Marvelous Facts and Miraculous Evidence in Early Modern Europe ...

Critical Inquiry
Autumn 1991
121
even "the weakestJudgments and strongest Imaginations," but the enlightened
had no need of them (D, p. 403).86
This lofty manner points to the second unintentional contribution
evidentialist theology made to the frontal attack on the very existence of
miracles. By associating miracles with the bumptious and unlettered, they
anticipated Hume's guilt-by-association argument that wonders proliferated
most among the ignorant and barbarous. Thus Casaubon thought it
necessary to apologize for St. Augustine's credulity in matters marvelous as
unbecoming an educated man: "It may be, St. Augustine may be thought by
some, to have been somewhat more credulous in this point of strange relations,
then became so wise, so Learned, andjudicious a man, as certainly he
was: neither do I think my self bound to believe all things in this kind, which
he may be thought by his words to have believed."87 More dangerously, miracles
had come to be linked with rabble-rousing enthusiasts, who sincerely
or maliciously pretended to a divine mission in order to undermine the
powers-that-be. This was one of Stillingfleet's most telling arguments for
the cessation of miracles, for otherwise public order would be at the mercy
of "an innumerable company of croaking Enthusiasts [who] would be continually
pretending commissions from heaven" (OS, p. 109).
Although Catholic theologians in principle did not subscribe to the
doctrine of the cessation of miracles, nor to the claim that miracles must
be palpable to the senses, they were in practice as concerned about the
destabilizing effects, theological and political, of alleged miracles as their
Protestant colleagues. The Council of Trent stiffened the evidentiary
requirements for miracles, and placed the responsibility for a thorough
investigation in the hands of the local bishop, with the intent of reining in
the deviations of popular religion.88 Both the reasoning behind and the
execution of the new regulations closely paralleled Protestant developments.
Catholic reformers emphasized the need to distinguish between
true religion and superstition, and since they further contended that
superstitions were the work of the devil, the problem boiled down to distinguishing
genuine miracles from demonic counterfeits. So rigorous
were the diocesan investigations that the number of certified miracles in
France declined precipitously in the second half of the seventeenth century.89
Those that did pass through the fine sieve of official scrutiny were
backed by so much legal and medical evidence that historian Jean de
Viguerie has argued that they are among the best-documented historical
86. See also Casaubon, Of Credulity and Incredulity in Things Divine and Spiritual, p. 10.
87. Ibid., p. 116.
88. See Delumeau, Un Chemin d'histoire: Chretiente et christianisation (Paris, 1981),
p. 194.
89. See Jean de Viguerie, "Le Miracle dans la France du XVIIe siecle," XVIIe siecle 35
(July-Sept. 1983): 313-31.