Miracle Stories Research Articles

The Reception Given to Sadhu Sundar Singh, the Itinerant Indian Christian ‘Mystic’, in Interwar Britain

In 1920 and 1922, an Indian Christian called Sadhu Sundar Singh toured Britain. Widely renowned in the global Christian community in the interwar period, Singh was notorious for certain stories of miracles, for his appearance and for the ways in which he epitomised Eastern Christianity. Using Singh’s correspondence and a range of newspapers, this article argues that British audiences were attracted to Singh because of his appearance and ethnicity and because he conformed to stereotypes of essentialised Indian spirituality despite his Christian faith. It argues that the reception to Singh in Britain must be understood in relation to the perpetuation of Orientalist understandings of Indians and Indian religions in the interwar period.

Miracle Children: Medieval Hagiography and Childhood Imperfection

Approaches from social history, medical anthropology, and the history of the emotions can aid in the understanding of sick and physically impaired children as they appeared in the miracle stories of medieval England. An analysis of the medical and religious meanings attached to bodily defects in the Middle Ages discovers that hagiographers harnessed the emotions evoked by childhood illness to create a distinctly Christian concept of childhood imperfection.

The differences between the healing stories from Epidaurus and from the Gospels

In Epidaurus, the main ancient sanctuary of Asclepius, important inscriptions from the fourth century B.C. were found. Their texts were based primarily on earlier traditions on healings. They tend to exaggerate and to promote the sanctuary. Their main feature is incubation followed by vision and healing, usually in a dream. It is assumed that there are some similarities and some differences between the healing stories from Epidaurus and from the Gospels. However, the similarity consists only in generic features: they are both healing stories and can be labeled miracle stories (but “miracle” is a notion we have constructed). Similarities in details between single stories are secondary and only few. Some health problems in the stories, as blindness, are the same, but it is rather banal, because they were both frequent and difficult to treat. Laying on hands and touching in the Gospel stories are perhaps inspired by Greek worldview, but they do not occur in Epidaurus. Other features are different. The healings are named differently. Stories are build In a different manner. Epidaurus stories stem mostly from votive inscriptions and reliefs (adorned with fantasy), the Gospel stories stem from oral traditions. Epidaurus stories concentrate on the sick persons, the Gospel stories on the healer. Jesus in these stories appears as a powerful human being. Epidaurus healings result from a theophany or sometimes occur through sacred animals, serpents and dogs. Epidaurus stories are most often related to oracular dreams, what never occurs in Jesus stories. Visions from Epidaurus involve chirurgical operations and many medicaments, both absent in the Gospels. The Gospel miracles had no sacral context. Epidaurus stories were transmitted in the context of a particular sanctuary, the Gospel stories in the context of a community. These descriptions of healing miracles seem quite dissimilar.

The Christ of the Miracle Stories: Portrait through Encounter, written by Cotter, Wendy J., CSJ

The Christ of the Miracle Stories: Portrait through Encounter, written by Cotter, Wendy J., CSJ

Byzantine Art and Gospel Commentary: The Case of Luke 13:6–9, 10–17

This paper represents a conversation between two disciplines that too rarely enter into dialogue: New Testament studies and the history of Byzantine art. Two gospel passages have been chosen for analysis here: the first is a parable, the parable of the fig tree (Luke 13:6–9); the second, which follows immediately upon the first, is a miracle story that provokes a controversy (Luke 13:10–17). Both passages appear exclusively in the Gospel of Luke. Our joint study will start with exegetical notes on the Gospel of Luke and the history of the interpretation of these particular verses and will then turn to the miniatures that illustrate them in an eleventh-century Byzantine manuscript in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Parisinus graecus 74 (figs. 1–2). François Bovon has interpreted the Gospel of Luke in a German collection, the Evangelisch-katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, a series attentive to the history of the reception (Wirkungsgeschichte) of the biblical text in the life of the Christian church. He will explain the two New Testament passages and follow the path of patristic and Byzantine interpretation during these periods.

