Defining Boundaries of the Natural in Fifteenth-Century Brittany: The Inquest into the Miracles of Saint Vincent Ferrer (d. 1419)

Smoller, Laura Ackerman

doi:10.1484/j.viator.2.301082

Cited by 9 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…1 By virtue of its juridical nature and its inclusion in a long-standing legal tradition, saint-making, particularly the certification of miracles, provided a model for evidentiary and investigative practices. In turn, by virtue of the supernatural origin of miracles, inquests concerning them were pursued through procedures that coalesced around the challenge of "defining the boundaries of the natural" (Smoller 1997). Finally, in the early modern period, the reliability of reports about both Biblical and historical miracles became a major occasion for debate in theology and in the theory of knowledge; by the mid-eighteenth century, any discussion of miracles would emphasize probability and testimony (Burns 1981;cf.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Miracles, Science, and Testimony in Post-Tridentine Saint-Making

Vidal

2007

Sci Context

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

ArgumentSeeing a prodigious cure happen and then testifying about it certainly differs from attending an air pump experiment in order to bear witness to it. Yet early-modern saint-making and the “new” or “experimental philosophy” shared juridical roots, and thereby an understanding of the role of testimony for the establishment of “matters of fact” and for the production of legitimate knowledge. The reforms carried out after the Council of Trent, especially during Urban VIII's pontificate (1623–1644), of the juridical procedures for saint-making in the Catholic Church implied a new attitude towards the examination of proposed miracles. Most of these miracles were healings. While the appeal to medical expertise had long been common, and skepticism had often manifested itself regarding cures or extraordinary bodily phenomena, both were now given formal status. Miracle inquests henceforth leaned towards refuting miraculousness by means of natural explanations. The procedure was systematized in a treatise published in the 1730s by Prospero Lambertini (later pope Benedict XIV). The combination of Lambertini's work with the canonization causes in which he acted as the “devil's advocate” in charge of disputing arguments favorable to a sainthood candidate allows for a reconstruction of the interplay between the juridical and scientific economies of saint-making, and of the role of testimony in the production of trust and evidence.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Miracles, Science, and Testimony in Post-Tridentine Saint-Making

Vidal

2007

Sci Context

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Katajala-Peltomaa 2017. 77 Vauchez 1998, 531;Smoller 1997. Some late medieval canonisation records, which are not always as organised as those from the post-Tridentine era, give us glimpses of this.…”

Section: Cure and Communitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Cure, Community, and the Miraculous in Early Modern Florence

Kuuliala

2019

Palgrave Studies in the History of Experience

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Illness and impairment, like bodily and mental deviance, are fundamental aspects of human life and something that each society has to negotiate. 'Health' -or the lack of it -is a social construct, and it has varied from society to society over time. In early modern Europe, health largely referred to one's ability to fulfil one's social role; a 'full cure' in the sense a modern person would understand it was not necessarily even the main expectation of an infirm person. 1 Similarly, the favouring and acceptability of various curative methods and their usage was negotiated within families and communities. Medical pluralism was prevalent: various healing methods -be they based on university-trained medicine, religion, or so-called folk healing practices -were used simultaneously, and their borders overlapped.The medical pluralism of the Renaissance and early modern Europe has been well documented in many types of sources. Among the most fruitful are the witness depositions of canonisation inquiries, which record views on infirmity, healing, and the miraculous.Canonisation processes were initiated by the papacy in the early thirteenth century in order to gain more control of the veneration of saints, and over the following centuries, the procedure was established, strengthened, and renewed. 2 During the inquests, the life, merits, and deeds of a putative saint were investigated, and the records were evaluated by the auditori of the Rota. The witness inquiries were executed following propositions called the articuli.Produced by the procurator of the case, they recorded the saintly candidate's life and miracles, which the witnesses were asked to provide evidence of, and which therefore largely shaped the witness accounts. 3 Furthermore, the witnesses' views were influenced by culturally established ideas about sainthood and miracles. 4 Thus, the testimonies are an 1

show abstract