.
48. Benedicti Papae XIV doctrina de servorum Dei beatificatione et batorum canon-
izatione, in synopsim redacta ab Emmanuel de Azevedo (Brussels, 1840), p. 432.
49. Émile Durkheim, “The Rules of the So­cio­log­i­cal Method,” in Classical So­cio­
log­i­cal Theory, edited by C. Calhoun, J. Gerteis, J. Moody, et al., 3rd ed. (Hobo-
ken, NJ: Wiley-­Blackwell, 2012), pp. 204–5.
50. Taking Durkheim’s insights further, Bertrand Méheust has argued that what
any culture considers pos­si­ble or impossible is largely determined, or “set up,”
by social practices. See his Somnambulisme et Médiumnité, 2 vols. (Le Plessis-­
Robinson: Institut Synthélabo, 1999), 2:271–72. Jeffrey Kripal has also ex-
panded on the insights of Méheust and Durkheim in his Authors of the
Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred (University of Chicago Press, 2010),
p. 224.
51. Ten eloquent critiques of the functionalist approach can be found in Alister
Chapman, John Coffey, and Brad Gregory, eds., Seeing ­Things Their Way: Intel-
lectual History and the Return of Religion (University of Notre Dame Press,
2009).
 464 n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 7 1 –3 7 4

52. Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (Oxford University Press,
1971), p. 5.
53. Parigi, Rationalization, pp. 55, 57. Stretching this functionalist analy­sis a bit
further, Parigi, a sociologist, goes on to argue that “miracles and scientific ex-
planations are thus both perfectly rational, in that they both rule out chance.”
54. Parigi, Rationalization, p. 165.
55. For an introduction to this concept, see the essays in Philip Gorski, ed., The
Post-­Secular in Question: Religion in Con­temporary Society (New York University
Press, 2012), especially essays 1 and 7–10. See also Charles Taylor, “Western
Secularity,” in Rethinking Secularism, edited by C. Calhoun, M. Juergens­meyer,
and J. Van Antwerpen (Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 31–53; and John D.
Boy, “What We Talk about When We Talk about the Post-­Secular,” The Immanent
Frame, March 15, 2011, http://­tif​.­ssrc​.­org​/­2011​/­03​/­15​/­what​-­we​-­talk​-­about​-­when​
-­we​-­talk​-­about​-­the​-­postsecular​/­.
56. Exemplified most recently by Dale Allison’s Encountering Mystery: Religious
Experience in a Secular Age (­Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2022).
57. Luke Clossey, Kyle Jackson, Brandon Marriott, Andrew Redden, and Karin Vé-
lez, “The Unbelieved and Historians, Part I: A Challenge,” History Compass
14, no. 12 (December 2016): 594–602, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1111​/­hic3​.­12360;
Clossey et al., “The Unbelieved and Historians, Part II: Proposals and Solu-
tions,” History Compass 15, no. 1 (January 2017): e12370, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​
.­1111​/­hic3​.­12370.
58. Roland Clark, Luke Clossey, Simon Ditchfield, David M. Gordon, Arlen Wie-
senthal, and Taymiya R. Zaman, “The Unbelieved and Historians, Part III:
Responses and Elaborations,” History Compass 15, no. 12 (December 2017):
e12430, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1111​/­hic3​.­12430.
59. Editions Vues de l’Esprit, https://­www​.­vuesdelesprit​.­org​/­.
60. Sylvain Piron, Christine l’Admirable: Vie, chants et merveilles (Brussels: Vues de
l’Espirit, 2021), p. 110.
61. Piron, Christine l’Admirable, p. 148. For a review of Piron’s book by Christine V.
Bourgeois, see the The Medieval Review, May 18, 2022, https://­scholarworks​
.­iu​.­edu​/­journals​/­index​.­php​/­tmr​/­article​/­view​/­34542​/­37781.
62. Kripal, Authors of the Impossible, p. 224. See also Kripal’s The Flip: Epiphanies
of Mind and the F
­ uture of Knowledge (New York: Bellevue Literary Press, 2019).
63. Jeffrey Kripal, Super-­Humanities: Historical Pre­ce­dents, Moral Objections, New Re-
alities (University of Chicago Press, 2022), pp. 217–18.
64. Archives of the Impossible, accessed 29 January 29, 2023, https://­impossible​
archives​.­rice​.­edu​/­.
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 7 4 –3 7 6 465

65. For more on Esalen, see Marion Goldman, The American Soul Rush: Esalen
and the Rise of Spiritual Privilege (New York University Press, 2012); and Jef-
frey J. Kripal, Esalen: Amer­i­ca and the Religion of No Religion (University of
Chicago Press, 2007).
66. Edward Kelley, Emily Williams Kelly, Adam Crabtree, Alan Gauld, Michael
Grosso, and Bruce Greyson, Irreducible Mind: ­Toward a Psy­chol­ogy for the
21st ­Century (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), p. xiii.
67. See the essays in Edward Kelly, Adam Crabtree, and Paul Marshall, eds., Be-
yond Physicalism: ­Toward a Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality (Lanham,
MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015). See also Pamela Rae Heath, Mind-­Matter
Interaction: A Review of Historical Reports, Theory, and Research (Jefferson, NC:
McFarland, 2011).
68. Nick Herbert, Elemental Mind: ­Human Consciousness and the New Physics (New
York: Dutton, 1993), p. 3.
69. Michael Grosso, The Man Who Could Fly: St. Joseph of Cupertino and the Mys-
tery of Levitation (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), p. 174.
70. Grosso, Man Who Could Fly, p. 174.
71. “What­ever their personal beliefs, historians should not ask their readers to
accept super­natural phenomena.” D. P. Walker, Unclean Spirits: Possession and
Exorcism in France and ­England in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Cen-
turies (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), p. 15.
72. On “hard-­edged alterity,” see Stephen Nichols, “Modernism and the Politics
of Medieval Studies,” in Medievalism and the Modern Temper, edited by R.
Howard Bloch and Stephen Nichols (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1996), p. 49; on the grotesque, see Paul Freedman, “The Return of the
Grotesque in Medieval History,” in Historia a Debate: Actas del Congreso Inter-
nacional, edited by Carlos Barros (Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 1995), pt.
4, pp. 9–19.
73. Dorian Llywelyn, SJ, “Millions of Pilgrims Travel to Lourdes Each Year. What
Made It Such an Impor­tant Symbol of Hope and Healing?,” Amer­i­ca: The Je-
suit Review, February 9, 2022, https://­www​.­americamagazine​.­org​/­faith​/­2022​/­02​
/­09​/­lourdes​-­hope​-­apparition​-­virgin​-­mary​-­242360.
74. On Germany, see David Blackbourn, Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary
in Bismarckian Germany (Oxford University Press, 1993). On Spain, see Wil-
liam A. Christian Jr., Visionaries: The Spanish Republic and the Reign of Christ
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). On France, see Ruth Harris,
Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age (London: Allen Lane, 1999). On
Portugal, see Jeffrey S. Bennett, When the Sun Danced: Myth, Miracles, and
 466 n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 7 6 –3 8 0

Modernity in Early Twentieth-­Century Portugal (Charlottesville: University of

­Virginia Press, 2012).
75. Harris, Lourdes, p. 357.
76. In addition to William A. Christian Jr.’s Visionaries, see his Apparitions in Late
Medieval and Re­nais­sance Spain (Prince­ton University Press, 1981); Person and
God in a Spanish Valley, rev. ed. (Prince­ton University Press, 1989); and Mov-
ing Crucifixes in Modern Spain (Prince­ton University Press, 1992).
77. Christian, Moving Crucifixes, pp. 16–19.
78. Bennett, When the Sun Danced, p. 3.
79. See Laura Ackerman Smoller, The Saint and the Chopped-­Up Baby: The Cult of
Vincent Ferrer in Medieval and Early Modern Eu­rope (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 2014).
80. Definition number 7 of “suspended,” adj. and n., The Compact Edition of the
Oxford En­glish Dictionary, 2 vols. (Oxford University Press, 1971), 2:3179.

Appendix 1: Seventeenth-­and Eighteenth-­Century Bilocators

in Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope

1. See Doris Bieñko de Peralta, “El impasse de una beatificación. El proceso de

sor María de Jesús Tomellín (1597–1637), monja concepcionista poblana,” in
Normatividades e instituciones eclesiásticas en la Nueva España, siglos XVI–­XIX,
edited by B. Albani, O. Danwerth, and T. Duve (Frankfurt: Max Planck Insti-
tute for ­Legal History and ­Legal Theory, 2018).
2. Escrito por ella misma. Vida de la Madre Francisca de la Natividad (1630), in
Monjas y beatas: La escritura femenina en la espiritualidad barroca novohispana,
siglos XVII y XVIII, edited by Asunción Lavrin and Rosalva Loreto López
(Puebla: Universidad de las Amer­i­cas Puebla, 2002), p. 50; see Magnus Lun-
dberg, Mission and Ecstasy: Contemplative W
­ omen and Salvation in Colonial
Spanish Amer­i­ca and the Philippines (Uppsala: Swedish Institute of Mission
Research, 2015), p. 195n45.
3. Lundberg, Mission and Ecstasy, p. 195n43. See also Doris Bieñko de Peralta,
“Voces del claustro: Dos autobiografías de monjas novohispanas del siglo
XVII,” Relaciones 139 (Summer 2014): 157–94.
4. Alonso Ramos, Los prodigios de la omnipotencia y milagros de la gracia en la vida
de la venerable sierva de Dios Catarina de San Juan (1690), edited by Robin Ann
Rice, 3 vols. (New York: IDEA, 2016). See also a recent edition edited by Gisela
von Wobeser (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2017).
 n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 8 0 –3 8 1 467

5. Ramos, Prodigios, pp. 391–92.

6. Lundberg, Mission and Ecstasy, p. 198n52.
7. See Jeanne Gillespie, “In the Right Place and the Right (?) Time: Catarina de
San Juan’s Visions and the Jesuit Missionary Efforts,” in W
­ omen’s Voices and
Politics of the Spanish Empire, edited by Jennifer Eich, Jeanne Gillespie, and
Lucia Harrison (New Orleans: University Press of the South, 2008), esp.
pp. 305–6.
8. Antonio de Siria, Vida Admirable y Prodigiosas Virtudes de la Virgen Sierva de
Dios D. Anna Guerra de Jesús, Sacada de lo que Ella Misma Dexó Escrito por
Orden de sus Confessores (Guatemala, 1716).
9. Ursula Suárez, Relación Autobiografica, edited by Mario Ferreccio Podestá
(Santiago: Academia Chilena de la Historia, 1984). See also Kristine Ibsen,
­Women’s Spiritual Autobiography in Colonial Spanish Amer­ic­ a (Gainsville: Uni-
versity Press of Florida, 1999); Manuel Durán, “Sor Ursula Suárez: Estrategias
y espacios de poder,” Mapocho 54, no. 2 (2003): 159–77.
10. Jerónima Nava y Saavedra: Autobiografía de una monja venerable (Cali, Co-
lombia: Universidad del Valle, 1994). Prologue by Angela Inés Robledo,
pp. 15–25.
11. Sebastián de Santander y Torres, Sermón fúnebre que en las honrras de la Vener-
able Madre Iacinta María Anna de S. Antonio, religiosa de el monasterio de
Sancta Catharina de Sena de esta ciudad de Oaxaca (Oaxaca, 1720).
12. “Cartas de Francisca de los Ángeles,” edited by Ellen Gunnarsdóttir, in Lavrin
and Loreto, Monjas y beatas, pp. 224–62; see also Sarah Owens, “Journeys to
Dark Lands: Francisca de los Angeles’ Bilocations to Remote Provinces in
New Spain,” Colonial Latin American Historical Review 12, no. 2 (2003): 151–
71; and Lundberg, Mission and Ecstasy, pp. 205–8.
13. Manuel Sanchez, Vida de Madre María Manuela de Santa Ana (1794), in
Sor Maria Manuela de Santa Ana: Una teresina peruana, edited by Elia J.
Armacanqui-­Tipacti (Cuzco, Peru: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinas,
1999), pp. 189–244; for context, see Constance Janiga-­Perkins, “The Mate-
riality of Meaning: Identity and Multiple-­Authorship in Sor María Manuela
de Santana’s Spiritual Letters,” Textual Cultures 10, no. 2 (Spring 2016):
28–50.
14. José Jerónimo Sánchez de Castro, Vida de la Venerable Madre sor Antonia de la
Madre de Dios, religiosa augustina recoleta (Mexico, 1747).
15. See Helena Esguerra, María de Jesús, una mística desconocida (Bogotá: Edito-
rial Kimpres, 2006); and Clara Herrera, Las místicas de la Nueva Granada: Tres
 468 n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 8 1 –3 8 2

