The tradition of collecting cultic miracle stories stretches from Augustine’s miracles of Saint Stephen to those of Our Lady of Czestochowa today. During the late medieval and early modern period, parish churches and guilds in the Low Countries were particularly productive in recording miracles ascribed to their patron saints.
Miracles of the Mind. Authenticity, authority and religious experience in vernacular miracle collections (2011-2016)
The FWO-project ‘Miracles of the Mind. Authenticity, authority and religious experience in vernacular miracle collections’ seeks to uncover the dynamics that have stimulated the production of miracle collections and to expose the desires that stirred clerks of parish churches, chapels and cathedrals of Flanders, Brabant and Holland to promote miraculous devotion between the late fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. To this end, a large corpus of miracle collections has been assembled and subjected to analysis. This analysis is informed by three main concerns. Firstly, this project’s aim is to establish a nuanced view of the political and practical contexts in which cultic miracles were registered and collected, how they were implemented in liturgical and cultic services and how their audiences 'consumed' them. Secondly, the project sets out to gain insight into the various techniques that were applied to guarantee the miracles’ ‘authenticity’ and ‘objectivity’ (confession, confirming on oath, witnesses, etc.) and how the acquired authenticity was presented in the final version of the miracle account. Our third interest concerns the representation of the private religious experience of the miraculés, focusing mainly on their visionary experiences and bodily suffering. Although impossible to control or corroborate, such experiential representations occupy an ambiguous yet pivotal role in a genre that is driven by factuality and its claim on authenticity. The majority of the work on miracle collections in the Low Countries has been executed in a fragmentary style and anecdotal fashion and has treated the material primarily from the perspective of the ‘emancipation’ and ‘internalization’ of popular religious culture. By integrating all known (Middle) Dutch vernacular miracle collections, contextualizing the cults that have produced them, and carrying out a close reading the miracle accounts themselves, this project will move beyond the traditional historiographical approaches and offer new insights into miracles as instruments to establish and consolidate relationships between the parish clergy and their parishioners.
- Project: 2011-2016
- Jonas Van Mulder
- Supervisor: Veerle Fraeters & Guido Marnef (University of Antwerp)
- Funded by: FWO
- Publications:
- Jonas Van Mulder, ‘Miracles and the body social. Infirmi in the Middle Dutch miracle collection of Our Lady of Amersfoort.’ in: K. Mustakallio, C. Krötzl & J. Kuuliala, Infirmity in Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Social and Cultural Approaches to Health, Weakness and Care (Ashgate, 2015)
- Jonas Van Mulder, ‘Het miraculeuze lichaam. Lichaamsvertogen in zeventiende-eeuwse genezingsmirakelen uit de Zuidelijke Nederlanden.’ in: Trajecta, 21 (2012), 249-294
- Jonas Van Mulder, ‘Ziekelijke vertogen? Lichaam en demonologie in Brabantse genezingsmirakels (1603-1717).’ in: Geschiedenis der geneeskunde (2011), 276-286
- Jonas Van Mulder, ‘The Prosaic Supernatural. Representation and function of lay visionary experience in miracle collections from the Low Countries.’ in: S. Katajala-Peltomaa & C. Krötzl (red.), Medieval Miracle Collections: On Methodologies, Structures and Functions (forthcoming)
- Jonas Van Mulder, ‘Middelnederlandse mirakelcollecties uit de Zuidelijke Nederlanden.’ in: H. Geybels, Tradities en heiligen in Vlaanderen (forthcoming)
- PhD dissertation (forthcoming)