The Flying Friar and other wild facts

Though she apparently never physically left her convent in Ágreda, Spain, the Spanish Conceptionist Nun Sister María de Jesús de Ágreda (1602-1665) miraculously bilocated to Texas and New Mexico more than 500 times in 11 years. The “Lady in Blue” appeared to the Jumanos Indigenous tribe on all those occasions and shared the Word of God.

The Franciscan Friar and mystic St. Joseph Cupertino (1603-1663) is said to have miraculously levitated off the ground on over 70 occasions when he was deep in prayer or physical ecstasy. The “Flying Friar” stunned Pope Urban VIII by soaring over the pontiff's head during a papal audience, an experience so astonishing that the pope vowed to testify to this miracle if Cupertino predeceased him. 

The miraculous, supernatural, angelic and demonic — in other words “a history of the impossible” — was explored during the annual CWL lecture at St. Mary’s University on Oct. 15 in Calgary. 

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Dr. Carlos Eire, a professor of history and religious studies at Yale University, presented the talk “Avatars of the Impossible: Demoniacs, Flying Friars and nuns who could be in two places at the same time.” His lecture material was inspired by his  historical non-fiction book They Flew: A History of the Impossible. This 2023 scholarly publication garnered the 2024 American Academy of Religion’s book award for Excellence in Historical Studies. 

The Catholic academic, who specializes in medieval and early-modern European history, framed his exploration into “miracles and the limits of rationale” by declaring there is an ongoing conflict between “social facts” and “wild facts.” 

The former, conceptualized by sociology co-founder Émile Durkheim (1858-1917), are the values, cultural norms, laws and structures that define a society’s collective life: these facts exist outside an individual, but they shape a person’s behaviour. 

“Our social fact is that miracles cannot ever be ascribed to supernatural causes, because we live in a culture in which materialism is the structure of our thinking,” said Eire. “There is no supernatural. So humans cannot defy gravity without technology. Humans cannot be present in two places simultaneously. And all reports about levitations and bilocations are, therefore, lies.”

The “Father of American Psychology” William James (1842-1910) counters with “wild facts,” a recognition that there are thousands of documented anomalous happenings and miracles throughout history that defy explanation. 

“The wild fact that we have to deal with is the fact that we do have thousands of reports of humans hovering or flying,” said Eire. “We also have thousands of reports of humans being in two places at the same time, hard as you might find that, even into the 20th and 21st century. I always get this question. Why did this stuff stop happening? The answer is, it didn't stop. We still have reports of these things happening.”

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The credulity of these claims were tested during canonization inquests. Monks, priests, nuns and lay people who observed miracles swore they spoke the truth as they knew lying would be a mortal sin and “the lying person would be sent to Hell forever.” 

Eire credits Sts. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas for providing helpful definitions for what constitutes a miracle. Augustine, during a fourth-century discussion with the Manichean Bishop Faustus, said a miracle “is something that happens in nature, that we just don't know how it is that it's possible for it to happen.” In the 13th century, Aquinas defined a miracle as a sensible effect produced by God, which transcends all the forces of nature.”

And these definitions feed into an essential Catholic and Christian teaching, said Eire, that we exist in mid-multiple dimensions. There is a spiritual dimension that we cannot see at work in the world amid the physical dimension we behold.

Eire outlined how the Protestant Reformation signified a major point of divergence in history. He shared how the Protestant reformers, including Martin Luther, who set this sea change into motion in 1517 with his Ninety-Five Theses, believe the last miracles from God were performed during the time of Jesus’ apostles. After John passed around the year 100, miracles of divine origin ceased. Catholics meanwhile, espoused that miracles inspired by God kept, and keep, occurring. 

However, both the Catholics and Protestants in the 16th and 17th century believed levitation and bilocation were possible, said Eire.

“With a big difference,” he stressed. “For Catholics, they could be of divine origin, and they could also be demoniac. For Protestants, they could only be a demonic act.”

The Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation from a miraculous act standpoint was ushered in by Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini, later known as Pope Benedict XIV (1675-1758). The former “devil’s advocate,” tasked with dismantling every miraculous claim, is credited for rationalizing the canonization process. He set in motion the system that sees atheist scientists and physicians called upon in modern times to scrutinize a potential healing miracle.

Eire cited 20th-century German sociologist Max Weber’s proclamation that the Protestant Reformation was the start of the world becoming more “disenchanted.”

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“It’s precisely because of its rejection of the miraculous,” said Eire. 

Catholics represent an exception. He said they “have a deep sense of the miraculous” to this day.”  For one, it is central to believe that the bread and wine is transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ during the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

(Amundson is an associate editor and writer for The Catholic Register.)