monks of that place, and a third by the above-mentioned Geoffrey. He cured the deaf, the dumb, the lame, the blind, men possessed with devils, in many cases before multitudes of people: he wrought thirty-six miracles in a single day, says one of these historians; converted men and women that could not understand the language he spoke in. His wonders are set down by the eye-witnesses themselves, men known to us by the testimony of others.[1] I do not hesitate in saying that there is far more evidence to support the miracles of St Bernard than those mentioned in the New Testament.[2]
But we are to accept such testimony with great caution. The tendency of men to believe the thing happens which they expect to happen; the tendency of rumour to exaggerate a real occurrence into a surprising or miraculous affair, is well known. A century and a half have not gone by since witches were tried by a special court in Massa-
- ↑ See these books in Mabillon's edition of Bernard, Paris, 1721, Vol. II. p. 1071, et seq. See Fleury, Histoire Ecclesiastique, Liv. LXVI. et seq., and especially LXIX. ch. xvii., ed. Nismes, 1779, Vol. X. p. 147, et seq., where is a summary of some of his most important miracles. See likewise Les Vies des Saints, Paris, 1701, Vol. II. p. 288—326; Butler's Lives of the Saints, Lond. 1815, Vol. VIII. p. 227–274; Milner’s History of the Church of Christ, &c., Vol. III., Christian Examiner for March, 1841, Art. I. At the recent exhibition of the “holy Robe of Jesus” at Tréves, no less than eleven miraculous cures were effected, so it is said. Miracula Stultis! See Marx, History of the Holy Robe of J. C., with an account of the miraculous cures performed by the said Robe from 18th August to 6th October, 1844, Phil. 1845. Numerous Bishops attended the exhibition, and more than 1,100,000 persons, says the book. See p. 97, et seq. See too John Ronge, the Holy Coat of Tréves and the new German Catholic Church, New York, 1845. See an account of the miracle wrought by Vespasian, in Tacitus, Hist. Lib. IV. C. 81, Opp. ed. Paris, 1819, III. p. 490, et seq. See several similar wonders in Ammon, ubi sup. p. 165, et seq.
- ↑ Bernino, ubi sup. Vol. I. p. 204, gives a very dramatic account of a scene between St Macarius and a Heretic, in which, to prove the truth of the catholic doctrine, the saint raises from the dead a monk who had been buried about a month! For other confirmatory miracles, see Bernino, passim. It is well known that Petrarch, in the 14th century, believed the miracles of Pope Urban his own contemporary; and de Sade his biographer, writing in 1767, will have us believe that the Pope actually performed 80 miracles, besides raising two girls from the dead in the city of Avignon. Junker, in his Ehrengedächtnitz Lutheri, (p. 276-289, ed. 1707,) says that a portrait of Luther at Ober-Rossla in Weimar, at three different times, was covered with a profuse sweat while the preacher was speaking of the sad state of the schools and churches. See Reformation Almanach für 1817, p. xxvi. See the story of Spiridion, and his numerous miracles, in Sozomen, Hist. Eccles. Lib. I. C. xi., ed. Par. 1544, p. 14, et seq. See Wright's Essay on the Lit. and Superstitions of England in the Middle Ages, Lond. 1846, Vol. II. Essay x. xii.