casos de búsqueda de perfección y construción de la santidad (Barcelona: Paso de

Barca, 2013).
16. Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, Paraýso occidental plantado y cultivado por la
liberal mano de los muy cathólicos, y poderosos reyes de España nuestros señores
en su magnífico real convento de Jesús María de México (Mexico City, 1684).
17. Epistolario de sor Dolores Peña y Lillo (Chile, 1763–1769), edited by Raïssa
Kordi� Riquelme (Madrid: Iberoamericana Editorial Vervuert, 2008).
18. Lavrin, Monjas y beatas, pp. 354–55.
19. Isidro Sala, Panegyrico piadoso en las honras, que a la Ven. Madre Sor Ursula
Micaela Morata, fundadora y abadesa de este religionissimo Real Convento de los
triunfos del SS. Sacramento de Capuchinas, hizo celebrar la Ciudad de Alicante (Ali-
cante, 1703); Memorias de una monja del siglo XVII: Autobiografía de la madre
Úrsula Micaela Morata, Capuchina, edited by Vicente Benjamín Piquer Garcés
(Alicante: Hermanas Clarisas Capuchinas de Alicante, 1999); Fernando Rodes
Lloret, Sor Úrsula Micaela Morata: Vida y Muerte (Alicante: Universidad de
Alicante, 2014).
20. José Rodríguez Moure, Cuadros históricos de la admirable vida y virtudes de La
Sierva de Dios: Sor María de Jesús de León Delgado (La Laguna, Tenerife, 1911);
Domingo García Barbusano, Sor María de Jesús: La monja incorrupta del con-
vento de Santa Catalina de La Laguna (La Laguna, Tenerife: Artemisa, 1990).
21. Anonymous, Compendium Vitae B. Joannis Josephi a Cruce (Rome, 1839); P.
Diodata dell’ Assunta, Vita di S. Gian Giuseppe della Croce (Rome, 1839).
22. Anonymous, Vita del Beato Angelo di Acri, Missionario Cappuccino (Naples: Oli­
vieri, 1825); Abridgement of the life of the Blessed Angelo of Acri, translated by
W. G. (Thames Ditton, UK, 1828).
23. Venerable Monsignor Strambi, The Life of the Blessed Paul of the Cross, translated
by anon. (London, 1853).
24. Vincenzo Ricci, ed., S. Alfonso M. De Liguori maestro di vita spirituale (Milan:
Gribaudi, 1998); Frederick M. Jones, Alphonsus de Liguori the saint of Bourbon
Naples (Barnhart MO: Luguori Publications, 1992); Jean Delumeau et al., Al-
phonse de Liguori, pasteur et docteur (Paris: Beauchesne, 1987).
25. Henri de Grèzes, Vie du bienheureux Félix de Nicosie (Clermont-­Ferrand, France,
1888).
26. Eduard Saint-­Omer, The Won­der Worker of Our Days; Life Virtues and Miracles
of St. Gerard Majella (Boston: Mission Church, 1907).
 Credits

Frontispiece. The Bowes Museum, Barnard ­Castle, County Durham, UK. © Bowes
Museum / Bridgeman Images.
Figure 1. José Garcia Hidalgo, Levitación de Santa Teresa y San Juan de la Cruz en la
Encarnación de Ávila, ca. 1675. Museo de Segovia. Fotografía: J. M. Cófreces.
Figure 2. Loreto Italian School, The Ecstasy of Saint Joseph of Cupertino, eigh­teenth
­century. Bonhams.
Figure 3. Author unknown, Vita Beati P. Ignatii Loiolae Societatis Iesu Fundatoris, vol. 2
(Rome, 1622), plate 74; artist, Peter Paul Rubens; engravers, Jean Baptiste
Barbé and Cornelis Galle the Elder. Courtesy DigitalGeorgetown.
Figure 4. Chronicle / Alamy Stock Photo.
Figure 5. Sailko, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, via Wiki-
media Commons.
Figure 6. Albrecht Dürer, The Ecstasy of Saint Mary Magdalen, Metropolitan Museum
of Art. Gift of Junius Spencer Morgan, 1919.
Figure 7. The Death of Simon Magus, from Liber Chronicarum (1493). Public do-
main, via Wikimedia Commons.
Figure 8. San Giovanni Bianco (1609–1679), The Levitation of Saint Dominic.
Bonhams.
Figure 9. Vicente Carducho, Vision of St. Anthony of Padua, 1631. The Picture Art
Collection / Alamy Stock Photo.
Figure 10. Vicente Carducho, Stigmatization of St. Francis, ca. 1610–1630. With per-
mission of Hospital de la Venerable Orden Tercera de San Francisco de Asis,
Madrid. Image courtesy of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University and
the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Figure 11. Giotto, Ecstasy of St. Francis, 1295. San Francesco, Upper Church, Assisi,
Italy / Bridgeman Images.

469
 470 credits

Figure 12. Author unknown, Vita Beati P. Ignatii Loiolae Societatis Iesu Fundatoris,
vol. 2 (Rome, 1622), plate 35; artist, Peter Paul Rubens; engravers, Jean Bap-
tiste Barbé and Cornelis Galle the Elder. Courtesy DigitalGeorgetown.
Figure 13. Artist unknown, Saint Ignatius Levitating, engraving, 1693. Private col-
lection / Tarker / Bridgeman Images.
Figure 14. Jeronimus Wierix, Vita B.P. Ignatii de Loyola, fundatoris Societatis Iesu /
­Hieronymus Wierx inuenit, incidit & excudit (Antwerp: Jeronimus Wierix, 1609),
plate 3. Courtesy Saint Louis University Libraries Special Collections.
Figure 15. Adriaen Collaert and Cornelis Galle, Vita S. Virginis Teresiæ a Iesv: Ordinis
carmelitarvm excalceatorvm piae restavratricis, Apud Ionnem Galleum (1630), plate
10. Courtesy Internet Archive via Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute
Library.
Figure 16. Adriaen Collaert and Cornelis Galle, Vita S. Virginis Teresiæ a Iesv: Ordinis
carmelitarvm excalceatorvm piae restavratricis, Apud Ionnem Galleum (1630), plate
12. Courtesy Internet Archive via Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute
Library.
Figure 17. Adriaen Collaert and Cornelis Galle, Vita S. Virginis Teresiæ a Iesv: Ordinis
carmelitarvm excalceatorvm piae restavratricis, Apud Ionnem Galleum (1630), plate
17. Courtesy Internet Archive via Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute
Library.
Figure 18. Representacion De la Vida del Bienaventurado P. F. Juan de la Cruz Primer
Carmelita Descalço. Por el R. P. F. Gaspar de la Annunciación Religioso de la misma
orden. Scena Vite, B. P. F. Joannis a Cruce Primi Carmelite excalceati, by Gaspar de
la Annunciación; Gaspar Bouttats, engraving, 1678, p. 85, fig. 21. ­Women of the
Book Collection, Sheridan Libraries, Johns Hopkins University.
Figure 19. Giambettino Cignaroli (1706–1770), Ecstasy of St. Joseph of Cupertino.
Courtesy Il Ponte Casa d’Aste.
Figure 20. Chronicle / Alamy Stock Photo.
Figure 21. Gioan Antonio Lorenzini, Saint Joseph of Cupertino. Courtesy of Wellcome
Collection.
Figure 22. © NPL—­DeA Picture Library / Bridgeman Images.
Figure 23. The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo.
Figure 24. Felice Boscaratti, San Giuseppe da Copertino in estasi, ca. 1762. Photo by
Didier Descouens. Saint Lorenzo Church in Vicenza CC BY- SA 4.0, https://creative​
commons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
 credits 471

Figure 25. Giambettino Cignaroli, San Giuseppe da Copertino e la Vergine Immaco-

lata, 1757. Rita Guglielmi / Alamy Stock Photo.
Figure 26. Chronicle / Alamy Stock Photo.
Figure 27. Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica, Roma (MIBACT)—­Bibliotheca Hertz-
iana, Istituto Max Planck per la storia dell’arte / Enrico Fontolan.
Figure 28. Mariano Salvador de Maella and Pietro Leone Bombelli, Retrato de María
Jesús Coronel y Arana (Rome, 1761). Courtesy Biblioteca Nacional de Espana.
Figure 29. José Félix de Amada y Torregrosa, Compendio de los milagros de Nuestra
Señora del Pilar de Zaragoza . . . (1680). Courtesy Biblioteca Nacional de España.
Figure 30. Giotto, The Apparition at the Chapter House at Arles, 1297–99. San Fran-
cesco, Upper Church, Assisi, Italy / Bridgeman Images.
Figure 31. Miguel Gamborino, San Pedro Regalado, 1793. Courtesy University of Na-
varra Library.
Figure 32. Author unknown, Vita Beati P. Ignatii Loiolae Societatis Iesu Fundatoris,
vol. 2 (Rome, 1622), plate 76; artist, Peter Paul Rubens; engravers, Jean Bap-
tiste Barbé and Cornelis Galle the Elder. Courtesy DigitalGeorgetown.
Figure 33. Artist unknown, La morte di Mamma Franceschina. With permission of
Santuario San Giuseppe da Copertino. Photo courtesy La Pro Loco di Copertino,
https://­www​.­prolococopertino​.­it​/­.
Figure 34. Juan Francisco Leonardo and Hendrick Verbruggen, Retrato de María Jesús
Coronel y Arana, between 1601 and 1700. Courtesy Biblioteca Nacional de
España.
Figure 35. Antonio de Castro, La Ve. Me. Maria de Iesus de Agreda. Predicando a los
Chichimecos del Nuebo-­mexico (Mexico: Joseph Bernardo de Hogal, 1730),
frontispiece.
Figure 36. Cristóbal de Villalpando, Mystical City of God, 1706. G. Dagli Orti /​
© NPL—­DeA Picture Library / Bridgeman Images.
Figure 37. Joseph Glanvill, Saducismus triumphatus, or, Full and plain evidence con-
cerning witches and apparitions in two parts . . . (London: J. Collins and S. Lownds,
1689), frontispiece. University of Nottingham, Manuscripts and Special Collec-
tions, BF1581.G5.
Figure 38. Joseph Glanvill, Saducismus triumphatus, or, Full and plain evidence concerning
witches and apparitions in two parts . . . (London: J. Collins and S. Lownds, 1689),
frontispiece. University of Nottingham, Manuscripts and Special Collections,
BF1581.G5.
 472 credits

Figure 39. Joseph Glanvill, Saducismus triumphatus, or, Full and plain evidence concern-
ing witches and apparitions in two parts . . . (London: J. Collins and S. Lownds,
1689), frontispiece. University of Nottingham, Manuscripts and Special Collec-
tions, BF1581.G5.
Figure 40. Joannes Nys, Vita et miracvla S.P. Dominici, prædicatorii ordinis primi instit-
vtoris . . . ​, illustrated by Théodore Galle (Antwerp: Apud Theodoru Gallæum,
1611), plate 27. Courtesy Internet Archive via Sterling and Francine Clark Art
Institute Library.
Figure 41. Adriaen Collaert and Cornelis Galle, Vita S. Virginis Teresiæ a Iesv: Ordinis
carmelitarvm excalceatorvm piae restavratricis (Antwerp: Apud Ionnem Galleum,
1630), plate 7. Courtesy Internet Archive via Sterling and Francine Clark Art
Institute Library.
Figure 42. Cotton Mather, from The Won­ders of the Invisible World (Boston: printed
by Benj. Harris for Sam. Phillips, 1693). Pictorial Press Ltd. / Alamy Stock Photo.
Figure 43. Albrecht Dürer, The Witch, ca. 1500. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fletcher
Fund, 1919.
Figure 44. Ulrich Molitor, from De lamiis et pythonicis mulieribus (Strassburg: Johann
Prüss, ca. 1489). The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo.
Figure 45. INTERFOTO / Alamy Stock Photo.
Figure 46. Hans Baldung Grien, The Witches’ Sabbath, woodcut, 1508–1510. Repro-
duced in Hermann Schmitz, Hans Baldung, gen. Grien (Bielefeld, Germany: Vel-
hagen and Klasing, 1922), p. 44.
Figure 47. Wilhelm Gottlieb Soldan, Max Bauer, and Heinrich Heppe, Geschichte Der
Hexenprozesse (Munich: G. Müller, 1912). Reproduction from Peter Binsfeld, Von
Bekanntnuss der Zauberer und Hexen (Munich, 1591). Courtesy of Hathi Trust.
Figure 48. Francesco Maria Guazzo et al., Compendium Maleficarum in tres libros dis-
tinctum ex pluribus authoribus (Milan: Apud Haeredes, 1608). Courtesy Hathi
Trust.
Figure 49. Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Las Brujas, 1798. Museo del Prado, Madrid /
HIP / Art Resource, NY.
Figure 50. J. Collyer, ­after J. Russell, Jean François Pilâtre de Rozier, stipple engraving,
1786. Courtesy of Wellcome Collection.
Figure 51. Claude-­Louis Desrais, Vue et perspective du jardin de Mr. Réveillon fabri-
quant de papiers, Fauxbourg St Antoine . . . ​, engraving, 1783. Courtesy Biblio-
thèque nationale de France.
 credits 473

Figure 52a. Alinari Archives, Florence / Bridgeman Images.