‘El Yndio Mas Venturoso’: A Spanish Guadalupan Drama of the Early Nineteenth Century

The Catholic missionaries who first brought Christianity to New Spain (colonial Mexico) were often very creative and innovative in their teaching methods. They used various audiovisual devices and, often without realizing it, built on preconquest and pre-Christian concepts, a form of unconscious syncretism. It is widely accepted that the missionary enterprise began in 1524 with the arrival of “The Twelve,” the first Franciscan missionaries. Their initial decision that evangelization would be carried on in the native languages, not Spanish, was crucial and had become Church policy by the eighteenth century. They were aided in this by the fact that Nahuatl, the Aztec language, served as alingua franca, especially in commerce and diplomacy, throughout the central plateau and as far south as Guatemala. The Franciscans, and later the Jesuits, produced grammars (artes), dictionaries, sermonaries, catechisms, miracle stories, and even religious drama in Nahuatl. The adaptation of Nahuatl to the Latin alphabet was enthusiastically received by the native peoples who left us chronicles, town council records, censuses (with valuable information on baptisms and polygamy), lawsuits, and other documentation. With all this, we have been able to open a new window on colonial life.

Reading the saints’ life and miracle story for Christian Education

Reading the saints’ life and miracle story for Christian Education

Thomas Becket and the Royal Abbey of Reading

Abstract Drawing on a wide variety of evidence, including letters, charters, indulgences, poems, miracle stories, relic lists, and a stained-glass panel in Canterbury Cathedral, this essay examines how the monks of Reading Abbey reacted to the controversy between King Henry II and Thomas Becket in the late 1160s and the beginning of Becket’s cult in the 1170s and 1180s. Reading Abbey was founded and richly endowed by Henry II’s grandfather, Henry I. William the Templar, abbot of Reading from 1168–73, was, unsurprisingly, on the side of Henry II and Becket’s opponents. The sympathies of the prior of Reading and of at least one Reading monk, however, were with Becket’s supporters. After Becket’s death, this dissension continued. Abbot William banned pilgrimage to Canterbury, orders that his monks circumvented. Abbot William’s successor, Abbot Joseph (1173–86), had a very different outlook. He promoted Becket’s cult to an extraordinary degree, despite the fact that Reading Abbey was in possession of an important relic, the Hand of St James, which had been placed at Reading by the king himself. The story of Reading Abbey’s relationship with Thomas Becket provides new perspectives on the factionalism triggered by the Becket controversy, the strength of Becket’s early cult, and the devotional history of a major English Benedictine abbey.

The Healing Shrines of St. Phoibammon: Evidence of Cult Activity in Coptic Legal Documents

Abstract:A group of 8th century Coptic child donation documents addressed to the monastery of Apa Phoibammon on the mountain of Jeme in Upper Egypt has been the subject of much discussion. The exclusively male children donated by their parents have always been understood as gifts to the monastery itself, a place where they were, however, not intended to grow up as monks, but to remain as lifelong servants. The reason stated for these donations were miracle healings granted by Apa Phoibammon, the patron saint of that monastery, in his local healing shrine. Such donations of cured former patients are a common feature especially to shrines of healing saints as demonstrated by their frequent descriptions in miracle stories circulating widely in the early Arab period. Juxtaposing phrases used in these Coptic legal texts with those from miracle stories of famous Egyptian healing saints, such as Coluthus, Menas, and Phoibammon himself, can demonstrate the impact hagiography had on daily experience and vice versa. The documentary evidence from Jeme thus forms the missing link between hagiography and reality as it emphasizes the practicalities involved when people were donated as living testimonies of a saint’s miraculous healing power. Due to the desire to legalize such donations, a written contract could only have been drawn up with the saint’s legal representative, in this case the abbot of the monastery at Jeme, who ran the healing shrine of Apa Phoibammon where the donated children would serve.

Gift Exchange with Saints in Medieval Icelandic Miracle Stories

Employing anthropological perspectives on gift giving, I analyze exchanges between Icelandic saints and their devotees in the miracle stories of Saints Jon and Þorlakr. Norms of reciprocal gift giving offered a framework for seeking saintly assistance that involved predictable stages, including vows, counter-pledges, and pledge-confirmations, followed by gifts and counter-gifts. I highlight the need for equity in gift exchange and the negotiations between devotees and saints seeking materially and/or symbolically balanced exchange. The examples discussed underscore the role of reciprocal exchange in structuring the miracle stories, the consequences of failed saintly gift transactions, and the Church’s role in promoting a reciprocal understanding of saintly worship. Counter-gifting of material goods by the devotee to the saints’ cathedrals directed wealth towards the Church, but I contend that the pivotal outcome of saintly gift exchange conducted according to traditional norms was the cementation of socio...

