Stupid things religious people say

[Fake Messiah]

Strange how friars and nuns don't fly (levitate) today as they used to. Almost as if some people in the past were just full of shit. But that didn't stop the Catholic historian to write a book on how these people could really fly, and other Catholics to jump into the rabbit hole of insanity with him.

Levitation and bilocation: a courageous history of supernatural belief

When I first came across Carlos Eire’s recent book They Flew, I was awestruck at the courage of the man. He is a Catholic historian and a professor at Yale.

As a professor of history, Eire goes in for careful documentation. In fact, it is the sheer bulk of eyewitness records that gives his work its weight and authority. When he presents evidence of saints hovering in the air, he does it as a scrupulous organiser of eyewitness accounts. And if levitation wasn’t enough, he also adds a bit of bilocation to the mix.

In order to write this book, a work that was 40 years in the making, Eire rummaged through scores of archival sources – primary documents in French, Italian, Latin and Spanish, including reams of testimonies from eye witnesses and transcripts from courtroom hearings and ecclesiastic inquisitions – and hundreds of secondary accounts from the period.

The problem [people today no longer believe in levitation] is prejudice. As part of a Reformation reaction to Catholic mysticism the spiritual and the physical had to be confined to entirely different realms, and miracles no longer happened. Our empirically-addicted enlightenment culture swallows this unproven prejudice whole; a sceptical secular atmosphere declares anything unmeasurable impossible.

So, meet St Joseph of Cupertino (1603-63). The contemporary accounts of his flying up to the ceiling in spontaneous unrestrainable ecstasy are more numerous than any others – and yet you may not have heard of him. His levitations were not always predictable but could easily be triggered by anything that affected him spiritually. Simply hearing the names of Jesus or Mary could do it, as could sacred music or the beauty of nature. Prayer, especially, was a common trigger. Saying Mass caused him to rise in the air frequently, especially at the moment of consecration.

I particularly like the evidence of Johann Friedrich, Duke of Brunswick (1625-79). As Lutheran sceptics go, few came more rational and intellectual than him. And yet it was when he slipped incognito into a Mass that Father Cupertino was celebrating he was utterly overwhelmed by Joseph’s inexplicable floating to the ceiling. He renounced his Lutheranism and became an enthusiastic Catholic instead.

Rather surprisingly, holy flying was equally well documented by those who lived with St Teresa of Avíla (1515-82). So far from being an attention-seeking trick, as some suspected, St Teresa begged God to relieve her of the burden of it. She also begged her sisters to grab her and hold her down if they saw any daylight begin to emerge under her feet and any hint of upward slippage. They tried, but they found it impossible to restrain her.

https://catholicherald.co.uk/levitation-...al-belief/