Figure 52b. Artist unknown, ­Mother Yvonne-­Aimee de Malestroit. History and Art
Collection / Alamy Stock Photo.
Figure 53. Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Angels’ Kitchen, 1646. Louvre, Paris,
France / Bridgeman Images.
This page intentionally left blank
 Index

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate figures.

Abaris the Hyperborean, 31 Andrés de la Torre, Francisco, 210, 224–25,

Abolkheir, Abusaeid, 178 231, 241–42
Acta Sanctorum, 39, 40, 50–51, 53, 398n42 Andrew Salos (“the Fool”), 39–40
Acts of Peter (second c­ entury), 36 anecdotes, 5, 390n7
Adey, Peter, 391n10 Angelo of Acri, 381
Admiral of Castille, 119, 149 Anglicans, 59, 322, 333
aethrobats, 31, 51, 53, 97. See also levitations; Anthony of Padua, Saint, 40, 42, 184–85
specific individuals Antichrist, 18, 61–62, 293
Agca, Ali, 363 Antonia Jacinta de Navarra, 193
Agelli, Paolo Antonio, hagiography on Joseph of Antoninus of Florence, 51
Cupertino, 100, 108, 118, 127, 133, 136, 149, Antonio de Trejo, 285
155, 158, 164, 167, 408nn16–17, 412n2 Antonio de Villalacre, 207
Age of Reason, 97, 137, 139, 351, 357–58, 381–82 Antonio di San Mauro, 118
Agnes of Montepulciano, 51 Antony the G ­ reat of Egypt, Saint, 39,
Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius, 331; Three Books 156–58
of Occult Philosophy, 300 Apollonius of Tyana, 31, 34
Albert (Austrian cardinal-­archduke), 276, 278, Aquinas, Thomas, Saint: on bilocations, 179–80;
441n118 levitations of, 40, 50; on magic, 298; on
Albert the ­Great, 40 miracles, 15, 169, 253; Summa Theologica,
Alexander VII (pope), 127–28, 236 157; on superstition, 298
Alphonsus Liguori, Saint, 29, 249, 358–59, Arana, Catalina (­mother of María de Ágreda),
381–82 201, 202
Ambrose, Saint, 182–85, 420n26 Aristotle, 179
Amort, Eusebius: “On Private Revelations, Artemisa, Marchioness dei Medici, 123
Visions and Apparitions,” 248 asceticism: of Antony the ­Great of Egypt, 158; of
Amun, 39 Christina the Astonishing, 43; genuine saint,
Anabaptists, 321 value in discerning, 261, 368; of Joseph of
Ana de Jesús Lobera, 189–90 Cupertino, 105, 107–8, 130; of Juana de la
Ana de San Agustín, 189 Cruz, 263; levitations and, 30–32, 39; of
Ana Guerra de Jesús, 380 Luisa de Carrión, 282; of Magdalena de la
Ana María de San José, 191 Cruz, 264–66; of María de Ágreda, 201, 203;
ancient world: bilocations in, 176–77; d ­ evil as part of mystical quest, 95; of Pedro de
as presence in, 319; levitations in, 30–40; Alcántara, 54; Protestant rejection of holiness
malevolent magic in, 299 associated with, 52; of ­Rose of Lima, 194

475
 476 index

Asian cultures: levitations in, 30–31. See also Bernino, Domenico, 142, 171, 408n4; Vita del
Buddhism; Hinduism Venerable Padre Fr. Giuseppe Da Copertino De’
astrology, 300 Minori Conventuali, 98, 100, 155, 162–63,
Athanasius of Alexandria, Saint, 158 415n57
atheism, 3, 23, 70, 196, 357 Bichi, Antonio, 130
Aubin, Nicolas, 327 bilocations: in Catholic tradition, 9–11,
Augustine of Hippo, Saint, 25, 297–98 175–76, 179–81, 190; challenges to study
Aves, Samuel, 329 of, 3–10; as charism, 12; defined, 2, 176;
demonic origin of, 3, 8, 176–77, 181, 317,
Bacon, Francis, xv 369; dismissal of, 6, 8; divine origin of, 3,
Balduin, Franz, 332 11, 181, 369; early Christians and, 182–84;
Baldung Grien, Hans, 346 fake, 8–9, 181, 190, 222–35; history of,
Bale, John, 61–62, 295 170–75; investigation, difficulty with, 209;
Bañez, Domingo, 87–88 in ­Middle Ages, 184–86; in New World
baptisms, 216–17, 219–20, 223, 321–22 colonies, 191, 193–96, 379–81; in
Barberini, Francesco (cardinal), 124 nineteenth ­century and modernity, 196,
Batista de Lanuza, Miguel, 91 363; origins of, 3, 176; in quantum
beatification. See specific saints mechanics, 177; responses to, xi; in
Beatriz de Jesús, 93 seventeenth c­ entury, 190–93, 381–82; in
Beauvais, Yvonne, 197 sixteenth ­century, 187–90; skepticism
Behringer, Wolfgang, 311 ­toward, 190, 196–98, 225–26; spiritualism
Bellarmine, Robert, 180 and, 9–10; testimonies and witnesses of, 6,
Benavides, Alonso de: correction by María 191, 209; in world’s religions, 177–81. See
de Ágreda, 211, 219, 229, 230–31, 385; also miracles; specific bilocators
differences with Samaniego’s and María binary approach of demonic vs. divine, 36–38,
de Ágreda’s accounts, 219–20, 229–31; on 113, 142, 261, 409n32
exchange between Jumanos and Franciscans, Binsfeld, Peter: Of the Confessions of Warlocks
217–20; foundation of María as Lady and Witches, 335–37, 348, 348
in Blue legend from, 210, 222, 384–85, Bishop, Raymond, 461n30
426n57; letter (1631) with María’s signature, black magic. See necromancy
210–11, 217, 228, 230, 233; meeting Blake, William, 362
with María de Ágreda (1631), 210, 220, Blatter, George, 251
221; Memorial (1630), 210, 220–21, 228, Blavatsky, Helena, 31–32
233, 384, 425n42, 427n67, 427n69; Memorial Bodin, Jean: On the Demon-­Mania of Witches,
(1634), 210–11, 220, 228, 385, 425n42, 335
427n67; Mexican edition of correspond- Bonaventure, Saint: on Francis of Assisi’s
ence with Franciscan missionaries (1730), levitations, 48; Legenda Major and Legenda
212 Minor, 46–47, 49; levitations of, 40, 47, 50;
Benedict XIII (pope), 248 Life of Francis, 184
Benedict XIV (pope), 133, 248–49, 368 Bongiovanni, Papal Nuncio, 278
Benedict XVI (pope), 251 Book of Revelation, 237–39, 238
Benedicta Henrietta of the Palatinate, 152 Bordini, Giovanni Francesco, 141
Berardicelli, Gianbattista, 115–18 Bouflet, Joachim, 391n11
Bernardino de la Sena, 217, 220, 383 Bouley, Bradford, 367
Bernardino of Siena, 306 Boyle, Robert, 360, 460n15
Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint, 40, 157 Bozzano, Ernest, 422n59
Bernhausen, Anna von, 325 Briçonnet, Guillaume, 296, 301
Bernini, Gianlorenzo, 33, 98 Brooks, Jane, 315
 index 477

Brossier, Marthe, 326 Catherine of Siena, Saint, 40, 89, 195, 271–73,
Brown, Raphael, 399n62 439n91
Brown, Richard, 313, 314–15, 315 Catholicism: baroque, 19, 41, 68, 99, 138, 140,
Browne, Thomas, 18 149, 175, 222, 260; bilocations and, 9–11,
Buddhism, 31, 176, 177 175–76, 179–81, 190; Congregation of
Bullinger, Heinrich, 61, 309, 350; On Witches, 333 Sacred Rites (Congregatio Sacrorum Rituum),
Byzantine hagiographies, 39 role of, 262, 365–67; “­devil books” produced
by, 320; exorcisms and, 38–39, 269, 321–28,
Cabrera, Juan Alfonso Enríquez de (viceroy), 363–64; Huguenots vs., 327; levitations and,
119, 120, 150 8, 10–11, 18, 29–30, 51–58, 139–44, 149,
Cades, Giuseppe, 122 290; Luther on, 67, 293, 294; modern belief
Caesarius of Heisterbach, 398n46 in impossible phenomena and, 365, 369–73;
Calef, Robert, 330 on natu­ral vs. super­natural, 23, 361, 371–72;
Calvin, John: on d­ evil, 291, 294–95, 321, 345–47, piety and, 16–17, 68, 301; Protestantism
448n43; on God, 59, 294, 321; Institutes, 280; vs., xv–­xvi, 17, 150–51, 154, 175, 237, 239,
on miracles, 61, 63–65, 294–95, 393n31; 261, 279, 289–91, 297–98, 301; Reformation,
on witches, 305, 309, 345, 347 53–54, 99, 113, 150; on superstition, 300–302;
Calvinists, 258, 305, 321–22, 326, 335, 340, 347 veneration of living saints, prohibition on,
Campagne, Fabián Alejandro, 394n41 262–63; witches and, 18, 309–11, 333, 335–38,
cannibalism, 307, 338 340–42, 348–51. See also bilocations;
Canon Episcopi (tenth-­century ­legal text), 305, canonization; ­devil and demonic possession;
339–42, 347 Eucharist; Immaculate Conception; levita-
canonization: Congregation of Sacred Rites, tions; miracles; transubstantiation; specific
role of, 262, 365–67; empirical science and, saints
365–70; Enlightenment princi­ples and, 134, cessation-­of-­miracles doctrine, 60–61, 69, 291,
368; heroic virtue requirement, 12, 134; 295, 365
promotor fidei (­devil’s advocate) and, 367; charisms/charismata, 10–15
revamping ­process of, 134, 262–64, 368. Charles II (Spanish king), 245, 246
See also specific candidates for sainthood Charles III (Spanish king), 249
Capuchins, 104–5, 124–28 Charles V (Spanish king/emperor), 263, 265
Carducho, Vicente, 42, 45 Charles (Prince of Wales and son of James I),
Carlo Borromeo, Saint, 132, 273, 368 285
Carloni, Maria Teresa, 363 Charles Borromeo. See Carlo Borromeo
Carmelites: Convent of the Incarnation (Ávila), Chesterton, G. K., 159
xii, xiv, 75, 93; origins of, 407n68; reforma- Christ. See Eucharist; Jesus Christ;
tion of order, 73, 78, 92–93 transubstantiation
Caro Baroja, Julio, 68 Christian, William, Jr., 257
Casanova, Giacomo de, 250 Christina of Sweden (queen), 128, 137
Casimir of Poland (prince), 115, 149 Christina the Astonishing, 40, 43–44, 373
Castañega, Martín de: Treatise on Superstitions Cignaroli, Giambettino, 148
and Sorceries, 331 Ciruelo, Pedro, 324–25; A Treatise Reproving
Castro, Antonio de, 212 All Superstitions and Forms of Witchcraft, 331
catalepsy, 12, 82, 96, 131, 143–44, 204–5, 282, Clark, Stuart, 289
405n30, 409n33. See also trances Clement I (pope), 420n25
Catarina de San Juan, 379–80 Clement IX (pope), 133
Cathedral-­Basilica of Nuestra Señora del Pilar Clement X (pope), 245
(Zaragoza, Spain), 182 Clement XII (pope), 248
Catherine dei Ricci, 190 Clement XIII (pope), 134
 478 index

