They Flew

An Academic Book About Inconvenient Religious History

Originally published on European Conservative.

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Carlos Eire’s latest title, They Flew, sets out to do something that many contemporary scholars are unwilling or unable to accomplish: facing a hard, inconvenient part of religious history. Putting biased notions aside, Eire refuses to discard the impossible. While he maintains a light tone, using every opportunity to employ puns, Eire is serious when he asks readers to suspend our disbelief—and our conceit—in order to consider the stories of our ancestors that they have seen people levitating when moved by the Holy Spirit (or perhaps the Devil).

Despite the book’s title, They Flew does not focus exclusively on levitations, also covering stigmata, bilocations, and other mystical miracles within Christianity—both Catholicism and Protestantism. Additionally, the author works to explain beliefs held by Christians about these occurrences, as well as their methods for determining whether or not these occurrences were of supernatural origin. (Eire briefly discussed tricksters who used mirrors, lights, and ropes to deceive through illusion, however this was believed to be a minor concern to the Christians being considered, so the point is not dealt with at much length.)

The book’s introduction begins by quoting from a priest who observed a friar flying to the top of an olive tree and asked, “What kind of nonsense is this?” This flying friar was no mere footnote, but Saint Joseph of Cupertino, who was well known for fits of ecstasy that provoked him into countless levitations and trances. These stories, while always being met with awe, were once far more common. As Eire writes, “Although the term levitation is relatively new, having been coined in the late nineteenth-century England, the phenomenon of gravity-defying ecstatics has ancient roots in Asian, Near Eastern, and Western culture, and can also be found in African, American, and Australasian tribal and shamanistic religions.”

Many contemporary scholars would be tempted to discredit stories of medieval miracles as nothing more than fabrications of the imagination. Eire argues that such a judgment is too hasty. As he sees it, levitation was a “social fact.” There was less of a question about whether it happened or not; instead those living at the time asked, “What was its source?” Catholics deemed that, in any given case, it was either miraculous (of God) or magical (of the Devil). Nor did Protestants of Martin Luther’s day tend to deny the fact of these occurrences; most asserted blanketly that they could only be the result of diabolical influences.

Implicitly, They Flew rises above being merely an academic defense for the impossible and turns into a tacit case for Catholicism versus Protestantism by looking at the fruit of its rift. When the subject is considered in this light, one forgets to wonder if miracles happen and rather wishes to be a part of the camp that still believes in their romantic possibility. I, as a Protestant reader, slowly found myself empathizing with the Catholics, hoping to see them make their case and win me over to belief. What fun is there in being Protestant if it means only giving credit to the Devil for the things that tickle our sixth sense?

Near the end of the book, in the second to the last chapter, Eire discussed Luther’s influence on the Protestant tendency to disbelieve in God’s miraculous action in the everyday world. He writes, “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.”

Inadvertently, many Protestants married themselves to an inconsistent Biblical hermeneutic: while claiming that God could not (or would not) do anything that wasn’t explicitly detailed in scripture, the Devil—a creative artist—was able to do much more than is written. Not only did they deny the Holy Spirit the power to continue working new mysteries, they claimed any such signs were purely and completely of Satan. According to this way of thinking, the Devil—not the Holy Trinity—had more creative license. These beliefs became so inseparable from their theology that little devotionals known as the Teufelsbuch (the devil’s book) became popular to warn people of daily demonic threats from folk customs, herbal medicine, and even good works including (but not limited to) pilgrimage, religious artifacts, sacramental confession, and other religious rituals.

Martin Luther’s obsession with what God wouldn’t do and what the Devil could do became so obscene and vulgar that he would, in my reading, often forget Paul’s directive of the fruits of the spirit, or that of Phillipians 4:8 to “think on these things that are … clean and pure, things that are lovely, and things that are of good report.” Instead, he would speak and write of his daily attacks from the devil and of how he would “chase him away with a fart” or tell the devil, “If this isn’t enough for you, devil, I just happened to shit and piss: wipe your mouth with that and take a big bite!”

I, as the Protestant reader, began to wonder if perhaps the test of Protestantism all along has been to try the grace of God by faith without works. This theological rift is even more starkly observable today. Present-day Protestantism is fragmenting into sects that are too often stripped of most things that are good and beautiful. There are only minorities who try to cultivate mysticism, and this while too often skirting around returning to any semblance of hierarchical authority. The descendants of Reformers remain willing to give the Devil the glory that God supposedly doesn’t want anymore.

