Miracles and Wonders in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period

Despite the assumption that we live today in a rather rationalist and mechanized world, there remain many aspects that neither medicine nor physics can fully explain. The Catholic Church continues to pronounce individuals as saints because scientifically confirmed miracles are associated with them. If we want to gain a solid understanding of the pre-modern history of mentality, emotions, and everyday culture, it proves to be highly revealing to examine what miracles and wonders had meant at that time, both in the theological and medical field, in the visual arts and literature. As a matter of fact, people both in the East and in the West have consistently flocked to pilgrimage sites all over the world in the hope that a miracle might happen and solve issues for them. The contributors to this volume, based on a symposium at the University of Arizona, May 2024, approach this critically important topic from many different perspectives, taking us from the early Middle Ages to the early modern age, examining hagiographical, medical, literary, and alchemical texts, discussing both miracles and wonders as relevant themes in the public discourses. Both the passage through Inferno and Purgatorio as the crucial pathway toward Paradiso and the experience of women’s miraculous conception are identified as deeply impactful for the pre-modern world, and this both in Christian and Muslim cultures. Studying miracles and wonders through a kaleidoscope of different materials and concepts makes it possible to gain a closer understanding of people’s mindsets, power structures, and the debate between medicine and religion. These topics were also greatly important in other cultures, as several papers on Arabic medieval literature indicate. Further, pursuing this global issue, we recognize easily that the separation line between the Middle Ages and the early modern period is only a modern construct and often not that helpful because the discourse on miracles and wonders has continued and influences even us today.

Albrecht Classen, University of Arizona, USA.