Clement XIV (pope), 249, 381 demonology and demonologists: definition of

Colahan, Clark, 426n63 demonology, 318; publications proliferating,
Cold War, Carloni’s bilocations during, 363 318–20, 334–35; role of, 289–91; as science
Colette of Corbie, 51 in sixteenth ­century, 318, 330–31; shared
Colombini, Catherine, 51 by Catholics and Protestants, 289–90, 350.
colonies in New World. See missionary work See also ­devil and demonic possession
Conan Doyle, Arthur, 9–10 Denmark, witch hunts and executions in, 311,
Congregation of Sacred Rites and Ceremonies, 334, 350
262 Desa, Felice (­father of Joseph of Cupertino),
Convent of the Immaculate Conception 101–2
(Ágreda), 171, 204–5 Desa, Francesco, 102–5, 408n17
Copernicus, 17, 58, 60 Desa, Giuseppe Maria. See Joseph of Cuper­
Coronel, Francisco (­father of María de Ágreda), tino, Saint
199, 201, 202 Descartes, René, xv, 22, 137
corpses of saints and the holy: autopsies, 132, Detti, Giovanni Battista (bishop), 106
368, 412n99; incorruptibility of, 13, 245, ­devil and demonic possession, 317–30; alchemy
264, 368; of Zwingli, 353 associated with, 300; astrology associated
Costanzi, Placido, 166 with, 300; bilocations associated with, 3,
Council of Trent (1545–1563), 134, 262–64, 8, 176–77, 181, 317, 369; Calvin on, 291,
301–2, 370 294–95, 321, 345–47, 448n43; Catholicism
counterfactual history, 19 and, 38, 289, 299, 319, 363, 365; Christians
Crookes, William, 9, 27–29, 28, 138 seeing all other religions u ­ nder control of,
Curie, Marie and Pierre, 9 38; Dominic and, 323; early modern world
and, 317, 319, 334, 339, 351; Enlighten-
La Dama Azul. See María de Ágreda ment and, 330; Julian the Apostate and,
Damian, Peter, 398n46 36; levitations associated with, 2, 3, 8–10,
Daneau, Lambert: De Veneficiis, 357; Les Sorciers 17–18, 30, 37, 38, 317, 369; Luisa de Carrión
(A Dialogue of Witches), 333 and, 282; Luther and, 291–94, 320, 321, 334,
Daniel, 32, 33 345–47, 351, 393n31, 446n11, 446n14,
d’Arlandes, Marquis, 357 447n25, 447n27; Magdalena de la Cruz and,
Daston, Lorraine, 390n6 269–70; magic and, 297–98, 302–5; María
Daza, Antonio, 263–64, 285, 288 de la Visitación and, 279–80; masquerading
deceit and fakery, 255–288; bilocations as, 8–9, as angel or Christ, 76–77; mass events of
181, 190, 222–35; Francisco de la Fuente as possession, 326–28; in modernity and post-
known fraud in 1630s, 224; levitations as, ­modernity, 351–53; molestation by demons,
8, 17, 30, 53, 76; meaning of “trickster,” 13; monasticism and, 319, 322; origin of
433n2; miracles as, 61, 222; miracle-­workers miracles from, 2, 3, 8–9, 17–18, 30, 38, 176–77,
as tricksters, 255–56; Protestants accusing 181, 317, 369; personal encounters and
Catholics of, 65–66; spiritual mediums, 30. pacts with, 268–69, 299, 302, 307, 320,
See also feigned holiness; living saints 338; Protestants attributing super­natural to,
Defenders of the Most Pure Conception of the 17–18, 30, 58, 61–62, 279, 289–91, 296–98,
Virgin (Spain), 283 313–15, 319, 321–22, 325, 327–28, 369,
De Gusmão, Bartolomeu, 134 393n31; real vs. nonbeing status, 317, 319,
de Lancre, Pierre: On the Inconstancy of Evil 334, 339; Second Vatican Council on, 365;
Angels and Demons, 336–37 superstition and, 297–98, 300–302; Teresa
del Rio, Martin: Investigations into Magic, 337–38 of Avila, demons and ­devil appearing to,
demonic possession and demoniacs. See ­devil 77, 77–78, 322, 324; terminology for
and demonic possession degrees of demonic influence, 324; Valera
 index 479

on Catholicism’s miracles as work of the Elijah, 32, 181, 407n68

­devil, 279–80, 291; witchcraft and, 297. Elizabeth of Hungary, 40
See also demonology and demonologists; Ellinger, Johann, 320
exorcisms; Inquisition; sorcery; specific Emmerich, Anne Catherine, Blessed, 29
levitator or person accused of being possessed empirical science: belief system and, 176,
­devil’s advocate (promotor fidei, advocatus 359–60, 362, 370; miracles and, 365–68;
diaboli), 367 rise of, 18–19, 22, 23, 290, 318, 357–60
Diaz de Cabrera, Antonio, 287–88 ­England: Daneau’s influence on witchcraft
Dirraquio, Francisco, 366 beliefs in, 347; exorcisms considered ludicrous
Domingo de Aspe, 220, 286, 288 in, 327–28, 333; witch hunts and executions
Dominic, Saint, 40, 41, 323 in, 311–12, 334, 350. See also Anglicans
Dominicans, 78, 245, 246 Enlightenment: bilocations during, 381–82;
Donato, Giovanni, 102, 103, 105, 408n16 canonization applying princi­ples of, 134,
Don Bosco (John Bosco), 196 368; ­devil and, 330; endurance of beliefs in,
doubt. See skepticism and doubt 196; scientists drawn to the spiritual, 360;
Douceline de Digne, Saint, 43, 398n48, 409n33 skepticism of, 53; witches and, 352, 353;
Duns Scotus, John, 180, 247, 248, 251 worldview of, 357–58
Dunstan of Canterbury, Saint, 43, 61 Enriquez, Enrique, 189
Dürer, Albrecht, 341; The Ecstasy of Saint Mary Epiphanius (patriarch), 40
Magdalen, 35 Erasmus of Rotterdam, 296, 298, 301, 302
Durkheim, Émile, 369, 463n50 Erastus, Thomas: Disputation on Witches, 333
Ernst August, 152
early Christians: bilocations and, 182–84; Eucharist, 162, 179–80, 204, 295, 326. See also
exorcisms and, 38; levitations and, 34–39, transubstantiation
58; superstitions and, 297 evangelical Protestantism, 365
early modernity: approaches to miracles during, Evangelisti, Silvia, 421n42
255, 370–77; bilocation’s treatment in, evil eye, 304
22–23, 38, 181, 369; ­devil as real in, 317, exorcisms, 38–39, 269, 289, 321–28, 333,
319, 334, 339, 351; distribution of miracles 363–64
during, 258–59; facts in, 390n6; levitation’s The Exorcist (film), 363
treatment in, 22–23, 30, 369; living saints eyewitness accounts: of bilocations, 21, 209;
in, 262–64; Protestantism in, 58–65; shared of levitations, 44, 45, 48, 53, 58, 329–30; of
Catholic and Protestant demonology in, witch ­trials and executions, 310–11. See also
289–90. See also ­devil and demonic posses- testimonies; specific saints
sion; living saints; superstition; witchcraft
and witches Fabricius, Andreas: Holy, Clever, and Learned
Eastern Orthodox Church. See Orthodox ­Devil, 320
Christians Fabri de Luca, Sixto, 274–75, 278
Eckankar movement, 178 Facchinetti, Cardinal, 119, 123
ecstasy (éstasi), 12; inclusion of u
­ nion, rapture, facts: beliefs as, 20, 145, 209; defined, 3–4;
elevation, and ravishment, 72; Protestant view dismissal of all reporters of levitations as
of ecstatic seizures, 17, 65; terminology used nonfactual, 138; in early modern age, 390n6;
to describe, 141. See also catalepsy; mystical material and spiritual realms existing
ecstasy; specific person who experienced si­mul­ta­neously as, 142; social determination
Edwards, Jonathan, 65 of, 140, 142; social facts (Durkheim), 369;
Edwards, Sarah Pierpont, 65 “wild facts,” 4, 20
Egido López, Teófanes, 260 Faustus tale, 320
Eliezer, 178, 419n13 Febvre, Lucien, 6, 21
 480 index

feigned holiness: investigation of cases of, Frederick III (Danish king), 121, 152
255–58; Luisa de Carrión and, 257, 280–88; Friedkin, William, 363
Magdalena de la Cruz and, 256, 264–71, Frisius, Paul: The ­Devil’s Hoodwink, 334
439n77; María de la Visitación and, 256–57, Fuenmayor, Andrés de, 243
271–80; terminology of, 435n18
Felice Amoroso of Nicosia, 382 Galgani, Gemma, Saint, 29
Ferber, Sarah, 316 Galileo, 22, 58
Ferrer, Vincent, 51 García Barriúso, Patrocinio, 260, 442n133
Finland, witch hunts and executions in, 312 Garcia Hidalgo, José, xiii
Flade, Dietrich, 310 García Márquez, Gabriel: A Hundred Years of
flight of the spirit (vuelo de espíritu), 72, 81, 141 Solitude, xiii
Flying Friar. See Joseph of Cupertino, Saint Gaspar d’Aveiro, 274
folk legends and folklore, 5, 6, 171, 176, 178, Gaufridi, Louis, 326
292, 296, 298–99, 301 Germany: mass events of demonic possession
foolishness, 40, 156–59, 416n73 in, 328; witch hunts and executions in,
Fra Angelico, 184 310–11, 333–34, 350
Francavilla, Antonio da, 104 Gerson, Jean, 73, 301, 403–4n5
France: exorcisms in, 325–28, 453n20; miracles Giotto, 47, 184, 185
occurring in, 258; witch hunts in, 311, Giovanni Batista di Santa Agata, 125
336–37 Giovanni di Fidanza, 46. See also Bonaventure,
Francesco di Paola, 187 Saint
Franchi, Girolamo de (bishop), 105 Giovanni Maria di Fossombrone, 125
Francis (pope), 264 Glanvill, Joseph: Saducismus triumphatus, 312–15,
Francis I (French king), 265 313–15, 454n36
Francisca de la Natividad, 379 glowing (luminous irradiance): bilocations and,
Francisca de los Ángeles, 380 12, 187; as charism, 13; levitations and, 12,
Franciscans: bilocations of saints of, 185; 47, 49, 50, 51, 54, 55–57, 204–5; Protestant
Conventual, 103, 104; ecstatic mystics of, rejection of, 17; raptures and, 204
193; History of the Virgin Mary and, 236, God: belief in legitimacy of encounters with, 142;
244; Inquisition and, 226; Lady in Blue Calvin on, 59, 294, 321; Luther on, 293;
legend and, 209–11, 216–21, 281; levitations miracles’ divine origins and, 3, 11, 17, 30,
of Francis of Assisi, effect on, 48; living 38–39, 176, 179–81, 369, 370. See also specific
saints and, 442n134; Luisa de Carrión and, saints for God’s interactions and miracles
284–85; Observants, 103–4; poverty, friction Gonzalez, Juan, 67
over rule of, 46, 48; Spiritual, 48 González de Cellorigo, Martin, 259
Francisco de Ameyugo, 193 González del Moral, Antonio, 222, 226–34
Francisco de la Fuente, 190, 216, 221, 223–25, Goodare, Julian, 311
234, 385, 426n51 Goya, Francisco, 352, 353, 458n84
Francis of Assisi, Saint: bilocations, 184, 185, Gracián, Jerónimo de, 69–70
222; birth of, in a stable, 101, 408n7; ecstasy Grandier, Urbain, 326–27
of, 49; as holy fool, 40, 159, 416n73; Joseph Gratian: Corpus Juris Canonici, 340
of Cupertino’s regard for, 44, 108–9, 112, ­Great Awakening, 65
123, 156, 159; levitations of, 40, 43, 44–50, ­Great Schism (1054), 40
45, 47; Luisa de Carrión bilocating to venerate Greeks, ancient. See ancient world
at his tomb, 215, 281; stigmata of, 14, 44, Gregory, Brad, 361, 460n20
45, 159, 272 Gregory IX (pope), 46
Francis Xavier, Saint, 53, 54, 187–90 Gregory XV (pope), 77, 215, 281, 284
Franklin, Benjamin, 357–58 Gregory Nazienzen, 36, 38
 index 481

