Chapter 9 -Miracles, Portents and Wonder for Sale

Since the ecclesiastical practice of commercializing miracles could be turned into a most gratifying source of money, it soon appeared that the more spectacular the miracle the more spectacular the profits to its promoters. Miracles thus became a kind of religious investment yielding a steady, if uneven flow of revenue. Their profitability depended, not only upon the spectacular nature or uniqueness of the portents, but also upon the advantages gained by those who believed in them, the combination of these ingredients being the cement with which both Church and its faithful could identify themselves in partaking of the visible results of God’s generosity.

If the selling of indulgences was a most lucrative method of amassing wealth, the exploitation of the individual and collective gullibility of Roman Catholic people was no less profitable. God’s generosity could be dispensed, distributed manifested on numberless occasions by the most diverse means and in the most contrasting and inappropriate situations and circumstances.

During the Middle Ages and later, miracles, portents, wonders, and God’s interventions were of a variety never seen or experienced before or since. They reflected in no uncertain terms the nature, credulity and mentality of those influenced by them – not to mention the spirit of the religious system, through which as a rule they were made to work. We shall content ourselves with reporting some of the most characteristic; this will indicate not only their nature but also how they were tuned into events by which the papacy profited through the collection of yet more revenues.

One day the people of Aspe in France carried out a sudden raid upon their neighbors of Saint-Savin. To prevent them from succeeding, the Abbot of Saint-Savin climbed a tree, said the appropriate prayers, and so paralyzed them that they were all slaughtered without resistance. The pope, informed of the massacre, cast an interdict upon Saint-Savin, with the result that for seven years it was cursed with sterility in its women, cattle and fields. To gain absolution, Saint-Savin agreed to pay an annual tribute of thirty sous. (1)In 1120 the Bishop of Laon excommunicated the caterpillars which were ravaging the diocese. This he did with the same as employed the the previous year by the Council of Rheims in cursing a priest who insisted on marrying. The Bishop of Laon was given money and offerings by the grateful peasants. (2)

Similarly St. Bernard when preaching at Foigny, was interrupted by a swarm of most un-Christian flies. Losing his saintly patience, he excommunicated them. Next morning the flies were all found dead.He received offerings, which he gave to the nearest monastery. (3)

In 1451 William Saluces, Bishop of Lausanne, ordered the trial of multitudes of leeches which threatened the fish of Geneva. The leeches were ordered, under pain of excommunication, together in the given spot. The people concerned made abundant offerings to the Church.

The ecclesiastical court of Autun in 1480 excommunicated an army of caterpillars and ordered the priests of the region to repeat the anathema from the pulpit until the caterpillars had been exterminated. The following year, 1481, and again in 1487, a most irreligious multitude of snails at Macon were duly excommunicated. In 1516 the clergy excommunicated the too numerous grasshoppers at Milliere, in Normandy. In 1587, at Valence, a formal trial was terminated with a sentence of banishment against another multitude of caterpillars. (4)

Bartholomew Chassanee, who wrote a large volume recording such trials, declared that besides being lawful they were also useful in so far that the Church, whenever successful in such actions, was rewarded with flourins and more abundant tithes than would have been the case had the vermin never arrived. When such miracles, excommunications, trials and the like the multiplied by the thousand, the florins multiplied with even greater rapidity than swarms of mayflies.

This manner of collecting money, however, although rewarding, did not yet yield as much as when authentic saints were brought into action. Thus, at the command of St.Stanislaw, one Peter, who was dead, rose from his tomb and went into a law court to certify the sale of an estate – after which, of course, the local church was amply rewarded by receiving a portion of such estate.

In the thirteenth century St.Anthony was told when in Italy that his father, in Lisbon, had been accused of murder. An angel transported him from Italy to Lisbon. Once there, Anthony asked the murdered man: “Is it true that my father is guilty of thy death?” “Certainly not,” replied the corpse, and Anthony’s father was acquitted . Thereupon Anthony was taken back by the same angel. A basilica was built over Anthony’s body. Pilgrimages have been going on ever since, to this very day, with stupendous money offerings, mostly from North and Latin America.

St.Vincent Ferrier (1357-1419)did even better. For when, frequently in the midst of his preaching, he grew wings and flew into the air, he went to various places to console some dying individual. Once when in Pampeluna he told a dying woman that if she consented to confess her sins he would give an absolution from heaven. The woman having assented, St.Vincent wrote a letter as follows: “Brother Vincent beseeches the Holy Trinity to grant to the woman sinner here present absolution of her sins.” The letter flew instantly to heaven, and after a few minutes flew back. Upon it was written: “We, the Saint Trinity, requested by our Vincent, grant to the woman sinner of whom he has told us the forgiveness of her sins, and if she confesses she will be in heaven within the next few years, Holy Trinity.” (5)

To satisfy the cynicism of the incredulous, the event was attested to by none other than the pope’s chamberlain, who gave copious evidence of this “fact “, as he called it, in addition to giving the names of fourteen highly placed prelates who vouched for it.”

The precedent created an epidemic of heavenly letters. They fetched tremendous prices. Curiously, heaven always sent them to the clergy. The number of miracles worked by St.Vincent was truly miraculous. During an inquest held in Avignon, Toulose, Nantes and Nancy, it was revealed that the official list totaled eight hundred. “If we reckon only the small number of eight miracles per day during his twenty-five years,” says Msgr. Guerin, his biographer, “we have 58,400 miracles.” And he adds, with understandable prudence: “Here we deal, of course, with public miracles only.

The beneficiaries of such portents, or course, showed their gratitude with solid, matter-of-fact coins. Vincent worked so many miracles that, as was officially related, “it was a miracle which he worked so when he did not work miracles, and the greatest miracles, and the greatest miracle which he worked was then he did not work any.” (7)

In Salamanca there was a miracle bell, which rang to warn the people of an oncoming miracle.(8) This happened mostly when the collection and the cathedral had not been too good. And since we are dealing with bells, we might as well recall the case of Pope Alexander IV. When he removed the ban of excommunication, all the bells of the church of Avignonet began to ring of their own accord; not only so, but they went on pealing all night and all day, although they had not been heard for the previous forty years. This “fact ,” was attested to by the declaration of the inhabitants of Avignonet in the year 1923. The “fact” was furthermore included as such in an Acte Notaire, dated January 29, 1676. On what authority? Not only on that of the inhabitants of Avignonet, but indeed on that of the Pope Paul III mentioned the “fact” in a Bull of 1537. (9)

All these manifestations, when they “occurred,” were taken for solid, concrete events. They happened thanks to the power which the Church vested in those who were in true communion with her – namely, the saints. The result, of a most practical nature, was that shrines were built over their bones; and since the saints went on multiplying with the passing of generations, their shrines did likewise. A shrine is a place of devotion, hence a sure magnet for pilgrimages; a kind of local regional or even international Jubilee. Shrines like that of St.James of Compostella in Spain, for instance, became almost as the tomb of the Blessed Peter in Rome. Pilgrims congregated there from all parts of Europe, and they included princess and kings, who never went empty handed. The poorest folk always left money at the altar. Magnificent gifts of solid gold , silver, precious stones and the like still adorn the place.

Now it must be remembered that the whole of Europe was dotted with shrines, and that pilgrimages were the order of the day for centuries. This brought a continuous flow of revenue as we have already seen in a previous chapter, with the result that the accumulation of riches continued unabated, ranging from money to land and real estate.

The devotion to saints, therefore, ultimately became an immense, steady source of continuous wealth for the Roman Church as a whole, and for clergy in particular.

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