Understanding the Qurʾanic Miracle Stories in the Modern Age (Signifying [on] Scriptures), written by Isra Yazicioglu

Understanding the Qurʾanic Miracle Stories in the Modern Age (Signifying [on] Scriptures), written by Isra Yazicioglu

Spiritual Currency in Northeast Brazil

Spiritual Currency in Northeast Brazil

Tales of Grace: Reflections on the Joyful Mysteries by Luigi Santucci (review)

Reviewed by: Tales of Grace: Reflections on the Joyful Mysteries by Luigi Santucci Kimberly F. Baker (bio) Tales of Grace: Reflections on the Joyful Mysteries. By Luigi Santucci. Translated by Demetrio S. Yocum. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2015. 144 pp. $18.99. Tales of Grace makes manifest a “feast of delight” the Italian essayist and storyteller, Luigi Santucci, finds life in Christ to be. As the narrator of Tales of Grace declares, “Only Christ was able to transform earth in a feast of delights” (123). Santucci knew well the challenging realities of life, having worked for the resistance movement in fascist Italy, particularly through an underground newspaper. Yet, writing in 1946 while Europe was still reeling in the aftermath of the Holocaust and World War II, Santucci has his narrator insist, “Christ taught us to find [joy] in everything, even in the most problematic and testing circumstances” (125). Such joy radiates through these reflections, available in English for the first time in this exquisite translation by Demetrio S. Yocum. The five chapters unfold as meditations on the joyful mysteries of the rosary (Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, Presentation of Jesus at the Temple, and the Finding of Jesus at the Temple). The narrator’s first “Hail Mary” opens the way to delightful experiences such as talking to an angel, serving as a dairy boy for the Virgin Mary, meeting the Christ Child, and even himself becoming an infant nursed by Mary. The meditations have a discursive nature as the narrator and other characters move between stories, time periods, and locations. The narrator visits Mary at the home of Elizabeth and Zechariah in one chapter, while in a later one he attends his university’s alumni reunion. Likewise, soon after giving birth in a stable, the Virgin Mary visits the narrator in a toy store decorated for Christmas. This movement of characters between time and place helps to cultivate an awareness of Christ’s salvific presence in all of life as his story reaches from the biblical past into the present age. The chapters are filled with stories of miracles, angelic interventions, and divine presence, yet they also show many people unaware of such spiritual presence [End Page 250] around them. For example, in Chapter 1’s reflection on the Annunciation, the narrator converses with an angel and suggests that the angels envy the lavish attention Christ gives to human beings. He describes temporal life as a time of engagement with Christ. Yet, several pages later he observes that humans take Christ for granted and pay him little attention. Rather than rebuking humanity for this lack of awareness, the narrator marvels at the irony that humanity counts time from the birth of Christ. Human beings may take Christ for granted, but the very passing of time, of their lives, is marked in relation to Christ. Thus, Santucci calls life a “second Eucharist” in which even time itself revolves around the presence of Christ (34). In contrast to humanity’s frequent lack of awareness of Christ’s presence in the world, Santucci’s creative stories make clear that creation itself knows Christ is in its midst. For example, in the reflection on the Visitation, the animals and land of the region around the home of Elizabeth and Zechariah in Ein Karim experience a surprisingly robust fertility when Mary comes to visit. Nature already knows the wonder of Christ’s presence and begins in earnest to prepare the food for this child who is yet to come. The cows and goats in particular produce such an abundance of milk that the farmers cannot keep up with all the milking. The angel Gabriel secretly comes to their aid by milking the animals at night until Mary discovers him there and insists that he must return to heaven. Providentially, the narrator arrives at Ein Karim for a visit just in time to replace Gabriel as the dairy boy. In contrast to the generous response of these goats and cows to the impending birth of Christ, the narrator discovers that the neighbors view the impending birth quite differently. They recognize that there is something unusual about Mary’s child and that his presence has prompted the over-abundance...