Gregory of Tours, 403n128 Homza, Lu Ann, 457n78

Grew, Nehemiah, 64 hot-­air balloons, 134, 354–58, 356
Grosso, Michael, 390–91n9 Huguenots, 325–27
Guadín, Lucas, 226, 233 Hume, David, 20
Guazzo, Francesco Maria: Compendium humility, 75–76, 85, 115, 157–58, 206, 227–28,
Maleficarum, 339, 348–49, 349 244, 247, 275, 278. See also specific saints
Gustavus Adolphus (Swedish king), 193 Hunter, Michael, 460n15
Guzmán, Dominic de. See Dominic, Saint Hyacintha Mariscotti, Saint, 53, 400n76
hyperosmia, 13
Habakkuk, 32, 33, 166 hyperpluralism, 361
hagiographies: Byzantine (Orthodox Christians),
39; decrease in, 196; formulaic approach to, Iamblichus, 31
52; miracles in, 64, 66, 68; printing press idiota (­idiots), 157–58
and, 51–52; purposes of, 11–12; Roman idolatry, 17, 60, 295, 301, 302, 350
Catholics and, 40, 52. See also specific hagi- Ignatius Loyola, Saint: aethrobats list by, 53;
ographers and subjects bilocations of, 6, 7, 187, 188; canonization
Haliczer, Stephen, 260 of, 140, 190; Inquisition’s treatment of, 113,
Halley, Edmund, 64 261; levitations and raptures of, 54, 55–57;
Harrison, Frederic, 362 Magdalena de la Cruz doubted by, 266–67
healing. See miracles Immaculate Conception, 173, 231, 236, 245–47,
Hebrew Bible. See Old Testament 250–51, 281, 283, 444n152
Heisenberg uncertainty princi­ple, 177, 418n8 incombustibility. See corpses
Hemmingsen, Nils: Admonishment to Avoid indeterminacy princi­ple, 177
Magical Superstitions, 333–34 inedia (super­natural), 13; Luisa de Carrión and,
heresy: accusations in Spain, 73; denial of saint’s 280–82, 285; Magdalena de la Cruz and, 265,
ability to levitate as, 370; witches and sorcery 266, 268, 438n73
as forms of, 305, 339–40 Inés, Saint, 224
Herrera, Alonso and Tomás de, 226, 233 infanticide, 307, 338, 348–49
Herrera, Juan de, 67 Innocent VIII (pope), 306
Hidalgo, José Garcia, xiii Innocent X (pope), 124, 127, 150–51, 159
hierophants, xvi, 34 Innocent XI (pope), 246, 248
Hijar, Duke of, conspiracy against Philip IV, Innocent XII (pope), 248
225, 227, 231, 242 Inquisition: ambiguity inherent in ­process, 257;
Hilary of Poitiers, 38 causality as ­factor in, 257; effectiveness in
Hildegard of Bingen, 413n21 uncovering frauds, 279; monks and nuns
Hinduism, 176, 177 subject to, 56, 322–23; nuns as failed saints
The History and Life of the Virgin Mary (María in, 53, 256–57, 263; social-­science approach
de Ágreda). See The Mystical City of God to, 371; in Spain, 258–59, 261–62; terminol-
holiness: Catholicism vs. Protestantism and, ogy of, 261; witch hunts and executions of,
17, 301; humility and, 76; levitations and 305–6, 311, 350–51. See also specific individ-
bilocations associated with, 11; sacred vs. ual ­under examination
profane in Protestantism, 59. See also feigned insomnia (super­natural), 13
holiness; virtuous life irruptions of the sacred, xvi
holy fools, 40, 156–59, 398n45 Isabel de Jesús, 193
Holy Roman Empire’s Constitutio Criminalis Isabel de Santo Domingo, 89–90, 91
Carolina, 309 Isabel Flores de Oliva (Saint ­Rose of Lima),
Holy Shrine of Loreto, 2, 128, 129 194–95
Home, Daniel Dunglas, 28, 29 Isabella (Spanish empress), 265, 275
 482 index

Isidore of Seville, 298 John the Wonderworker, Saint, 29

Islam and Muslims, 176, 178, 194 Joseph I (Holy Roman Emperor), 152
Italy: bilocators in, 187, 190, 196, 197; exor- Joseph of Cupertino, Saint, 2, 98–167; as agent
cisms in, 328; mass events of demonic of divine ­displeasure, 112–13; angel’s visita-
possession in, 328; miracle accounts in, 52, tion to, 107; as archetype, 98–99; asceticism
258; witch hunts in, 311. See also specific of, 105, 107–8, 130; in Assisi, 118–24;
saints from Italy autopsy on, 132; beatification and canoni-
zation of, 98–100, 116, 133–34, 146, 162,
James the Greater (apostle), 182, 183 367–69, 412n102, 463n42; bilocations of,
James I (­English king and James VI of Scotland): 139, 171, 177, 192, 193, 417n1; body as
Daemonologie, 62, 334–35; Scot’s Discoverie relic, 132; burial of, 133; as Capuchin, 104,
banned by, 333; witch hunts and, 334–35 124–28; compared to María de Ágreda, 193,
James, William, 4, 20 204, 208; compared to Teresa of Avila, 109,
Japan, Luisa de Carrión’s bilocations to, 215, 281 113, 136, 138, 142–43, 145–46; context
Jean des Anges, 327 of levitations of, 139–44; as Conventual
Jéronima del Espiritu Santo, 380 Franciscan, 100, 103, 105, 127; conversions
Jesus Christ: bilocations of, 181; on d ­ evil, 318; resulting from, 22, 121–23, 150–53; death
­devil passing himself off as, 76–77; Gospel of, 132; distinctive traits of levitations by,
narratives of, 32, 156; as levitating wizard, 36; 137, 143, 145, 153, 159–67, 369; in double
miracles of, 32–34, 39, 397n28; mystical levitations, 164–65; ecstasies and trances of,
marriage with, 263, 271; self-­abnegation 109–10, 131, 141–42, 155, 162, 369;
of, 156; teleportation of, 32. See also New examination for ordination as priest, 106–7;
Testament; transubstantiation eyewitness accounts, 100, 109–10, 119, 121,
Jews and Judaism, 32, 36, 176, 178, 181, 182, 296 130–31, 136–39, 153, 155, 159–60, 165;
Jiménez de Cisneros, Francisco (cardinal), 263 flames, impervious to, 110, 115, 164; Francis
Jiménez Samaniego, José: chronology of Blue of Assisi as model of, 108–9, 112, 130;
Lady legend and, 383, 385; defending The frequency of levitations, 146, 414n32;
Mystical City of God against objections, 246; gunpowder analogy and, 145–46, 165;
differences with Benavides’s and María de hagiographies on, 98–101; healing by, 113,
Ágreda’s accounts, 219–20; hagiography by, 139, 165, 166; as “holy fool,” 156–59; Holy
as appendix to The Mystical City of God, Shrine of Loreto, levitations upon encounter
201, 213, 245; Life of Sor María (hagiogra- with, 2, 128, 129; Inquisition’s treatment of,
phy), 195, 199, 200–202, 204–7, 213, 245, 113–16, 117, 123–25, 128, 154, 155, 157, 261,
385, 426n57, 427n64, 427n69; María 410n46; as intercessor ­after his death, 132;
asking him to burn History of the Virgin interment in Osimo, 133; “invisible hand” in
Mary, 242 levitations, 163–64; isolation of, 116, 124–28,
Joannicus the G ­ reat, 39 130, 138, 146, 149–50, 154–56, 208, 263;
Johann Friedrich of Saxony (Lutheran duke), 22, knowledge of Teresa of Avila and other
121–23, 122, 137, 149, 150–53, 163, 410n66 ­earlier levitators, 140–45; levitations of, 1, 2,
John (apostle), 237, 238 19, 44, 108–16, 112, 117, 118–19, 120, 121,
John XII (pope), 62 125–26, 128, 129, 136, 161, 208, 367–68,
John XXII (pope), 305–6 377, 390–91n9; life of, 101–7; making sense
John XXIII (pope), 193 of phenomenon of, 138; Mass, levitating
John Bosco (Don Bosco), 196 during, 110–15, 121, 127, 146, 160–62,
John Joseph of the Cross, 381, 382 161; miracles recorded as part of rec­ord
John of the Cross, Saint, xii, xiii, 53, 92–93, of, 133, 136, 139; miraculous healing of
94, 323–24, 407n68 childhood affliction, 103; obscurity of, 167;
John Paul II (pope), 29, 197, 251, 363 from ordination to Inquisition, 107–13;
 index 483

original name as Giuseppe Maria Desa, 101; Lady in Blue. See María de Ágreda
as patron saint of ­those flying in airplanes, Lambertini, Prospero (­later Pope Benedict
134; prediction of his own death, 130; rapture, XIV), 368–69, 463n42; On the Beatification
physical phenomena of, 144–46; resemblance of the Servants of God and the Canonization
to Jesus Christ, 101; ­resistance to levitations of the Blessed, 368
and rapture, 114–15, 145, 410n51; rhymed Lange, Andreas: The Worry ­Devil, 320
hymns by, 143; in Rome, 115–16, 118; screams Lauria, Cardinal di, 157, 158, 162
that accompany levitations, 109–10, 114, Lefèvre d’Étaples, Jacques, 301
115, 121, 127, 145–46, 155, 165–67; self- Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 22, 137, 152–53
­mortification of, 108; shame and embarrass- Leo I (pope), 297–98
ment of, 114–15, 162; skepticism of levitations Leo XIII (pope), 250–51
being fake, 137–38, 154, 255–56; tempera- Leo, ­Brother, 48–50
ment of, 101–2, 149, 408n10; testimonies, Leroy, Olivier, 9, 29, 40, 43, 44, 53, 363, 391n11
99–101, 119, 123, 412n2; transfer from levitations: as ancient global phenomenon,
Assisi to Capuchin friary at Pietrarubbia, 30–34; author’s knowledge of, xiii; belief in
124–25, 412n4; transfer from Fossombrone legitimacy of divine encounters as part of,
to Osimo, 127–28; transfer from Pietrarubbia 142; binary approach of demonic vs. divine,
to Fossombrone, 126; triggers for ecstasies 36–38, 113, 142, 409n32; in Catholic
and levitations, 109–11, 112, 146–53, 147, tradition, 8, 10–11, 18, 29–30, 51–58, 139–44,
148, 163–64; uneducated and simpleton, 149, 290; challenges to study of, 3–10;
103–5, 156–58; Urban VIII and, 116, 117, as charism, 12; court testimony of, 330;
149, 155, 367; visits from Church officials Crookes on, 27–29; defined, 2, 9; demonic
and nobility, 119–23, 137, 149, 156; vow of origin of, 2, 3, 8–10, 17–18, 30, 37, 38, 317,
obedience, effect of, 110, 124, 144–45 369; divine origin of, 3, 11, 38, 369; double
Juana de Jesús María, 191–92 levitations, xii, xiii, 92–93, 94, 164–65;
Juana de la Cruz, 263–64, 436n34 early Christians and, 34–39, 58; exorcism
Juan de Ávila, 266, 267 and, 327; eyewitnesses of, 45, 48; as a fact,
Juan de las Cuevas, 274 xiii, 3–4, 140; faked or false, 8, 17, 30, 53,
Juan de Ribera, 273 76; geo­graph­ic­ al extent of, 51; Glanvill’s
Juan de Santa Marta, 215 depictions of, 313–15, 314; hot-­air balloons
Juan de Santander, 220 as, 354–58, 356; lists of levitators, 40, 43,
Juan de Villalacre, 207 50–51, 53, 363; in ­Middle Ages, 40–51, 182;
Juanentín del Niño, 191 in modernity, 2, 29, 359, 363; modernity’s
Judaism. See Jews and Judaism view of, 22, 29, 145; Orthodox Christians
Julian the Apostate, 36, 319 and, 29, 39–40; Pilâtre de Rozier and, 354–58;
Jumano Indians, conversion of, 172–73, 210, printing press, effect on number of recorded,
216–21, 228–30, 281, 383–84, 426n57. 51; Protestant views on, 17–18, 30, 58–65,
See also Luisa de Carrión and Mariá de Ágreda 208, 365; purpose of, 3, 138; responses to,
for their missionary work in New World xi; Rule’s demonic possession and, 329;
shared culture of levitators, 141–42; soul’s
Kant, Immanuel, xiii, 360–61 involvement in, 142; spiritualism and, 9–10,
Keitt, Andrew, 262, 395n48 28–29; testimonies of, 4–5; ­women and, 39,
Kessel, Leonard, 187, 188 51; written accounts of, 40. See also glowing;
Kessell, John, 427n73 miracles; specific individuals
Kramer, Heinrich: Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer The Life of Jesus (sixth-­century Hebrew text),
of witches), 306–10, 331, 337 34–36
Krell, Crypto-­Calvinist chancellor, 321–22 Liguori. See Alphonsus Liguori
Kripal, Jeffrey, 390n2, 390n7, 463n50 Lincoln, Mary Todd, 9
 484 index

