God's jokes
Eric Christiansen
Miracles and the Mediaeval Mind Benedicta Ward (Scolar Press £17.50)
protestant churches have never en- couraged miracles. The Hand of God, yes, when the Armadas are blown off course, or Mr Slope wins preferment, but not the real thing. That means wild and em- barrassing deviations from the expected, spectacular signs, terror, hysteria and ap- plause. There are good reasons for not pro- moting that sort of event, but no Christian can deny that it happens. Disbelief in miracles means disbelief in the Bible and in the saints whom we still commemorate. The accepted compromise is to believe in them as long as they don't happen now; which is rather as if Christ had turned the wine into water.
The Reformation, we are told, put an end to the habit of venerating false wonders, pig's bones and God's foreskin. What is strange is that it also seems to have left Northern Europe's churches barren of true ones. Where are they, the cripples who throw down their crutches at the tomb of Archbishop Cosmo Gordon Lang and walk? It is a question for a novelist, how long a clergyman of the Church of England who raised the dead from their graves, or soft fruit from a broomstick, would be tolerated by his parishioners, his bishop, or his wife. It is a question for a theologian whether the Protestant saints whose relics have worked cures in secret, or the protestant laity who have been kept in ignorance of them, have the more to complain of.
Christmas approaches: one miracle we are all allowed to celebrate. One among thousands it used to be, before the New Learning came in, and Henry VIII wrecked the shrines. But miracles don't need shrines, and a lack of devotion in the public is exactly what they are meant to overcome. Unless there really is a curse on this island, they must have been happening all the time, in arcane profusion, unable to tinge the rigours of protestant piety with the faintest glow but transforming the lives of back- street mediums, conjurers, beggars, betting men, trapeze artists, lunatics and the whole tribe of risk-takers, witch-doctors and in- curables. The surreptitious splendour of these healings and hauntings may sometimes disturb the leisure of an archdeacon, but never seems to irradiate a synod or pack the Cathedrals' express.
It was not always so, as Sister Benedicta Ward points out in her fine book. In those days, miracles and religion went hand in hand; but they had to be the right miracles, or they might easily lead to the wrong sort of religion. It was generally recognised that the Devil worked his own wonders, and that men contrived spurious ones, and that the purpose of God's miracles was not always self evident.
Why did such things occur at the graves of so many men and women who had met violent deaths after unremarkable or disreputable lives? Why did they abound at Rocamadour, where there was no shrine, but not at Rome, where St Peter himself was buried? Why did St Cuthbert's cures favour the rich, and St Godric's the poor? Why were some men punished by God for disturbing the ducks on Fame Island, while
others were assisted by the Virgin Mary in . carrying on affairs with nuns? Why was the living king of England, in all his grossness, able to cure scrofula at a touch, while even St Thomas of Canterbury was sometimes unable to heal pilgrims who had walked hundreds of miles to his tomb? Why was it wrong to expect God to show himself in judicial Ordeals, but right to venerate his presence in the consecrated bread?
These problems had to be faced and solved, unless the doctrines of Christianity were to be submerged in a flood of inexplicable and sensational events. The proliferation of wonders was not the work of artful monks; even the most unscrupulous clerical manipulator, like the Welshman who engineered the cult of St William of Nor- wich as a victim of Jewish ritual murder, had no interest in making supply exceed de- mand or in risking his profit by over- production. The signs and wonders were quite abundant enough; the difficulty was making use of them, whether for gain or for devotion. Sister Benedicta's able dissection of the evidence, which fills hundreds of volumes, from the fantastic to the clinical, shows how the clergy laboured to find pat- terns, meanings, and messages in phenomena that were as apt to hinder true belief as to assist it.
The cure of the sick was the commonest and most acceptable of these patterns. It brought health to the afflicted, profit to the shrine, and edification to the beholder, and it could be authenticated by interviews and case-notes. It is not surprising that so many miracle-stories were of this type. But what of the infliction of pain, paralysis, blind- ness, and even death on the previously healthy? They must have been doing something wrong, and in the stories they always appear as sinners, even if they did nothing worse than those women who took shortcuts over land that was consecrated to the mysogynist St Cuthbert. But what about funny and apparently frivolous miracles? St Magnus of Orkney split the dice to enable a desperate gamester to beat his opponent's double six. St Faith ap- peared in visions to demand trinkets and jewellery. A great philosopher might find it difficult to approve of such things, but laymen didn't; it was better to accept God's sense of humour than to deny it.
Since then, the scientific spirit has made it easier for the believer, by discrediting so many miraculous things that were never easy to reconcile with religion. The protes- tant clergy have been spared much of the trouble and doubt that continue to afflict their catholic and orthodox colleagues, as in Poland this winter. Our parsons can con- centrate on more sensible things, like degrading their liturgy and selling off their churches. Nevertheless, all they stand for Is based on one miracle, and others keep hap• pening, whether they like it or not. Perhaps there is something to be said for taking them seriously. If so, I recommend Sister Benedicta's book as an intriguing record of how the problem was dealt with by a more open-minded age.
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