Eirie writes of how a kind of fear of doing good—because it could actually be a false appearance and showiness—was propagated by Luther. “‘Do you really think God loves you more because of the good you do?’ Luther hoped others would see that he had no fear of damnation and that he was claiming leadership in a cosmic struggle, along with Christ, his savior.”

This belief in—as well as fear and hatred of—the Devil’s power is what would lead to mass witch-hunts in the 14th to 18th centuries. The author stated in the book that 57% of those tried would be executed, including toddlers, and those of all classes and ages. This was not unique to Protestants: Catholics also burned and lynched hundreds of supposed witches and sorcerers, some of whom were likely innocent of any actual wrongdoing. But because the Catholic institution of the Inquisition was made up of educated men who also believed that God still worked miracles in their day, there was a far greater chance of being proved innocent. Furthermore, the Inquisition was wont to be easier on women than on men, since men were generally better educated and therefore ought to know better and deserve harsher punishments.

As an example, Eire writes of a nun, Magdalena de la Cruz, who got away with falsely claiming to have stigmata for decades. When she was at last found out in 1546—turned in by other nuns in her convent who suspected her miracles weren’t valid because of her vindictive and controlling tendencies—she confessed to having been an illusionist. The Inquisition was merciful, though, and sentenced her to perpetual seclusion in a convent to perform menial tasks. As Eire details:

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. With her mouth gagged, a rope 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 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 desired the death of sinners, but rather their conversions and their chance to survive and save their souls.”

While the Catholic Inquisition has a bad reputation—there is no doubt it didn’t always give fair sentences—no one can deny that its process was quite thorough. When someone was accused of falsely performing their miracles, the first assumption wasn’t that this person was demon-possessed—as it was among most Protestants at the time. Rather, Inquisitors first looked to see if the accused conveyed an attitude of pride and vainglory, or if he or she were humble, self-denying, and giving God any associated Glory. They hardly ever focused on whether the miracles actually happened until the sincerity of the individual had been established. While the Church believed that a person could attain holiness, or what Eire calls “perfection,” She also believed that someone who was made perfect would never boast of it. It was the job of the Inquisition to determine if an individual showed signs of being Christlike. This would often take months or years, during which time the suspect would live in an isolated cell so that Inquisitors could observe the person. Eire writes of only a few Saints who went through this fire to be declared innocent and authentic, including Saint Joseph of Cupertino, Saint Teresa of Avila, and Maria de Agreda. He also writes of those who were convicted of association with the Devil, and of those who were proved innocent after they died.

Whatever the modern man might believe today, when studying stories of our past it is important to approach them from the perspective of those who lived through them. Even if they are only superstitious beliefs, they are also real memories and testimonies that shaped and forged our history. Simply discounting them is to ignore a large part of who we are. And to credit only the Devil where God, too, might have glory, is to have little faith or romance—where is the fun in that?

Eire discusses D. P. Walker’s claim that historians must completely exclude the possibility of any demonic influence on the world, responding:

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 suggest 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.

Nevertheless, if one chooses to overlook or egotistically dismiss the beliefs of the past, he remains confronted by reality’s tendency to remain mysterious and unknowable to anyone other than the mystic. Eire claims that this singular truth would befuddle William Crookes, Isaac Newton, and Immanuel Kant, among others with whom he engages. Crookes is quoted as saying, “The phenomena I am prepared to attest are so extraordinary and directly oppose the most firmly rooted articles of scientific belief.” Newton—who wrote as much on theology, spirituality, alchemy, and prophecy as he did science—claims to leave it up to “the reader” to consider whether the agent that causes gravity is “material or immaterial.” Although a hyper-rational philosopher, even Kant was drawn to “metaphysical daydreaming” and would admit, “I can’t help but feel a little attraction to nonsensical things of this sort, as well as to their rational underpinnings, and to suspect they have some legitimacy.”

At first glance, They Flew seems to be something of a hefty volume. And while it remains thoroughly academic, with appendixes and notes, the content elevates itself in the mind to being somehow light, bidding the skeptic to lay aside his ego. The author has done his job well in providing a thoughtful analysis on a subject that might have easily turned into something of buffoonery if not expertly handled. However, does the spirit need any persuasion for what it feels to be true? It is an enjoyable read solely because it gratifies the soul’s desire to soar nearer to God.

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