living saints: body parts distributed by, 266; as Lutherans: Catholic worship aspects retained
failed saints, 256, 263–64, 442n134; Juana by, 59; ­devil as preoccupation of, 62, 300,
de la Cruz as, 263–64; Luisa de Carrión 303, 320, 334; witches and, 305, 309–10,
as, 280, 283, 285; Luis de Granada as, 278; 333–34, 339, 350
Magdalena de la Cruz as, 264–66, 268, 271;
María de la Visitación as, 271, 273, 275; Maculists, 245–46
veneration of prohibited, 262–63 Maffei, Ascanio, 126
Lopez, Diego, 219 Magdalena de la Cruz (Nun of Córdoba), 2, 256,
Lorenzini, Antonio, 120 264–71; asceticism of, 264–66; background
Lorenzo de Cepeda (­brother of Teresa of of, 264; bilocations of, 265; class issues
Avila), 87 and, 371; confession of deceit by, 269–70;
Louis XVI (French king), 356 exorcism performed on, 269; Ignatius Loyola
Luisa de Carrión (Luisa de la Ascensión), 3, doubting, 266; inedia of, 265, 266, 268,
257, 280–88; absolved by Inquisition but 438n73; Inquisition punishing for her
relegated to obscurity, 288, 385; accused as deceit, 270–71; Juan de Ávila doubting,
fake bilocator, 190, 216, 234, 385; asceticism 266; legacy of, 271; as living saint, 264–66;
of, 280, 282; background of, 281; bilocations loss of reelection of abbess, 268; miraculous
of, 280–81, 342; compared to María de Ágreda, healing and prophesizing by, 266; possessed
281; compared to Maria de la Visitación, 200; by demons, 268–69; pregnancy of, 267–68;
compared to Teresa of Avila, 284; Daza as pride and be­hav­ior causing doubt of, 267
hagiographer of, 264, 285, 288; death of, 287, magic: in ancient world, 30; Catholicism’s saving
385; demons and, 282; as Franciscan, 281, of, 371; defined, 17; d ­ evil and, 297–98,
284–85; inedia of, 280–82, 285; Inquisition’s 302–5; incantations and spells, 304; levita-
treatment of, 216, 285–88, 443n141; levita- tions and, 5; magical realism, xiii; magus/
tions of, 282; as living saint, 257, 282, 285; magi as magicians or sorcerers, 34–36;
New World missionary work via bilocations, non-­Christian practices as, 60; potions and
191, 193, 215–16, 219, 220, 427n64; Philip magical substances, 303–4; premodernity
III and, 283–85; Philip IV and, 286; as royal and, 21; Protestant view of miracles as,
advisor, 174, 417n2; as second “Lady in 61–62; white (or good) magic, 304. See also
Blue,” 220–21, 281, 383–85; stigmata and, necromancy
282; talismans distributed by, 283; transfer Majella, Geraldo, Saint, 382
from Santa Clara to Valladolid, 288, 385 Maldonado, Juan de, 337
Luisa de la Ascensión. See Luisa de Carrión maleficium (evildoing), 299, 304–6, 308, 312,
Luis de Granada, 66, 273–74, 278–79; “A 334, 338, 339, 349, 351. See also sorcery;
Sermon on Scandals Caused by Public witchcraft and witches
Disgraces,” 278–79 Manero, Pedro, 211, 213, 214, 227–28, 231,
Luis de León, 67, 68, 70, 79 234, 385
Luke of Steiris (Luke Thaumaturgus), Manning, Henry Edward, 362–63
39–40 Manrique, Alonso, 265
luminous irradiance. See glowing Manrique, Inés, 288, 444n157
Luther, Martin: Catholic disparagement of, 67, Manso y Zúñiga, Francisco de, 217–18, 384
293, 294; denial of witch’s ability to fly, 347; Maravall, José Antonio, 260
on the ­devil, 291–94, 320, 321, 334, 345–47, Marcilla, Sebastián, 210, 216, 217–18
351, 393n31, 446n11, 446n14, 447n25; María de Ágreda (María de Jesús de Ágreda),
medieval folklore and, 292, 301; noncombusti- 2, 199–251; autobiography of, 199–201;
bility of pictures of, 353; rejection of postbib- background of, 199–203; Benavides, meeting
lical miracles by, 60–61, 63; on witches’ with, 210, 220, 221; bilocations of, 19, 171,
execution, 309 172, 173, 175, 190–91, 208–21, 234, 342;
 index 485

birth of, 199; canonization uncompleted for, compared to Luisa de Carrión, 200; confession
189–90, 200, 213, 245, 248–51; cessation of fraud, 277; Inquisition’s first examination
of levitations and ecstasies, 207–8, 224; declaring holiness, 274–75; Inquisition’s
compared to Ana María de San José, 191; second examination finding fake stigmata,
compared to Joseph of Cupertino, 193, 204, 276–77; levitations and ecstasies of, 272–73;
208; compared to Luisa de Carrión, 281; Philip II and, 275–76, 278; politics as her
compared to Padre Pio, 197; compared to undoing, 275–76; punishment of, 277–78,
Teresa of Avila, 171–72, 208, 245; conflict- 280; stigmata of, 76, 271–77, 439n92,
ing narratives from two continents, 213–21; 440n96; suffering of Christ as focus of,
context of bilocations of, 190–93, 197; 271–72
corpse’s failure to decompose, 245; death of, María Manuela de Santa Ana, 380–81
199; demonic possession of, 223, 226, 233, Marie Antoinette (French queen), 356
241; Duke of Hijar’s plot against Philip IV, Mariology, 239
alleged involvement in, 225, 231, 242; em- Marnix, Philips van, 61
barrassment and fears of, 206–7; eyewitness Martina de los Angeles, 193
accounts, 204–5; first inquest (Inquisition, Martín de Porres, Saint, 194, 422n52
1635), 224; Francisco de la Fuente as pos­si­ble Martin of Tours, Saint, 38, 184
influence on, 224–25; González del Moral as Mary Magdalene, levitations of, 32–34, 35
examiner of, 226–34; Inquisition’s treatment Mary of Egypt, 39
of, 173, 193, 206, 210, 211, 222–35, 242, Mass: Francis Xavier levitating during, 54;
245–46; joining Discalced Franciscan Joseph of Cupertino levitating during,
nunnery, 202; “Lady in Blue” legend of, 171, 110–15, 121, 127, 146, 160–62, 161;
208–10, 213–14, 220–22, 383–85, 426n57; Pedro de Alcántara levitating during, 54;
levitations of, 19, 171–73, 204–8, 214; Luisa superstitions and, 302
de Carrión’s bilocations and, 220–21; Luisa Masseo, ­Brother, 49
de Carrión’s examination by Inquisition Mather, Cotton, 329–30; Won­ders of the
and, 287; New World missionary work via Invisible World, 335, 340
bilocations, 172, 173, 191, 195, 208, 213, Mather, Increase, 315–16
228–30; as Philip IV’s confidant and advisor, Maurus, Silvanus, 180
174, 211, 225, 227, 231, 234–36, 244, Maximus of Ephesus, 36
287; raptures of, 203–4; reopening of Mazzanti, Ludovico, 128, 129
inquest (Inquisition, 1649), 225–34; Méheust, Bertrand, 463n50
Roman Inquisition a­ fter her death, 246; Melanchthon, Philip, 339, 345, 347
self-­mortification of, 202–3; sources of the Mendo, Andrés, 245
legend, 209–13; suspicions of deceit or Mendoza, Alvaro de (bishop), 91, 92
demonic possession, 222–51, 255–56; Menéndez Pelayo, Marcelino, 5–6, 259
temperament of, 202; Teresa of Avila as ­mental illness, 261, 332
inspiration to, 189; testimonies needed Metaphysical Society debate (London 1875), 362
to corroborate bilocations, 209, 213–21; Mexico. See missionary work
testimony directly from María, 210, 211; ­Middle Ages: charisms during, 11; demonic
triggers for levitations, 204, 206; as Virgin possession associated with levitations in,
Mary’s scribe and automatic writing by, 38; ­devil as presence in, 319, 322; increase
173–74, 200, 202, 231–32, 236–45. See also in bilocations during, 181, 184–86; increase
The Mystical City of God in levitations during, 40–51, 182; magic in,
María de Jesús de León y Delgado, 381 304; Protestant rejection of super­natural
María de Jesús Tomellín, 379 phenomena of, 17, 58; stigmata’s emergence
María de la Visitación (Nun of Lisbon), 3, during, 182; superstition in, 301; witch
256–57, 271–80; background of, 271; hunts and executions in, 305, 332–38
 486 index

Midelfort, Erik, 391n15 Molitor, Ulrich: On Witches, 306, 342, 343–44,

Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig, 412n5 456–57n66
mind and ­matter, relationship of, 59–60, 68, 176 monasticism: assumptions of, 142–43; demonic
Miracle of Laon, 325–26 possession and, 319, 322; foolishness and,
miracles: Aquinas’s categorization of, 15; Calvin 156–57; levitations and, 39; Protestant
on, 61, 63–65, 294–95, 393n31; Catholicism rejection of, 52, 63
and, 17–18, 23, 52, 65–71, 294–95, 361, Montaigne, Michel de: “On Cripples,” 332
365–67; causality as f­ actor in legitimacy of, Montella, Rita, 363
257; cessation of, 60–61, 69, 291, 295, 365; Montgolfier, Michel and Jacques-­Étienne, 134,
challenges to study of, 10–14; in early modern 354, 357
Catholic world, 258, 370–77; empirical Morata, Ursula Micaela, 381
science and, 365–68, 370; fake, 61, 222, More, Thomas, 66
255–56; Hume on, 20; in medieval Italy moti (movements, motions, gestures), 114,
and Spain, 52; modern-­day Catholicism and, 141–42, 160
365–67; modern views of, 362–63; More vs. multilocation, 176, 418n3
Tyndale on, 66; natu­ral ­causes of, 64; as Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban: The Angels’ Kitchen
polemic, 65–71, 255, 279–80; postsecular (painting), 365, 366
interpretation of, 371–72; predicting ­future Musaeus, Simon: Melancholy ­Devil, 320
events, 13, 112–13, 127, 130–31, 139, 260, Musculus, Andreas: Trousers ­Devil, 320
266, 302; Protestants and, 17–18, 52, 60–71, Muslims. See Islam and Muslims
294–95, 321, 365, 371, 393n30; reading The Mystical City of God (María de Ágreda),
minds or consciences of ­others, 13, 127, 236–45; appendix of (hagiography by
131, 139; relics’ healing power, 15, 69; social Samaniego), 195, 201, 213, 245; banned by
science as functionalist approach to, 370–71, Innocent XI, 246; bilocations/transvection of
464n53; spontaneous healing, 3, 103, 113, Virgin Mary reported in, 182, 183; Casanova
139, 165, 166, 197, 263, 265, 273, 277, and, 250; contents of, 237; divine approval
283; thaumaturgy and, 14–17, 60. See also for, 243–44; ­English translation of, 251;
bilocations; levitations; specific saints French theologians opposed to, 246–47;
missionary work: by bilocators in New World influence and popularity in New World,
colonies, 172, 173, 191, 193–96, 224–25, 195; inspiration for, 241; Our Lady of the
228–30, 281, 379–81; Francisco de la Fuente Pillar incorporated into, 182, 183; María as
declared as fraudulent bilocator to New fifth evangelist, 236–45, 238; Mariology and,
World for, 216; Jesuit missionaries, 54; 239; New Jerusalem in, 238–39; objections
Luisa de Carrión as bilocator to New World to and Inquisition’s treatment of, 245–46;
for, 215–16, 280–81; María de Agrenda as order to burn, 173, 232, 234, 242; Philip IV
bilocator to New World for, 208, 214–21. in possession of copy of, 232, 234, 242;
See also Luisa de Carrión; María de Ágreda reception of, 245–51; revelations of, 231–32;
modernity: bilocations and, 363; coexistence squabbles within the Catholic Church over,
with premodern views, 362–63; early Christian 247–48; third writing of, 243; title of, 236
approach to levitations and, 38; levitations mystical displacement or mystical journeying,
and, 2, 29, 359, 363; miracles and, 362–67; 191, 421n42. See also transvection
postsecular interpretation of miraculous, mystical ecstasy: evaluation criteria for sainthood,
371–72; rejection of super­natural in, xvi, 4, 368–69, 370; God’s control of, 95; levitations
21, 177, 370; super­natural phenomena and, 2, associated with, 30, 40; phenomena associated
18, 21, 53; third way of believing in, 359–62; with, 3, 20; resemblance to natu­ral diagnosa-
transition to, 22, 291, 353, 361; trou­ble ble illness, 145, 413n21; soul vs. body in, 95;
with, 21–23; witchcraft and transition to, as upward movement, 84, 95; varied terminol-
312, 370. See also empirical science; skepti- ogy associated with, 72, 74, 80–84, 89, 96, 141,
cism and doubt 404n11. See also levitations; specific saints
 index 487