Christians and Jews in Angevin England: The York Massacre of 1190, Narratives and Contexts ed. by Sarah Rees Jones and Sethina Watson (review)

Reviewed by: Christians and Jews in Angevin England: The York Massacre of 1190, Narratives and Contexts ed. by Sarah Rees Jones and Sethina Watson Paul Brand Christians and Jews in Angevin England: The York Massacre of 1190, Narratives and Contexts. Edited by Sarah Rees Jones and Sethina Watson. (Rochester, NY: York Medieval Press in association with Boydell Press. 2013. Pp. xx, 351. $90.00. ISBN 978-1-903153-44-4.) The first Jews to settle in England arrived not long after the Norman Conquest of 1066, and the medieval phase of Anglo-Jewish history came to an end in 1290 with the expulsion of all of its members other than those who had converted to Christianity. The final decade of the twelfth century looks to have been a major turning-point in this relatively short history. This was the first time serious violence occurred against Jewish communities not just in London but also in at least seven other towns in East Anglia, the Midlands, and York. The present volume is the outcome of a 2010 conference held in York that examined the wider context of the York “massacre.” The first section of this volume is rather misleadingly titled “The Events of March 1190.” Three of the section’s five papers do indeed focus on providing an immediate context for them: they are Joe Hillaby’s paper on the attacks on Jewish communities elsewhere in 1189–90; Nick Vincent’s paper on the literary sources behind William of Newburgh’s chronicle account of the York massacre; and Sarah Rees Jones’s paper on what is currently known about the transformation of York into a major royal center postconquest, Jewish settlement in York from the 1170s onward, and the local inhabitants fined for the York attacks. But Robert Stacey’s important paper specifically rejects the traditional connection made between the 1189–90 Jewish killings and the creation in 1194 of a network of official registries (chests) for records of Jewish loans and the emergence of the Exchequer of the Jews in 1198 and argues that both are connected with something rather different: the assertion of a new royal jurisdictional monopoly over the Jewish community. The second section (“Jews among Christians in medieval England”) includes a characteristically thought-provoking paper by Paul Hyams on some of the barriers to social contact and trust between Jews and Christians in medieval England, a fascinating paper by Eva de Visscher using Hebrew and Hebraist texts from pre-1290 England to reconstruct how Christian readers learned Hebrew, and a paper by Pinchas Roth and Ethan Zadoff looking at the evidence for Talmudic study in England, with a particular focus on Rabbi Elijah Menahem. The third section (“Representations”) has an interesting paper by Heather Blurton on the chroniclers’ use of biblical and other narratives of the destruction and expulsion of the ancient Israelites as a model for their description of the violence against Jews in England, another by Matthew Mesley on a miracle story allegedly involving a blind and dumb Jewish woman at the tomb of St. Remigius of Lincoln and her subsequent conversion, and one by Carlee Bradbury on the visual tradition in English art of the [End Page 623] period from 1190 onward of dehumanizing a Jew present at the funeral of the Virgin Mary. The volume as a whole makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the history of the Jewish community in medieval England and its relationship with the Christian population and English royal government. Paul Brand All Souls College University of Oxford Copyright © 2015 The Catholic University of America Press

The Parable of the Storm: Instruction and Demonstration in Mark 4:1–41

Many analyses of Mark 1–4 sharply separate the Parables discourse (4:1–34) from the Storm pericope (4:35–41) and consider the latter to begin a new phase in Jesus’ ministry (4:35–8:26). However, even scholars who make this distinction note a close link between the Parables and the Storm. In this article I use a narrative-critical approach to identify and engage thirteen lexical connections and how they develop for the implied audience through the narrative structure of 4:1–41. Overall, I seek to demonstrate that the Parables discourse and Storm pericope complement one another and follow the instruction-demonstration pattern evident in 1:21–28; 1:35–45; 2:1–12; 2:13–3:6. In each case, a miraculous demonstration follows an episode of Jesus instruction, the two are marked by a similar setting and lexical connections, and the latter miracle story develops the teaching of the kingdom and divine Sonship of Christ that were initially explained in the adjacent instruction. I will show how Mark 4:1–41 shares this structure and that analyzing the implied audience's reception of the narrative offers new developments of the Parables discourse, explains several obscurities in the Storm pericope, and further demonstrates the theological perspective and narrative line of thought in the text of Mark 1–4.

Understanding the Qur’anic Miracle Stories in the Modern Age

In the introduction to her Understanding the Qur’anic Miracle Stories in theModern Age, Isra Yazicioglu writes about the dilemma of how readers are tounderstand such stories. She poses the question that if both the Qur’an andscholars of Islamic thought argue that Muhammad’s message is his miracle(p. 5) and that natural phenomena contain miracles, then why is there a needfor such narrations? And since they are only narrations of miracles, for readersdo not actually witness these miracles, do they “count as evidence ofGod’s power?” (p. 8). Stemming from these and other related questions,much of the book revolves around issues of causation and sources of knowledge.This book will appeal to advanced university students and academicsinterested in Qur’anic studies and especially in Islamic philosophy.Part I, “Medieval Muslim Debate,” includes a chapter on al-Ghazali andIbn Rushd. Each chapter includes a welcome biographical section on thescholar under discussion. Starting with al-Ghazali, we see the idea that Godcan and has sent miracles to verify His messengers and that this is fundamentalin Islam (p. 18). These miracles enable people to discern betweenprophets and imposters (p. 19) and by creating miracles God “nonverbally ...