Napier, John, 61–62 Padre Pio, Saint, 364; bilocations of, 29, 197,
Nardi, Bishop, 107 363; compared to María de Ágreda, 197;
Native Americans: levitations and, 30; as victims levitations of, 29, 363; stigmata and, 197,
of ancien régime, 21. See also missionary work 363
natu­ral vs. super­natural, 23, 255, 289–90, 361, paganism, 15, 30, 32, 36–38; bilocators vis­
371–72 iting pagan lands, 191; malevolent magic
Navarro, Gaspar, 261 and, 299; superstitions and, 297. See also
Navarro, Pedro, 264 idolatry
Near Eastern cultures: aethrobats in, 31; ­devil Palamolla, Giuseppe, 113–14
and, 296; levitations in, 30 Panaca, Francesca (­mother of Joseph of Cu­
necromancy, 61, 295, 303–5, 331 pertino), 101–2, 104–5, 107
Netherlands, mass events of demonic posses- parapsychology, 176
sion in, 328 Paravicino, Fray Hortensio Félix, 68
New Age spirituality, bilocations and trans­ Parigi, Paolo, 367, 371, 464n53
vection in, 176 Parisciani, Gustavo: San Giuseppe da Copertino
New Jerusalem in María de Ágreda’s The alla luce dei nuovi documentti, 100, 146,
Mystical City of God, 238–39 155–56, 408n2, 408n10
New Mexico missionaries. See missionary work Parish, Helen, 65–66
New Testament: demonic possession in, Pascal, Blaise, xv
299–300, 319; María de Ágreda’s treatment Pastrovicchi, Angelo, 100, 126, 130, 133,
of, 240–41; miracles in, 32–34, 64, 181 408nn16–17
Newton, Isaac, 19, 22, 97, 177, 354, 360 Paul (apostle), 10–11, 156, 229
New World colonies. See missionary work Paul V (pope), 325
Nicene Creed, 233 Paul of the Cross, 381
Nider, Johann: Formicarius, 306 Pedro de Alcántara, 54
Nun of Córdoba. See Magdalena de la Cruz Pedro de Balbás, 288
nuns: baroque and Enlightenment-­era nuns Pedro de Ribadeneira, 52
and bilocations, 381–82; feigned holiness, Pedro (Peter) Regalado, Saint, 51, 185, 186
examples of, 256–57, 263; New World nuns Pellegrini, Vincent Maria, 124
and bilocations, 195, 379–81, 422n57. Pentecostalism, 365
See also bilocations; levitations; living saints; Perea, Esteban de, 217, 218, 384
specific nuns by name Perez de Valdivia, Diego, 73
Nuti, Roberto, 100–101, 416n68, 417n80 Pérez Villanueva, José, 227
Perkins, William, 62
Obadiah, 181 Peru, mass events of demonic possession in,
Obry, Nicole, 325–26 328
occultism. See magic Peter (apostle), 36, 37; First Epistle of Peter, 38;
odor of sanctity, 13, 18, 368 in María de Ágreda’s The Mystical City of
Oldridge, Darren, 6, 391n14 God, 237
Old Testament: levitations, instances of, 32; Peter Canisius, 325
mystical relocation, instances of, 181, 419n13; Peter Jeremias of Palermo, 51
on sorcery, 305 Peter of Alcántara, 53
Olivares, Count-­Duke of, 235 Peter Regalado, 51
Orthodox Christians: assumptions on super­ Petronius, Alexander, 6, 7
natural, 17; hagiographies, 39; levitations Philip (apostle), 32, 181
and, 29; Protestant view on mysticism of, 62 Philip II (Spanish king), 90, 255, 265, 275–76,
Osuna, Francisco de, 265 278
Our Lady of the Pillar (Zaragoza, Spain), 182, 183 Philip III (Spanish king), 90, 215, 259, 281,
Otto, Rudolf, 153, 415n51 283–85, 379, 417n2
 488 index

Philip IV (Spanish king): death of, 244–45; Duke 321–22; h ­ uman and divine, relationship with,
of Hijar’s conspiracy against, 225, 227, 231, 60, 62–65; idolatry opposed by, 60; levita-
242; fraudulent miracles, proliferation tions and, 17–18, 30, 58–65, 208, 365; m­ atter
during reign of, 259; life and rule of, 235; and spirit, relationship of, 59–60, 68;
Luisa de Carrión and, 281, 286, 287; María medieval past still relevant in, 353; miracles
de Ágreda as confidant and advisor of, 174, and super­natural, 17–18, 23, 52, 53, 60–71,
211, 225, 227, 231, 234–36, 244; Memorial 176, 294–95, 321, 365, 371, 393n30;
(1630) written by Alonso de Benavides for, monasticism eliminated by, 63; mysticism
210, 220; The Mystical City of God by María rejected by, 62–63, 392n22; nonmainstream,
de Ágreda, copy in possession of, 232, 234, 365; paradigm shift of Reformation and,
242; papal relationship with, 150 17–18, 22–23, 51–52, 58–65, 99, 121, 262,
Philip Neri, Saint, 53–55, 132, 140–41, 190, 368 297–98, 309, 345–47, 361; piety and, 21,
Philostratus, 31 62, 64–65, 301; revivalist movements, 365;
Piccino, Ottavio, 193 spiritual deliverance and, 365; superstition
piety. See Catholicism; Protestantism and, 300–302; witchcraft and, 18, 62, 292,
Pilâtre de Rozier, Jean-­François, 354–58, 355–56, 309–11, 333–35, 348–50; wonder-­decoding
377 and, 303. See also Reformed Protestant
Pinelli, Cosimo, 113 tradition; thaumaturgy and thaumaturgs;
Pio of Pietrelcina, Saint. See Padre Pio specific branches
Piron, Sylvain, 373 Puritan colony of Mas­sa­chu­setts: demonic
Pius VI (pope), 249 possessions in, 289, 329; witch hunts and
Pius IX (pope), 250 executions in, 315–16. See also Salem
Planes, Geronimo, A Treatise on the Examination witch ­trials
of True and False Revelations and Raptures, 259 Pythagoras, 31, 178
Portugal: feigned holiness in, 256–57, 271–80;
succession crisis in, 275–76; witch hunts in, quantum mechanics, 177
311. See also María de la Visitación Quiñones, Francisco de los Ángeles, 265
postmodernity, 22, 353, 362–63, 372
postsecular interpretation of miracles, 371–72 Ramos, Alonso, 380
potions and magical substances, 303–4 Rapaccioli, Francesco (cardinal), 119, 123, 150
predictions. See miracles raptures. See specific saint or person for ecstasies
premodern beliefs: effect of ignoring, 391n15; or raptures
lingering for five centuries, 362; as rational rationalism, 22, 64, 262, 290, 395n48
to their era, 6, 20, 391n14; traits of, 21 Ratzinger, Joseph (Cardinal and l­ater Pope
the preternatural, 290, 318, 359, 363 Benedict XVI), 251, 462n31
printing press, effect of, 51, 319, 325, 327 Raymond of Capua: Life of Saint Catherine, 195
prophecy, gift of, 13, 112–13, 127, 130–31, Redemptionists, 358
139, 260, 266, 302 Reformation. See Catholicism; Protestantism
Protestantism, 289–316; bilocations and, Reformed Protestant tradition: demonic
176–77; “boundary issues” and, 262; Cathol- possessions and, 300; ­devil and, 321–22;
icism vs., xv–­xvi, 17, 58–65, 150–51, 154, nonmainstream Protestants rejecting, 365;
175, 237, 239, 261, 279, 289–91, 297–98, superstition and, 301; witchcraft and, 333,
301; clergy’s role, 60; ­devil and demonic 350. See also Calvin, John; Luther, Martin;
possession in, 17–18, 30, 58, 61–62, 279, Zwingli, Ulrich
289–91, 296–98, 313–15, 319, 321–22, relics: healing power of, 15, 69; Joseph of
325, 327–28, 369, 393n31; disenchantment Cupertino and, 124, 132–33, 163; María de
of, 22, 62, 260, 394n43; ethical approach la Visitación and, 273; Protestant rejection
of, 60; evangelical, 365; exorcism and, 289, of, 60, 301
 index 489

remote viewing, 191, 421n43 Shagan, Ethan, 361–62

Remy, Nicholas: Daemonolatreiae, 336–37 shamanistic religions, 30, 176
Ribera, Francisco de, 68–70, 90–91, 141, 273, Shenute (monk), 39
403n128 Silva, Diego de, 245
Ribera, Jusepe de, ii Simon Magus, 34, 36, 37, 397n29
Rituale Romanum (issued by Paul V), 325 sins: seeing sins of ­others, 13, 112; specific
Rochas D’Aiglun, Albert de, 391n11 ­devils assigned to specific sins, 320. See also
Roman Catholicism. See Catholicism heresy
­Rose of Lima, Saint, 194–95 Sixtus V (pope), 278
Rosmi, Arcangelo, 146 skepticism and doubt, xv; in canonization
Rossi, Baldassare, 165, 166 ­process, 367–68; of Crookes, 27–29; ­devil
Royo, Eduardo, 227 and, 333; of Enlightenment, 53, 134; in-
Rubio, Juan, 226, 233 creasing ­toward bilocations, 190, 196–98,
Rule, Martha, levitations and possession of, 225–26; increasing t­ oward levitations, 29,
289, 329–30 68–70, 78–79, 113, 137–38, 154, 255–56;
Rumi, 178 postsecularism and, 372–73; punishment
for, 370; religious effect of, 392n22; rise of,
Sabbats of witches, 308, 336, 339, 342–50, 346 255, 262, 290, 360, 370; spiritualism and,
sacramentalia and talismans, 266, 277, 283–84, 9; as starting point, xv, 319, 360; witches
287, 288, 443–44n151, 444n155 and, 308, 312, 315–16, 331–33, 350
sainthood: Catholicism vs. Protestantism, 17, social context for levitations, 139–44; divine
52, 64; charisms and, 11–12, 14; corner- encounter as legitimate phenomenon,
stone of Catholicism, 365; feigned holiness, 142; material and spiritual realms existing
examples of, 255–88; superstition and, si­mul­ta­neously, 142–43; soul’s role in,
301–2. See also canonization; corpses of 142–43
saints and the holy; living saints social imaginary, 68, 400–401n85
Salas, Juan de, 219 social science: as functionalist approach to
Salazar, Gaspar de, 189 miracles, 370–71, 464n53; Piron’s suggestion
Salazar Frías, Alonso de, 350–51 for “social science of the activities of the
Salem witch ­trials, 329, 335, 337 invisible,” 373
Salvador de Orta, 55–58 Solomon, 178
Sánchez Lora, José Luis, 260 Sophie Amalie (Denmark-­Norway queen), 152
Sandoval de Rojas, Bernardo, 284 Sophronius of Jerusalem, 39
Sandoval Padilla, Luisa de, 119, 120, 150 sorcery, 297, 299, 305–9, 331, 332. See also
Sandoval y Rojas, Bernardo de (archbishop), 263 witchcraft and witches
Savonarola, Girolamo, 73 Spain: bilocators in, 182, 190, 196; early modern
Schutte, Anne, 258 era in, 258–60; hagiographies published in,
Schwartz, Georg, 61 52; mass events of demonic possession in,
science. See empirical science 328; miracles and feigned holiness in, 258–64;
Scot, Reginald: A Discovery of Witchcraft, 62, mystical displacement or mystical journeying
332–33, 334 in colonies of, 191; veneration of living
Scotland, witch hunts and executions in, 311–12, saints in, 263; witch hunts in, 350–51. See also
334–35, 350 Inquisition; missionary work; specific saints
Second Vatican Council, 365 from Spain
secularism, rise of, 196, 197; dogmatism of, Spangenberg, Cyriakus: Hunt ­Devil, 320
372; postsecularism, 371–72 Spanish Armada, defeat of, 275–76
Sena, Bernardino de la, 217, 220, 383 Spanish colonies. See missionary work
Seraphim of Sarov, Saint, 29 speaking in tongues, 11, 38
 490 index