Das frühe Christentum und die Bildung

Early Christianity is often regarded as an entirely lower-class phenomenon, and thus characterised by a low educational and cultural level. This view is false for several reasons. (1) When dealing with the ancient world, inferences cannot be made from the social class to which one belongs to one's educational and cultural level. (2) We may confidently state that in the early Christian urban congregations more than 50 per cent of the members could read and write at an acceptable level. (3) Socialisation within the early congregations occurred mainly through education and literature. No religious figure before (or after) Jesus Christ became so quickly and comprehensively the subject of written texts! (4) The early Christians emerged as a creative and thoughtful literary movement. They read the Old Testament in a new context, they created new literary genres (gospels) and reformed existing genres (the Pauline letters, miracle stories, parables). (5) From the very beginning, the amazing literary production of early Christianity was based on a historic strategy that both made history and wrote history. (6) Moreover, early Christians were largely bilingual, and able to accept sophisticated texts, read them with understanding, and pass them along to others. (7) Even in its early stages, those who joined the new Christian movement entered an educated world of language and thought. (8) We should thus presuppose a relatively high intellectual level in the early Christian congregations, for a comparison with Greco-Roman religion, local cults, the mystery religions, and the Caesar cult indicates that early Christianity was a religion with a very high literary production that included critical reflection and refraction.

The Mistranslation of James Legge in A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms from Eco-Environment Translation Theory

<em>Fo Guo Ji, known as A Record of Buddhistic Kingdom, was written by Chinese Monk Fa Xian in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. It is more a travel documentary than an exotic sceneries miracle stories; and place-legends. It has been regarded as one of the most significant classics that probed into the South Asian culture, religion. This paper deals with James Legge’s English translation of Fo Guo Ji from the perspective of translation ecology. Eco-translatology is put forward by Michael Cronin and met with new result when Hong Kong scholar Hu Gengshen put the three properties of language, to be exact, the characteristics of variability of language in both language structure and context is possible, it follows negotiability in the process of using language and the adaptability is required in eco-environment setting. In light of eco-translation theory, this paper aims at exploring the factors influencing James Legge’s English translation by analysizing the text as well as providing a new angle to interpret James Legge’s translation to Chinese classics.</em>

Miracles eucharistiques et prêtres indignes dans quelques recueils cisterciens (1170-1220)

The collections of Cistercian miracles and exempla of the late 12th and early 13th century are strongly influenced by Eucharistic themes. Some of the miracles are deliberately aimed at priests judged unworthy of their office, and thus echo the ‘Gregorian’ discourse that was already well developed. This article seeks to determine how these miracle stories are mobilised in support of such a discourse, despite the fact that the discourse itself has two foci which are in principal antithetical - criticism of the unworthy priest and exaltation of the priesthood via the sacrament. Analysing and comparing miracle stories - and their variants - in five major collections has made it possible to identify the choices made by their compilers as they attempted to fit those miracle stories into orthodox discourse in the best way available and to resolve the paradox that they encountered.

Practices of Remembrance in Flemish Houses of Regular Canons. The Troubled Memoria of Prior Odfried, Founder of Watten (d. 1086)

A religious community’s foundation was a unique moment in the building of institutional remembrance and the identity of the founder(s) was of primary importance to the identity and cohesion of the religious group. However, as few foundation stories have emerged from communities of regular canons in Flanders, the tale of the Watten priory, the earliest community of regular canons in Flanders, is all the more illustrative. The existence of different genres in which Odfried, the founder, is remembered reflects the search for a fitting memoria for the man who unleashed a controversial debate between advocates and opponents of Church reform. The fact that he also continued to stir emotions after his death is shown by the Watten Exordium and two miracle stories, one written at Watten, the other at Saint-Riquier Abbey in Picardy. Odfried was remembered as someone who undeniably had great qualities, merits that even partook of saintliness, though in the long run they were not to result in his lasting veneration a...