spiritualism: bilocations and, 9–10, 176; Teresa of Avila: compared to Joseph of

levitations and, 9–10, 27–29, 28 Cupertino, 109, 113, 136, 138, 142–43,
spiritual transport. See teleportation 145–46; compared to Luisa de Carrión, 284;
Sprat, Thomas, 64 compared to María de Ágreda, 171–72,
Sprenger, Jacob, 306 208, 245
Star Trek series, 176 Teresa of Avila, Saint, 2, 72–97; in anti-­
Star Wars series, 14 Protestant polemics, 67; autobiography of,
stigmata: Catherine dei Ricci and, 190; Cathe- 72–73, 75, 77–78, 79; autopsy of corpse of,
rine of Siena and, 89, 272; as charism, 13; 368; background of, 75–79; beatification and
Francis of Assisi and, ii, 14, 44, 159, 272; canonization of, 78, 90, 140, 190; bilocations
Luisa de Carrión and, 282; Magdalena de of, 187, 189–90; Book of Foundations, 91;
la Cruz and, 265, 266, 270; María de la Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation and,
Visitación and, 76, 271, 273–77; medieval xii, 75, 93; Carmelite order’s reformation
accounts of, 182; Menéndez Pelayo on, 5; by, 73, 78, 92–93, 208, 407n68; cessation
Padre Pio and, 197, 363; ­Rose of Lima and, of levitations, 89, 96, 136, 208, 407n57;
194; as unique Christian phenomenon, 14 commonality of experiences of, 54; demons
Strauss, David, 359 and ­devil appearing to, 77, 77–78, 322, 324;
Suárez, Francisco, 180 epilepsy as diagnosis of, 405n30, 413n21;
Sulpicius Severus, 38 eyewitness accounts, 53, 71, 74, 86, 87, 89–91,
Summers, Montague: The Physical Phenomena 93, 96; falconry imagery used by, 87, 406n49;
of Mysticism, xiii fame following death of, 97; flight of the
the super­natural: in Catholic ­Europe, 14–16, spirit experienced by, 81; hagiographies on,
53, 259, 260; emotionally charged discussion 90–93; humility and fears of, 75–76, 85, 87,
of, xi; history of, xv–­xvi; importance of 96–97; Inquisition’s treatment of, 75, 78, 97,
discussing and questioning, xii, xv–­xvii; 113, 261; Jesus Christ appearing to, 77, 77,
Kripal and, 390n2; modernity’s rejection of, 322; John of the Cross and, xii, xiii, 92–93,
xvi, 4, 21, 177, 370; natu­ral vs., 23, 60–62, 94; Joseph of Cupertino’s knowledge of,
255, 289–90, 361, 371–72; personal quest 140–45; letter to her ­brother Lorenzo de
of author and, xii–­xiv; present-­day view on, Cepeda, 87; levitations and, xii, xiii, 53, 70–71,
xi, 363–64; preternatural vs., 290, 318, 359, 74, 85–86, 90–96, 92; Libro de las Moradas
363; Protestant view of, 17–18, 22, 58–65, (The Interior ­Castle), 74, 76, 80–82, 85–89,
289–91. See also bilocations; levitations; 95–96; rapture, physical phenomena of,
miracles 80–84, 91, 404n13, 405n27, 405nn30–31;
superstition, 17, 21, 60, 297–98, 300–302, rapture vs. ravishment as experiences of, 12,
331, 350 72, 74–75, 79, 80–81, 96, 141; ­resistance to
Suso, Henry, 63 levitations and rapture, 53, 72, 75, 79, 83–90,
suspension of disbelief, 14, 69, 221, 373, 377–78 96, 406–7n56, 410n51; self-­reporting of
Swedenborg, Emanuel, 360–61; Arcana Celestia levitations, 53; skepticism of, 68–70, 78–79,
(Heavenly Mysteries), 360 255–56, 261; super­natural encounters, 79–81;
Switzerland, witch hunts and executions in, suspected of fraud or demonic possession,
309–11, 350 75, 77, 82, 97; trance-­like state of, 73, 79;
transverberation of, 109; ­union (unión) and,
talismans. See sacramentalia and talismans 72, 75, 141; Vitae Beatae Virginis Teresiae a
Tauler, John, 63 Iesu, ­popular graphic account of, 91; vuelo
Taylor, Charles, 361 de espíritu (flight of the spirit) experienced by,
telepathy, 13, 40 72, 81, 141; writing style, “gracious disorder”
teleportation, 12, 32, 176, 178, 191 of, 93–96, 407n69. See also La Vida de la
Teodoro da Cingoli, 126 Madre Teresa de Jesus
 index 491

testimonies: as anecdotes, 5, 390n7; of biloca- La Vida de la Madre Teresa de Jesus (Teresa de

tions, 6, 21; centrality as evidence, 4–5, 20; Avila), 72–74, 77–86, 88–91; amber-­and-­
dismissal of, 4–6, 138. See also hagiographies; straw analogy, 88, 91; arrebatamiento (rav-
specific candidates for sainthood ishment), 72, 74, 80–81, 96, 404n11;
Teufelsbuch (­devil book), 320 arrobamiento (rapture), 72, 74, 80–84, 89, 96;
thaumaturgy and thaumaturgs, 15–17; levita- chapter 20, 79, 80, 93, 95; “gracious disorder”
tions and, 36; Protestants and, 16–17, 60, of writing style, 93–96, 407n69; gun analogy,
371; use of term “thaumaturgs,” 16, 34 84, 406n39, 414n27; hagiographers relying
Theodore of Sykeon, 39 on, 90; Inquisition’s control of only copy of,
theurgists/theurgia, 34, 36, 39 78; The Interior C­ astle needed to fully under-
Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), 150, 152, 235; stand, 95–96; on levitations, 74, 85–86, 95;
­Battle of White Mountain, 281 likelihood of influencing Joseph of Cupertino,
Thomas, Dylan, xvii 141; ordered to write, 72, 75, 141; vuelo de
Thomas, Keith, 370–71 espíritu (flight of the spirit), 72, 81, 141
Thomas Aquinas. See Aquinas, Thomas, Saint Villalacre, Antonio de and Juan de, 207
Thomas de Cantimpré, 44, 398n46 Virgin Mary: bilocations and transvection of,
Thomas of Celano, 46, 49 182, 183; María de Ágreda as scribe of,
Tirso de Molina, 264 173–74, 200, 202, 231–32, 236–45
Tomás de Villanueva, 54 virtuous life, 11–12; heroic virtue, 12, 134
Torrecilla, Juan de, 216 Vitry, Jacques de (cardinal), 44
Torsellino, Orazio, 189 Viviani, Mario, 126
trances, 12, 73, 79, 109–10, 142–44, 162 Voragine, Jacob de: The Golden Legend, 34
transubstantiation, 60, 160–61, 179, 301,
449n56, 462n35 Walker, D. P., 317–18, 452n1
transvection, 12, 32, 176, 178, 181, 191 Wallace, Alfred Russel, 9
transverberation, 109 Warfield, Benjamin, 393n30
tricksters. See deceit and fakery Weber, Max, 22, 60, 260, 362
Trinity: María de Ágreda and, 173, 243; Teresa Webster, John, 315
of Avila levitating with John of the Cross Weyer, Johann, 312, 331–35
while discussing, xiii, 93, 94 Whiggishness, 21–22, 394n40
Troelstch, Ernst, 362 Wilhelmina Amalia, 152
Turner, Victor, 415n49 William of Thoco, 50
Twitchell, Paul, 178 witchcraft and witches, 330–51; accusations of,
Tyndale, William, 61, 66 3, 308; ambiguity of issue of flight, 349–50;
Catholics and, 18, 309–11, 333, 335–38,
Ugolino di Monte Santa Maria: ­Little Flowers of 340–42, 348–51, 349; Catholics and
Saint Francis (Fioretti di San Francesco), 48–50 Protestants agreeing on need to combat, 309,
Urban VIII (pope), 116, 117, 134, 149, 155, 333; class issues and, 371; denial of flight,
210, 262–63, 367 labeled as witch for, 370; ­devil and, 297, 299,
Ursula Suárez, 380 331; Enlightenment beliefs in, 352, 353;
female gender most often associated with,
Valera, Cipriano de, 279–80, 291, 294 305, 307, 312, 338, 371; flying abilities of
The Vauderie of Lyon (fifteenth-­century docu- (levitations and transvection), 7–8, 315–16,
ment), 342–45, 347 339–51, 340–41, 344, 346, 348–49, 352;
veneration of saints: Catholic prohibition on historical treatment of, 21; Huguenots and,
living saints, 262–63; by Protestants, 301 326; images in printed books, 340–41, 342,
Venturino of Bergamo, 51 343–44, 346; Inquisition’s treatment of,
Vianney, John, Saint, 29 305–6, 311, 350–51; Luther on, 334, 347, 349;
 492 index

witchcraft and witches (continued) 371; weakness and lack of sophistication

magic distinguished from, 302; maleficium attributed to, 208, 240, 247, 248, 257;
and, 339, 349; modernity’s view of, 21–22; witchcraft and, 305, 307, 312, 338, 371.
opposition to witch ­trials, 332; Protestants See also nuns
and, 18, 62, 292, 309–11, 333–35, 348–50; World War II: Joseph of Cupertino as patron
Salem witch t­ rials, 329, 335, 337; in seven­ saint in, 135; Padre Pio and, 29; Yvonne-­
teenth ­century, 350; skepticism and, 308, Aimée de Malestroit and, 197
312, 315–16, 331–33, 350; social-­science
approach to persecution of, 371; studies Xavier. See Francis Xavier
of, 7–8; treatises on, 332–38, 350; Weyer
countering beliefs in, 331; witch hunts and Yepes, Diego de, 67, 69–70, 90–91, 201, 407n57
executions, 305–12, 332–38, 350. See also Yogic traditions, 31
Sabbats of witches Yvonne-­Aimée de Malestroit (Yvonne Beauvais),
Witekind, Hermann, 332 197, 363, 364
­women: as Inquisition suspects, 73, 257–59,
403–4n5; levitations and, 39, 51; Mariology Zapata de Chaves, Luis, 265
and, 239; religiosity of, expressed in Spain’s Zárate Salmerón, Gerónimo, 210, 384
mystical phenomena, 52, 260; social-­science Zozimus (monk), 39
approach to persecution of or miracles of, Zwingli, Ulrich, 59, 61, 321, 345, 353